Why Macs Suck

Nothing more to say really. Watch it and feel the pain.

Newegg

Just in case anyone had about 5 benjamins to lay down on their favorite blogger, here is my wish list for upgrading my home-built box.

Newegg.com Public Wishlist

I've become obsessed with tweaking out my computer. It's one of the joys I have of being a computer user (the others being WOW and naked ladies.) I can upgrade and mod my hardware components and user-interface at will. Right now, I have a pretty sweet setup at home, with a large 20-inch flatscreen and a smaller 15'' tilted 90 degrees so that it's portrait-oreinted. I should take a picture and post it.

My current specs: (This is from memory, so things may be wrong or incomplete. I could edit them when I get home but that would kind of defeat the purpose of wasting time at work.)

Mobo: Biostar m7viw
CPU: Athlon (1.9 mhz, don't know model)
Ram: 1 gb (2 x 512mb) crucial pc 133 sdram
Video: Nvidia 6800
Audio: Creative x-fi platinum
Scanner: Canoscan L something
Printer: Canon cheap jobber
Storage: 2 x 120gb harddrives
Keyboard: Logitech g15 gaming keyboard
Main display: Samsung 204b
2nd display: Panasonic (it's a tv actually)

This config was mostly built in the summer of 2004 by my brother on a beach. I had been having problems with my previous build spontaneously restarting, sometimes after only 5 minutes. It was getting really annoying, especially since I found myself saving games incessantly to avoid losing my progress. Anyway, after months of me complaining to him, my brother devised a master plan. We were going ot meet our sister camping in CT that weekend and he would bring down a box and I would bring my old system with my hard drives (and all my docs.)

We met at the beach, and he plugged together 3 UPS systems for a total of 15 mins of power. He was able to manually install my hard drive and get it all working before the time limit. I took my box home and was immensely happy that I could play Morrowind and only be worried about the Assassin's Guild. The era of spontaneous restarts were over.

But here it is 2006. I added the video card and the audio card and the dual monitors, and while the machine still runs great, it has started to chug a bit. I did a clean install of windows a month ago, hoping that would help. It didn't really. So I think it's time to upgrade.

I wanted to get better, bigger RAM, hoping that would be the easiest fix. But my mobo is so old that it only supports RAM up to pc266, which is hard to find cheap because noone really makes it anymore. So I have to upgrade my mobo if I want decent ram. And I would need a new CPU because the newer motherboards doesn't support my old one. Complicated, I know, but that's the life of a hacker. I'm always living on the edge of a knife! I'm a rebel Dotty, a loner.

With these 3 components, priced under $500, I can make my system as saavy as one from Alienware or some other high-priced piece of plastic.

Try doing that with a mac, sucka!

Sorry, had to get in the obligatory zang in there.

Game over

The 2006 Red Sox are dead. Long live the king.

This series in Boston can't be called the Boston Massacre. That name already describes a similar series in 1978 where the Yanks swept a four game series to take the lead in the AL East. But it's still apt here in 2006. The MFY already had a 1.5 game lead going into Boston on Friday, they leave today with a 6.5 lead after taking five games in four days and outscoring the Red Sox 49-26.

Those bastards from the Bronx dominated the Sox in every way. They came from behind, they scored at will, they held our bats quiet when it mattered. In the battle of the fens, our red-stockinged braves were killed by gunpowder and smallpox blankets by an overpowering enemy. All we can do is wave sticks and rattles on their way out of town and hope the conquistadors never come back.

In some small way, though, this series has had a normalizing effect for me. Being a Red Sox fan since I was a kid has meant constant pain. 1986 was a great example, but also the early 90s and being swept by the Athletics in the playoffs to our current 2nd banana status in the AL East. 2004 was an anomaly. Red Sox fans were able to feel happy and proud for a time. While this was an amazing feeling, deep down I always thought there was something wrong. The ecstasy of winning a championship was not a feeling I associated with my team.

So this series, this Last Stand, has torn down the statue of the World Series. 2004 is officially over. And so is this season.

Wait til next year...

Absolutely nothing!

So it's all about this cooze who's a regular fuck-machine.

Actually, no, it ending up being about a robot named Robbie. The first Robot ever created which held sentient life. But nobody wanted him around, they said he was an abomination. So the Cybodyne Corp. made Roberta the Robot and married the two robots on national television. They even made a baby robot, Bobbie the Baby Bot, but he malfunctioned like a retarded baby. Cybodyne never did figure out why he never worked right. Years pass and Robbie has had enough of being married. So he files for divorce and the controversy starts all up again. The whole movie is told through one of those bad tabloid TV shows like Geraldo or Dateline.

That's it.

I turned it in a while ago on a Saturday. That whole day was crazy. I knew I had to send this movie script in by midnight. But I wanted to visit my friend in New Haven and go on her friend's boat. So after working on the script in the morning (and leveling up my gnome mage Brandley for a few hours) I needed to get on the road. Driving on I-95 was fun, I was jotting down lines on my pad with one hand while driving with the other. I think I had the last five pages worked out, but I needed to type it up. I got to New Haven and brought my laptop along with me.

We ended up in Branford, on this marina. There were a bunch of dudes I didn't know, a 20 ft motor boat and 3 coolers full of beer. I drank a few, then it was time to board the vessel. My friend put the computer in a garbage bag, so it wouldn't get wet. All the guys knew I had a mission, so they weren't too put out when I immediately went down below (it was a big boat) and started typing. The boat was going really fast, bouncing and trouncing me all over the cabin. But I did it. I finished it up on the boat in Long Island Sound. I was so seasick by the end, I was sweating and about to blow chunks. I ripped off my clothes, threw on my shorts and jumped in the cold ocean. Luckily the boat had stopped.

We drank more beer and watched more people do watersports (not pissing.) I ended up doing the final editing back at my friend's house and sent off the final script at 11:47pm.

I wouldn't have done it any other way.

Greg at The Living Room in Park Slope, 8.11.06

Hey Y’all,

I’m going to be doing a set in Brooklyn at the Postmark Café in Park Slope. It’s a coffee shoppe in a badass neighborhood and I’ll be doing an ok-for-TV bunch of jokes. Apparently, the kids don’t like it when you drop F-bombs on them before they’re ten years old. The best part is there’s no cover and you don’t even have to buy a cup of coffee. Although I bet you’d love it if you did. I wish I had some coffee right now. Mmmm. Coffee.

So come on down and see an hour-long show of comics in hometown Brooklyn.

• When: Friday, August 11^th, 8 pm
• Where: Postmark Café, 326 6th Street, Brooklyn, bet. 4^th and 5^th Ave.
• What: funny stuff
• How much: Absolutely nothin’!

Some info about the room: www.myspace.com/livingroomcomedy