Wisdom of the Jabberwocky

My sister's old PC broke down, and I suspected problems with the motherboard and/or the psu due to heavy Ragnarok use. Now, when you upgrade the motherboard, you'll have to upgrade the processor, and the ram modules as well. I also had to replace the psu (and eventually the chassis) since I suspect that it could have been the source of the problem as well. The only parts I'm gonna keep are the 2x IDE hard drives,1x CD-RW/DVD combo drive and the monitor.

We went to PC Express in Gilmore to check out the latest hardware. We then decided to have the following assembled: AMD64 Sempron 3200+ processor with 512 DDR2 ram on a MSI K9MM-V motherboard (ide/sata, built-in video, ethernet and audio). We also got a slick black casing with 450watts of psu along with it. Total cost: Php 6900. The look on my sister's face: Priceless.

Don't let the numbers deceive you. AMD64 Sempron 3200+ only has a core speed of 1.8Ghz. It has a 128 L2 Cache and a thermal power design of 62w and 35w. While it's capable of 64-bit instructions, you really won't need that if you're just using Windows XP.

The choice for the motherboard came down to three things: 1) ide support, 2) built-in ports, 3) price. The MSI K9MM-V supports both IDE and SATA drives, although I did not notice at first that it only has 1 IDE port, and 2 SATA ports. Which means that I can only fit in 1 master HDD and 1 slave CD-RW/DVD combo drive and the extra HDD can only go into an external USB enclosure. The MSI board also boasts of internal video adapter, agp slot, internal audio and internal lan.

Setting up the new PC is a breeze. So that I won't have to reinstall everything (and download every darn patches again from Ragnarok), I decided to make use of the existing Windows XP installation from the old hard drive, and just "fix" the installation to re-introduce the new hardware to the software. This requires booting from a WinXP installation CD, which will then detect that you have an existing Windows installation and offer you an option to fix that installation. From a technical standpoint, it means that the entire system registry hive will be replaced but the software hive will remain intact.

Now, had I gotten an entirely new PC, I could have spent an additional Php 7k (3k for the hard drive, 1k for the optical drive, 3k for the monitor). Php 14K for a brand new PC is not that expensive anymore. Had a chosen a lower spec, I think the price could still go down to Php 12K. (In comparison, my old 386SX pc costs me around Php 40k, 13 years ago).

Several things happened as of late.

I totally forgot blogging. That's pretty obvious. I've haven't much time organizing my card collection, much less arranging the contents of my bag, and even less blogging. There's so many things to blog about, there just too little time to do the actual deed.

I still play Magic:The Gathering competitively, although not as active, but if time permits, I am able to play during FNMs, block or standard constructed tournaments. My friend, and regular playtest partner, Seigfred, left for Aussie already, so practice has been somewhat limited. Chris came recently though, and with his crazy, powerful vintage decks, it's the next best thing to a practice before a tournament.

I still sell stuff online through e-bay, but things went slower now after I hit a snag with my previous transactions. Note to self: Fix inventory first before selling again.

I still haven't finished watching Lost. Between my wife's Grey's anatomy, House, Scrubs and Heroes, I couldn't fit my own dvd collection into her dvd movie schedule. And oh, there's an entire Naruto and Bleach animes waiting to be watched after the Lost episodes. Honestly, I didn't see the "I control the remote" clause in our marriage contract, as she claims exists :P

I'm still working on several .NET software projects. There's always the proverbial "what if i just stayed the uber-developer career path" thinking that's hanging in the air, somewhere.

I'm still trying to fix, improve, develop something, somewhere, someplace. I don't know - they're all over the place - the clogged bathroom sink, the bathroom ceiling, the shelves, my sister's computer, my friend's internet cafe, mother in-law's auditing system; the list goes on.

And I'm still here blogging.

Looks like paypal has finally arrived in the Philippines. I tried over and over before to sign up for a paypal account, but due to lack of proper local laws, paypal refused to create any accounts from the Philippines.
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I really didn't expect it to happen. I was browsing through ebay- drooling over cheap rare M:tG cards, which, unfortunately for me, can only be paid using paypal. Then a thought suddenly came to me, what if I try to sign up for an ebay account? I wasn't successful before, why should now be different? With nihilistic glee (yes, my vocabulary became enriched with magic speak), I went to paypal's signup page and completed the sign-up process.
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It wasn't too hard really. The downside is, you cannot use this paypal account if you are selling, ie, you cannot accept payments if you are an online merchant. You cannot fund it, it only draws money from your credit card. You can only use it to pay for online goods. Cheap online, ebay-auctioned goods.

To those who are wondering why it took me this long to blog an update, here's why:

1. I'm too busy at work.
2. I'm too preoccupied after work.
3. I'm too lazy in between.

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Ubuntu Breezy Badger has integrated itself wonderfully to our Windows-dominated network. I'm completely satisfied with it, and I see wonderful, cost-effective solutions that will go with it in the future.
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OpenOffice.org also showed promise. We are currently using OOo 2.0 with MS Office 2003 and the beta (still free) MS Office 2007.
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Visual Basic .NET is also coming around the corner, along with cousins ASP .NET and ADO .NET. We'll have to see how our old projects adapt to it.
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My old Magic the Gathering cards are now out of the old shoebox and are seeing gaming tables beside coffee and beers. And they have new companions, new, mint and near-mint cards in protective sleeves, from the two latest MTG expansions, Coldsnap and Timespiral! Yay!
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I became a DCI member (Duelist's convocation international), so you can call me a DUELIST. Hey, wanna duel, huh punk?
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Got a new Palm T|X PDA. It's really cool with several ebooks, mp3s, audiobooks, and movies. I also made my first Palm OS app, a better MTG:Life Counter using handheld basic (http://www.handheld-basic.com/dl_try.php).
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The last time I updated this blog, it was still MSN Spaces. Now it is Windows Live Spaces. I still think Google will do better than Windows Live. Live is just hype (After Windows Vista, I may be wrong).
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It's another NBA season once again! Fantasy Basketball is in the air. I got Lebron James in my first round draft. Yay again!