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I’m happy.  I was right about my previous power supply being busted.  I purchased an ABS Tagan ITZ 700W Power Supply from newegg, installed it, and both of the motherboards that I thought weren’t working are purring beautifully.  Plus this power supply is really nice… It’s got a super shiny blue finish that goes well with the blue lights in my case.  Comes with a rubber grommet to go between the supply and the case to keep vibration noise to a minimum. There’s tons of power connections… 2 PCI-E, 6 Molex, 2 Floppy, and 8 SATA. I’m using about a third of those connections with my current setup. Likely more than I’ll ever need, though the motherboard I’m using has 8 SATA connections as well, so if I ever get enough SATA drives to take advantage of that, I’ll be able to support the power requirements.  In any case, my desktop PC looks sexier than before, and is a little bit quieter as well.

I’m never buying a BFG product again.  I don’t like it when a power supply fails only a year after I purchase it.  I’m gonna call their tech support and see if their lifetime warranty on power supplies holds up.

Technorati Tags: ABS Tagan ITZ, BFG, Newegg, Power Supply

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This has not been a very good week for me.  First, my desktop PC stopped working.  Won’t turn on.  Seems like a burnt out motherboard, but this would be the second time in a month that I’d have to replace that.  I think there’s something wrong with the power supply, and it busted both motherboards for me.  I think I may be adding BFG to the list of manufacturers whose products I won’t be purchasing again.

This morning, I went to turn on my TV, and it just turned itself off after a couple seconds.  It’s an Olevia 337H 37″ LCD.  TV won’t turn on at all now.  From what I read on various forums and such online, it probably needs it’s mainboard replaced.  I can’t talk to Olevia’s tech support to try and get it fixed until business hours on Monday.  So, I won’t be watching any TV this weekend.  Not that there’s anything on, mind you, but I just got Heroes season 1 on DVD and I’ve been itching to watch it.  I’ve got a tiny 14″ TV in storage, but it just wouldn’t do the show justice.  Gotta watch it on a nice widescreen TV in high def.

Late last year and early this year, when Olevia’s TVs first started selling like crazy ’cause of their low prices, their customer support and tech support got flooded with requests, and apparently was really slow at fulfilling them.  I really hope that’s improved by now.  I don’t want to have to wait more than a week or two to start watching a decent TV again.  I really hope I have it working by the time Heroes season 2 starts up.

Technorati Tags: Olevia, BFG, TV

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So I’ve been listening to The Linux Link Tech Show for a while now. Probably about the closest I get to the Linux community. I’m a bit anti-social, so forums and LUGs (Linux User Groups) aren’t really big on my list of things to join. I like this show though, because I can listen to it for a couple hours every week and stay up to date on the news in the Linux world.

At the end of every show they list thier Frappr map shoutouts. My name is in their most recent show (#183) near the end.

I finally made it back to work. I’m feeling a bit better, and I got my blood work back from the doctor. All clear. Apparently my blood is “Perfect”. No colesteral problems, nothing wrong with my thyroid, so I just had a nasty flu.

On a side note… I’ve put Windows 2000 back on my gaming PC. I’ve got a dual-boot setup going now. Linux has about 200GB of HD space, Windows has the other 40GB. I put Winblows back on the system for two reasons.

1. Windows has much better gaming support. I’ve been using Cedega for my Linux gaming needs for a few months now, and I guess I’m a little tired waiting for better DirectX 9 support. Playing Guild Wars under Cedega, I can’t do any antialiasing or postprocessing effects because I have to run the game with DirectX 8.
2. I couldn’t get my new bluetooth headset and USB webcam to work the way I’d like them to in Linux. It’s a bit easier to get bluetooth working in Windows, and recording video from a webcam in Linux takes a bit more work than I’d like to devote right now.

I’m still using Linux for everything else… web browsing, audio/video stuff, CD/DVD recording, and programming when I have the time. Now that I’m not using Cedega anymore, I can stop my subscription and save $5 a month.

I should be able to post a video of my juggling tomorrow. I would make the vid tonight, but Heroes is on, and that gets my devotion tonight.

A few months ago, I switched from Windows XP to Linux. Here’s a list of why, so if you’re fed up with Microsoft, pay attention.

Linux is free: Both free as in speech and free as in beer. You pay nothing to get it, and you can freely distribute it.

Linux is open source: Linux, and the majority of software available for it, is open source. You can modify the code however you want, or compile it specifically for your system so it runs faster.

Linux is stable: Don’t get me wrong, Windows XP is pretty stable compared to previous versions of Windows. I rarely saw the horrid blue screen of death (BSOD) when I last had Windows installed, but how many Windows systems have you seen that you could run for months or years without rebooting and not see any slowdown?

Linux has similar applications to many of the ones you’ve used in Windows: There are Linux programs for web browsing, instant messaging, email, photo editing, audio & video editing, you name it! You can even open your Microsoft Office format documents with OpenOffice. Much of the Windows software that doesn’t have a Linux equivalent, you can run through Wine (the windows emulator). I play the MMORPG “Guild Wars” through a gaming-specialized version of Wine called Cedega, and it runs beautifully.

Software installation and updating is simple: All software installs and updates are done through one central program, depending on which distribution you use. You select what software packages you want to install, and they are automatically downloaded, along with any prerequisite packages. When any software installed on your system has an update available, that same software management program will notify you and perform the update for you.

Linux is hard to infect: There are very few viruses and spyware in Linux. Spyware is rare due to the open source nature. Viruses are rare because they would need root user priveledges in order to install themselves. The root account is not necessary to use day-to-day, so the main user accounts have limited privledges.

Linux is fast and stays fast: Linux is built without much of the bloat that is included in Windows, so it runs faster. Windows tends to slow down the longer you’ve had it installed. This is often due to spyware, viruses, and hard drive fragmentation.

Linux hard drive partitions don’t need defragmenting: Data is purposefully packed loosely on a Linux partition. This means when files are resized, the new data can be placed next to the old data on the hard drive, instead of wherever the next empty space is. When new files are created, they are put in a large section of contiguous free space, instead of the earliest open spaces.

Linux is not reliant on its graphical interface: Almost anything you can do graphically in Linux, you can do with the command line, and vice-versa.

Linux is customizable: You can change everything about the appearance of Linux. There are 3 popular Window Managers, and many others. The Window Manager is what gives the desktop and program windows their appearance and behavior.

Linux supports more hardware than Windows: With Windows, drivers for older hardware are left out of newer operating systems, and older drivers are incompatable with new systems. Linux doesn’t have this limitation. Most of the drivers are written by end-users.

Linux is easy to install: Linux is on par with Windows on ease-of-installation.

You’ve waited long enough. Check out http://www.ubuntu.com for an easy to install Linux. You can even try it out before you install it.