This weekend I had the great fortune of rebuilding my personal computer. It turned out to be quite an experience, and surprisingly frustrating at times. Before I detail the problems I ran into, here's a list of the new components I put into it:

• Asus A8N5X motherboard
• AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ CPU (dual core)
• 2GB Corsair XMS DDR400 SDRAM
• Antec SmartPower 2.0 500W Power Supply
• eVGA GeForce 7900 GT 256MB
• 2 Seagate Barracuda 160GB SATA 3.0 GB/s hard drives

I have also put up a small photo series detailing my progress, for those interested (more on this in a moment). Fortunately, it doesn't contain any photos of my frustrations.

After assembling everything in the system, I plugged it in and turned it on. For a fraction of a second, the system begins to boot; after that, nothing but silence. I try again, with even worse luck the second time: nothing happens at all. Panic instantly sets in. Frustrated, I surf the web looking for answers but come up empty handed. My dad suggests that it sounds like power supply issues so, one by one, I disconnect every device from the supply. After getting down to just the motherboard, CPU, and memory, things begin working. Slowly but surely I replace the items and, to my delight, everything eventually works.

I tried out Windows slipstreaming for the first time, and was pleasantly surprised with how well it worked. I was able to load Service Pack 2 instantly, bypassing the oh-so-annoying Windows update process. Interestingly enough, I still had a total of 55 critical updates to be applied, and even more for Microsoft Office. I'm slowly getting things back to normal, and I look forward to doing a little gaming in the near future.

I'll have another Zalman VF-900 blog post here soon, detailing the install process (as well as my second no-power adventure with my new machine).

As I noted earlier, I have posted a photo series here at this blog covering my computer building experience. I am trying out the Plogger photo gallery software for my photos, so feel free to check out my main collection (I have replaced Plogger with Monkey Album, my own photo album software). Plogger has a few bugs, and a few features I dislike, but I'm going to try it out for a while (until I can write my own). If you see a problem anywhere in the gallery software, let me know. Hopefully things will work as they are intended to.

The new look and feel coming in Firefox 2.0 recently landed on one of the branch builds, so I downloaded one this weekend's builds and tried it out. My verdict? It has a long way to go before public consumption. In other words, it's pure crap in its current form.

A preview of the new theme is available over at the Mozilla wiki, and it looks pretty nice. Too bad the real thing looks nothing like that. Every icon looks grayed out, there are toolbar button hovering problems, widgets aren't properly aligned, etc. A catch-all bug over at Bugzilla has been filed for the new theme and, as of this writing, there are 38 dependencies (38 other bugs) written against the new theme (and only one has been fixed so far). That list has grown steadily over the past few days, and I can only imagine that it will continue to do so. I'm excited about Firefox 2.0, but if Mozilla screws up something this basic, it will certainly be a disappointment.

In somewhat happier news, a bug that's been around for some time has just been fixed in today's branch build. Bug 318793, Firefox caches extension update file, has been a minor thorn in my side for a while. I'm glad to see that this issue has received the attention it so sorely deserved.

Since early February and March, I've been talking (and thinking) about upgrading my home computer. And I'm finally making some inroads to the situation. For whatever this is worth, here are the components I've firmly decided on:

• Asus A8N5X: This motherboard has great reviews at NewEgg, and the socket 939 platform from AMD is way more mature (and stable) than the new Intel stuff (or even AMD's socket AM2, as far as I know). It looks like this isn't available anymore at NewEgg. :-(
• AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+: A great processor for a very reasonable price (although it went up $15 just today). Dual core should be fun to play with.
• CORSAIR XMS 2GB (2 x 1GB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM: Going from 1GB of RAM to 2GB will certainly be an improvement.
• Antec SmartPower 2.0 SP-500 ATX12V 500W Power Supply: I'm going to try a modular power supply and see how well I like it. Antec makes quality units, so I don't doubt that I'll be pleased.
• Seagate Barracuda 160GB SATA 3.0GB/s: I'm planning on getting two of these, doubling my available storage (not that I need double the storage mind you). My current Maxtor drives really suck; they're loud, slow, and I'm tired of dealing with them. Hopefully these Seagate's will do better. These drives are no longer available at NewEgg. :-(

I'm also looking at upgrading my video card (preferably to a GeForce 7900GT), but I don't know which brand to go with. I currently have a card manufactured by eVGA, and as I have mentioned before, it runs a tad warm. I've also been reading about a number of stability problems with eVGA 7900 cards, although they recently did a 7900 series reload to fix some of the issues. As a result, I've been focusing on the XFX GeForce 7900GT (470MHz). The XFX model comes with stock speeds (most 7900 cards come factory overclocked, something I'm thinking I'd like to avoid) and it has fairly good reviews at NewEgg. The price, around $225 after rebate, isn't bad either!

Had I fully made up my mind about a video card earlier this week, I would have gone ahead and ordered these components. But I'd rather spend some more time weighing my options. Suggestions? Comments? As always, they are welcome.

It's time for a rant that I've been saving for some time now.

I spend more time these days walking the virtual aisles of Amazon.com than I do the aisles of a brick and mortar store. And I couldn't be happier. No lines, no travel, and no hassles from the sales staff. But I have become startlingly desensitized to the actual shopping experience. I recently went into the local Best Buy in the hopes of looking at a Canon A620. Not only did they not have a Canon A620, their camera selection was literally worse than the Wal-Mart next door (I know because I drove over there to look).

Immediately upon entering the Best Buy camera department, one of the oh-so-helpful sales staff came up and, unsurprisingly, asked if I needed help. I said no, he said OK, then followed that with something which I have yet to fully understand (he said it all so fast). The only part I truly remember were the words "non-commission." After realizing they didn't have what I wanted, I began to wander around the store aimlessly, pondering the Best Buy shopping experience as a whole.

The particular store I happened to visit is surprisingly small. As a result, each aisle is, quite literally no more than 2 or 3 feet wide. Two people can barely pass each other on any given aisle, making it difficult to even browse their merchandise. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the more obese shoppers occasionally get stuck, requiring the aid of the local rescue squad and the Jaws of Life to extract them from their predicament.

As I'm wandering around, I casually glance at their CD collection. They have absolutely nothing from my wish list. Which isn't too surprising, considering that I'm into some rather obscure music. But I've been to Best Buy stores in the past looking for the staples, stuff like Abbey Road and Pet Sounds, and they didn't have either. How shocking is that?

As I'm leaving the store, disappointed in my quest and vowing never to return, a Best Buy manager busily chased after another guy who was also leaving. This particular individual had a bag with what looked like both an item and a receipt, but the manager kept insisting on writing him a citation. If the local police force is turning to Best Buy employees for help, we're all doomed. Doomed I tells ya!

This final little charade a least brought a smile to my face. Something that the Best Buy shopping experience has never done. Or never will do. Why go to a store that doesn't have what I want, charges higher prices, is cramped, and has surly employees? Until I can find an answer to that question, I'll be doing my best to avoid all Best Buy outlet stores. I couldn't be happier.

Last night I posted a Firefox profile tutorial. The guide describes what profiles are, what they are good for, and how you can make use of them. I'll probably add to it over the next week or two. Some troubleshooting tips would make a good addition, and hopefully some readers will have suggestions on ways I can improve things. As always, let me know of any problems you might find.

After graduating from school with a bachelor's degree of computer science, I must admit that I knew virtually nothing about developing *NIX based applications (that's UNIX / Linux based applications for the non-geeks out there). Granted, I did do a little bit of non-Windows based programming while in school, but it was always incredibly basic stuff: compiling one or two source files, or occasionally writing a make-file for larger projects (three or four source files). Having never had a Linux or UNIX box to play with outside of school, I just never got a chance to get my feet wet. Thankfully, my job at IBM has changed that.

Over the past few weeks, I've been doing a great deal of Linux programming, thanks to the cross-"platformedness" of one of the projects I'm working on. And this project is way more complicated than your typical school assignment. I'm now horsing around dynamically linked libraries, also known as "shared objects" in Linux land, like nobody's business. Not only that, the project itself is essentially a multi-threaded shared object, making it all the more exciting. I've learned more about g++, ld, and ldd in the past few weeks than I ever knew before.

Unfortunately, debugging multi-threaded shared objects is easier said than done. The debugging tools in Linux (at least the ones I've played with) all suck so horribly. They make you really appreciate the level of quality in Microsoft's Visual Studio debugger, or better yet, in WinDBG (this thing is hard core, and it's what the MS developers actually use in practice). Fortunately, printf() always saves the day.

One cool trick I recently employed to debug a library loading problem I was having, is the LD_DEBUG environment variable. If you set LD_DEBUG to a value of versions, the Linux dynamic linker will print all of the version dependencies for each library used for a given command. If you have a Linux box, try it out. Set the LD_DEBUG environment variable, then do an ls. You'll be amazed at the number of libraries that such a simple command involves.

Although Linux development can be frustrating at times, I've already learned a great deal and consider my experiences a great success. If I come across any more useful tips (like LD_DEBUG above), I'll try my best to post them here (as much for my sake as for yours). Until then, you'll find me knee-deep in my Linux code. I've got a few more bugs to squash.

Checking out of the local Food Lion tonight, my eye happened to catch the second page of an opened copy of that most trusted news source, the Weekly World News. The story that happened to grace that page was one of hope, innovation, and pure genius. It seems that an enterprising woman has discovered an affordable alternative to plastic surgery. You see, having a limited income prohibited this woman from being able to realize her dream of true beauty. So she whipped up an easy, simple, and (apparently) affordable solution: using small amounts of C-4 to reshape her face. Yes, that C-4. I have to admit that the results were quite surprising. A homely woman had become a beauty queen in no time at all. She too seemed pleased:

I couldn't be happier with the results, and my hearing should return in the next day or two.

Edit: For those not already in the know, the Weekly World News is a tabloid newspaper, but they do have a website. Unfortunately, this particular story has not yet been published there (and I'm not certain that it ever will). Maybe I'll buy a copy of the paper and put up some scans...

Early this morning (at 1:03 AM to be exact), I bid and won on volume 35 (Doppelgänger) of the Prince Valiant series published by Fantagraphics Publishing. This volume completes my Prince Valiant library, a goal I have been trying to reach for some time now. Once the book arrives, I plan to read it and then go through them in order, beginning with volume 1. I can hardly wait!

I've been battling several minor medical problems recently, which has slowed my blog posting efforts. With any luck I will get back to normality sometime soon. The Firefox profile tutorial I've been working on is nearly done, and a new release of Googlebar Lite is on the horizon. I've also had an idea for a new Windows application that I might write, should I find the energy and motivation to do so. Writing C++ all day for The Man sure makes it tough to do so in one's spare time.

In other miscellaneous news, I recently purchased some new rims for my car. They replaced the original factory wheels (the standard steel ones with hub-caps). Over time I had lost or broken several of the caps, so I eventually took them all off. As a result, it looked pretty bad. The new rims have improved things quite a bit. I'm looking at buying a Canon A620 digital camera in the very near future, so I'll try to get a shot or two of them. Lots of picture goodness is heading this way; I can't wait!

Bug 343825, "Enable official branding and set version to Firefox 2 Beta 1 for upcoming release", was recently checked in to the 1.8.1 branch. This can only be good news, and a sign that the first beta build of 2.0 is on the verge of being released. Perusing through the change logs over at The Burning Edge, as well as the nightly build notices in the Firefox Builds forum at MozillaZine, yields some cool new features and fixes. The ability to undo closing a tab has recently been added, although you should be forewarned of bug 343801, which causes the history menu to intermittently disappear. Also, passwords are now auto-filled before all images are loaded. This is a great bug fix; no more eBay login trouble!

I am really excited about Firefox 2.0, and when the first beta is officially released, I'll certainly switch over. The nightly builds have been getting more and more stable, and they're certainly a joy to use. Thankfully, release day is only getting closer.

I recently ordered a Zalman VF900 VGA cooler for my NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT. As I previously mentioned, the temperatures I've been seeing on this card have been incredibly hot. It would probably be safe to say that this was the primary factor in my frequent system crashes, but only time will prove that theory. Well, yesterday the cooler arrived and I installed it. Read on for my thoughts on the card, the results I've seen so far, and more.

A photo set detailing the install process is now available. Much to my delight, I encountered no problems during the whole process. Removing the stock cooler took some time, mostly due to the number of screws that were holding it down to the card. After removing the stock cooler, I cleaned the memory chips and the CPU with a dry paper towel. I probably could have done better during this step, but it seemed to do the job.

Next up was the application of the Arctic Silver 5 thermal grease that I purchased along with the cooler. This was the step that I was most worried about, mostly because I had never done it before. It turned out to be quite easy, although spreading the stuff over the chip definitely required a steady hand and some patience. I then attached the cooler to the card, and plugged it in to my motherboard. It was time to test!

For a reference point, here are two screenshots of the stock cooler:

As can be seen from the first screenshot, the idle temperature is 71°, with an ambient temperature of 45° (all temperatures are in degrees Celsius). The second screenshot shows the card after a high load (specifically the Lost Coast level from Half-Life 2). Under load, the card reached 81° and the ambient temperature shot up to 54°. These temperatures were quite ridiculous. Let's see if the VF900 can correct this problem:

Wow, what a difference! The idle temperature has dropped down to 56° while the ambient temperature is now only 36°. Under load (the same test as before), the temperature only reaches 64° while the ambient temperature is 45°, which happens to be the same temperature as the idle ambient reading using the stock cooler! So we've come down a total of 15° on idle and 17° under load. Although the load temperature is still a tad warm, we've improved greatly. My next system will be even better in the cooling department, thanks to a lower power CPU and graphics card.

As one can therefore conclude, this VGA cooler works wonders. I'm very pleased with this product and will most likely purchase another one in the future (when I finally upgrade my system). Or I might reuse this one (I would just have to buy some new thermal tape for the RAM heat sinks). If you're machine runs hot, I highly recommend the Zalman VF900 (be sure to snag some Arctic Silver 5 as well). Again, we'll see if this corrects the crashing issues I've been seeing lately. In a few weeks time, I'll report back with the results.

Out of what could only be described as sheer boredom, I recently reinstalled the strategy game Rise of Nations. My dad picked this up for free at a conference he attended years ago, and I remember playing through it quite a bit at the time. But I now see why I uninstalled the game: I really suck at it. I've never been a fan of strategy games, mostly because I can never figure out how to win. Oh sure, I know the winning conditions, but getting there is another story. On the easiest difficulty setting, I have no problem beating the computer. But ramp up the difficulty just one notch (to the "Easy" setting) and I immediately enter a deadlock. The computer's army gets too large, and no matter how large I try to make mine, I can't turn the tide. Out of frustration, I end up cheating and dropping nuclear bombs on the enemy, wiping out their entire population (an act which is surprisingly enjoyable).

I'm certain that the word "strategy" has some part to play in beating the computer, but I apparently don't have that ability. Give me fast and furious action please. This strategy stuff is for the birds.

I've played through the Prey demo a couple of times now, and I must say that I am truly impressed. Unlike any game before it, Prey actually exploits the third dimension. Wall and ceiling walking are commonplace throughout the demo (for both you and your enemies), and the effect is somewhat disorienting at first. But the result is nothing short of incredible. You literally have to keep your eyes open in all directions at once, upping the tension level considerably. And the gravity shifts make for some interesting puzzles.

The other neat piece of tech featured in this game is the portal concept. Sprinkled throughout the various levels are portals to other areas of the map. In most cases, you can walk entirely around a portal, proving that it is indeed flat. But enter through it and you are seamlessly transported to another area. The effect is well done and also offers up some intriguing puzzles to solve.

Apparently, Prey will be released on July 10. If I can get my system to stop crashing when I play games (I've ordered a nice Zalman VGA Cooler for my graphics card) I'll definitely pick this title up. If you haven't played the demo, I highly recommend it.

I'm taking next week off from work, so hopefully I can use that time to catch up on stuff I've been wanting to do for some time (CoLT 2.0, a Firefox profile tutorial, etc.). I may even go nuts and convert this blog to WordPress 2.0.3. I ditched an earlier 2.0 build back in February, but I'm toying with the idea of trying it out again. We'll see what happens with that.

There are several other miscellaneous topics to discuss: I've decided on putting off my computer upgrade for another month or so. With the predicted AMD price cuts coming down the pipeline, I could potentially save hundreds of dollars by waiting just a little longer. So that's what I'll do.

I only need one more Prince Valiant book (volume 35, Doppelgänger) to complete my library collection! Volumes 38 and 39 recently arrived in the mail (I purchased them via eBay), but I have yet to read them. Unfortunately, the last volume I need is also the hardest to find. I've only ever seen it on eBay twice: once with a larger collection and once by itself. With any luck, one will pop up when I'm looking.

Last week I gave the Prey demo a shot, and was very impressed. I want to run through it again, and I hope to comment further on it once I do so. It's definitely a game I just might purchase...

My only grandfather passed away on Saturday, June 24. He had been very sick over the past month or two, mostly due to liver cancer. I'm going to miss him greatly; he was a great man.

The month of June is turning out to be pretty crappy overall. My grandfather has become very sick, and my sister and I are driving down to Georgia this Friday to join my parents who are already there. That means that I'm taking a day off from work, at one of the worst possible times. I've got a number of deadlines looming, each of which has a number of associated problems holding me back. But all of those problems pale in comparison to spending time with my grandfather. So off to Georgia it is.

I just saw a commercial on TV for a (presumably) local college, and they touted their program by showing a bunch of "video game developers." This motley crew of students looked no older than 20, and one girl commented "Can you believe we get paid to play games?" The people who put together this advertisement clearly understand nothing about the game development industry. I would hazard to guess that game developers spend less than 5% of their time actually playing games. Few people, if any, get paid to play games; the real glory, as well as the real money, is in development. And game development isn't an easy task.

In college, I had the privilege to take two computer graphics courses. Both were challenging, and both gave me a new appreciation for game development. The folks who create today's game engines are literally pushing the envelope in computer graphics. I shudder to think of how complex the math is behind games like Half-Life 2, Far Cry, and Quake 4. To think that your average college kid can do this fresh out of a no-name school is a little hard for me to believe.

My current graphics card, an eVGA GeForce 6800GT, has been running very hot recently. Spending time in Half-Life 2 or Oblivion causes temperatures in excess of 75 degrees Celsius, scorchingly hot by most standards. As a result of these high temperatures, video output routinely becomes corrupted, requiring a power-off of the machine to set things right. This occurrence seems fairly recent, and I'm not entirely certain why. My computer has always done a good job of controlling its temperature, thanks to my Cooler Master aluminum case. I've inspected all of my system's fans: three of my four chassis fans (I've disconnected the one on top for being too noisy), the power supply fan, the CPU fan, and the fan on the graphics card. Each one seems to be spinning, and airflow doesn't appear to be blocked.

I've been looking at building an entirely new system for some time now, and this problem is only pushing me closer to actually going through with it. Switching to a more energy-efficient AMD processor should help somewhat, and I plan on adding an after-market cooler to my new graphics card (I'm currently looking at a GeForce 7900 GT). Hopefully these steps will bring my system's temperatures down considerably.

I finally found a picture of my kitty cat:

I miss her greatly, but seeing a picture of her brings back good memories.

I continue to use Favorites Plus to manage my favorites page, which I make daily use of both at work and home. And the more I use it, the more I question whether or not I should continue to do so. Having dumped Internet Explorer long ago (so long ago, in fact, that I can't remember when), keeping my IE favorites up to date has become rather redundant. My main goal is to keep my favorites page up to date; something that might be better suited for a PHP / MySQL application. In fact, I began working on such an application many months ago. I don't recall why I stopped development; if I pick it up again, perhaps I'll remember.

So the question is, should I drop support for Favorites Plus? I mean, Firefox is clearly the better browser, and its bookmarks system is top-notch (though the "export to page" functionality doesn't have all the features I want). I really like having a dedicated web page in which to store my favorites, but generating said page is the problem. And even though Favorites Plus does a decent job in this arena, it's not as portable as I'd like. All of these issues combined make continuing support seem not worth the trouble.