I've been thinking recently about modern monitors and graphics cards. I just purchaced a desktop with an nVidia 7150 in it. An integrated GPU in a desktop in today's day and age. Sad. Forunatly that will change when I drop a 9800 in it. But, shared memory for the GPU and CPU? That's a terrible idea. Whoever came up with it should be banned from computer engineering.

Another issue I have these days. It's hard to find a laptop with a high resolution display. I have a Dell Inspiron 8000 with a Pentium III in it that has a display of 1600x1200. My two most recent laptops, a Celeron M and a Turion 64x2 (Toshiba A105-S2071 and HP DV6636nr) both had displays at 1280x800. At work we just purchaced two Thinkpads (Core 2 Duo) with a 1024x768 display. Why have displays gotten worse over time for laptops? I don't mean that they need to be 1900x1600 or something like that, but, for a widescreen laptop wouldn't 1600x1024 (or whatever fits the WS aspect ratio) be nice? Or have 1600x1200 standard for 4:3 screens?

I have a Toshiba Satellite A105-S2071. The HDD is failing, that battery is useless, and would cost me a bit to replace the two. Now, I'm wondering, is it worth buying the parts? Or, for a little bit more money, should I just replace the laptop? I just added 1GB of RAM (DDR2) to the system, so if I did get another laptop, I could skimp out on the RAM and add the 1GB stick to it. Thoughts? UPDATE: I've replaced the Toshiba with an HP Pavillion dv6000.

Computer system names
Hmm....I've run into a problem. I've exhausted the naming scheme that I've been using for the past several years for my computers. The scheme, based upon the game I half way wrote in BASIC years ago (abandoned due to me realizing that the gameplay really sucked, and that 16 bit DOS programs had no future), has been seen in my through my sn, Armanox, who was the main character, and through anyone whose visted any of my servers or other systems(Armanox, Anorock, ashere-laptop, Taloron (Still up at armanox.no-ip.org!), Anaton (my desktop for the past two or so years), apharian, Artarias, and Talarias). Since I never finished writing the game, I never finished all of the characters (many were designed, few were named), and thus had a short name list to use. With the laptop that I'm currentlly using, I need to find a new naming scheme to use.

Ideas: Norse mythology. Have the DHCP server be Yggdrasil, which would be the server that connects all of the others. And I could name an antiVirus server Thor, and have it send a message to the system it cleaned of a virus like "The hammer of Thor has come down upon your system." Might be a cool idea. But, who would trust a system called Loki (That can be a Windows Box.....)

Mental Afflictions. The Linux group has officially adopted this one, so I'm not going to use it at home.

STDs. Humourous, but probably not a good idea. Can you imagine people spreading something from the Herpes server?

Okinawan Martial Artists. Fun idea, but kinda obscure. After all, when I tell people that my laptop is called matsumura, they're really gonna think I'm nuts

Beowulf Characters. I love the epic of Beowulf. But I'm saving the names for Beowulf clusters.

Shakespearean characters. Another interesting idea. but, who would trust the MacBeth server? And poor Juliet will die after Romeo does....

So I ask you, reader of my journal, to comment and leave ideas for me to use. Thank you for your time.

I intern at a location that is 99% Windows. The 1% that is not is the three Linux boxes that I run and one Solaris server (that really isn't my company's anyway). Several weeks ago a Worm (W32.Tenga.A) infultrated the network with Admin access, and quickly began infecting systems, including the servers. Now, the Worm only effects Windows 95-Me and Windows NT 4-XP, but the company does not have any systems running Vista at this time. While the rest of the IT department began trying to clean up the infection, which Semantic AntiVirus mis-identified, I started mounting the C:\ of the servers and the workstations via my two laptops and running ClamAV to start the clean up. Now, due to Semantic and ClamAV's scouring tactics, we lost a lot of exes, inlcuding the install exes on the servers, but, thanks to having two Linux systems, we were able to start the clean up using a system that was impervious to the worm. Now, I'm not saying that running an all Mac, Linux, BSD, or other *NIX shop is the way to keep everything running, just that diversity is important to keep everything running smooth.

Decided to make a list of my running systems.....

Type - Make - Processor - Mem - OS

Desktop Gateway P4 1.7GHz 384MB XP Pro, Slackware 10
Desktop Dell P3 1.0GHz 256MB Ubuntu 6.06
Desktop PackardBell i486SX 22HMz 1MB DOS 6.22
Laptop Toshiba Celeron 1.7GHz 512MB XP Home, Ubuntu 6.10
Laptop AST Pentium 90 MHz 8MB Windows 95
Uber SGI 2xIP30(64bit,446BogoMIPS) 1GB Gentoo

Once again the age old problem has arrisen - people lack faith in my skills with computer repair for the simple fact that I'm not certified, when I can present several person's who'd testify in court that I put many certified individuals to shame. Damn.

So.... over the summer, I did some computer repair work for the Church. They were working with a P4 gateway that I had cleaned up in Feburary. For some odd reason, it refused to work there. Noticing that it was to replace a x486, I offered to trade them another Gateway with a P2 and 32MB ram for it. They made the deal. I brought it home, and have had no problems since. Oh, and it runs Fedora Core 4 very well...

Flea market Saturday:

Compaq Deskpro:
Celoron @ 400 Mhz,
320 MB Ram
Matrox Productiva G100 Video Card

So, while the HD needed some, replacing, its most likly the best thing $25 ever spent

En taro Adun... I am Armanox, sent by the Conclave to serve and to concoule