Life

Computer “Chronos” Bites the Dust

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So long “Chronos”, it’s been one hell of a five year (going on it’s sixth) ride. All the abuse you took from me, being more or less on 24×7, overclocked from 3.2GHz to 4Ghz, watercooled, and on it’s 4th motherboard and second CPU.

This computer has carried me through countless nights of Starcraft and Counter-Strike, then Counter-Strike Source. This computer has brought me to level 60 in WoW, then level 70. This computer has made countless videos, websites and edited countless pictures. This computer has taken me through BattleField 1942, Battlefield 2, then through EverQuest II, Eve Online, Team Fortress 2, and Left4Dead.

You have helped me produce endless amounts of term papers, exhausting hours of research, Catia, Rhino3D, MatLab and Maple. I have received job offers from you, found friends with you, and resurrected you from the dead more times than I can remember.

Now you don’t remember your BIOS settings, nor do you stay working for more than a few minutes at a time without the BSOD or eerie crackling and beeping noises. I miss you already 🙁

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Life

Houston.

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Things I like about Houston:

  1. Elevated driveways to help prevent local flooding
  2. Road labels and signs painted on the road itself
  3. EZ-TAG also integrates a real-time traffic monitoring system
  4. Every day is bright and sunny

Things I don’t like about Houston:

  1. When it rains, it rains
  2. Elevated driveways are like small mountains to my car
  3. Traffic. 🙁
  4. Traffic. No, really, it’s terrible
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Cool!, Life, Pictures

Window Tint Done

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I had my window tinting done by “The Beav” over at American Auto Tint. After watching him work, let me say this – the man knows what he is doing.  It is like watching the master of an art practicing his form. In under 2 hours he managed to get all 5 rear windows tinted, and we settled down to let the adhesive soak in and started talking about some local car clubs.

When we came back out to see how the tint was adhering to the glass, he discovered that the lower left corner of the rear windshield tint somehow got a hair stuck in it. There is a pretty good sized bubble jammed between the tint and the glass because the hair is lifting the tint. Poop.

Simple right? Pull it off and re-do it? Here’s the problem. I needed to get to work, and the Beav needed to get on his vacation that he planned a long time ago. Eventually we agreed to meet again at a later date to remove and re-do the rear tint, which was fine with me. I would drop off the car, and he would work his magic to get everything fixed and squared away.

However, you can really only see it if you get up close to the car, so I guess for the time being I can deal with it – although I caught myself looking in the rear view mirror a lot, looking for that little spot of imperfection.

For those intestested, I went with maximum legal tint provided by Llumar for Texas all around in an even coat for the 4 door windows – this came out to be 35%. The rear windshield was done in 15%. In case you were wondering, no the dark rear tint does not make it any more difficult to back the car up at night. You need to pay attention more, but it’s not like it’s blacked out as you would think.

Overall, it was well worth the $200 for “The Beav” to get the job done, and get it done right. No imperfections other than the aforementioned hair on the rear tint, which will be fixed in about a week’s time, and also comes with a full lifetime warranty from Llumar.

On the way to work I kept thinking “why didn’t I get this done sooner, my hands don’t feel like they’re on the BBQ grill when out in the Texas sun”.

Enough babbling – on to the pictures!

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Life

Snow Snow Snow Snow

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Look Outside!

I live in New Jersey, which you may know was one of the states recently slammed with a significant snowstorm last night through this morning. Here’s a few pictures of outside, which was the most significant amount of snow we have had yet this winter season – click “Read more” to see the rest.

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