yotogi.net

last year, magic money was part of the downpayment on melissa's and my wonderful house. this year, part of it went to a little more "recreational" expense.

i have been building my own computers since i was in college. back then the pickings for high performance and affordable machines was pretty much, well... no one had what we wanted. being an AMD guy, the pickings were even smaller. couple all of that with working in a department (and for a boss) who pinched every penny and you built your own stuff.

after my last experience building my own machine (there is a ton of stuff about it in the archives), i have pretty much decided that i am tired of it. back in school, i had an office with a bench and tons of spare parts. now, i don't and i certainly don't have the time anymore to mess around trying to figure out driver conflicts or best configuration for performance.

don't get me wrong, i still do my research. i still look at the numbers and try and understand if i should or should not be an early adopter of technology. i just don't want to have to deal with the crap of putting it all together. i want my computer to be like a sports car, fast and fun, but with a contract that makes someone else fix it when it breaks.

to that end, i spent too much money the other day on one of these. and this time, i decided to be patent and wait on the new NVIDIA 6800 video card. so i will be bleeding edge for about a week and then i should be good for another couple of years.

the lead time on this is something like 30 days. bah, i want my new toy now.

for the last two weeks i have been sporting a sore shoulder. i thought that it was a pinched nerve, but at this point i have no idea. when i wake up in the morning i can barely move my arm. by the end of the day it is better, but still really sore. i can type and mouse and drive, but the rotation of my arm hurts like hell. i have a doctors appointment on wednesday to have someone look at it (and get my first physical in some years).

but i didn't post that to bitch. i posted that so that i could talk about how much being in pain (and having to adjust to not using your primary arm) can mess with you. my father was in a car accident a few months ago and broke his collarbone. his arm was immobalized for several weeks and he talked about how that drove him crazy. i am already favoring my arm, my posture has changed to take stress of that side of my body. i am already using my left hand more. it is strange how quickly your body adjusts to things like this.

last weekend we painted the living room. i am going to get on getting some new pictures up in the images section of the webpage.