Matt Plude

Several weeks ago I purchased a copy of Microsoft Vista Ultimate and Office 2007 Ultimate. They have since sat on my desk collecting dust until I convinced myself I was ready/able to build a new computer. After about 2 weeks of research, reviewing articles on Tom’s Hardware, AnAndTech, NForce, etc I decided it was time to dive in.

The box is sitting in the UPS facility in Redmond and should show up at my doorstep tomorrow. I might be adventurous enough to build it tomorrow night but we will see how the day goes.

Here is the build:

New Parts:
MSI P6N SLI Platinum LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 650i SLI ATX Intel Motherboard
Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 Conroe 1.86GHz LGA 775 Processor Model BX80557E6300
XFX PVT73PYDJ3 GeForce 7600GS 512MB GDDR2 PCI Express x16 Video Card
CORSAIR CMPSU-520HX ATX12V v2.2 and EPS12V 2.91 520W Power Supply
CORSAIR XMS2 2GB (2 x 1GB) DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) TWIN2X2048-6400
ARCTIC COOLING Freezer 7 Pro 92mm CPU Cooler
MS Vista Ultimate
MS Office 2007 Ultimate

Existing Parts:
Antec SLK3700-BQE Case
Maxtor DiamondMax 10 SATA 16mb Cache (x2 RAID1) 300.0 GB
Seagate Barracuda Plus 200G (x2)
Dell 1907FP DVI
ViewSonic VX900 DVI
NEC DVD RW - IDE
Sony DVD Rom - IDE

I’m excited to see how it turns out, luckily the motherboard is Quad-Core compatible and can support plenty more RAM down the road. One of the nice things too (and part of why I went with the Platinum board) is the eSata port on the back - incase more external devices start to use it, I won’t be left behind.

The current parts in my existing box are perfectly fine, just couldn’t support Vista very well and are a few years old. I’ll be building another Server 2003 box (I cannibalized my previous server) and playing around with the new Exchange Server 2007, SharePoint Server 2007, Web Expressions, Visual Studio 2005, SQL Express and a few other of the latest Microsoft tools and applications. I figure if I keep that as my “sandbox” if it gets hosed I won’t be too upset!

Filed under: Programming, Technology, Business
No Comments

Today my Dad, Grandpa and I, along with my grandma and mom took a trip to Seattle Center for the 1st Annual Washington Brewers’ Festival. It was a pretty awesome event. Got a chance to try several beers from smaller breweries throughout the state. Laura’s parents and I were discussing whether or not the Roslyn Brewery would be at the event, turns out they were. Tried their Pale German Lager to start the afternoon off - pretty smooth taste, one of my favorites of the day. Also got a chance to try a beer from the Diamond Knot Brewery in Mukilteo. Apparently the owners are Boeing employees, so that was interesting. Hopefully they’ll be back next year and I’ll get a chance to try a few new beers and enjoy the atmosphere. I have to say, the “brew” culture is pretty laid back! (never would have guessed haha)

Filed under: Brewing
No Comments

Frequent Hotmail users are probably familiar with the SMTP delay, especially when sending attachments. I’ve always wondered how Hotmail can have such horrid sending speeds yet the fact that I almost never use their service, it doesn’t matter. I recently signed up for the Windows Live Mail service, which is a vast improvement over Hotmail, yet found out the past few days that sending attachments is just as bad if not worse then Hotmail. Only sending attachments of around 2-3MB the service crashes when attaching, if it claims to attach when sent the receiving party has yet to actually receive the email/attachment.

So it’s back to using Gmail or other services for attachments, I’m just amazed at how horrible the attachments send using either Hotmail or Windows Live Mail.

Filed under: Technology
No Comments

A quote from one of my favorites, Tom Petty, that sums up college. I’m not sure I lived up to this all 4 years but I know I’ll take the good times with me. Here’s to living it up the next 15 days!

“I’ve learned one thing and that’s to quit worrying about stupid things. You have four years to be irresponsible here. Relax. Work is for people with jobs. You’ll never remember class time, but you’ll remember the time you wasted hanging out with your friends. So, stay out late. Go out with your friends on a Tuesday when you have a paper due on Wednesday. Spend money you don’t have. Drink ’til sunrise. The work never ends, but college does…”

Filed under: Random
1 Comment

Aaron called me this morning to let me know someone had broken into my car and stolen my old JVC deck. They smashed in the small window near the side mirror, tried to pry it open with a screw driver it looks like before smashing it in with their fist. They ripped the deck clear out of the dash too, cut the harness (which made no sense to me because the clip was 2 inches away and would have saved them the time cutting it - but then again they aren’t the smartest in the first place) I called Bellingham PD this morning but all they did was take info over the phone a few hours later and left it at that. No one came out to look at it or anything. So looks like I am stuck with fixing all of it now. Whoever the dumb crap was, he most likely was looking for a way to afford his next drug fix and ripped off my POS $50 (if that) 6 year old deck and caused $300-400 in damage to my vehicle in the process. Worst part, the punk will get away with it, get high and move on to the next car.

Filed under: Random
1 Comment