>I just built a new computer:

2.4ghz P4 512k cache

400mhz bus, 8X AGP

256mb DDR Ram @ 400mhz

DVD+/-R Combo (CDRW) Drive

Onboard Ethernet/Sound

40 Gig HD

I put in a mediochre video card, far less then it deserves… but all in all I’m able to sell it for $400

A little bit more money could result in a gigabit ethernet card, a high quality sound card, or a rockin’ 3D card for games or 3D modeling, and maybe even some more memory.

This is a perfect computer for back to school, and in fact that’s what I built it for. A girl at GAP is going back to college and needed a computer. We were in the back shootin the shit and I mentioned I might be able to make one for pretty cheap. I guessed $300, not quite… but it only ended up being $100 more.

The best part about it is that it looks cool.

It’s a black tower with silver/blue shimmering drive bays, a silver box with digital temperature readout, light pillars with bubbles on each side of the front, and a window with colored fan on the side. It’s got all black drives (3.5 & DVD) and the “light pillars” are blue at the top, and the colors cycle on the bottom from yellow to red, blue to green.

Laura saw it and was all impressed, so that made me happy.

This was such an easy system for me. I pretty much threw it together and had Windows running on it within 3 hours. Everything went together first shot, I did everything in order, and didn’t make any dumb mistakes. In spite of the 90 degree temperature, I even managed not to sweat on any of the parts, stopping to mop my brow every now and then.

So now I am burning it in. Literally.

I’m ripping a DVD, will run DVD-Shrink to get it to fit on a 1-layer disc, then will attempt to burn it.

I think my DVD burner might be dead. It keeps giving me I/O errors. =(

It’s a Sony 500A from about 2 years ago. It cost me $300 at the time, but now they’re dirt cheap. At the show I saw a dual-layer burner (NEC?) for $179, and bought the 4X +/- R Burner in the above system for only $75.

I’ve burnt a lot of DVDs, CDs… and it’s also been really hot lately. I’m not sure what the problem is exactly, but it makes me sad. .:sigh:.

Quitting Relay has paid off thus far — I had 14 hours last week of straight computer work. For (get this) Adam’s Family Funeral Home ;p and some awning place in West Springfield, which interestingly enough happens to do business with Finish Line Signs & Graphics in Springfield whom I did the web site for.

FinishLineGFX.com

There’s a picture of one of their awnings in the (oooh, can you guess?) the awning section.

We set up a wireless network at one place, cleaned off some spywire, malware, itsybitsy sneaky ware, and enabled him to access the accounting and payroll software from any computer in the place.

At the other we updated their network to 100mb, put XP on one computer, and left the others as is in the interest of saving them some hours. As it was we backed up over 5gigs and set up ICS with their… dialup… connection… and set them up with a central place on the server machine to store all the employees files so they could be backed up with a drag to the CD Drive.

So it was good experience, it was fun, and much better pay then Relay =]

Man, it’s been a while since I had a chance to sit down at the computer and all this stuff comes into my head while I’m sitting here.

I was supposed to go camping this weekend in NH with Justin. 2 people canceled, which would have left just the 3 of us, thus it was decided we’d try for next week. I’m in luck, I have no work next Saturday… or this entire week for that matter. So I’ll be going next week. I will make sure to remember my sleeping bag this time, however… as it was the only thing I forgot when I was all packed to go on Friday =]

I plan on using this week to focus on school, my partner just had a death in the family so there probably won’t be any jobs this week. It’s just MCSE until NH.

K, that’s it. I’m going to bed.

=]