Archive for April, 2006

Now THIS is a big plate of cheese…?

Obviously, I’ve heard about water cooled PC’s before, but I’ve never actually seen the internals of one.

I was never 100% sure what people were talking about when people would say “water cooled”, but it looks like it works just like a car cooling system.? You put this nasty antifreeze looking stuff (not water) into a reservoir on the top of the computer in a CD bay, and a little pump circulates the liquid into a radiator (on the left, it looks JUST like a car radiator), and it goes from the radiator directly into the CPU housing, and comes back out nice and hot, ready to be cooled in the radiator again.? Translucent green hoses make it look very Borg.? I think I like it.

I know this is fact, because the news tells me so.

I think the only problem with this is that I don’t really like the term “software engineer”.? Engineer is one of those buzzwords that people love to throw in their job titles.? I’m the first to admit that I don’t have an engineering degree (I’m math, so I’m a REAL dork).

I think Eric Sink (uber-founder of Sourcegear) put it best.. “Software Craftsman”.? That makes the most sense.

Ok this time, this is it. This is in southington, built in 1951. It needs a little bit of updating (like maybe some new wiring and circuit breaker, eventually a new furnace and maybe a central air unit, etc..) but this is exactly what we were looking for. The place went on the market on a tuesday, we did the showing on wednesday, and we put an offer on it thursday, but there was already another offer on it! We beat them out (It really helps your bargaining position when you don’t have to sell an existing property). Our inspection went mostly fine, and we anticipate closing at the end of may.

Take a look…

A question:? Which key on your keyboard is the most likely one to break or wear out,? assuming the only factor in it’s wear is simply pushing the key repeatedly, all other things being equal?

Well today, I found the answer.? The left “ALT” key.? I “alt tab” a lot (task switching).? Probably hundreds of times a day; I do it constantly.? And now the key is at the point where it fails to register about one in ten times.? Which is really aggravating, because if I have a document or source file open, with text highlighted, and I “alt tab”, if the ALT fails to register than it simply replaces all the selected text with an ascii tab.? And if I’m not paying attention, I occasionally delete valid work.? I don’t think it’s a manufacturers defect, since I’ve had the keyboard for over 4 years without any problems.? I bet I just wore the microswitch out by pressing down on the stupid key too much.

The solution:? Just buy a new keyboard.? I really want what I got stevie for christmas:

I’ll probably just end up getting one of these, a simple replacement:

I like these, I like the resistance on the keys, and with a throw-away price, how can you go wrong?