I hate having to reinstall Windows. I try to avoid it like death, but sometimes it's just inevitable. Asus sent a new motherboard, and as I've written before, new motherboards usually mean new chipsets, which mean new drivers, which mean Blue Screens of Death for Windows.

Thankfully, there were no blue screens of death. However, one of my hard drives stopped working shortly after this, but I think it was already dying. Regardless, my installation of Vista had become overly bloated, so I reinstalled anyways. Things seem a little more responsive, and I don't have a shitload of unneeded baggage trying to start when Windows does.

I eventually got the broken drive working again. Now I just need to get my other broken drive working so I can retrieve my pictures.

Eventually, I will switch over to pure Linux. I'm just waiting on the Linux port of Unreal Tournament 3.

On the Agenda...

(A) Re-do my audio cables that run from computers to my surround sound receiver. I didn't insulate them properly, so there's constant buzzing in the background. It's faint, but noticeable. Ideally, I'd like to replace the receiver and run an HDMI cable to it for digital audio. For now, however, I need to purchase new jacks.

(B) Finalize my Linux installation on my MacBook. I still need to get the touchpad, 3D acceleration, and wireless working properly. I can't wait to be able to play Unreal Tournament 2004 on it.

(C) On top of all that, I need to finish a ton of reviews. I'm still looking for more PC cases for review as well.

(D) Did I mention Pittco is quickly approaching? August 16th-17th doesn't seem all that far away. And yet there's so much to do!

Nikos posted his desktop to his blog, which was syndicated by Planet Larry, a Gentoo-oriented syndication. My blog is also syndicated there. He tagged a few people to show their setups, and I've been meaning to take a few pictures of mine, so I decided to show off as well. You can see a few other setups from Gentoo users and developers and George on Planet Larry.

My brand new Nikon D40 DSLR came yesterday, and today I've got a fully-charged battery. So why not take a few snapshots with the new camera?

First up is the desktop itself. From left to right, there's a 17" Samsung LCD, a 22" Acer LCD, and a 20" Princeton LCD. The 22" and 20" are connected to my desktop through DVI to my GeForce 8800GTX. The 17" is used with my benchmarking rig, or my server as needed. Below the monitors are my MacBook, G15 Keyboard, and Logitech G5 and MX510 mice.

Next up are my towers. The one on the bottom is my desktop, featuring a Core2Quad Q6600 CPU, 4GB of RAM, a GeForce 8800GTX video card, two 36GB Raptors, and about 400GB between three other drives.

Above it is my benchmarking rig, which has an AMD Phenom 9500 Quad-Core CPU, 2GB of RAM, a 250GB hard dive, and an AMD Radeon HD3870 video card.

Lastly, I'm posting a picture of some of my upcoming reviews and previous reviews. They're sitting on my shelves. Some of the stuff I can't talk about is behind the sheet. Shhhh!

I didn't picture my home server because it's currently in pieces waiting for a new heatsink. I also didn't picture the Asus Barebones I previously reviewed on BIOSLEVEL because it's connected to my TV for an upcoming article!

I hope you enjoyed my workstation. I'm tagging Roy, Colin, and John.

The Spring '08 semester has finally drawn to a close. I'm so glad I'll be able to go back to getting reasonable amounts of sleep, and not going to school for several hours a day, then working close to 40 hours a week as well. I'll be much happier being able to split my time between BIOSLEVEL.com and Buffalo Wild Wings.

For BIOSLEVEL, Sapphire recently sent us new AMD 780G chipset motherboard, Radeon HD3450, and an overclocked Radeon HD3870. Between the motherboard and Radeon HD3870, there's a pretty powerful machine just waiting to be powered. Several companies sent us additional parts for the review, which included 2GB of RAM, a quad-core Phenom CPU, and a slew of heatsinks. The reviews of the motherboard and videocard have been posted, and I've got several reviews lined up for the donated components as well. I'm just amazed at the piled of stuff that was shipped to us to power the motherboard.

Simply put, I'm surprised at how well the motherboard's ATI-based integrated graphics performed in Linux. This won't be a motherboard I let out of my sight anytime soon. Since my last final on Wednesday, I've completed an entire two reviews in a single 24-hour period. It's so ridiculously nice to have time away from school again.

Maybe this'll finally be that summer I do something truly productive (and profitable). I've got all the ideas lined up, but do I have the time or motivation to do it? Time will tell.

For the uninitiated, I work at a Buffalo Wild Wings as a Shift Leader, Bar Tender, Server, and Cook. Depending on the day, you may find me doing everything at once. Regardless, I never stop being surprised at some of the folk I meet.

I've been the regular bartender Sunday mornings for the last year. In that time, I've gotten to know a lot of regulars that I may not see around other days. Despite the usual chats about sports and local events, I only know what a handful of these people do for a living. This past Sunday, I discovered one of them to be a recruiter for none other than Microsoft.

Mind you, the guy isn't a programmer. He's a people person that typically recruits from the industry. He moved to the Pittsburgh area only a year ago to be a little closer to his wife's family, but now he's looking to move back to his hometown, Atlanta. He wasn't sure when he was moving back, but he made sure I had his phone number and the like.

While talking about my own interests and aspirations, I was careful not to bring up Linux or the like of open source software. I don't necessarily want to work for Microsoft once I graduate, but I also don't care to hurt my chances with a potential employer.

I don't see myself ever working for Microsoft.

For the last several few years, I've been the one amongst my friends that had little or not computer issues. This last week has been hell for me. If it wasn't for the slick window decorations and DirectX 10, I would go back to XP. If it wasn't for iTunes and Window's mouse functionality, I would switch completely to Linux.

Not that I'm blaming Vista. My woes are much more over Windows itself, or atleast at the point where Windows took the NT root starting with Windows 2000. Who the hell created "dynamic disks" and "dynamic partitions"? They're retarded, broken, and horribly dangerous to use. For example, say you're running a striped (RAID0) volume (that doesn't use an entire disk) over two harddrives and you lose one of the drives. If you have other partitions on the remaining drive that are NOT striped, you won't be able to access them anymore. Why? Because they're part of a "dynamic disk", and apparently need the other disk to function properly, even though the partition is only on a single disk.

So, not only did I lose the majority of my program files, but I also lost my iTunes music. THANKFULLY, iTunes added all the songs I've purchased over the last several years to my "waiting to download" purchases. Normally, iTunes will NOT do this, but they make exceptions for long-time customers and those who invest significant amounts of money into iTunes. I fall under both categories. I have well over 500 downloads in my queue, and this is after 45 minutes of downloading. God damn.

Lesson(s) learned? Windows RAID0 is BAD, putting music on RAID1 would be a fantastic idea. I've had two 250GB drives that I've been meaning to run in RAID1 for a few months, and I put them together this morning after this all happened. I will not let this happen agian.

Call me paranoid, but my summer goal is to have a hardware RAID5 system in one of my computers by the end of summer. This way, my data will always be safe unless all the drives manage to fry, and the drives will be OS independent in case I'm dual-booting. Regardless of dual-booting, I won't be relying on Windows RAID in any way.

If my mouse worked the same in Linux as it did in Windows and Apple released iTunes for Linux or went completely DRM-free, I'd switch completely to Linux in a heartbeat. For the moment, however, I can't.

As for iTunes itself, they gave me everything back that was still in their catalog. Unfortunately, one of my favorite artists, Inez, was no longer listed. At the time of this writing, I'm attempting to extract these songs from my iPod Touch. Aside from that, my purchases over the last few years in total are: 1140 songs, 6 movies, 16 short films or music videos, and 70 TV episodes. In monetary terms, approximately $1372 dollars. After working out this math, I kind of question why I legally download my music.