Urban Kid in a Suburban Mind

Time:

9:17 am.

So on with the weird dreams.

Last night the story was that Todd was tired of living at our current apartment and wanted to move elsewhere for a change of scenery, so for some ungodly reason we ventured to Dundalk, the honest-to-god shithole of Maryland just to the south east of Baltimore. And we got an apartment there, living in a true dump with various Asian types, oddly enough. It was waterfront, as much as a sludgy toxic sea of oil can be called water. I was miserable, but somehow I'd already signed the lease, but I wasn't out of the other place yet, so I was stuck with two residences, two rent payments, and I got depressed. Of course, then I woke up to the wonderful home I actually live in and things were cool again.

In other news, there's something I've taken particular notice to pertaining to how my crowd of people prefers to interact. It seems as if everyone is at least knee-deep in some online community or communities, be they forums or P2P communities or MMO's or Social Networking sites... what have you, the various incarnations of the online community are inumerable. The realization herein is that I myself am not and have never really been a part of any community in the way they have, wherein friends are made and some, however unmeasurable, change has been affected via actions across the web. I've dipped my feet in several, mind you, but none ever really clicks. What usually happens is I will enter into a community, but rather than invest any of my personal time into it or help move it forward in any way, I utilize it as a resource.

For example, the TCCA forums I am part of, I don't go hunting for folks needing help with their cars or make any other attempt to aid others, but I use it as readily available Help-Me tool to figure out what to do when I have a problem needing to be fixed. LiveJournal has a series of communities I could be a part of but I participate in none, simply making use of the social networking aspect of it by making entries like this so others know what I'm up to, but I rarely if ever comment on others' journals. With MySpace and Facebook, I simply use them as alternatives to e-mail or IM, since some folks I know are more likely to check MySpace than GMail and therefore it's better to send a message across MySpace than an e-mail or wait for the chance to send an IM. Any MMO I've played, I don't join guilds or even interact with others half the time, I usually solo through and my interaction with other players is strictly via the economy.

The problem can be sourced to the fact that I have an extremely hard time keeping in mind that people in these communities are, in fact, people, not just the random blotches of text on the screen. It's as if the reality-line has blurred a but more for me than most in that respect, as someone used to interacting with AI in older games and getting so immersed I could consider it real until the awareness that I was gaming hit and I'd start doing something silly or extreme. Because I can't entirely accept people I know only by text and screen name as people, I'm less likely to treat them as respectfully and reasonably as I would those I've met in person beforehand. And because it fails to stay in scope for me that these are real people I'm interacting with, I get tremendously bored with them when they're not engaging me, and similar to open-format games like GTA, when the game stops engaging me, I will engage it. I start spamming random obscenities just to try and rile things up, like getting more and more stars in GTA, and suddenly it becomes a game, a challenge to try and get more and more people pissed off with me and then something tremendous happens (in their eyes) like the dropping of a ban-hammer, but it doesn't phase me because the community was so boring at that point that I'm non-remorseful to be cast out. Game over. But hey, I can just move on to the next community and start all over again, reset.

This is why I'm banned from 39 channels in Anthrochat and am on the hit list of every furry IRC admin out there. I just don't care. I don't feel like I should care. But everyone else seems to think it would be a good idea to have at least a little concern. It's weird.

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Time:

8:26 am.

Now I'm not an aggressive driver, mind you. But in the mornings, amidst the rush-hour traffir where people are bumper-to-bumper and employing stupid, assinine maneuvers to either get ahead of the line or make sure others don't get ahead of them, I employ my own form of psychological warfare.

For example, when I'm trying to merge onto the highway and people are trying to speed up and get that one extra car length ahead so I have to slow down and get behind them...well, I don't. I continue accelerating steadily, not mashing down the gas or swerving wildly, I drive as if that person, that car doesn't exist and I'm just merging onto the highway as normal, without an asshat trying to get 00.09 seconds ahead. I cruise forward, with my signal on, I make eye contact with the other drive, and it becomes a game a chicken. And you know what? I always win at chicken. Realizing I'm not going to slow down and consent to being behind him after such a display, he backs off and I happily merge over into the lane and everyone returns to driving as normal.

I'm not an aggressive driver. I'm a Passive Aggressive Driver. (durr hurr)

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Time:

2:38 pm.

You know, all day I've been forgetting to post about yet another loverly dream, but now, despite it having been nearly 8 hours since waking from it, it's still fresh in the head. Odd as most dreams fall out of my brain 10 minutes after conciousness gives its sub a boot to the head.

This time it featured Josh, of all people. I was hanging out with him, but we weren't in the States. He had an apartment that was part of a dilapedated but reconstructed warehouse-gone-apartment complex. It was a really unique building, too...original brick on all the exterior walls, original iron window frames and bars, but most unique about it was a complete lack of ground access. In order to get to the apartment one had to walk around to the back of the building where there was a decent looking plaza/park area with a fenced basketball court and cement sidewalk, but just before you walked up some short stairs to follow the sidewalk up into the narrow but deep plaza, there was an iron staircase that led up to a catwalk system that hovered over the entire park area. I'm pretty it, also, was original, and you'd walk the catwalk to reach your section of apartments which all seemed to be on third floor, with the space underneath seemingly unused, or maybe still being used as a warehouse. There was also waterfront just before the stairs, so if you were walking down them away from the complex, you'd see an industrialized harbor. It was all quite gorgeous in its own urbanesque way.

But anyway, Josh lived here, had an apartment that was 2 floors with a nifty balcony to overlook the city opposite the water. I'm pretty sure it was supposed to be France, some heavily industrial part of France. It was just gorgeous, all of it. Josh's apartment was cluttered with random furniture and such that he wasn't making use of, and it seemed like that leftover furniture consumed a majority of the space in his apartment, but it still felt homely. We both went upstairs and sat out on his balcony, looking over the city, both of us smoking a cigarette. It was as if maybe we both lived there now, but he was there first and I was moving in. And it felt good to be moving in there.

It's my dream to move into the city, into some old industrial section that smells godawful but is like a little oasis in the smog and concrete desert. I figure one of these days I finally will, slip into one of the reconstructed apartment complexes of Baltimore. So many people insist to me that it's a horrible idea, that the crime and the trash and general filth are hideous and not worth dealing with. It's hard for those people to understand that I want that. I want to live somewhere a curfew doesn't exist, where I can't go walking down ever alley alone, where I have to be careful, where trash clogs the drains and steam spews forth from sewer grates as if the fires of hell were burning beneath me (points for whoever can score that quote). Where parking is a ghost story, your neighbors are 1" of drywall away, and if there's a fire on the first floor you better learn how to fly out the window.

I want to live somewhere like that because that's where the human experience shines through in its fullest. I could step one foot out my door and be immersed in it, the bustle of city life, the drama, the tragedy, the comedy, the variety, the hardship, the despotic, and of course, the dreaming. Maybe I'm crazy, but that atmosphere, depending on how it is approached, can truly enrich one's life. And for the observer, the third-person omniscient narrator of inumerable stories, there's a true treasure to be found there.

Mmm...romantic mind wanderings...it's such a feasible, easily attainable goal. Then why is it that I feel that sense of intimidation about pursuing?

Ahh yes, I forgot...potential for disappointment.

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Subject:	THE RIG
Time:	8:18 am.

- ASUS M2N-SLI Deluxe Motherboard w/ NForce 570 Chipset
- AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ Brisbane @ 2.51Ghz CPU
- 4 x 1Gig Kingston HyperX 4-4-4-12 DDR2 800 Gaming RAM
- BFG Tech GeForce 9800 GTX OCE 256-bit 512Meg GPU
- BFG Tech 550 Watt PSU

Think I'd merit at least a "5" in the Vista rating system? :3

I need to save up for a better case for this thing now. I was okay once I figured out the fan problems with my GPU, but I definitely didn't realize quite how hot RAM can get. I just put the last two gigs of the stuff in yesterday and my temps jumped a good 3 degrees celcius. My case is nice and all, but the standard single small intake, single large exhaust combo just isn't cycling the air fast enough. This box right hot, and it's not hard to see why. In fact, if I weren't running all the aftermarket cooling that I am (Artic Cooling 120mm CPU fan w/ fist-sized copper heatsink and 80mm two-slot VGA cooler) I'd probably be melting this thing.

So here are the plans - save up, grab an Antec 900 case (features 2 x 120mm intakes, 1 x 120mm rear exhaust, 1 x 200mm top exhaust and the PSU rests at the bottom of the case which is conducive to improved cooling), and after acquiring said case, possibly reformat the hard drive and give Vista Ultimate 64-bit a try since, as one of my PC gamer buddies relayed to me, it's "the future of gaming", which I can't argue with cause now that I have the 9800 I'm eager to make use of Shader 4.0 and DX10. Alternatively, I could always just save up again after that and get a second hard drive and run a dual-boot sort of setup. This latter option may be best as I'm already nuking hard drive space like nobody's business with all the game I have on the non-OS partition.

I should be able to comfortably sit on these specs for some time. Once things get hairy with framerates again, I planned ahead and bought a SLI mobo so I can just pick up another 9800, stick her in and whammo! Double the graphics processing speed! Also, since my mobo is AM2+, I have at least some security in processor upgrades as ASUS has yet to really rush in on a new socket, meaning I should be able to get away with just upgrading to the newest processor available for the AM2+ socket when the time comes. My 4800+ processor is great and all, but still leaves a good bit of upgrade room. It's certainly doing fine for now.

So hot damn...I'm set! This is the first computer I've built, and when I first put it together in October I had to hold back due to funding limitations, but now it's pretty much all there, the box is essentially compelte, anything else is just an upgrade on an already phenominal system. This thing is Vista worthy, which I've been reluctant to move on to, but until Windows 7 comes out, I'm willing to make use of it. DX10 and Shader 4.0 are worth it.

I'm thinking about it right now...how much money I spent on building this system...Hell, I'll even toss in the cost of the new case I plan on getting...$973. That's it. This badass mufuggin' machine's hardware has a grand retail value of $973. This includes all the overnight shipping I paid for to get the parts ASAP, so if you want you can slice off a good $100-150. I suppose you could also add on another $200 from when I bought the 8600 to run until I could afford the GPU upgrade, too, but that's now Todd's baby and is running his machine all nice-like (so he can play UT3 with meh). $973. Oh hell, let's have fun and add on future upgrades, ie. a new processor, second GPU and the PSU to run it all...let's see...using current prices (which will inevitably go down by the time I feel this upgrade is necessary)...Haha, $610 in upgrades I have available to me, amounting to a grand total system cost of $1583, and that system would kick the piss out of the $3000 Alienware equivalent. It's amazing how much more cost effective it is to build your own system. Even more amazing how easy it is to learn how to do so.

So yeah, after another year, once the prices on these upgrades has gone down, I can easily pick them up and have essentially brought my system up to par to the new technology of the next generation. This box may very well last me longer than that old HP I used to run that I just upgraded and upgraded until I couldn't upgrade anymore, and that box laster me half a decade, which, to the tech saavy, is an eternity in terms of hardware longevity. Barring the introduction of nano processors, I think I'm set for a good while now. God knows I'm happy. And the lull in computer gaming couldn't have come at a better time, giving me an opportunity to upgrade before the coming of the onslaught of PC exclusives that are scheduled for release in the next year.

Biggest challenge right now, which will be quickly resolved with this new case as it offers an abundance of airflow for cheaps, is fighting off the heat. Granted, I'm not running meltdown temps, but it's still too hot for my tastes:

CPU Under Load ~ 45-48C (only ever peaked at 45C before the extra RAM)
Mobo During Load ~ 40-42C (which is an improvement on the 60C it used to run)
GPU Under Load ~ 58-60C (hooray VGA coolers and RivaTuner)

This is with all fans running 100%, too, which is surprisingly not too loud save for the GPU fan which whirrs high above everything else, but is unnoticeable with the volume up. I'm a bad boy with voltages and overclocking, too:

1.33v VCore ~ 1.45v
5.0v Line ~ 5.10v
3.33v Line ~ 3.42v

Running the RAM at 2.0v isn't helping either, but goddamn, does it make things zoom zoom! :D

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Time:

11:39 am.

Thank god, it finally happened. The crown EA has held for so long over the racing genre of game, the title of "Best Arcade Racing Game Studio" has finally changed hands to a company that more than deserves it... Codemasters.

Just last year Codemaster came out with DiRT, an arcade style rally racing sim. The game was gorgeous, without a doubt, and played like a dream, but despite being so well executed, it felt like there was a great deal of untapped potential, and not everyone is a fan of the rally form of racing.

About a year later, we now have Grid. Made by the same studio, Codemasters, using the same engine but more streamlined and efficiently running, but now achieving something no other racing game to date has managed to do - bring together all disciplines of racing in a seamless, gorgeous, intense and refined arcade racing game. Seriously, everything from the legit ARL Pro-Muscle races, European Le Mann's and other circuit races and Japanese Drift GP racing is all there. These races have a feel to them like Gran Turismo, but with more style and a fun arcade feel. But that's not it. There are also the very much illegal street races present that my generation has developed an affinity for in the form of Grip races, canyon cat-and-mouse racing, downhill drift and various others, all having the feel of a Need for Speed Underground game. Its perfect, a fantastic mesh of all attitudes and all tastes.

The structure of the game is amazing too. You don't just run into races headfirst, you manage your own team with its own bank, colors and reputation. Winning races builds reputation in those circles which allows you to pursue greater challenges. If you can't afford to sign on and race your own car, you can race for another team to make some extra cash, driving their car. There are different racing leagues in each country you have to qualify for, and a licensing system that, unlike the Gran Turismo equivalent, is an enjoyable thing to go through. And unlike most racing games that expect you to win first place every time, that isn't necessarily the objective in Grid. Your sponsors may expect you to win within the top 5 or top 3, or expect you to set a new lap record on a specific track, or to specifically beat out another team in a race. Especially in Le Mann's races where there are multiple classes of cars racing at the same time, the best you can hope to do is win first in your class. It's a completely fresh take on the racing game.

So yeah, this whole ramble sums up to this one statement: Play Grid, and enjoy a completely reinvented take on a classic genre. Not many games get me worked up like this, but Grid is worth the hype.

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Time:

10:03 pm.

Amusing how touchy hardware can be.

My GPU spiked at 98C the other day. Needless to say, this freaked me out and I did some research into things. Turns out the highest the fan ever spun up to was 37% while under a heavy loud (Crysis, in fact).

I thought to myself, "How stupid, NVidia has these drivers set up to never run the fans so high that you can hear them all for the sake of what? Being quiet?" In fact, that whole idea that the fans on a computer should only be kept running as high as "necessary" to ensure it's not "too loud". How stupid...you're risking higher temps which reduce system longevity all so you don't have to turn the speakers up just a wee bit more to overcome the whirring of fans circulating air?

On that conservative fan speed setup, the temp spiked at 98C. I'm amazed the card hasn't sustained damage. Got Rivatuner running, set up basic profiles so that when gaming the fan is at 100% like all my other fans, and 'lo and behold, running Crysis for 2 hours straight the highest the temp ever hit was 58C (which made me realize quite how much that VGA cooler helps). That's a 40C reduction in heat. That's huge.

Now answer me this, seriously, why risk the temps when you can just as easily wear headphones or turn it up if the difference is that dramatic? Not to mention the overclocking potential this opens up. All of you who are so worried about making your boxes so "silent and stealthy"...fools, all of you.

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Time:

12:15 pm.

Man, the relationship between Josh and I is so weird.

Last night I was bored and hungry. He had spent the whole day at a family function, babyshower for his sister. Things were just winding down and he invited me over to eat some of the food there. I went over and felt more like a boyfriend visiting his girlfriend's family than just a friend stopping over. Talked with his aunt, grandparents, sister-in-law, all about random topics and nonesuch. Ate some delicious home-made food, had a generally awesome time sitting around the table chatting with folks, it was neat.

But yeah, like I said, the dynamic between Josh and I is really bizarre. The similarities between us on the major facets of life are dauntingly similar. Hobby-wise, we both are avid photographers, complete computer geeks, we both love hookah smoking and sound systems and cars in general. Personality-wise, we're both passive, avoid conflicts but work "diplomatically" when conflict isn't escapable, are easy-going, like to socialize and improvise or otherwise make plans on the fly. Also, we have a habit of overwriting old plans with new ones that pop up so things are always changing and plans become undependable. It's crazy.

At first after we first linked back up I considered maybe trying to pursue something more with him, but it just didn't seem to click right. It wound up being kinda awkward when we boned and probably won't be repeated. An experiment, I guess. It's more of a brotherly thing. We make great business partners, great friends, we seem to respect one another on various disagreements and it never winds up being a problem...I dunno, it's crazy. Frankly, I think he'd make a bitchin' roommate. Our cleaning habits are even similar, namely we like to keep things neat. He's about ready to get out of his aunt's place, too, it seems, so it may very well be a viable option at some point.

It's so weird. I just can't seem to explain the dynamic of our relationship adequately. It's like some Friendship Super Plus to the N'th. The only thing I can't seem to figure out is why we wound up falling away after high school, cause it's not that we were avoiding each other. I guess we're both just so passive that neither took the time to pursue the other. Now that we've both popped up on each others' radar, though, we're meeting up pretty much daily. He may even start hitting the gym with me after he gets out of work, which I'm jazzed about cause I could use a consistent gym buddy.

You know what it's like? It's like we're the brothers of Boondock Saints. The core stuff is there, with everything else in our lives just being a subtle variation on the base foundation. Yeah...we're Boondock Saints. XD

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Time:

10:34 am.

Man, I've been a real post-whore lately. Product of some intense boredom, I assure you. Things have been excessively boring post-Anthrocon, which is odd cause things certainly didn't seem boring beforehand. The bar must've gotten raised...oh dear.

But anywho, on to things that have been going on! July 4th...nothing happened. Seriously, nothing at all. I worked, did something coloring on old drawings, started on a new one, got home and did nothing of grand importance. Entertainment was found much later in the night when Josh got off work and we decided to go out to eat and see "Wanted". So we hit Muvico and got our tickets, then went to play some DDR while we waited for showtime. It was the first time I've played DDR in an arcade in...about 2 years now, I think. And it was hard! I have nowhere near the stamina I used to have when I was playing daily...it was actually really depressing. All the more motivation to get a place with a basement space to set up the old Stepmania box and stomp away for hours a day again...daily DDR got me into better shape than this gym regimine I'm on. -.-

"Wanted" was...a pretty nifty film. Adapted the comic decently, but wasn't really something with any dramatic depth, it was mostly just entertaining, which is fine by me cause sometimes that's all you need. Ever since seeing it Josh has been wanting to try to curve bullets, an idea for which I have adequately bonked him in the head for. :3

Saturday was busy as shit. We rearranged the apartment, tossed out some busted furniture and various other useless items, and now the larger bedroom is being shared by Mary and I, Todd has the smaller bedroom, and the living room is...spacious (we tossed the broken love seat). Still got some things to move about, but when all is said and done the apartment is going to have alot of open space it didn't have before. Mary and I are doing a bunkbed thing with our bedroom, which allows me to keep my computer in the bedroom which may or may not be a good idea, but we'll see how it goes over time. After going non-stop moving things around in the apartment, I took a break to head over to Milt's and as is noted in a previous post, we raped Rock Band hard.

Sunday was the day of rest. I was tired from moving things around so I spent most of the day being an internet hermit and working on some hardware annoyances with my computer. Got a phone call from Razok, a dude I met at Anthrocon, which was nice. Also picked Supreme Commander back up on the PC. Hadn't played it in about a year before I built the new box, so running it on the new specs was neat. Not to mention I run a dual monitor setup now, and SupCom supports running the game on two monitors, one of which being for commanding units and such and the other monitor is dedicated entirely to being a Tacmap so I can keep tabs on what's going on, and even zoom in for cinematic-looking action should I so choose. Definitely cool stuff. Last night before going to bed I set up a hookah at the desk and played through a game, thoroughly hemorraging the rectums my opponents with my ever perfecting territory rush strategy.

Today, boredom ensues! At work, naturally gunna do the gym when I get off, naturally...I have no lunch though, and I'm really hungry...not sure what I'm gunna do about that, given that I get no breaks, need to stop eating out so much and...well...guess I feel guilty eating out. Losing weight steadily, but not fast enough. Josh has actually been helping me out a ton inadvertantly, since whenever he and I hang out we're out and about doing something active more often than not. Linking back up with him may very well be the best thing to happen to me literally in years. Still working on the photography studio thing, but there's not much else we can do aside from wait until we can afford the studio. He's working things out on the idea of having the business be a live-in kinda deal.

Car is still completely FUBAR. I'm refusing to drive it except for to and from work. This morning when I pulled into work something amusing happened upon mine and my co-workers eyes. When pulling in it was noticed that I was dragging something behind me, so when I hopped out of the car I took a peek, and sure enough, one of the old neon tubes from when I was running underglows had MELTED and fell to the ground, holding on only by a wire. This indicates to me that the car's exhaust is much hotter than usual (considering the neon tubes have been there for years), and the heat is enough to melt plastic. Which indicates the temperature sensor must be messed up cause the temp gauge in the car shows normal. Also, the car has somehow learned how to accelerate to 40mph on its own again, the only way to stop it being to dead-drop the gearshift to first, resulting in a heavy CACHUNK. Yeah...fucker's dead. :D

S'ok though, next car lined up is a 2005 Scion xB, 5-speed MTX since Me + ATX = TRANSDEATH. Selling the sound system part by part, still. Josh has been letting me refresh on driving stick in his Neon. In return, I taught him how to drift. XD

I M A GUD DRIEVR DURR HURR.

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Time:

8:54 am.

Man, my dreams are friggin' weird.

So I was back in high school, but it wasn't my old high school, it was some other place that, frankly, was cooler. But anyway, I was hanging out in the morning with Shyz (I'm not a stalker, really) and some 15 year old kid who was a friend of his (omg pedo) and some other folks I knew in the dream but didn't recognize outside of its context. Eventually class started so I dashed to my locker to grab my stuff only to realize I left it all at home and the only things in my locker (which I had to break into cause I forgot the combolock code) were pencils, pens and a notebook.

But anyway, we all made our way to class, and things progressed as normal, until sometime around lunch we were all summoned to assemble outside for a special event. So Shyz, the 15 year old and I (pedo stalker, lol) stood together out in front of the building waiting for whatever was gunna happen and after a few minutes feeling a rumble in the street a parade of America's Military Might came rolling past the school. Hummers, tanks, trucks bearing ICBM's in display, all sorts of crazy stuff. Very USSR-esque stuff. But once the vehicles drove by they'd park in the football field.

I got this crazy idea. There was a truck not 50 feet away from me with an ICBM just sitting on it, shining with brand new blue paint with yellow stripes, and it was begging to be stolen, apparently. And that's what I did, I hopped into the truck and drove off with a huge missile. I guess nobody stopped me cause the next thing I knew I was in Moscow chatting with Russian soldiers, selling the missile to the Russian Government.

And...that was it. Really weird, cause I'm pretty sure I'd never sell a stolen ICBM to any Russian institution, namely because I'd never steal an ICBM, let alone smuggle it to another country. The whole treason thing aside...weird stuff.

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