I saw the rings of Saturn

I broke out the telescope and set it up in the middle of the street. Thanks to a call to my sister I was able to zero in on Saturn. The nerd in me came all the way out tonight.

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Everyone can rest easy

I’m not going to go crazy. Jenni let the Newegg credit card out of the vault and I ordered my parts.

I got everything in the previous post and
Western Digital 750GB SATA Hard Drive x2

and a new video card
EVGA GeForce 8800GTX

She really does need to hide that card from me.

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Time to upgrade the PC

So a lightning strike near the house caused an electrical surge to occur in only the ethernet cables and speaker wires.

Before you even ask everything in the house is on a surge protector or UPS.

When the strike happened Percy and I were both on the front porch and we got a nice shock. It was not fun.

The only things affected were:

  • The nic card in Jenni’s machine is blown
  • The surround sound system is gone
  • The ethernet ports in the router are gone yet the wireless still works
  • My motherboard is shot since the nic was integrated.

So now it’s time to upgrade. Tell me what you think:
EVGA 132-CK-NF78-A1 LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 780i SLI ATX Intel Motherboard
Model #: 132-CK-NF78-A1

PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750 Quad EPS12V 750W Power Supply
Model #: Silencer 750 Quad BK


Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700 Kentsfield 2.66GHz LGA 775 95W Quad-Core Processor
Model #: BX80562Q6700

CORSAIR XMS2 2GB (2 x 1GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400)
Model #: TWIN2X2048-6400C4PRO

or do I want this memory
CORSAIR XMS2 4GB(2 x 2GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400)
Model #: TWIN2X4096-6400C5DHX

I haven’t been keeping track of all the latest changes in the hardware industry for the past couple of years so any help would be appreciated.
P.S. This is mainly a gaming rig.

Jim says it was electrical induction caused by the strike.

Decided to go with this memory:

CORSAIR Dominator 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066

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Ramblings…

mySQL is now successfully installed on the laptop. I’ll be using it as my development machine from now on. I’m getting used to using a command line again. sudo is my new favorite word.

I ordered a Bluetooth GPS for my Blackberry today. I’ll never be lost again.

Got in contact with a few old friends on Facebook of all things.

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Linux Update

Tonight as Lost was on I managed to get Apache Server up and running under Ubuntu including setting file permissions. Tomorrow I’ll set up mySQL and get a local WordPress site up and running.

I also got it setup to where I can connect to my work PC. This makes Ubuntu Linux a complete replacement for me. It does everything I need it to do. I still have the option to boot into XP but I’m hoping that I won’t have to. The only thing I can think of that I need is Visual Studio. I have Mono installed for .net development but haven’t tried it yet. If it works out I may wind up completely removing XP from the laptop.

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