My next 30 day challenge will be to sit and meditate everyday for at least 20 minutes. I’ve done 14 consecutive days before, but never 30. My meditation practices in the past have always been spotty, a day here and a day there, but I really want to make it a daily practice. (see below)

While I’m here, I also want to post some of my New Years resolutions, goals, and to-dos in this post. Better late than never, right? Here goes.

1. I’ll begin with my reading list. Some of these authors / philosophers I’ve already read, but I’d like to delve deeper into their works and worlds. My list includes Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Emerson, D.T. Suzuki, and a dash of Plato (specifically The Last Days of Socrates). On the tech side of things, I have a few networking security books I’d like you have a look at as well.

2. Speaking of tech, 2011 will be the year that I become proficient in Linux. I’ve always run dual boot systems (Windows and some flavor of Linux), but I’ve never really committed to learning the OS. Over the last week I’ve installed Arch Linux on four of my computers, each with its very own desktop environment –but it’s the command line that will get most of my attention. On a related topic, I also decided to learn the Vi(m) editor.

3. I’d like to compete in another triathlon. I’d also like to run some 10K races this year (Meg?). (Quick note on my Vibrams: I’m loving them and I don’t think I could ever go back.)

4. I’d like to go camping more. A lot more. I’d like to go to Acadia again.

5. Study Buddhism. (see D.T. Suzuki above). Meditate on a daily basis.

6. Write, write, write! Poetry, fiction, blog posts, whatever. My goal is at least 500 words a day.

7. Code, code, code! Python, C++, Lua, whatever. I have an ever growing list a projects (Arduino). I plan on tackling some of them this year.

8. I’d like to be able to hold a conversation in Russian. I’m pretty close, but I’m not quite there yet. I need to push myself to that next level.

9. I have a few personal traits I’d like to work on this year too. The first is to master empathy, the second is to finish what I start, and the third is to get out of my comfort zone, often. I think those are all pretty self-explanatory.

10. AND FINALLY, I’d like to be a little more hands on this year –a more practice, less theory kind of approach. Whether it be carpentry, electronics, metalwork, cooking, fly fishing, etc…, it’s time to put the books down and get busy. I just finished building my new workbench (well, one just like that), so I’m ready to get my hands dirty.

Please proceed.

Sorry….. Anyways, Cam, Meg, and I spent the day at Plimoth Plantation last weekend and I wanted to give them a much deserved plug. For those of you who don’t know, Plimoth Plantation is sort of a living museum attempting to replicate the day to day life of the original Plymouth colony, circa 1627. It’s a semi-working plantation inhabited by actors and actresses role playing as pilgrims, who, I must say, they do a fantastic job. It’s not a guided tour, but a literal stroll down history lane where you are encouraged to explore the plantation, popping in and out of various houses and talking to the townsfolk. Every history buff at some time in their life has wished they could experience various eras in history for themselves. Well this may be as close as one might get to making that wish come true — short of a building time machine of course — which I’m working on.

My personal favorite part of the day was spent in a very authentic looking reproduction of a Wampanoag home site, just a quick walk from the village. The Wampanoags here are not role playing, but are actual descendants of Native People dressed in traditional clothing and showing off various crafts and skills. You can sit and chat with them as much as you like, and ask them all sorts of questions regarding their lineage and traditions. Fascinating is a word that comes to mind. If I were alone, I probably would have spent all day there, just listening to other people’s questions and soaking up the rich heritage of these people. Again, another “must visit” place for anyone who has a passion for history.

Donovan’s gonna be pissed!!

Well, I just had a great customer service experience and I want to give credit where credit is due. Last week I ordered a book from Amazon.com called Getting Things Done by David Allen. The book arrived, I went home, cracked open a beer, sat on my brand new lazy boy, and slowly opened the book — savoring that new book smell. Oddly enough, the book jumped right into the thick of things. No table of contents, no preface, nuttin. I was three pages into it when it dawned on me that I might be missing some pages. Sure enough, pages one through fourteen were no where to be seen. I was a little bummed, but I know that these things can happen from time to time. The first thing I did was to see if anyone had had similar problems with this particular title, and they had.

So I did the next obvious thing, I contacted Amazon. Or more precisely, they contacted me. While I was on their site searching for contact information, I came across a “Call Me” button. Being the spontaneous adventurer that I am, I clicked it. It then prompted me for my phone number and options for when I would like them to call me back; right now, 5 minutes, 10 minutes, or 15 minutes. I really wasn’t doing anything at the time, due to lack of reading material, so I clicked right now. Almost the same instant I clicked the button, my phone started to ring. “No Way!” was all that came to mind. So I answered it. It was a recording telling me they were connecting me to Amazon. A few seconds later I was talking to an Amazon customer support representative. Since I was logged into my account when I clicked the “Call Me” button, he had all of my information already up on his screen. He politely asked me a security question to verify that I was who I said I was, and then went on to ask me how he could help me this evening. I went on to tell him my sad story. He apologized to me and assured me that he would send out a replacement immediately. All I had to do was print up the prepaid mailing label that he emailed to me and send my defective copy back to them free of charge.

It couldn’t have gone any better. The whole experience took less time than it did to write this blog entry. Anyways, that’s my story. I’ve always loved doing business with Amazon, and this is just one of the many reasons why.

P.S. I’m using the neighbors Wi-Fi. Shh, don’t tell.

Here is a clip from one of the most obnoxious parades in America. It’s absolutely fantastic.

This goes on for about half an hour and includes fire trucks from dozens of towns. The video really doesn’t do it any justice at all. It could be the loudest single event I’ve ever been a part of — and I go back year after year for more.

Hope every one has a great and safe 4th of July.

Needless to say, I did what every other true American would do. I sped up to see how long he could hang on! It wasn’t that long. — Alright, relax! I pulled over and let him off. I almost killed us both while taking that picture though. They say not to talk on a cell phone while driving, but I’ve never heard anyone say “don’t turn around and take a picture of a frog on your rear window while traveling 70 miles per hour” (that’s 112.65 Km/h for you metric lovers).

Yeah, I was surprised I was posting this myself, but I feel it is my duty to the human race. A friend of mine gave me this recipe because MLL told her how much I love sweet potatoes. By the way, I also really like casseroles. What a coincidence? This recipe is really easy to make and it’s sooooo gooood. But be warned! It’s about as healthy as shooting heroin into your veins. Actually, heroin may be slightly better for you. Did I mention this is sooooo gooood though?

Ingredients

The Filling:

• 3 cups sweet potatoes (peeled, steamed, and mashed)
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 eggs, beat them like there’s no tomorrow
• 1/2 cup butter (1 stick — ouch)

The Crust:

• 1 cup light brown sugar
• 1/3 cup flower
• 1 cup chopped pecans (I prefer them crushed)
• 1/3 cup butter (melted)

Directions

1. Combine all the ingredients for the crust into a medium sized bowl and put aside.
2. Combine all the ingredients for the sweet potato filling into a large bowl in the order listed. Mix thoroughly.
3. Pour sweet potato mixture into a greased baking dish. (I used Pam)
4. Sprinkle the crust mixture evenly over the sweet potato filling.
5. Bake for 30 minutes on 350 degrees. Allow to set for at least 30 minutes.

Eat it warm, eat i cold, some people even melt marshmallows on top of it (in case it wasn’t unhealthy enough). Bon Appetit!

This was taken last night.

/sigh

Oh well, back to reality. Gotta love New England.

The dream began with me coming out of a big ol’ church and making my way to the church parking lot to get into my Jeep. When I got there, I found that my Jeep had been stripped of all valuable parts (rims, running boards, lights, etc…) I was furious. I was so mad in fact, that it woke me out of a dead sleep. I was sitting in bed, wide awake for a good minute just fuming. It felt so real.

Here’s the funny thing, I don’t even own a jeep. I have no desire to own a jeep. Still, the dream was so realistic that when I woke up, I had to convince myself that I didn’t own a Jeep. I remember saying to myself, “I just bought that damn thing!” After my head cleared and I realized it was just a dream I had to chuckle. I felt so stupid.

I’ve had strange and realistic dreams before, but none that have evoked such emotions. I’m sitting at my desk now and I’d still like to get my hands on those sleazy Jeep wrecking bastards.

Including my daughter who has had a sudden interest in babies over the last year or so. She’s already asking when she can babysit.

In unrelated Christmas news, Cameron got the Lego Star Wars ships she asked for. The first one she got was Slave 1 (Boba Fett’s ship – duh, obviously) and the second one was the ever impressive Star Destroyer. She must have been good this year because Santa thought it was appropriate to spoil her rotten. — She really is a good kid though.

The first set (Slave 1) has 537 pieces in it and took me over 5 hours to put together. The Star Destroyer has almost 1400 pieces in it. I haven’t even opened the box yet because, quite frankly, I’m scared. I predict it will take me the entire month of January to put that sucker together. Maybe even half of February too. But it should be fun, right? Lol, of course it will be.

In case I don’t post in the next couple of days, have a great New Year everybody. I have a good feeling about 2007… (famous last words?)

I’ll keep y’all posted.

I wore a tee-shirt to work yesterday.

I love New England.

The cruise was a blast and Bermuda is absolutely gorgeous. There’s more than just beauty there though, it’s an extremely fascinating country. Did you know that Bermuda has the highest per capita income in the world? Over 50% higher than that of the U.S.A. It shows too. Middle school kids were walking around with laptops and PDA’s. But enough about that.

The food on the cruise was incredible. I seriously gained 5 pounds last week. Gourmet breakfast, gourmet lunches, and gourmet dinners everyday. If you wanted to skip the restaurant scene, they also offered buffets on the top deck three times a day. On the back of the boat they had a 24 hour grill that served hamburgers, cheeseburgers, hot dogs, pizza, and fries. The fries were fabulous; and they were even better at 3 in the morning. I’m not sure why. They had a chocolate buffet Friday night from 11:00 to midnight. I’m not a chocoholic by any means, but this set up would have impressed anyone. And of course there was 24 hour room service which we took full advantage of. So, in short, the food was great! The drinks were even better. We were drinking Bloody Marys, Dirty Bananas, Coco Locos, all kinds of foo foo drinks and more buckets of beer than could fit in our state room. Koji and I drank cognac and smoked Cubans on the back deck. That was great.

The first day in Bermuda we all hit the beach at Tobacco Bay. Tobacco Bay has this cool little cove, complete with its very own tiki bar. While we were in Bermuda the weather was close to perfect. On the way back to Boston we ended up hitting the tail end of a storm which kind of kicked the crap out of us. But let’s get back to the good weather. Tobacco Bay was really nice. As I’m sure you’d expect, the water was crystal clear and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Tropical fish were swimming all around us. That was pretty cool and yet sort of freaky.

Meg and I broke off from the group every now and then and explored the Island. We had lunch in St. George on Tuesday and lunch in Hamilton on Thursday. Both cities are really unique. St. George, where our ship was docked, is a very quaint little city, whereas Hamilton, the capitol of Bermuda, was more of a conventional city. That didn’t take away from its charm, though.

One of my favorite parts of the trip was horseback riding. Meg and I went on an hour and a half guided tour of southern Bermuda all on horseback. My horse kicked ass. He was 1/3 Clydesdale, 1/3 Black Stallion, and 1/3 dragon. They say he was untameable. They say he killed men for fun. He was so fierce that they had to blind fold him so he wouldn’t kill me on site. Behold, the fiercest horse ever to set foot in Bermuda:

His name is Buddy. I think that’s somehow short for The Almighty Horse of Destruction. We bonded. He was much better than Meg’s stupid horse TJ. Who the hell names a horse TJ? But that’s neither here nor there. I enjoyed it so much that I think I’m going to look into horseback riding around here. I might even buy cowboy hat.

TJ,…please!

Wednesday was the wedding. The whole reason for going on the cruise. For me, it was by far the best day of the trip. The actual wedding was beautiful. The wedding dinner was fantastic. And the wedding reception was…. a bit fuzzy.

Koji and Michelle got married at the Grotto Resort which overlooks the ocean. It really was picture perfect. After the ceremony, we went back to the ship for dinner. I’m not exaggerating when I say I had the best piece of steak I’ve ever tasted in my life. I eat a lot of steak mind you. There was an open bar in the disco from 8:00 to 10:00. You’ll have to read about the rest of the night on another blog because I don’t really remember the details. I heard it was fun though.

Koji just emailed me and said that they’re already planning another cruise for next year, this time to the Caribbean. Sign me up! I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, cruises are worth every penny. If you ever have a chance to go on one, I would highly recommend it. I plan on taking an Alaskan cruise sometime before I die and I’ll definitely be doing a geek cruise in the foreseeable future. But for now, it’s back to reality. I already miss everyone I went on the cruise with. There’s something about being isolated in the middle of the Atlantic that really brings people together. Or maybe it was the booze. But seriously, we couldn’t have gone with a better group of people. I uploaded over 350 pictures of the cruise, Bermuda, and the wedding to my flickr account. You can check them out here. Enjoy.

TOO THE DISCO!!!

Hopefully I’ll be able to post some pics as the week goes on. I even brought my laptop to do a little writing. That is, of course, assuming that internet access isn’t something ridiculous like $100.00 an hour. In that case….. see you when I get back.

There are two specific things on this weekend’s agenda that Cameron and I are particularly excited about. By the way, it’s a beautiful thing when you and your 8 year old daughter start getting excited about the same things. She’s turning out to be quite a geek. But I digress.

Friday night is the season premier of Avatar: The Last Airbender, and boy do we love Avatar. Cam and I watched seasons 1 & 2 religiously. I know what you’re thinking, it’s a cartoon, but trust me, it’s great. I don’t watch many cartoons, let alone look forward to them, but this show is close to perfect. It has an ongoing plot that really keeps you on the edge of your seat, but it never gets too serious. There’s action, lore, humor, a surprisingly deep storyline, and best of all, it’s great for all ages. So to recap; season premiere, great show, don’t call us Friday night between 8:00 and 9:00.

Next on the agenda at Geekfest 2006 is Lego Star Wars II for the Nintendo Gamecube. Oh yeah! Cam may have turned me on to Avatar, but I introduced her to the ever so exciting and titillating world of Star Wars. What do you get when you combine Star Wars with Legos and the Gamecube? Hours of brainless stimulating fun. Needless to say, we blew through the first game in no time. Like Avatar, Lego Star Wars is great entertainment for all ages. It really is. We can’t wait.

So this is our lazy rainy weekend. Not too shabby, huh? After this it’s back to business, so we better enjoy it while we can. Oh, and we will.

If you recall, back in October, I experienced the great cellar flood of 2005 which single handedly wiped out three of my four computers. As luck would have it, my XPS laptop was spared from the devastation of said flood. This was mostly due to the fact that it was 10 miles away, sitting on my desk at work.

After almost five months of desktoplessness, I finally finished all the repairs to the cellar and restored the command center (also referred to as the dungeon) to its former glory. Everything got a complete upgrade; the walls , the ceiling, the floors, the windows, and most importantly my computers. Ahh yes, my new babies. Take particular notice of the brand spanking new Dell XPS 600 sitting ever so menacingly to the left of my desk. This thing is so screaming fast it actually hovers off the ground. Complete with full blown, dual nVidia GeForce 7800 GTX w/ SLI, Creative X-Fi sound, 2 Gig of DDR2 ram, and a dual TV tuner. Click on the larger of the two images above to check out all of my new goodies.

Seriously though, the last three weeks have been a bit disruptive to my normal routine. I’m finally starting to get back on track tjough. And the good news is, I’m putting the final touches on phrostbyte. And even better news, I was able to build a computer from the parts I salvaged from my original three computers. A fairly decent computer at that.

Well I have a lot to say and hopefully the time to say it soon. Be back in a jiff.

**on a side note, that”s the first time I ever used the word jiff in a written sentence.

I found out about this around 1:30 on Friday afternoon. A service crew and the fire department had already been into my house to shut off the water and power (water was spilling out of all my electrical outlets). The fire department officially condemned the townhouse until further notice. How I came about this information is quite interesting. I was sitting at my desk when I randomly decided to check my messages at my house, which I do every 4 months or so. I’m not exaggerating. The message I got was a gentleman apologizing up and down about my condo and telling me they’ll do everything they can to help us get through this. I thought it must be a wrong number, until I flashed back to the beginning of the message where he addressed me as Mr. Sinclaire. I knew then it wasn’t a wrong number. At this point in the message I still had no idea what had happened to my townhouse. The gentleman leaving the message had assumed I already knew everything that took place and didn’t mention any specifics. He kept saying sorry and used words like extensive damage and tragedy, but mostly he kept apologizing. That’s what really freaked me out. For all I new the condo may have burned to the ground. The adrenaline pumping through my veins was overwhelming. My hands were shaking. After what seemed like an eternity the guy leaving the message finally shut up and gave me his number. I called him and he filled me in. He said I should consider this an emergency and head home right away. So I did.

From this point on everything felt very surreal. Walking up to the back sliders, I was still telling myself it must be a mistake. It was a really weird feeling. Then, through the glass, I saw the layers and layers of mud on my white linoleum floor in the shape of boot prints. That’s when it really hit me that this was no mistake. Even when I went into the house there was a very eerie feeling. It was very cold and very dark. And a mess — plaster and water everywhere. The basement was pitch black and all I had was a lighter to light my way. All my flashlights were in the second half of the basement. Good idea, lets keep the flashlights in the darkest, hardest to reach place in the house. Genius! The water had receded a little and was only about 3 inches deep. I pulled the cover off the window to let in some light. You know the rest.

Let me address my two major mistakes here.

1. Putting three high-end computers on the ground. Idiot! My rationale here was that this townhouse has never had water in the basement since it was built 20 years ago. It is located on high ground. I never even thought of a pipe bursting. Lesson learned.
2. Not having homeowners insurance for personal belongings. Idiot! I have no rationale here. Idiot!

A fire and flood clean up team came around 4:00 and went to work. I had to get an electrician in to get some power to the place so we could run 3 commercial dehumidifiers and 6 blowers. He was nice enough to get power to my refrigerator too. We saved the Heinekens! We all got done around 9:30, sealed the house up, and left for the night with the equipment still running. I went back Saturday afternoon to start throwing away stuff in the unfinished portion of the cellar. This stuff was mostly junk anyways. When I first got there on Saturday I had a chance to really look around for the first time. It reminded me of a place that had been abandoned for several weeks. It was kind of sad.

I think we are all just about caught up at this point. I’m meeting with about 10 people on Monday to assess the damage and see where we go from here. The good news is everything structurally in the house will be covered. They explained it to me this way; if you could take the condo and flip it upside down, anything that doesn’t fall will be covered. Too bad I didn’t bolt my computers down.

By the way, Cameron wants me to make sure everyone knows the cat is okay. She made it out alive………this time.

The truth is, it really isn’t so bad. So I lost my computers and some other things, I’ll get new ones. I always tell Cameron not to cry over things. What kind of person would I be not to take my own advice. And like I said, the damn cat’s alright. And yeah, the house is uninhabitable for a while, but it’s not like we don’t have a hundred places where we could go. That’s more than a good majority of the poor people in New Orleans can say. This unfortunate event really puts the Katrina tragedy into perspective. I had 6 inches of water in my basement which caused thousands of dollars worth of damage. These people had 6 feet of water and lost everything they owned. I had a lot of damage done to my townhouse. Damage that can be repaired. People lost entire houses due to hurricanes Katrina and Rita. How could I possibly feel bad for my situation? I don’t. Shit happens.

This brings me too the main point of this entry. Believe it or not my condo isn’t suppose to be the main focus here. What is suppose to be the main focus is all the crap that has happened in the last year. I’m speaking of the tragedies around the world. I have never seen anything like this. Granted I’m no historian, but I don’t recall any period in history where so many natural disasters have taken place in such a short period of time. Between tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes, and flooding it seems like where getting everything thrown at us at once. In the paper today I was reading about parts of Rhode Island and Massachusetts that were completely under water. Some of this I saw first hand. I was at my cousins house yesterday and saw her neighbors pumping out raw sewerage from their basements. Last week it was New Hampshire. Houses and businesses up there were totally wiped out. I don’t need to mention all the disasters that have made the national and international headlines in he last year. Seriously, what is going on here?!?!

Am I wrong? Maybe I am. I hope I am, because there’s some serious environmental mayhem going on out there. It would be nice to now that this is just a cycle that we go through every X amount of years. Or that this is just a major string of bad luck for the planet Earth. Maybe next year it will be Jupiter’s turn and the year after that Venus will get the crap kicked out of it. I don’t know. I really don’t have a point here. I just thought I’d share this observation with you.

On the brighter side, at least it finally stopped raining today.

fast forward to the present day

I’ve killed my computer. That’s right, dead. How’d I do this you ask? Let me tell you the series of events that led to the final demise of my beloved PC.

Let me first tell you about when it reboots. This is important to know when troubleshooting. Out of the dozens of times it randomly rebooted, only 1 time was while not playing a game. Every other time was in-game. I ran a bunch of benchmark programs and torture tests to try to get it to reboot (processor, video, audio, memory). Nothing. I really tortured this machine too. Nothing I did made the computer reboot. The only constant I had was that it reboots while playing a game. Specifically Battlefield 2 and Half-Life 2. And never at the same point in either game. I think you’re all caught up at this point. This is the information I had to work with. And the following outlines my train of thought and the actions I took.

• Video Card - My first thought was that it must be video related. It just made sense. At the time I was using a nVidia Chaintech 6800 GT 256. I rolled back the drivers. I must have tried 6 different versions of the drivers. Rebooted. Then I switched the video card out completely with a nVidia BFG 6800 GT 128 OC (my original card). Rebooted. I was dumbfounded. Back to the drawing board.
• Software Related- I should first tell you that I am obsessed with having a clean system. I methodically run multiple anti-virus programs a week. Not to mention multiple spyware and adware programs, CWShredder, highjackthis, IBprocMan, Tweaknow Regcleaner, diskclean, defrag, etc… I know every process that is running on my computer at any given time. But still, I had to know. So I reformatted and reinstalled my OS. Rebooted.
• Power Supply- It must be the power supply. Granted 420 watts should be more than enough to run what I have. Perhaps it was bad. Power supplies are one of the leading causes of this type of problem. So I went out and bought a new power supply. Rebooted. Son of a…
• Memory- Another leading cause of system failures. I ran memtest86 for 24 hours straight. No errors. But I still had to be sure. So i popped out one stick and fired up BF2. Rebooted. I popped out the other stick and replaced it with the one I originally took out. Fired up BF2 once again and boom, rebooted. Hmm, well at least I was expecting this.

Audio Card- This was my next thought. The games I play are not only graphics intensive but audio intensive as well. And it is the oldest piece of hardware in my computer. I’m using one of the first edition Soundblaster Audigy cards. So I popped it out and used the on-board audio (which I hear is actually very nice). Rebooted.

• Monitor- I know, I know, I’m stretching here. About right now I’m just praying it’s not the motherboard or processor. And I actually read in some random tech forum that this guy switched monitors and it solved his rebooting problem. I can’t imagine a monitor ever rebooting a computer, but at this point I’m desperate. I have a rather old 21″ NEC that is obviously on it’s way out. So I swapped my computers. I put Big Blue on a 19″ Micron. I switched power outlets too just to be safe. It actually didn’t reboot for several days. I was crushed when it actually did. Son of a…
• Network Card- I figured why not, I’ve swapped out everything else. Rebooted.
• IDE Cables- Rebooted

Where on the home stretch here folks. I should have mentioned before that overheating is not a problem. I have 5 case fans, 1 ps fan and a vortex cpu fan which I can control the rpm’s manually. The processor’s temperature is well below the specified limits.

I figured I’m running out of options here. I pulled everything out of the pc and checked for metal on metal or anything that might short out the motherboard and force a reboot. Nothing. I decided to out pull the cpu and cpu fan and investigate. This my friends is where the problem lies. As I was pulling the cpu out, the cpu and heatsink separated. I had to reapply the arctic silver thermal paste. I hate doing this. And I think this led to Big Blue’s ultimate destruction. Ever since I put the cpu/heatsink back into the computer it has decided it doesn’t feel like booting up. AT ALL. Instead in decides to spew out these obnoxious beeping sounds at me. I’m not talking about any post beep or standard error beeps you would get from a fully functional motherboard. No, this was more like the binary equivalent of getting flipped off by a computer. That’s it, this officially marks the day my computer shit the bed. What pisses me off the most is not figuring out what the original problem actually was. At this point I hope it was the motherboard or processor. That way I wouldn’t feel so bad about frying it myself.

Oh well, what to do now. I’ll be without an uber computer for a while. I have other computers to get me through this very traumatic time. It’s just not quite the same though. I don’t think I mentioned that the motherboard was an Asus KV8 Pro with an AMD 64 3200. I’m thinking Abit will be my next motherboard of choice. Maybe I’ll upgrade a little to an AMD 64 3700 while I’m at it. Yeah, that sounds good. See, I’m feeling better already. I’ll keep you posted. Big Blue shall rise again.