Thursday, December 17, 2009

Windows 7

Let me start this by saying that I try to let the hype die down before I jump on any new technology.

However, $29.99 for an operating system is where I draw the line on rational decisions.  Financial planning and cautioned spending in the face of the new hotness felt like someone telling me that dark chocolate covered nipples were off the menu because of the carbs.  Soul-crushing and just plain wrong.  So I waved good-bye to eating anything other than a ham sandwich (and certainly no dark chocolate covered nipples....as far as I know) for a week, snatched my debit card from it's pleather sheath, and bought myself some of that Windows 7.

Seeing a normally expensive piece of software go for so cheap usually means it's languishing in some plywood bin at Wal-Mart.  And for all I know, 7 will be there by Easter (just in time for themed baskets complimented with with seven chocolate eggs, Se7en, and 7UP).  But a curious thing happened after I boldly slapped F12 and booted from the (self-made) disc:  Everything worked.  The wording of the options needed a little clarification but that's probably just me wanting technical jargon rather than options written by Dora the Explorer.  After logging in for the first time, I began to see why the beta was getting such good reviews.  Windows 7 seems to be as stable, if not more so, than my XP machine was and it retains the eye candy-ness of Vista.

(Side Note: People that pronounce it Veesta absolutely crack me up.  Vista is a real word people!  You think Microsoft paid someone to come up with a trendy, buzz-word type name for their OS?  I'll take Vista any day over OSX or Ubuntu.  Try having a rational adult conversation with a non-computer person and see which of the three names you'd like to try to say with a straight face.)

I don't know what it is about this blog but every time I start to pick a topic for my next blog the potential subject rebels and smites me with its nonoperative ways.  I went home last week to finish my nerd Windows 7 blog and my PC started to only report six of my eight GBs of RAM.  After visually making sure the RAM sticks are securely in place I turn the PC back on only to find that I now have no video.  So like any good geek I turned it off, cracked it open, and started poking around.  One hour, two monitors, and a metric ton of mumbled curses later, I still have no video.  So I made a (somewhat) rational conclusion that the on-board video card must have gone bad.

Now normally I love to find excuses to spend money on computer parts.  But Christmas was dueling my inner nerd in an epic battle of Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock. (or whatever Japanese game with pointy-haired, effeminate, card-throwing adolescent boys yelling about attack points and monsters passes for popular these days.  Really.  Look it up.  I challenge you to Google for ten minutes and NOT to find six different shows that fit that description.  Also, can you tell I have a five-year-old son at home?)

Cut to last night, I get my new XFX Radeon 4770 card (I only remember that because it was last night and it was written in about 419 places) out of the box and carefully put it in the tower.  By the Way, this card is a monster.  It's like the K2 of video cards.  Huge.  Anyway, I turn on the PC, same video problem.  More poking and mumbled cursing ensue and I finally called my drummer. (Did I mention I'm in a band?  Did I mention we're called Porcelain Paradox? Did I mention we haven't posted new songs in over a year or that the songs on our page are old-ass demos? Did I mention that I just remembered to fire our webmaster? Did I mention we're playing our first show in almost a year, with our new bass player, at Patrick Sullivan's on Friday, February 12th? No? Well...someone should.)  After a few minutes he says it could be the motherboard but I should try messing with the RAM again just to make sure.  So I remove all four sticks of RAM and replace them one by one, with restarts in-between, and.......it works.  Sweet dark chocolate covered nipples it works!

I equally love and hate computers.  I feel like getting Love and Hate tattooed on my fingers but not on the knuckles like everyone else.  I want them tattooed on my finger tips so I can never get a job show my keyboard my feelings by typing with the hand that currently has the most appropriate saying.

Flawless and non-consequential plan.