This weekend was quite literally a gut check. Summarized in spectacular powerpoint fashion…
- Microsoft Vista is quite possibly the worst f*cking software ever written. Ever. Period. End of Story.
- Weekend-long pounding stress headaches suck. SUCK SUCK SUCK.
- Building a computer from scratch got a lot more complicated in 8 years. Building a computer with a pounding stress headache is a fracking awful.
- Hard drives arriving DOA (complete with that sickening head clicking) SUCK.
- And I thought ATI was bad... Nvidia (and ATI) need to get their act together and polish their linux drivers... and make sure your installer works!
- Alberto Milone is a SAINT!! Wrote a great python script (Envy) that does a video driver installer better than Nvidia or ATI (f*ck nuts)
- Discovering Envy after a day and a half of manual tweaking SUCKS!
- Figuring how to reconnect my home theater system is always much more trouble that it should be.
But now to the accomplishments
- Now have a nice dual screen, dual booting (WinXP & Kubuntu) system. Kubuntu has the right video driver (although the X-fi isn't supported yet... Oh... Creative sucks too for that, but at least I have sound out the motherboard). I wasn't able to do virtualization on a raw partition... baby steps, but I'll be able to setup a VM of Windows 2000 to cover basic windows tasks, and I'll only have to move over to WinXP for gaming or final photoshop production -- a step in the right direction.
- Have a brand spanking new 42" LCD HDTV. Went with Visio from Costco... definitely looks and feels a little on the cheap end, but the picture quality is great (and its 1080p for a little more than $1000). The HDTV cable box comes on Friday. I also need to go buy an upcoverting DVD player.
- After cursing out Vista to no end on Sunday, I finally got my PDA (its a fucking Dell windows mobile 5!) to sync for Ann to use (today is her first day... wow that's weird).
To Do Items
- Buy a Weber grill (only allowed charcoal unfortunately), so I can start cooking.
- Buy new DVD player.
- Setup computer software.
- Install bike stand
- Get car washed...
- etc, etc.