One of my former teachers told a reporter from the local paper that I had just gotten back from Israel and he called me to set up an interview to get my views on the recent conflict. I met with him monday, and the story is now in print. I haven’t seen where in the physical paper it is, but it’s position on the webpage suggests it’s a front-page story. It’s available online here: The Pilot: War Zone: Local Residents Flee Mideast.
So I’m planning a new box for college, and have come up with a tentative parts list. I am soliciting any advice and comments that people would be willing to offer.
CPU:
AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ Manchester 2000MHz HT 2 x 512KB L2 Cache Socket 939 Dual Core Processor - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103562
$169 (This was $289 2 days ago when I was pricing it - sweet)
Motherboard:
ASUS A8N5X Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131569
$84.99
RAM:
CORSAIR XMS 2GB (2 x 1GB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM Unbuffered DDR 400 (PC 3200) Dual Channel Kit System Memory - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820145587
$207.00
Video:
eVGA 256-P2-N553-AX Geforce 7600GT CO 256MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814130283
$169.99 (Before $30 mail-in rebate)
Hard Drives:
I was originally planning on doing 3 Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD2500KS 250GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822144701, $82.99) in a RAID-5 (software) configuration but there is currently a sale on the Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3320620AS (Perpendicular Recording Technology) 320GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148140) for $99.99 and I might just order three today.
Enclosure/Power:
Antec LifeStyle SONATA II Piano Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 450Watt SmartPower 2.0 ATX 12V V2.0 for AMD & Intel systems Power Supply - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16811129155
$104.99 (But that’s a one-day sale price, I think it’s like $109.99 normally, though this is the 2nd day in a row it’s had a one-day sale. Both before $15 mail-in rebate).
Optical Drive:
Reusing my Sony DVD Burner from my current box.
Not including shipping or rebates, the total price comes out as: $1035.94
Advice, comments, etc. are most definitely welcome as I don’t follow the hardware market.
So I realized that I haven’t made a post since I get home from Israel. I want to reassure my faithful readers (all one of you) that I am back safe and sound in the country, and had a wonderful time. Pictures from my trip are available at http://www.dlgeek.net/israel/ . Be warned that they are quite high-res and load slowly. Please do not kill my DSL. Thank you.
It’s 3:51 in the morning and I am already awake and showered. In about 30 minutes or so, I leave for the airport, for a flight to NY, where I will meet my tour group and fly to Israel. Back in 3 weeks. Email me if you need me, I’ll respond if I have a chance. I will hopefully put pictures up at http://www.dlgeek.net/israel during the trip, but no promises.
I’m done!
Today was the commencement ceremony at Pinecrest. I am now a high school graduate, ready to take the world by the horns but responsibly, or something like that (our principal isn’t the best with words).
The ceremony was all right - short with no keynote speaker. I think I missed Salutatorian by a few hundreths of a point, but that’s ok, Kala’s speech was excellent. It was really annoying when students’ parents would start yelling out when their name was called. The recessional worked MUCH better this year than last though. Afterwards, I went back to homeroom to get my diploma (pretty nice, will post picture later) and final report card (not so pretty). No transcripts because the state’s student managment system screwed up GPAs and ranks, I’ll get it later.
All in all, not a bad end for 13 years. I’m glad to get the hell out of Moore County Schools and Pinecrest, hopefully Cornell will be much saner.
(Sorry Robert, this is a meta-blog-post. Perhaps I should create a catagory for them?)
Since being syndicated on Planet Debian, the amount of comment spam I’ve gotten has risen sharply. No spam has made it onto th site itself, since I moderate the first comment someone makes, but the emails have gotten annoying. Therefore, I put a turing test into place. Blind users will be happy to hear it’s not a CAPTCHA, instead it’s one more field to fill out that asks a very basic math question to prevent spambots from commenting. Users who registered back when I required it won’t even get the field, isn’t that nice?
To the readers of Planet Debian who are probably asking “Why Do I Care?”: If you don’t mind, try out the system to make sure it works. I figure the readership of that site will have a fairly diverse set of browsers and maybe even a few using accessibility ehancements that can confirm that the system has no problems.
If you encounter any problems, email me at astronut@dlgeek.net or ping me on IRC (astronut on both freenode and oftc).
At the Senior Awards Ceremony, I found out that I was awarded the 1st place ($1000) scholarship by the PTSA. Then later, I found out my parents had known for 3 weeks. It’s the first time my dad has kept a secret that long.
In related news, I’m still ticked about the honors thing. The local paper’s article about the issue sucks, but a paper from a neighboring county has a great article here. In short, to make everyone more equal, the school is prohibiting the wearing of honor cords and medals and such that signify participation/success in various activities and programs. I intend to wear both my AP Scholar of Distinction and IB Diploma Canidate medals when I walk across.
So, for English, I had to do a 30 hour project to learn a new skill. So, not realizing it was as easy as learning to play golf or sewing a dress or something similar, I set out to rewrite Shakespeare. Specifically, I rewrote Macbeth in a modern setting. The (comical? good? you decide) result is available here.
I have been selected as a Chubb Foundation Scholar with a $6,000/year four year scholarship. Score!
For the interested, Chubb was the company my grandfather worked for, and the scholarship is open to employee families only.
RDF: