Really, after the flamebait, trolling, and offtopic posts I've made recently, I'm amazed that I still have excellent karma. Funny.

I'll just have to come up with something insightful or funny tomorrow, I guess. That should make up for my boredom tonight.

Here's one thing I've learned: if you post your flamebait without the +1 karma bonus, most mods will let it stand. If you post flamebait with your karma bonus, they will mod you down into oblivion.

Psychology is one of my pet interests. I'd love to study this phenomenon a little bit more in depth. Perhaps I should sacrifice a little karma...

I wish Matrox would drop the price of the Parhelia. I really, really want to support Matrox with my money, but I can't do so when they price their cards so astronomically high. Actually, I can't remember a Matrox card that wasn't expensive. But $350? That's insane. How can the Parhelia possibly still cost that much money?

Wait a minute. I was going to say, "I need a new video card", not go on about Matrox. Maybe I should change the subject to "Matrox is crazy".

You know, I should be the CEO of half the tech companies in Silicon Valley. Or, at least, a VP. Maybe a member of the board. Ahh, chairman of the board. That sounds good. Yes, well. I meant to say, "These stupid Silicon Valley companies are stupid." Yes, yes, I know Matrox is Canadian. But they're a stupid tech company. They can be a honorary Silicon Valley company for the sake of this point. The point is, they're all stupid. What the hell is wrong with all these companies? They're releasing overpriced products that are too little, too late. This whole faster, faster, faster thing is dumb, too. What ever happened to better? I'd rather have a better processor than a faster processor. Same thing with a hard drive. I'd rather have a better hard drive than a bigger hard drive. Better -- as in, "it doesn't suck". Intel's hyperthreading is pretty damn cool. It's an actual innovation, rather than racing to a magical number, like 1000 MHz. ooooh, we got to 1000 MHz first! Ehh, so what.

I need a new video card. The only choices today seem to be Nvidia and ATI. I guess you could include SiS, VIA/S3, Intel, and Matrox, but none of them are particularly relevant if you want to play games. Nobody uses an SiS video card willingly.

Right now, I have a ATI Radeon LE. That's said to be about the speed of a Radeon 7200 or 7500. Not very fast, compared to today's hardware. And, more importantly, it's only DX7. I want a DX8.1 or DX9 video card. Ugh. Looking at the prices, that's going to set me back at least $120 for a retail ATI card or $150 for a retail Nvidia (Asus) card. Going OEM is certainly nothing I'm afraid of doing, but the last few video cards I bought were all OEM. They all had features missing. I'm getting tired of that. I want to have everything in the chipset enabled, rather than going to enthusiast web sites and learning what registry entries to hack or downloading hacked firmwares. Ugh.

So, the choices boil down to a Radeon 9000/9500/9700 or a Nvidia GF4 4200/4400/4600. We can strike the 9700 and 4600 from the list automatically, as they are way overpriced. That leaves us with the Radeon 9000/9500 and GF4 4200/4400. The Radeon 9000 is said to be pretty damn slow (slower than a Radeon 8500), even the Radeon 9000 Pro. I'm not really sure I want a cheesy video card. All the other boys might laugh at me and my sluggish video card. On the other hand, the 9000 (non-Pro) sells for an amazingly low price of $65-$75 (around the same price as my Radeon LE). We're talking really slow, here. And, this is the OEM Sapphire version. Ugh. It's not even built by ATI. Well, it certainly could be worse. It'd be an upgrade from my current card. I really dislike the idea of buying such a crippled video card, but beggars can't be choosers, right? Hmmm. For just a little more money, I could buy the retail 9000 Pro ($120). Maybe it's worth buying the retail 9000 Pro, just to avoid going with Sapphire. I just don't trust them. On the other hand, I could have a Sapphire 9500 (non-Pro) for just $150. Very tempting. That'd give me DX9 support! Very cool, indeed. Yet, would it be any faster than a 9000 Pro? I'm not sure that an OEM 9500 non-Pro would actually be any faster...

Or I could just buy a damn Nvidia card, like everyone else on the planet.

I'm not quite sure. I mean, I don't play FPSs all that much. I mostly go with the slower-paced games. I want awesome visuals, like what the back of the Morrowind box promised. I'm sick of seeing blurry screens. I want 4X anti-aliasing (or even better!).

This doesn't seem too much to ask. Say, 1280x1024 with 32 bit color and 100 Hz or 120 Hz refresh rate. Maybe 1600x1200 at 85 Hz, if my poor eyes can handle that. I remember the days I could stare at a 60-72 Hz screen for hours at a time. Oh well. Getting old sucks.

So, what should I do? Should I settle for a cheesy 9000 Pro and save my money for better things, like lots of pizza? I probably wouldn't get any benefit out of a 9500 or comparable GeForce card, anyways. Hmmm. Too bad I don't have $350 for the Parhelia.

I don't know what came over me, but I talked to my ex-girlfriend last night. Actually, I think I know what came over me. I was bored, I hadn't taken my anti-depressant meds, and I was looking for a reason to feel good about myself. If I can cheer up my ex and be a good friend to her after our breakup, hey, I must be a nice guy. Oh, bullshit. I don't need to be nice to that bitch in order to feel good about myself. And so what if I'm not the perfect person? Neither is she. The saddest thing is that I was trolling myself. Ugh. Talk about pathetic. I need to think more about my actions and the causes for them. As if I dont obsess over enough stuff already...

When did my life get so screwed up? When did I get all these issues? Okay, so maybe I wasn't exactly the most happy, well-adjusted person when I was 13, 18, 21, or 25. But, at 30, you'd expect I'd have most of these things ironed out by now. Ugh.

At least I can honestly say that I like myself, am moderately attractive (if not more so), and can hold my own in social settings. It wasn't always like this. So, I must have made progress somewhere along the line. If I can just find what gave me the energy and motivation to change back then, maybe I can continue changing.

My life hasn't gotten better or worse in a long time. It simply stays barely tolerable. I know there's something out there that will bring me happiness, but I don't know what it is. I've tried a lot of stuff. Most of it brings happiness for a little while, but then I settle back into depression. Or else I like it a lot, but it's not enough to break the depresion... and I lose interest in it.

My problem is I'm too fucking needy, and I'm all too willing to blind myself just so that I don't see something that scares me. Girlfriend isn't ready for a relationship? Ignore it and continue to date her. Your friend's lies are getting more and more outrageous? Ignore it and trust her. You're falling back into the patterns of avoidance and self-destruction? Ignore it and continue an empty, nihilistic existence.

There's got to be something more. There's got to be something out there that will make me care. I need to care about something, or else I shall surely go insane.

Well, not that you care, but that's what goes on in the mind of a bored manic-depressive with too much time and computer.

When everyone around you
Is telling you lies
When everyone around you
Is making you cry
When everyone around you
Says it's all your fault
They feed off your naivety, tears, and shame
Offer them instead
Your pity

I can't believe SexyKellyOsbourne quit. This really is a blow to Slashdot as a whole. SexyKelly wasn't just a troll. SexyKelly was also someone who pushed the boundaries of karma whoring, devil's advocate, and class clown. Strangely enough, I think SexyKelly wanted to try to improve Slashdot. Why else would SexyKelly sit around and troll Slashdot? There's only one reason, and it's not because of boredom (there are better/more amusing things to do than troll slashdot): SexyKelly wanted to push the Slashdot team to implement a better moderation system. Whereas most old-timers (by my definition, anyone who's been here long enough to think to himself, "Slashdot has gone downhill") have a cynical streak, SexyKelly was actually rather refreshing. Like many of the cynical Karma Whores of yore, SexyKelly trolled/whored not for attention (but that was also nice), but because it was obvious the moderation system was screwed up. SexyKelly, however, wasn't cynical -- or, at least, SexyKelly's peers were much more cynical. I don't where the hell I was going with this point, so I'm just going to skip to my next point. I don't know. Probably something about blah blah blah wanting to change the system blah blah blah exposing the problems blah blah blah hoping for positive change, not draconian punishment.

You know, come to think of it, that was my whole point. I didn't have anything else but that.

Come, let us mourn the loss of a great troll/karma whore/renegade. Let us mourn the change that did not occur. Some of us actually had renewed hope that Slashdot isn't some stupid flamebait blog itself.

Same old Slashdot, same old flamebait articles. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

I didn't think I could get any more bored!!

Okay, unless a good story gets posted SOON (hah!), I'm going to start having conversations with myself as an anonymous coward.

Hot damn, but I'm bored!

Uhhmm... I'm going to try to work in masturbation in a post without being modded down. Think it's possible?

I can't find a decent article to read. After you strip out the duplicate stories, obvious flamebait, editorials, television and movie fanboy stuff, and YRO crap, you end up with watered down, boring tech stories that sound like they came from Reuters or the AP. Oh wait, they did! Blah! Like I care about that crap. I get enough of it from My Yahoo. I'm not sure why I even bother to read the Reuters and AP stories any more. They do a fair job at covering political and social issues while staying mostly neutral (or a little liberal, depending on the story), but you should never depend on anyone to tell you your tech, except for engineers. Nobody can tell you anything interesting about IBM, Motorola, Intel, Rambus, or Micron unless they have an engineering degree.

"Today, Intel rolled out a new CPU -- the brains of a computer -- that will be faster than anything previously released. It runs at 3 billion cycles per second, a new landmark in desktop performance. Intel reps say that it will be used mostly in high end computing tasks, such as desktop publishing, imaging, video editing, and state-of-the-art games. New systems based on the chip are expected to be sold in late Q4 this year. Shares of Intel were down three percent in trading today, though industry analysts predict a small increase in revenue during the holiday season, a time traditionally very good to Intel."

You know what? I just wrote that paragraph of fluff right now, off the top of my head. But this is EXACTLY what the Reuters and AP copy is going to look like when Intel announces the 3 GHz P4! Just wait. You'll see. Word for word.

You wanna know what the Slashdot submission is going to look like? I'll write that one for you, too.

Intel: New 3GHz P4
[ Intel ] Posted by CmdrTaco on 03:30pm, October 20, 2002
from the even-faster-yet dept
Anonymous Coward writes, "After losing the race to 1ghz, Intel has won races to both 2ghz and 3ghz. The new P4 is reviewed at all the usual places. It will be shipping to OEMs late Q4, which means early Q1 2003, probably. I can't wait." And I'm still poking along at 800 MHz."

UGH! Is there anyone else absolutely sick and tired of the crappy submissions, none of which are edited at all? This shit is really pissing me off now. Stop making every damn word a link. It's both bad HTML writing and bad grammar. If you need to make a list of links, make each individual link descriptive of where it goes, not a generic word that doesn't describe anything about the link. This is how you do it properly:

I will be visiting Tom's, Anandtech, Ars Technica, and others in order to find out information on Intel's newest CPU, a 3GHz P4.

Is it that hard? No. Just use a little thought. Try to remember back to nineth and tenth grade English (some of you may still be in middle school. I don't know.) Of course, if your native language is not English, all your sins are forgiven. I'm feeling generous at the moment.

Don't make prepositions (of, in, around, above), definite articles (the, that), or other "useless" words links. They don't tell the reader anything, nor do they tell search engines anything useful about your links. This is especially important for large sites that Google indexes.

It's not so much this that annoys me so much. It's the ignorance. Damn, but I hate ignorance.

I don't even remember what I was ranting about originally. Boring articles, wasn't it? Well, they annoy me, too.

So much to do...

1) Activate new debit card
2) Buy a new USB compact flash reader
3) Assemble dual 450 MHz Pentium III server
4) Install OS X on B&W G3/450
5) Learn new database software
6) Encode ~100 compact discs to Ogg
7) Buy 50 pin and 68 pin SCSI cables, terminators
8) Call ISP and complain about firewall
9) Buy toaster (why didn't the bank give me a toaster?)
10) Figure out how to cluster two SMP systems using Mosix
11) Spend hours reading online comics in a hopeless attempt to catch up
12) Rewrite everything on home page (some pages are older than my dog!)
13) Recover from triskadecaphobia
14) Troll web-based discussion boards
15) Make excuses to creditors
16) Harass passers-by
17) Take shower (list is apparently not in order of importance)
18) Clean apartment
19) Hide sneakers from puppy
20) Sit around and look bored

It's okay to fear the worm.

Dear readers,

I love you. No, really. I love you. Even though I may troll you for my own amusement, I have the utmost respect for you. You confuse me, though. Why do you moderate me up when I admit that I'm trolling? I have enough karma to last me a lifetime, but it's very reassuring to know that you love me back. It's not really necessary, but I appreciate the gesture. Would I lie to you?

My question is: does having a high karma get you slashdot chicks? And where are the chicks? How come they're not following me around, throwing themselves at me, and telling me I have nice eyes? I've got just enough bad boy in me to make me mysterious and thrilling, yet enough goody goody two shoes to treat a girl right. Unless she's being naughty.

I want to live in an apartment with Sascha K., Gibby Hanes, King Buzzo, and GWAR! We could play checkers all day and talk about the conflict in the Middle East.

Dreams
I used to wake up screaming
Giant robots squeezing the life out of me
But since I met you
I can't sleep at all
Unless you're my latest dream

I used to wake up screaming
Strange men torturing me on the operating table
But since you said yes
Maybe I trust people a little more
Until I wake up

I used to wake up screaming
Men and women melting in front of my eyes
But since you bared your soul
I feel that maybe somebody loves me
Unless I'm your nightmare?

Music
Listening to Soundgarden makes me cry
What's this
The Beatles broke up, you say
I laughed the day Lennon was shot

Listening to Rush makes me feel smart
What's this
Their lyrics are based on Ayn Rand, that dumb tart
I laughed the day Lennon was shot

Listening to KMFDM makes me feel like a rebel
What's this
I listened and listened and there was no treble
I laughed the day Lennon was shot

I had dream about Melissa Etheridge
What's this
What's this
I made out with a lesbian