One of my machines is a nice EVGA 680i SLI Motherboard. She's sporting a RAID array of 2 WD Raptor HDDs, Core2Duo 1.86 Ghz overclocked to 2.8 Ghz, and a sexy LianLi case.

She has been my workhorse for a while now and hasn't let me down.

Recently, it has been a dedicated media center that my parents use. My father, becoming as nerdy as me (or maybe i got it from him), purchased a Seagate 1.5 TB SATA HDD: a beauty!  It would NOT take a format under ANY condition. Considering I had a variety of HDDs in there already with an extensive history configurations, I had come to the conclusion that the drive was faulty.  Receiving the replacement HDD, the same problem existed....

I was lost it. How could this happen?  The HDD fails a full format around 73% EVERY TIME, and it would never take a quick format. It also failed the Seagate diagonostics software! The twist: it will format on another machine!

So I decided to try some updated 680i chipset drivers. It fixed the problem immediately. The drive took a quick format, and I started a full format on her just to be sure. I generally expect stability fixes in driver updates, but this is one of the strangest/largest issue I've seen get corrected.

Either way, thanks Nvidia for correcting it.

Every morning to work is a blast. Generally involves school bus drivers clogging up rt 30 and schoolhouse, people not very awake at the wheel, people driving before defogging their windows, etc. Always exciting.

On a few roads, there are children at bus stops separated by only a home.  I've literally seen a bus stop 3 times in 1 block because they didn't consolidate the bus stops.  I had to walk to my bus stop and meet kids from blocks around when I was a kid (up hill both ways). Makes sense!  I'll let someone else to the math on how much fuel their wasting, but I'm honestly more selfishly concerned about having to stop 3 damn times for only 1 out of 3 good reasons. There also are the crossing guards in their cars sipping coffee and reading the paper in their cars while I'm forced to drive 20 MPH because it is so dangerous for kids. But that's a different story.

But, to the point, EVERY morning, I see people talking on their phones while driving to work, I presume.  Who the hell are you talking to?  My buddy Chris said he does that in the morning with his wife, but they're probably in a phase of some kind since they recently got married.  Good for them.  To the rest of you people out there... you suck at driving, you suck more in the morning, and you suck even more with that phone glued to your ear.  But seriously, maybe I just don't get it.  Maybe your radio in your car is broken, so you're calling to get the weather, or news or something?  Maybe you're calling your credit card company so you can get put on hold and listen to some music that makes 90% of people happy for the period of time they're on hold.

Educate me people....

Comcast has been sending out propoganda explaining that they're going to cap users @ 250 GB/month because a SMALL percentage of users are using a lot of bandwidth doing BAD THINGS!  First off, fuck you, I know you're talking about me. Second, why is it that you're going to give us double our speeds for free if you're strained so much?

Let me explain why: Comcast's first business in our area was TV.  For example, if I start using Netflix's HD streaming via XBOX 360, I will be interferring with their business model and will be taking away money from them. So, this is where the cap comes in. Since I'm also a customer of their internet service, it is easy for Comcast to implement unfair control measures.  The cap discourgages massive downloads and gets customers to begin to get used to limitations.

Perhaps someday we'll be tiered like we pay for TV: $50 for basic package, $15 more for X,Y,Z content, $15 more for the whole internet!

6Mbps/1Mbps upgraded --> 12Mbps/2Mbps
8Mbps/2Mbps upgraded --> 16Mbps/2Mbps

New Plans:
22Mbps/5Mbps  $62.95/month
50Mbps/10Mbps $139.95/month

Giz had a good post on the Circuit City layoffs that happened last year.

I worked @ CC when this happened. It was a horrible idea. Everyone who was loyal and most likely been there for MANY years, were the ones who were canned.  Those of us who were just "passing through" were the ones that were left behind.  The managers that were left behind were scared shitless and did pretty poor jobs.

Now, I'm 23, most stores I walk into now have managers that are younger than me.  Few to none of them are experienced. Just the other day, I had a manager admit a store had a lower price and refused to price match because it was below their cost.  WTF is the point of a guarantee if you're just going to back out when it gets tough?  It's called investment and making a customer happy. That apparently doesn't exist anymore.

Honestly CC, my loyalty to you is going as far as my circuit city rewards will take me. They've been sent to my home, and I'm going to burn through them as quick as I can. Read: if you want to buy some items at the CC lounge, call me!

Also, for humor: ask any CC employee when they were told the new computer system was going to be installed.

Note: I still DISLIKE Best Buy. I don't like to goto a store to get treated like an inferior and get handled by a company's employees who think they can do no wrong ,"OMG BB, we h4v3 G33k SQUAD!!!!!!!!!"

Newegg FTW