Been a long time

Wow, looking back over the past couple of months, I've been crazy busy.  Mostly work and geek stuff.

I've been working on upgrading my gaming rig somewhat.  I had been using a GTX 285, and it's been a good card.  However, I saw the benchmarks on the new GTX 660 ti and was quite interested, so I popped one of those suckers in.  So far, so good.  I'm thinking of waiting for a sale so I can sli another one up.

I've also added an antec kuhler liquid cpu.  This implementation was not as I had envisioned - a nice quiet pc.  In all actuality, it's got a big honking radiator and 2 giant fans on either side.  So, when it ratchets up the fan speed it sounds like a launch Xbox 360 amplified.  However, my cpu temp is lower, so...score?

Next up, yesterday, I decided to put Empire Strikes Back into my dvd drive as I was cleaning up my home office.   The sound was choppy, so I decided to buy a standalone sound card.  I haven't had one in over a decade I would guess.  Then it hit me - how would my USB headphones work with the sound card to provide positional sound for Dolby Digital Live?  I need to ponder this some more, but if others have some thoughts, please let me know.

It's summer, so that means con season.  I went to Star Wars Celebration VI and Dragon*Con.  Boy, I am conned out now. I wasn't able to complete my snowtrooper costume in time - I ran into a cosmetic issue with some handpainting on the backpack, so I need to redo that and then some final sewing work.  I did finish my Tie Fighter Pilot though.  It's a surprise of a costume.  I really like wearing it.  I wore it for the Dragon*Con parade this year and while having a stormtrooper is definitely a cooler costume, this one was comfy and perfect for a warm morning.  

Gaming - haven't really done much of it.  I picked up NCAA 13, and had some fun with the road to glory mode, but haven't had time to give it my full attention.  I really see myself dropping off considerably on the 360 gaming.  With PC gaming, I have been playing Flight Simulator X quite a bit.  I'm just trying to learn a few things in anticipation of trying for my private pilot's license in the next couple of years.  I do have an urge to finally finish up Fable 2 and finally open the shrinkwrap on Fable 3.  

Raiders of the Lost Ark is being re-released for a week in glorious Imax.  I have tickets for Sunday, but one of the kids has been shitting the bed at school so I think I need to make an example and deny the film.  Oh well, the Blu-Ray set comes out in a couple of weeks.

I've also started futzing around with an Arduino.  My intent is to create a soundboard for the mouse droid I am building. So far, I'm just doing some tutorials, mostly with LED's, but I'm getting the hang of it.  I did create my first handcrafted from scratch sketch last night.  Nothing fancy at all, but a small step.

Football is back.  Bama sure looked good in the opener against Michigan.  I'm not sure if Michigan is truly a top 20 team, and the #8 ranking may have been a bit high.  However, I did like that Michigan was still playing hard near the end of the game.  I hope they have a productive season.  It's early yet, but I think it's realistic to expect Bama to go to a very good bowl game, and be in contention for the SEC/BCS.  I do think there is enough backlash over last year that any SEC team will need to run the table in order to make it to the National Championship.  Haters gotta hate I guess.