KiggenPig said:
October is the best time of the year. Midway through the semester, CFL and NFL seasons are going, MLB playoffs, and best of all the NHL season starts. Hockey is a religion in our family; we are stereotypical Canadians.
I hate commercial sports, I think watching them is a waste of time. I feel a bit of a hypocrite because I am at the moment wearing a Seattle Seahawks shirt. But that's only because it was the cleanest shirt I could find. The only time I watch sports is if the Seahawks (or Mariners) make the finals. Then I'll watch and get behind it because the parties out in the bars are lot more fun if we win. But that's the only reason I get behind it, not because I really care about the sport.
When I was 11 years old, I was very much into sports. We used to get the paper delivered and one of my favorite things to do was to look at the current standings of my favorite sport teams. So that lasted about one year. When I was 12 I got interested in girls and became the roller rink king. When I was 13 I got into surfing because the roller rink thing was "old hat" and not cool anymore. Being a surfer was cool.
So that's that. What's my point? My point is that adults who are sports fans are cases of arrested development (IMHO
). Mentally, they stopped aging at age 11 and there they stayed. Some of us have moved on, though
I also feel the same about video gamers. Big waste of time. I actually used to write video games for the 6502 processor back in the early 80's if you can believe it or not. I was 14 at the time to keep up with the chronology. So I became a computer nerd after the surfer thing. Although I was still surfing at the time. I never actually quit surfing until I moved inland. But I digress.
In any case, I just recently built a new computer a couple days ago. AMD FX630 processor, ASUS M5A97 LE r2.0 motherboard, 8 gigs of DDR3 1600 RAM (G-skill "ripjaws"
), and a high airflow (HAF912) Coolermaster case. I got the whole package for $280 bucks off Newegg. If the rig holds up for the next 2 weeks I will redeem the rebates which will knock down that price a further 40 bucks making it a $240 rig.
Of course, I had to "cannibalize" the components of my old system to make this work, particularly the 3 SATA hard drives, the power supply, and the video card, which (don't laugh) is an NVIDIA Geforce 8800 GTS. (I told you I wasn't a gamer) So why did I assemble a gaming rig, you might ask? (Although an extremely budget minded gaming rig). Because I like power. I miss the days of overclocking when you had to use your ingenuity to get a few more thousand Hz out of your CPU or video card in order to make some application run more smoothly. That was fun. I think we hit a plateau with the INTEL Core2Duo where overclocking wasn't really necessary anymore. At least for the things I was doing. The gamers, however, kept Moore's law alive as they always strive for higher and higher frame rates. This is a good thing, but the only frame rates I need these days are to watch "Terminator Genysis 3D" on my 40 inch Samsung 3D TV.
Speaking of which, I'm sure my old build with the Core2Duo would have handled Terminator Genysis 3D just fine. So why did I get a new rig you might ask (if you're still readning this)? That's because my old rig took a dump. I took it to the local repair shop and they told me it was a short on my motherboard, the ASUS P5B-E. What?! That almost never happens. I was sure it was my power supply unit but they tested it and it checked out fine. Guess what, though? I just fired up my new rig a couple of days ago and (after going through the BIOS setup) Windows popped up immediately. I couldn't believe it. Technology builds almost never work out for me the first time, I was amazed. I was even more amazed that I didn't have to re-install windows or the chipset drivers for the new motherboard. It was actually almost creepy.
However, I did notice a high-pitched whine the second I turned on the computer. I thought, OMG, what the F%$# is this? I didn't want to believe it was the PSU because that seemed to check out OK at the repair shop. So I looked online and found this guy who said to take a paper towel core, put it up to my ear and move it around the rig to find out where the whine was coming from. Initially I thought it was coming fro from the motherboard, but sure enough, it was actually coming from the PSU. Damn! So I just ordered a Corsair 500 watt PSU for $49 minus $5 "Promo code" minus $20 rebate (if I get it), so that sets me back $25. Not bad. It's not one of those new fancy "modular" PSU's, but for $25, who cares, right?
Actually, if I had it my way, I'd still be using my old Core2Duo rig. I got immense satisfaction out of not falling for the hype and upgrading my system. The only thing I did upgrade was the operating system to Windows 8 because I had to in 2014 when they stopped supporting Windows XP. To celebrate the occasion I got a new 2 terabyte Seagate Hard Drive also, so that set me back about $250 for the combo. But it worked fine in the old rig; I was planning on using that until they stopped supporting Windows 8 in 2022. See, when you get older you get stingy and hold on to old shirts and old computer builds, I guess.
There's one bright light, though, in this saga. I just got word from my buddy at the computer repair shop that the Oculus Rift VR headset is slated to go public the first quarter of 2016. He has one of the promo "development kits" he uses for 3D CADCAM and video gaming and says it's awesome. So I guess my instinct to go for a new gaming rig may pay off after all. I was planning on getting a geforce 750ti for this new build to keep the price down so that I could buy a 3D monitor. However, I think I'm going to sit on my heels with the geforce 8800 until the Oculus rift come out. The chatter on the street is that you're going to need a geforce 970 to run the Rift.
http://www.fastcompany.com/3046376/tech-forecast/oculus-rifts-pc-requirements-are-virtual-realitys-achilles-heel
That probably goes for the Rift's competitors also, such as HTC's
Vive and Sony's
Morpheus.
<< morning yawn!
Beauty is as always in the eyes of the beholders.
).
