Pennies

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Things have been pretty quiet around here lately, so I decided to post about something that happened today. The latest Canadian government budget includes a decision to eliminate the penny. I think it’s about time they did that. I’ve always hated those ugly little coins, and the fact that they are worth less than they cost to make should have been considered years ago.
Most people don’t use pennies and have a disgusted look on their face when they receive them with their change. We all know about the tales of people who toss them in a big jar, but I’ve even seen people just toss them on the ground as they walked out of a shop.
The only person who will probably miss them is my father maybe, since he likes to use them whenever he can, and he would always pick them up when he saw them being abandoned on the sidewalk or something. :lol:

Dead Router

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Today, I went into the kitchen to get my lunch at around 1PM, and then when I returned to my room with it, I noticed that my internet was down. It was working fine just minutes earlier. I tried to get to my router’s administration page, but it was down, too. I went downstairs to investigate, and I could see that the router was completely dead. I tried to reset it, unplug and plug it back in, etc. but nothing helped.

I don’t know if it’s just a coincidence, but it seems like the solar storm we had this morning fried my router. I don’t know why, but nothing else seems to have been affected. It’s a mystery, but whatever happened, I was left with a dead router.

So I had to buy a new one. I wasn’t too impressed by most routers I saw online, all those in that price range seem to not be as good as when I bought the last one.

Since it is Friday, buying a router online would mean waiting until Monday or Tuesday for delivery, so that was not an option. I decided to go to Future Shop to buy one. It was the same price anyway.

I ended up getting the D-Link DIR-645. It’s a little strange looking, almost like a big black beer can, but it had the features I wanted. My last D-Link router worked well until today, so it has a more familiar interface for me as well.

Albatross

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Today, I got the new Big Wreck album, Albatross, at HMV. It’s been 11 years since the last time they released an album, which I coincidentally had also bought at the same store. Since I bought The Pleasure and the Greed by Big Wreck 11 years ago, I have listened to it more than any album I’ve ever owned, and it inspired me too keep playing guitar despite the difficulty.

Albatross is a great album. It’s not quite the same as the “old” Big Wreck, but in this case the change is good. It’s a bit funny, but the song “You Caught My Eye” seems almost like a Big Sugar song, and it happens to be one of my favorites at the moment.

One thing that bothered me about the album is that it seems that the record company set the price higher than most other new releases. It wasn’t really a problem for me, since I am a fan of Big Wreck and I wanted to buy it, but I think it could discourage new listeners from buying it.

Big Wreck - Albatross

A Different Kind of Truth

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Today, I got the new Van Halen album, A Different Kind of Truth.
It took them a while to make it, so it almost became like Chinese Democracy by Guns N’ Roses. It seemed like it would never be released, but it’s here now…

I had a bit of doubt about it after hearing the single “Tattoo”, since it wasn’t really that impressive, and apparently they had to dig out old demo tapes to get new song ideas… but I decided to buy it anyway. The fact that they put a train on the cover helped convince me, too. :lol:

The album itself is much better than the single, for the most part, and it’s heavier than I expected. With old demo tapes or not, they did make progress with a balance of old sounds and new. Overall, I think it’s a very good album.

Compatibility

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I ran into a problem with the new machine. There is one game that simply won’t run on it, no matter what I try.
Apparently, Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear (Urban Operations) will not run in Windows 7 with a modern video card, especially an AMD Radeon.
I even went as far as installing the game in a virtual machine running Windows XP, and even that didn’t work. Since it’s an older game, it requires DirectX 7 support, and the VirtualBox 3D driver only provides some DX8 and DX9 support for some reason. Strange, since I’d expect DX7 applications would probably run better than anything more recent in a virtual machine anyway.

So I was left with two options: to play the game while standing in the basement, or try getting it to work on my netbook. I tried it on the netbook first, since I could plug that into my monitor and keyboard / mouse and stay seated. :lol:
Much to my surprise, it ran on my netbook without any problem whatsoever. It’s running Windows 7, too, although it is the Starter Edition. The built-in Intel 3150 graphics chip seems to handle older games very well, even in Windows 7. The game even seems to be more stable than it was in Windows XP, too.

Ballistophobia

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Today, I received the final piece of the new machine. I got the motherboard and some other stuff last week, so I had those installed in the case and ready for the processor to arrive. I finished assembling it this afternoon. Installing all the software is fun… :lol:

Ballistophobia

I went with a Dual Core Intel i3 2130 (LGA1155) processor running at 3.4GHz. It’s fast, and even with its somewhat small and silent heatsink and fan, it stays cool.
I also got 16GB of RAM, since it’s not expensive at all these days, and it does make a huge difference in performance to never run out of memory.
For hard drives, I got a Kingston HyperX 120GB SSD, and I paired that with my old WD1200JDs for now. Since one of the WD1200JDs is not really working so well, I’ll replace those drives with 1TB or 2TB hard drives once the prices return to normal.

The video card I went with is the ASUS AMD Radeon 6950 with 2GB of GDDR5. It’s huge and has dual fans, so it stays cooler than other video cards with only one fan. I won’t have any trouble running any games now. :lol:

New Computer Case

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I decided to take advantage of the Boxing Week sales to start getting some parts for my new computer. Since I didn’t have the money for everything yet, I went with the most important parts to start with; the case and power supply. I got a Corsair Carbide 400R case. This case is a great value, and it’s not overly complicated on the inside. I liked my Antec P180 cases — both of them — back when I got them, but they’re complicated and heavy. The 400R is much simpler and lighter, and it has a great cable management system that is very easy to work with, and it prevents the old spaghetti problem. I’m very happy with the case, and it was a really good deal, too.

Along with the case, I bought a Corsair 750 Watt power supply. It’s modular, but not all the cables are removable. They only made the less commonly used cables modular, and that makes perfect sense.

I will probably get the rest of the parts in a couple of months. I don’t think I will be getting a Quad Core processor this time. A fast Dual Core will be fine if I get a ridiculous amount of RAM, maybe 16GB. :lol:

Brother

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I convinced my mother to get a new printer, so I ended up ordering a Brother laser printer from Amazon.ca on Monday. It arrived this morning.

Our old HP printer had been causing a lot of trouble whenever we wanted to print something. I could always get it working after a few minutes of persuasion, but if my mother wanted to print something by herself, she couldn’t do it most of the time. When it didn’t crash upon powering up, the HP would often have stuck print cartridges or some other problem. When it did work properly, though, it was okay.

Anyway, I’ve been impressed so far with the Brother laser printer. It connects to the network and sleeps when it is not in use, so it’s always available without having to go turn it on. Although it only prints in black, the quality of the printing is better than the HP’s when printing text (no smudged ink), and that’s really all that’s needed most of the time. We’ll keep the old HP to print stuff in color when needed, but that’s rare.

Autoracks

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I received a package today. Yes, on a Sunday! It was really surprising, but I guess Canada Post has decided to deliver on the weekends for a few weeks preceding Christmas.
When my mother told me she saw a Canada Post truck in front of the house this morning, I didn’t believe her. We don’t even get mail or packages on Saturdays here, so getting a delivery on a Sunday seemed impossible. :lol:
But it wasn’t so. When I opened the door, there was a package waiting for me.

I had ordered a couple of autoracks from Walthers recently, since they were on sale, and I rarely see them in hobby shops. I now have enough autoracks to fill an entire track in my rail yard. They’re pretty long, so they take about as much space as two regular freight cars. This means that they cannot run on all layouts, so that might be why I don’t see them in shops, but they have no problem running on my layout as long as I don’t push a long string of them (pulling is fine).

Since I was taking a photo of one of the new autoracks, I decided to take a couple of photos of the layout as well to show its progress. If you saw the yard in the past, you can see that it’s now completely changed and the turntable is gone.

I plan to build some kind of industry where the two unfinished tracks are on the square cork boards, possibly an Ethanol plant. We’ll see…