Musings From New York

Happy New Year!

I write this from Sam's apartment in Baton Rouge. We're heading out in an hour or so, first to Biloxi, MI. Not to party, of course. As I understand, very little remains of that town, even after several months of Katrina relief & rebuilding efforts. Hopefully, the terrific sights there wouldn't dampen our enthusiasm as we head out to New Orleans.

We checked a webcam of Bourbon Street last night, and there seemed to be some activity there. We're hoping that there'd be enough people around to make it a memorable trip ;-) Or at the very least, there are some good jazz or blues bars open with some good music. In fact, that's where Sam & I spent most of our time last year ... smoky blues bar, listening to some good ol' fashioned Mississippi blues! Ooh yeah!

So to one and all, here's wishing you a great New Year's! I'll see you on the other side!

Stuff you gotta see ...

After reading about it in today's NY Times, I went over to YouTube to check out this very funny song from 17th December's SNL. Snack Attack, Motherf***er! Update: This video is available for FREE from iTunes Music Store. Check under "TV Shows". It's FREE!

And then, to watch the most painfully embarrassing (no jokes, it makes my toes curl in horror) English song to be featured in Indian Cinema, check this out. I'd sent Gowri the song several months ago ... for some reason, she loved it .. so much so that she spread it around like an infectious disease. Personally, I fight off the urge to put a gun to my head whenever we've talked about it.

Lastly, check out this AWESOME ad for Carlton Draught Beer (Australian). TBS Superstation had a "Best Ads of 2005 show" last night and this was number 4 or thereabouts. It was my favorite though. For some reason, the CareerBuilder ad was voted the best ... Oh, and the MTL ad is pretty sweet too!

My thoughts on building a PC

You really need to know what you're doing! I mean, a lot of it is plugging A into B sort of thing, but I spent a lot of time going over the mobo manual to figure out which one of 10 identical looking pins I should plug something into! I also had a PC Gamer magazine I'd picked up a month or two ago that had step by step instructions, with photos! Some of the specific issues I had are:

• Plunking the processor into the mobo was ridiculously easy. Installing the cooling unit on top of the processor was not fun. You're supposed to drop the heat sink onto the processor, lock it in place using hooks on either side of the casing, and then turn the locking pin down to fix it in place. It is pretty difficult to do this ... I think I ended up bending the locking pin - it just wouldn't turn!
• The case's cabling needs to be better marked or labelled
• I didn't realize that LAN ports needed drivers that were not native to the mobo. I was panicking when I didn't have an Internet connection when I powered up until I reread the mobo manual.

I may not be perfect ...

But I'm pretty darned good.

I ordered a few parts over from NewEgg last week, and assembled a PC over the Christmas weekend. Well, I assembled it on Saturday and spent Sunday and Monday installing stuff and gaming. WoW never looked so good! I have not experienced ANY lag at all on this new rig.

Anyway, here are the specs:

          

11-156-175	CASE RAIDMAX/X1 ATX-909WBP BLACKRT (Serial#: 06N45R0A0000028)	1	$69.99	$69.99
22-144-239	HD 100G|MX 7K 8M SATA 6L100M0 % (Serial#: L20AJMXG)	1	$59.50	$59.50
	This item is serviced by the Maxtor, Please call 800 262 9867 for service. Web: www.maxtor.com.
14-102-639	VGA SAPPHIRE X800 CF 256M 100137 % (Serial#: A054000106837)	1	$265.00	$265.00
20-176-825	MULTI-SLOT PRO-GEAR Xm-4U BLK (Serial#: 655408170161)	1	$22.00	$22.00
29-102-188	SOUND CARD CREATIVE|X-Fi Xtreme RTL (Serial#: MASB0460539006213L)	1	$121.99	$121.99
	Creative Labs (800)-998-1000
19-103-539	CPU AMD 64 |3700+ ATHLON 64 939P RT (Serial#: 1356899K50145)	1	$235.00	$235.00
	For Retail AMD processor, please call 408 749-3060 for service after first 30 days. For OEM AMD processor, we will service for 30 days only. Please verify the Processor matches your order Prior To installation. IMPORTANT: Always pack your CPU well for return. We will refuse your RMA if we received it as DAMAGED!
17-103-932	>POWER SUPPLY ANTEC TP2-550 EPS12V (Serial#: 761345225519)	1	$99.99	$99.99
20-231-033	MEM 1G|G.SK D400 F1-3200BIU1-1GBHX (Serial#: 0C1MD5040000002 ,0C1MD5040000004)	2	$128.99	$257.98
37-102-062	MS WIN XP PRO w/SP2 SINGLE PACK % (Serial#: 00045619310313)	1	$138.95	$138.95
	Please Note CD keys are listed on the outside of the plastic wrap accompanying your product.
13-136-165	MB DFI LP[UT] RDX200 XPRESS200 939 (Serial#: D54202858)	1	$189.00	$189.00
	DFI (510)-623-5010
27-140-014	DVD+/-RW HP|DVD740RI 16X BLK RTL (Serial#: 002544416069)	1	$89.99	$89.99

A sweet rig for 1600, including the rushed shipping.

This was the first time I'd built a PC, and I'm glad to say I got it about 90% right. The things to be done:

• Installation of 2nd hard disk - this was the hard disk whose O/S failed after I tried putting in more RAM on my old HP. I'm praying the data is still intact.
• Installation of a media card reader - eliminates the need to USB cables for my camera
• Non-functioning LEDs - although I plugged the LED leads into the mobo, the lights aren't working. I'm told it may be a polarity issue, so that's something to look into
• Non-functioning pimpage - the case is supposed to glow blue (although this may be the old PSU that got replaced)
• Unidentified cable - The RaidMax case's instruction manual is laughable in how bad it is. There was one cable from the front of the case that was unidentified, and I couldn't see any corresponding pins on the mobo. Nothing's blown up, so I'm guessing it's not something critical ... but I've now got to call RaidMax and figure it all out!

My next few upgrades are going to be (not necessarily in the following order):

• A second video card - Crossfire is ATI's equivalent technology to NVidia's SLI; however, enablement of dual-GPU in crossfire is a software toggle, whereas it's a change to the BIOS with NVidia. This is because with Crossfire, the output of the secondary card is piped into the primary, whereas SLI is enabled with a chip on the mobo. The other advantage of Crossfire is that I can mix the cards, as long as they're in the same family. For example, I could have an X800 256MB card and a 128 MB card. With SLI, I need 2 cards of the same type. There are some other complications, but I won't go into them here!
• More RAM - you can never have less RAM
• A second optical media drive - I have a DVD +/- RW ... I might just put in an ordinary DVD/CD-RW
• Sometime in the future, I'd switch to dual-core 64-bit processors (the AMD X2). The reason I didn't go for it now is that some games & apps have issues with dual-processors. I'd probably make this upgrade around the time Vista is launched, or shortly after the first few Vista patches come out.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Easy on the eggnog now :)

And speaking of Mike ...

Congrats, mate.

I do, however, question his taste in music. Sorry Mike, I was going to ask you to suggest the songs for my wedding party (whenever that may be), but "Santa Claus is Back in Town" is pushing it. ;-)

Speaking of the Beatles ...

An interesting "what if" discussion can be found here. My position is quite simple: I think Mike's talking out of his ass :-)

New Music

Another weekend comes by, with more new music ...

1. Crazy (Original) & Crazy (Acoustic) by Seal ... Heard this over the radio at lunch, and it was one of those "Damn I remember this song" moments! I just had to get it.
2. Cherry Blossom Girl by Air ... I have no idea where or when I first heard this song. Maybe it was when I was in the UK. Nonetheless, when I first heard the snippet on iTMS, I just had to get it! Very nice song, this.
3. Paranoid (Live) by Ozzy Osbourne ... Randy Rhodes, we miss you. Please reincarnate soon.
4. Over The Mountain by Ozzy Osbourne ... see above.
5. Fortunate Son by CCR ... I had a lousy MP3 of this track, so I decided to replace it
6. Blood Red Sky by Judas Priest ... my unofficial anthem sometimes ("You won't take me, you won't break me") .. cheesy I know, but my middle name is Edam, and it's a Gouda track ... couldn't resist that :)
7. The Story Continues by Patrick Doyle ... the opening track of the Harry Potter & The Goblet of Fire soundtrack. The creepy/sinister take on the cheey tune we all know and have as our ringtones (not me, my ringtone is the intro to Coldplay's Clocks!)
8. Baby Baby by Amy Grant ... what? It's a sweet song. Don't judge me!
9. Walking In The Rain by Shivkumar Sharma ... iTMS has added the pathbreaking The Elements: Water & The Elements: Space to its catalog. The Elements were released in ... 1996? 97? They spawned this whole slew of Hindustani albums covering moods, landscapes, and Gods know what else. I remember this track as being one of the more "western" of the Water album.

Holy crap!

5.26.06 ... mark this date! The Beast is back, baby! And look at who's playing him!!

And ... The Angel?!

Let the secret fantasies of admantium claws begin! Woohoo!!

Update: I'm not the only one! And although this one has nothing to do with this particular movie, it's one heck of a belly laugh! I <3 Penny Arcade!

What a week!

I don't think I've worked this hard since ... school, and I mean 10th standard in Bangalore! Remember those History & Geography projects we slaved over after school hours? Kid you not, these last 2 weeks, I was logging 12 hours at work on some days. And a lot of that was unproductive time - in group meetings, doing Project Management stuff (Gods, how I hate those status reports!)

The good news is that I think I've gotten over the learning curve's "hump", and that I finally have a decent idea about the different components and their interactions and such. It took me only 4 weeks, but I'm there! I also interviewed people for my team ... that was an interesting experience ... I mean, my module of the project (business requirements analysis) is so high-level, it doesn't really matter how much technical expertise people have.

I mean sure, you gotta have some basic understanding of the solution, but I need good technical writers ... people who can lead client meetings and such ... I mean, normally I would be doing such stuff, but I've been given a position in the project one level above my current station (all other leads are Managers, I think. At most, there are 2 leads that are Senior Consultants, me included). Which leads me to this week's Project Management lesson: Don't Attend Non-critical Meetings. Send minions instead. Which is why I was interviewing* to fill up my team. Sending minions ensures you look concerned and involved, but they're really work breaks.

But, it looks like my part of the project is getting pushed out, and I might be racking up the Delta SkyMiles until April or May. At the rate of 1500 miles a week, I'm getting about 6000 a month ... only 4 months needed for a Business Class upgrade! I think! Woohoo!

* Yes! Me! Interviewing people! Cue Darth Vader: When I left you, I was but the learner. Now, I am the master!