Mood:

Next year I’ll have graduated 20 years ago.  Feeling old…
At least I skipped grade 1, so most everyone else in the class is older.

On the topic of work, several employees left the company so I’m back to doing high-level support for the credit card program we interface with.  Whee…

I’m pricing out a new computer for myself using our tax refund.  Here’s where it is right now (I already have a keyboard, mouse, monitor, speakers, etc.):

Because the motherboard and card are SLI-ready, my next upgrade will be another of the same card.  By that time they’ll have come further down in price, and a better CPU too.

Anyone “in the know” have any suggestions/concerns on these choices?  It’s basically a gaming rig.  I’ll probably order it all next week.

Mood:

Yes, I’m still here!

Ball hockey season started up again, and with all the stuff I have to do at work and the family at home I haven’t had much time for myself.  When I do get time alone I tend to just vegetate, except when I’m forced to figure out why my Usable Freeware site stopped working with its PHP database (host’s PHP upgrade broke my code).

I got sick quite a bit during the early part of the year, so I’ve hit my paid sick day limit already and it’s only halfway through the year.  An air conditioned office is comfortable, but when someone gets sick and comes in because they’re out of sick days, everyone else gets sick and brings down the overall efficiency.

Emily is repeating lots of words.   She’s still mostly babbling, but understands when we tell her to do basic things.  She smiles all the time, loves hugging and kissing, and charms pretty much everyone.

Geoffrey is loving the new Dr. Who episodes.  I suppose I’m going to have to get him a Sonic Screwdriver for Christmas…

I tried to update my ATI video card drivers and it couldn’t find an INI file. I tried to skip it and now my computer boots to 640×480 with 8 colours and no option to go higher. I tried System Restore, uninstalling and reinstalling, but no joy unless I use the Microsoft drivers from Windows Update, and they’re not great. Even DivX video is choppy. With all the problems I’ve had with ATI cards I think my next video card will be a GeForce and I’ll stick with those; never had any problems with nVidia.

I’m posting this with the Performancing Firefox plugin, which allows me to browse in a split-screen while I blog.  If I like it I’ll probably give their free blog metrics service a go.