Reading a “post over at Slashdot”:http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=134143&cid=11197391 and someone mentioned this:
There is a 1 in 1,000,000 chance that someone on the same plane as you has a bomb.
There is a 1 in 25,000,000,000 that two people on the same plane have a bomb.
So always take a bomb with you on the plane, then you’re pretty sure you’re safe.
I don’t know if it’s being up at 5:30 in the morning or not that makes that hilarious. Probably, but I’m pretty used to this schedule after 1.5 weeks at it. Just getting to be bedtime, now, as soon as I go find a snack. Already ate some leftover ham a few hours ago while watching TV, but I’m hungry again.
To prevent a complete waste of space: “ZipZoomFly”:http://www.zipzoomfly.com/ (one of the two best, and usually cheapest (hence, best) online stores for computer stuff, the other one being “Newegg”:http://www.newegg.com/) recently got some “Refurbished Seagate 200GB IDE”:http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=101560-RFB hard drives in, for only $112.50 with free 2-day shipping (their usual shipping deal). Very good price…although the “new version”:http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=101560 they sell for $125, which dropped from $127 a few weeks ago but was as low as $117 a month or two ago.
That particular hard drive is my favorite out of all the hard drives I’ve used personally. It’s the quietest, most reliable, and best of all has a FIVE YEAR warranty, something you can’t get anywhere else on that kind of drive. Go Seagate! I’ve got two of those drives, and a Hitachi Deskstar 200GB that I like all right (I have to RMA one of the Seagates and the Hitachi though, but their failures one right after the other within three days in the same computer less than two months after the purchase of both may or may not be the drives’ problem…I bought a new motherboard and processor just in case, and treated myself to the “3EGHz Pentium 4 with HT, an 800MHz FSB, and 1MB of L2 cache”:http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=80661-1 while I was at it, so I can’t complain except for the money :-) But hey, a motherboard for $74.49 (the “AOpen AX4SPE-UN”:http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?description=13-137-041&depa=0) and 3 GHz processor for $186.90 (it’s dropped by ninty cents since then at ZipZoomFly and it’s three dollars more at Newegg) isn’t a bad deal at all, especially when you have the rest of the computer waiting for you to drop it in and make it sing.
Of course my brother’s computer died shortly thereafter, it’s either the motherboard or processor, not sure which and don’t have an easy way to test right now, since his is an Athlon XP 2400+ system. His motherboard is $50 anywhere I can find it but it takes at least two weeks to ship it if it’s even in stock (it’s kind of old). The processor is around $115 (that includes $3 to bump it up to an XP 2800+). I don’t feel like buying to hit or miss, so he’s getting the same motherboard and processor as me above, exact same specs. $263.49 shipped from Newegg, and it’ll be here by Thursday at 4:30 pm.
So far I can recommend the “AOpen AX4SPE-UN”:http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?description=13-137-041&depa=0 very highly (if price is no object, the “AX4SPE Max II”:http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=13-137-045&depa=0 for $122.49 with shipping is even nicer). I wouldn’t get two if I didn’t like the first one. Very solid, five PCI slots, Dual Channel DDR, 8X AGP, 8 USB 2.0, onboard LAN and sound, Serial ATA support…very nice all around. And that’s on the -UN model, not the Max II! The Max II adds (if you’re interested) two IEEE 1394 ports (Firewire), more Serial ATA ports (six total), and onboard RAID 0 and 1 support. Oh yeah, and Gigabit LAN, and 7.1 audio instead of 5.1. If you can live without that, the -UN model is an awesome board at a great price!
Okay, still haven’t eaten yet and it’s now 6 am. “Computer, end personal log and set permissions to public. Stardate 20041228.0604.”