Riding the Mobius

Ahhhhhhhhh… My protracted post-graduate job search is finally over! After fifteen months of searching in the worst economy in generations, I finally landed a decent job. I don’t mind telling you that it was quite discouraging to be looking for so long, especially considering how hard I worked to make the most of my education. If you’ll indulge a little horn-tooting for a moment, I graduated cum laude from Penn State’s prestigious Schreyer Honors College, finishing with a 3.81 GPA (which would have been better had I known about the possibility of wiping my academic slate clean when I resumed my education, but that’s neither here nor there).

To finally reward myself for my diligence, I decided (with the grudging acquiescence of my lovely fiancée) to build my dream Windows-based PC. My old desktop, which is still going strong, was purchased about five years ago and was starting to show its age… It’s a VPR Matrix FT9150-PE, which I believe was an inexplicably short-lived Best Buy house brand. It’s been running Windows XP flawlessly the entire time, and has been a pleasure to use for years. I feel a little guilty putting it out to pasture, but I needs me some more power these days. I did actually make a few upgrades to this machine over the years, bumping the RAM to 2GB, adding a 512MB GeForce video card, and replacing the power supply (which is the only hardware failure I experienced since I bought it); doing this stuff gave me the urge to design and build my own system from the ground up, which is what I’ve just done. What follows is my best effort to chronicle the construction of my new baby.

I bought everything from the fine people at NewEgg.com, and I couldn’t be happier with the service that I got. Here’s the parts list:

Antec Twelve Hundred Black Steel ATX Full Tower Computer Case – Retail

Thermaltake TR2 W0176RU 1000W ATX12V 2.2 / EPS12V 2.91 SLI Certified CrossFire Ready Active PFC Power Supply – Retail

ASUS P6T Deluxe V2 LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard – Retail

Intel Core i7-950 Bloomfield 3.06GHz LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Processor Model BX80601950 – Retail

COOLER MASTER V8 RR-UV8-XBU1-GP 120mm Rifle CPU Cooler – Retail

CORSAIR XMS3 12GB (6 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Desktop Memory Model HX3X12G1333C9 – Retail

Microsoft Windows Vista Business SP1 64-bit for System Builders w/ Tech Guarantee – OEM

Western Digital VelociRaptor WD3000HLFS 300GB 10000 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5″ Internal Hard Drive – OEM

(2) Western Digital Caviar Green WD10EADS 1TB SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5″ Internal Hard Drive – OEM

BFG Tech BFGEGTX2852048OCE GeForce GTX 285 2GB 512-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card – Retail

LG Black 6X Blu-ray Disc Burner & HD DVD-ROM Drive SATA Model GGW-H20L – OEM

Pioneer Black Blu-Ray Reader and 12X DVD±R DVD Burner SATA Model BDC-2202B – Retail

Logitech G19 Black USB Wired Standard Gaming Keyboard – Retail

As you can see, I bought a lot of stuff. As it turned out, the components came in two batches from two separate warehouses, so of course, I got everything EXCEPT the power supply within three days, so the bulk of it was just sitting there, mocking me with its inability to turn on, for another two or three days. Here are a few shots of all the stuff, minus the tardy power supply:

Is it a computer yet?

A gigantic case in a gigantic-er box

To save a little money, I generally went with OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) gear where possible. This was a little risky, given that this whole project was a huge experiment for me, and OEM gear usually doesn’t come with documentation, software, or accessories. As it turned out, I didn’t really have any problems, and the few that I did experience were pretty quickly rectified.

So, to begin, I went with the Antec Twelve Hundred Black Steel ATX Full Tower Computer Case because it has a ton of expansion bays, plenty of room for larger gear (more on that later), a great cable management system built into it, and enough cooling fans to keep my entire computer from cooking itself from within. As a bonus, it has blue LEDs throughout and a clear side panel, which just makes it look cool. Here it is before I put anything inside:

The cleanest this case will ever look

I also wanted something that had easily-accessible front-side USB 2.0 ports, since my last desktop has about the worst-positioned ports I’ve ever seen; on the old one (which was designed by Porsche, incidentally) they’re at the bottom of the tower, just around the corner of the front left side, which means you have to crawl on the floor to use them if you have the tower on the ground, as I did. This new case has two USB 2.0 ports at the perfect place, right on the very top of the front panel. It also has convenient headphone and microphone ports front and center, so the design is just what I was looking for.

First, I installed the two Western Digital Caviar Green WD10EADS 1TB SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5″ Internal Hard Drives, which I plan to use primarily for media storage. As a pro DJ and all-around music-lover, I have a TON of music, and I like to back it up at a high quality.

Two terabytes in a cage looks like this

I also installed the Western Digital VelociRaptor WD3000HLFS 300GB 10000 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5″ Internal Hard Drive to use for the OS and some of the programs that I use the most. It has a higher RPM than the other drives, so it runs a bit faster.

For the optical drives, I wanted to future-proof, so I got the LG Black 6X Blu-ray Disc Burner & HD DVD-ROM Drive SATA Model GGW-H20L and the Pioneer Black Blu-Ray Reader and 12X DVD±R DVD Burner SATA Model BDC-2202B. Overkill? Yes, probably, but like I said, future-proof. I don’t really think any software is shipping on Blu-ray at the moment, but I expect to see it start happening in the next year or two.

Once I got all the drives seated in their cages, I moved on to the motherboard and CPU, which was really the step that gave me the most anxiety about the whole process… As I mentioned before, I’ve done some PC upgrading here and there, but never did any mucking about with CPUs or motherboards (aside from adding or removing memory and the like), and the CPU was by far the single most expensive component of this whole rig, and I was paranoid that I was going to destroy it with my ignorance. As it turned out, I guess I was lucky and/or skilled enough to get it installed without any trouble, because I’m using it to write this… Here’s the board, the ASUS P6T Deluxe V2 LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard – Retail, and you can kinda see the CPU, the Intel Core i7-950 Bloomfield 3.06GHz LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Processor Model BX80601950 – Retail, on the side, but I was too worried to go snapping pics of it while it was exposed. I briefly considered going with the “Extreme” version of this chip, but it was just a sliver below double the price of the one I got, and I didn’t feel the performance boost was enough to justify that kind of price.

The people who design this stuff are geniuses

The board has some nice features on it, like six memory slots, which I filled with CORSAIR XMS3 12GB (6 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Desktop Memory Model HX3X12G1333C9 – Retail. Again, overkill, perhaps, but I like to be able to have a bunch of crap open at once, and I also don’t like to wait when I can avoid it, so I went a little nuts on the memory. Once the 4GB sticks come out and down to a reasonable price, I may just bump it up to 24GB, simply because I can. The board has power and reset buttons right on it, and some pretty bitchin’ copper heat sinks. It also has space for three SLI-enabled graphics cards, but I can tell you right now that there’s NO WAY I’d get three of the cards that I went with in this thing… The card, the BFG Tech BFGEGTX2852048OCE GeForce GTX 285 2GB 512-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card – Retail, is pretty huge, as you can see here:

That-sa beeg card, yes?

Yeah... Not getting three of those on this board...

Speaking of huge, I got a pretty serious CPU cooler, mainly because I just thought it looked really cool. Behold the muscle-car styling of the mighty COOLER MASTER V8 RR-UV8-XBU1-GP 120mm Rifle CPU Cooler – Retail, which totally looks like a big-block engine, complete with chrome piping; V8 is an appropriate name. As in some of these other pics, the soda can is there for scale. The thing is freaking HUGE, so much so, in fact, that I wasn’t able to install the optional side-panel fan in my tower because I had less than an inch of clearance between the cooler and the panel, so there was zero chance of a fan fitting in there. Still, the thing looks badass, and the case does a fine job of cooling without adding any fans, so I’m not too broken up about it.

Soda can is there for scale. Also, I was thirsty.

Over-exposed, but you get the idea

The V8 dwarfs everything on the board

By that point, I pretty much had everything ready to go, but I had to wait another day or two for the power supply to arrive. It gave me time to worry even more that I’d done something wrong and was about to fry several thousand dollars worth of gear. Ah, self-doubt… You failed, because I forged ahead anyway the moment it arrived.

While the CPU installation was the part about which I was most worried, it was connecting all the cables (power and SATA) that was the most annoying. I have big hands, and trying to get them in the case, around corners and through slots, without breaking anything was a bit of a chore. I really tried to keep the cabling as neat as I could, and thanks to the cable management built into the tower, I was able to do a fair job of it. Here’s what it looked like before I started routing power from the Thermaltake TR2 W0176RU 1000W ATX12V 2.2 / EPS12V 2.91 SLI Certified CrossFire Ready Active PFC Power Supply – Retail:

Now I know why people were talking about modular power supplies

This, unfortunately, is the part on which I feel I dropped the ball a bit. Had I done a little more research here, I almost certainly would have gone with a modular power supply to cut down on the unused wiring that is now taking up space at the base of my tower. It’s not a big deal, but I really wanted to make this as clean a build as I could, and a big clump of unused wires is kinda messing with the aesthetic here. Oh well, something to remember when I do this again in a few years…

So, at this point, I was all installed and wired, and it was time for the moment of truth: I connected everything and hit power… Stuff lit up, fans whirred, and… No video was going to my monitor. By all appearances, things looked fine; nothing was on fire, LEDs were glowing, the motherboard looked active, but I wasn’t getting any picture. I was pretty bummed, but was mentally prepared for some hiccups during this project, since it was my first. I did my best to troubleshoot it myself for an entire day, but since I didn’t really have any idea what might be causing the problem, I called my friend Dave, who does IT management for a living. He’s built plenty of systems, and he graciously agreed to take a look and help me out.

I hauled the tower over to his place (which, fully loaded, probably weighs in at around 70 lbs.), and after about a half hour of poking and prodding, we discovered that the motherboard wouldn’t boot up with all the memory installed. After we yanked all but one of the modules, it fired right up and started working flawlessly. I scampered home, installed the OS, then added the rest of the memory without a hitch. In retrospect, it sounds like sort of a n00b mistake, but then again, this was my first build, and this was really the only thing that I did wrong, and it took about ten seconds to fix once we figured it out. (Thanks, Dave!)

As for the OS, I went with Microsoft Windows Vista Business SP1 64-bit for System Builders w/ Tech Guarantee – OEM. While I haven’t been any fan of Windows Vista thus far, I have it on my laptop, and I think it was unfairly maligned, really. It was super-annoying to get it set up, what with all the intrusive protecting-me-from-myself features that are active upon installation, but once I figured out how to disable them, it’s been a pretty solid OS. I still prefer XP over Vista, but I wanted to be current with this new build, and Vista now sells with a free upgrade to Windows 7, so I figured that was the way to go.

I ran Vista for the first few days, but after talking to a bunch of people who were running the Windows 7 beta, I decided to take the leap of faith and give it a go; after all, it was still a new system, so if I had to nuke it back to Vista with a clean install, it wouldn’t be a tragedy. I did the upgrade a few days ago, and it seems to have only caused a problem with some of the ASUS software that came with my motherboard (which I promptly uninstalled), and possibly iTunes, but I think I got that fixed tonight. So far, I like this OS MUCH better than Vista, so give it a try if you’re able to run it.

After running the “Windows Experience Test,” I feel like I’m clocking some decent numbers, though my primary HD seems to be dragging the overall score down, despite it being one of the faster ones out there:

The reality is that Photoshop loads from a cold start in less than three seconds, and Crysis runs at maximum settings without blinking. Yes, I’m pretty happy with what I’ve accomplished. I haven’t done any overclocking, but I may give that a try in the future. For now, this thing is blazing fast compared to what I’m used to, and I’m more concerned with it lasting a long time than with squeezing out a little more speed.

Almost an afterthought, I decided to replace my venerable Logitech G15 keyboard, which had fallen victim to a spilled soda a few months back. I figured that a kick-ass computer deserved a kick-ass keyboard, so I went with the successor to the G15, the decidedly sexier Logitech G19 Black USB Wired Standard Gaming Keyboard – Retail. It has a color LCD, dual powered USB 2.0 ports, 12 programmable macro keys, and can backlight in any color that my geeky heart desires. My Razer Lachesis mouse has also been upgraded with cat-proof tubing for reasons that should be obvious if you happened to read my older post, “Cats Are Jerks.”

Oooooh, glowy!

The exterior with side-view panel and a reflection of me and my iPhone

Inside, looking fairly clean

Inside, a bit closer

So… It’s finally done. I have christened this beast my “Jedi PC,” since I felt like designing and building my own PC was a bit like a Jedi’s final training step of constructing his own lightsaber. Yes, I know… I’m a HUGE nerd/geek/dork. I’m OK with that.

But you know what? My PC can beat up your PC, so you can suck it!

The iPhone 3GS

I love my iPhone 3G, but I think I’d love an iPhone 3GS even more. That being said, I’m fully prepared to suck it up and watch everyone who has the 3G either wait out their contracts (as I plan to do), or pay $500 or $600 to get the latest shiny, and after a little background rambling, I’ll tell you why.

When the first iPhone came out, I was filled with a powerful techno-lust that was only kept in check by the exorbitant pricing and my relative poverty. I was forced to “slum it” with a Samsung Blackjack, my first entry into smartphonedom. My mouth practically started to water every time I saw someone gliding their lucky little fingers over their glass-faced, metal-backed beauties, which is an odd reaction, considering that I’m pretty sure an iPhone would be too crunchy for my tastes.

When the iPhone 3G rolled out, I was only a month away from contract renewal eligibility, so I was in good shape. As it turned out, I didn’t get the phone for another two months anyway due to the insane demand for the product, but I’ve loved the phone from the moment that I got it set up.

Despite its obvious and super-irritating flaws and/or omissions, most notably the lack of copy-and-paste and multimedia messaging, a non-user-serviceable battery, and an inadequate battery life, I still consider the iPhone 3G to be the finest all-around phone that I’ve owned yet.

The iPhone 3GS looks like it will address the most glaring of these flaws right out of the box, and adds some other niceties that I wanted, like video recording, data tethering, a better camera, increased capacity, etc. This, of course, means that I want it, and would probably buy it at the subsidized price, remanding my current 3G phone to my fiancée, who would then pay almost twice as much a month in service fees over her current voice-only plan.

Now, in the early days of my adult working life, I worked for AT&T Mobile (and other carriers which it bought out), so I’m familiar with the idea of subsidizing phones. In those days, we’d allow people to re-contract pretty much at any time to take advantage of our specials; you didn’t have to ride out your existing deal in order to enjoy a new promotion. It was easy, it was cool, and it was probably unprofitable.

In case you’re unfamiliar with the concept, that iPhone 3GS I so dearly wish I could get for $299 actually costs AT&T a lot more than $299, but they eat some of that cost so that we, the little people, will be more inclined to buy the phone and lock ourselves into a two-year contract that costs significantly more than a Plain-Jane voice plan. (Remember how I skipped the first generation iPhone? Had the unit cost been more reasonable to me, AT&T could have been charging me for a full voice/data plan for several years by now.)

I don’t fault AT&T for balking at sucking up a few hundred dollars per phone every time Apple decides to release a new hardware iteration that addresses something that should have been included from the start. Business is about making a profit, and subsidizing our purchases every time we get bored with our hardware would leave less money for AT&T to expand and improve the network that actually makes the phones, you know, DO STUFF.

Instead of simply ignoring the issue, I’ll propose that AT&T consider trying some tactics to avoid alienating the legions of iPhone 3G users who are crying foul on the upgrade situation, even though our outrage is mostly based on our own self-interest.

One idea is to allow us to trade in our existing iPhones to qualify for the standard subsidy; investing a few bucks in reconditioning phones that have probably been babied (as mine has) would give AT&T a pool of phones that could be sold at an extreme discount, hooking new users who will need to upgrade to the more expensive voice/data package that the phone requires.

Another idea is to start a “recruit a friend” sort of program. For example, I’d give my fiancée my iPhone 3G if I could get the 3GS at the subsidized price without having to ride out my contract, and I’d even sign a new two-year deal. This, again, would result in my fiancée upping her plan and spending more money each month, and AT&T wouldn’t even have to recondition the phone.

There are, of course, other solutions to consider. Anyone could, theoretically, add a new line to his/her account at the subsidized price, cancel their existing line, and pay the early termination fee, which I believe is a pro-rated $175; this would kill your existing number, but would still likely result in a net gain for the user and increase in dreaded “subscriber churn” for AT&T.

The most reasonable option, I think, is probably just to relax and enjoy the 3G phones that we have. We’re getting the 3.0 upgrade for free, which takes care of the stuff that I care the most about, and I don’t have to shell out hundreds of dollars to get those features. (I can’t believe I’m saying this, and I’ll be aggressively protecting my Nerd Card for the next week or two in case the Nerd Guild enforcers come to reclaim it due to my abject heresy, but there it is…)

One final thought for those of us who have been enjoying 3G iPhones for the past year: let the first-gen iPhoners have this one. They’ve had to watch us gloat about our GPS functionality and better reception while they “suffered” with their metal-backed signal-repulsors, and now they can one-up us until next June, when we’ll undoubtedly be having this discussion again after the fourth-generation iPhone is announced.

Cats are jerks.

I know this, because I have one. Well, to be more accurate, I was harangued into having one by my lovely fiancée, who has always been a fan of cats. Me, I grew up in a dog household, and therefore consider myself to be in the more macho dog camp; that’s not to say that I particularly object to cats, since I love just about any kind of animal, but I have always been put off by the idea of an animal, by custom, taking a big, smelly dump inside my house, designated litter box or not. Like so many other men, I decided that this particular issue wasn’t really a battle that needed pickin’, so I agreed to the cat.

Enter Penny, a prime example of feline eff-you-ishness, who has, since her integration into our family, left me scarred for life, ruined several objects, and caused occasional and assorted havoc at her leisure.

Penny, trying to look innocent.

Cute, right? Don’t be fooled… Behind that adorable, bewhiskered face lies the mind of a serial torturer devoid of any conscience or sympathy. While her crimes are many, I’m only sharing the following because I managed to triumph over her unprovoked malice, and I relish every win life allows me these days. Now, I know you may be thinking, “What kind of idiot has an adversarial relationship with a cat?” Well, all I can say is that if you’re asking the question, you probably haven’t ever lived with a cat.

Soooooo… There I was, at the beginning of May, finally in possession of a few bucks that didn’t necessarily NEED to be spent in any particular way for the first time since Thanksgiving. The urge to treat myself to something at least semi-fun was overpowering, so I decided to go buy a new mouse for my desktop PC, since my aging trackball seemed to be barreling towards its final rest with increasing speed. Being the giant geek/nerd that I am, this passed as fun for me, so I carefully mulled my options.

I considered going with the new Warcraft-branded mouse, but upon checking it out at my local Best Buy, I decided that it was just too damn ugly and clunky. (A bit pricey, too, but like I said, I was treating myself, so that wasn’t really the biggest factor.)

I wound up going with the Razer Lachesis gaming mouse because it fulfilled my main criteria for this purchase: ergonomically sound, functionally superior to what I was using previously, economically feasible, and aesthetically ass-kicking. It’s got a rubberized surface that feels great, a chunky scroll wheel that has just the right amount of travel, and does that cool glowy thingy. Though I would have preferred to spend less money on it, all told, I was happy with the purchase once I got it set up.

Soooooo… There I was, literally three days later, enjoying my new mouse by playing some World of Warcraft. Penny decided to plop herself on the desk in front of me, as cats are wont to do, with her head toward the back of the desk, her butt squarely pointed at me. I absently began to pet her as I played, and before long, I began to notice my mouse behaving erratically. I didn’t think much of it, as Warcraft occasionally lags and/or glitches, and went about my level-grinding business. Within two minutes, I totally lost control, and my mouse, usually pulsing with a bright blue inner light, died on the table.

Penny, being a cat, and as such, genetically predisposed towards douchebaggery, had chewed almost completely through the mouse cord WHILE I WAS PETTING HER! It wasn’t bad enough that she rendered the first toy that I’d bought for myself in six months completely useless, but she had to do it while I was in the act of being nice to her. I can only assume that the wire casing was made by injection-molding ground-up rodent entrails, thereby making it irresistible to cats.

Either that, or Penny is a jerk.

After pushing Penny off the desk with as much self-control as I could muster (which, as an animal lover, wound up being more than one might expect), I called upon my years of geek/nerd training to try to resurrect my poor mouse from the dead.

A little bit more about my geek cred… When I was a boy, I didn’t ask for toys like Transformers or G.I. Joe, but for things like “science kits” from Radio Shack, which usually consisted of a bunch of transistors and simple circuitry, all attached to little springs that the user would wire together based on instructions included with these kits. I don’t think they really make them anymore, but they fueled my techno-lust and helped make me the tech-savvy geek that I am today.

Anyway, I busted out my tool kit and got to work. First, I had to strip the wires and cut out the bad section. This was a little harder than it might sound, since the wires were about as thick as regular spaghetti, and much finer with the coverings stripped off.

The mouse is prepared for reconstructive surgery.

Next, I spliced all five wires back together.

The wires are spliced, and w00t! We have glowage!

Finally, I wrapped all the wires up with electrical tape as neatly as I could, which resulted in a bit of an unsightly bulge, but it’s mostly out of sight under the monitor riser anyway. You can see all the bits that I cut out next to the mouse. Note that it once again glows in all of its mousy glory!

Is that bulge a splice point, or are you just happy to see me?

Unsightly bulge notwithstanding, the mouse is good as new, and the whole process took me about 30 minutes. Most of that time was spent stripping the wires, because despite my geekishness, I’ve never bothered to buy a real wire-stripper.

Following this incident, I gave Penny a stern talking-to, but she just doesn’t seem too interested in learning English, and my Catonese was never very good, so I don’t think she gets it; even if she does understand, she’s not honoring my pleas to stop destroying my stuff. Here she is plotting her next attack:

You can almost see the Wheels of Malice turning in her head...

Shortly after this pic was taken, WHILE I WAS WRITING THIS POST, I caught her gnawing on the mouse wire under the desk… At least she’s trying to be a little bit more Ninja Cat about it.

Jerk.

OK, so I’m already tired of hearing about Michael Phelps and his marijuana problem. Truth be told, I was tired of hearing about Michael Phelps during the Olympics, since I don’t particularly agree with the fact that one type of athlete can win multiple medals for doing essentially the same thing multiple times. People who choose fencing, or for whatever bizarre reason, curling, only have one opportunity to win a gold medal, but Phelps can take home eight? Don’t get me wrong… I’m not trying to diminish his achievements in any way, but I don’t really think it’s fair to hand out medals for every little variation in stroke. I think it would be fairer to have swimmers participate in a battery of races, scoring points for their finishing places, with the overall point winner taking home ONE gold medal. That’s not really the point of this post, but it’s something that I’ve been a little annoyed by since the Olympics.

No, the point of this post is that I’m growing weary of the media crucifying celebrities for every little thing, even though I’m conflicted about the phenomenon. On one hand, everyone makes mistakes, though most of us are so average that no one notices or cares, so our gaffes don’t get splashed all over the front page of every media outlet in the world. On the other hand, if you want to be a celebrity and reap the rewards of fame, you should be prepared to take the bad with the good, and suck it up when things go awry. There’s little that I find more tiresome than a celebrity who cries and whines about the pressures of fame and the lack of privacy and blahblahblah; cry me a river, and I’ll be happy to lend you one of my past-due bills to dry your tears. If you want your privacy back, take up a 9-to-5 in an office or a factory somewhere, become an anonymous drone, and see how much fun it is to live like an average person. As you can probably tell, I’m not terribly worried about celebrities getting hassled, but there are times when I think it’s simply over the top.

Take Michael Phelps, for example; the guy basically sacrifices his youth in order to become a champion swimmer, sets world records, brings home more gold than anyone in history, and the moment he does something fun for himself, the cameras are there, waiting to take him down. OK, so he hit a bong at a party with his friends… I’m not too worried about it. At least he didn’t rob investors of $50 billion. You don’t get to his level without sacrificing… Well… Just about everything. I don’t begrudge him a little fun. (To be clear, I’m not advocating drug use by any means, but come on… Pot? It’s not like he was caught smoking crack with a prostitute.) Should he lose his endorsements? Meh. I’m actually a little surprised that celebrity endorsements are still being employed. I don’t think I’ve ever been persuaded to buy anything simply because someone I admire or aspire to emulate is using a product or service, so I think advertising dollars would be better spent in other ways, but that’s just me. At any rate, if companies want to dump Phelps, that’s their prerogative; maybe it’ll make Phelps think twice before he sparks that next joint or climbs behind the wheel after a few adult beverages.

Perhaps even more horrifying is the lawsuit that has recently begun against Miley Cyrus, a.k.a. Hannah Montana, in which “all Asian Pacific Islanders living in Los Angeles County” are suing her for $4 billion dollars because she was seen in a picture making a racially insensitive “slant-eyed” face. For some reason, the litigants think her childish mistake should cost her about $4,000 per Asian person living in L.A. County.

Really? $4 billion? For making a face while goofing around with your friends?

What is it with people in this country thinking that everything that offends them should either be censored, outlawed, or legally actionable? People, I find plenty of things to dislike, but I don’t go around trying to sue everyone and everything that pisses me off. Should I sue George W. Bush because I sincerely believe that his incompetence and arrogance have put our entire country in jeopardy, thereby making it ridiculously difficult for me to obtain a job with the degree that I’ve just earned? Frankly, I’d love to, and I’d invite every taxpayer to join me in a class action lawsuit, but I know it wouldn’t accomplish anything but making some lawyer even richer than he already is.

My point about both Michael and Miley (who’d probably make a lovely couple, come to think of it) is that they’re both young, and as such, are going to do stupid things like smoke a little pot at a party or lampoon the facial features of an Asian friend. We all act like irresponsible idiots from time to time, and I think everyone is entitled to do so, famous or everyman, rich or poor. Our society has become so repressed and politically correct these days that it’s really liberating to do something less than socially acceptable once in a while, so I think we all deserve a little slack. Everyone just needs to try to be a little cooler, a little less “I’m a special little snowflake,” and we can all get on with the business of living and trying to enjoy life.

All that being said, if you disagree with me on any of these points, please let me know so that I can sue you.

I don’t have to leave for work for a few hours, and I haven’t written anything just for the sake of writing something lately, so I figured this was as good a time as any to do so; one can only write so many job cover letters without wanting to smash one’s keyboard out of abject boredom, and since I need my keyboard, it’s probably a good idea to do a little something for myself. That said, these are just some things that I’ve noticed and/or been thinking about lately.

Obama seems to be off to a decent start, and it fills me with hope for our country. Yes, I know… He’s only been in office for a few days, but he jumped right on some things that desperately needed attention. First, he really seems to be making an effort to do things differently than Bush, which is key, as we can see how eight years of narrow, arrogant thinking has affected our country and its standing in the international community. I like the more open attitude he’s taking, starting with the redesign of whitehouse.gov, the official public portal into the President’s doings. Obama has pledged to post all non-emergency legislation on the site for five days to allow people to comment on it before he signs anything. This, in my humble opinion, may be the most significant idea to hit politics in quite some time, if he actually follows through and uses the process to better enact the will of the people. Bush never struck me as the sort of guy who cared what I, or anyone else, thought, and since I sincerely believe that I’m smarter than W., the fact that he had the power to get me killed was always maddening to me. People who complain that Obama is an “elitist” should think about what they’re saying; shouldn’t we want an intellectual in the highest job in the land? Being the President is a rough gig, and I want someone who is actually intelligent enough to ponder the weighty issues and make the best decision for the country, not the best decision for a few rich guys. I know he’s not superhuman, magic, or omnipotent, but I have faith that he’ll get us back on track if we just let him do it.

The bank bailout hasn’t done jack for me or anyone else I know yet. I’m no economist, but as a taxpayer, I expect something real to come out of $800+ billion in assistance that we’re all financing. Rather than this money “getting credit flowing again,” as I keep reading everywhere, things seem to be going in exactly the opposite direction. Many of my friends and family have actually had their credit reduced through no fault of their own lately, and a realtor friend of mine told me last night that it’s been almost impossible for many of his potential clients to get new mortgages. Rather than helping us out, it seems like these big banks are sitting on that money and looking after themselves. Not cool, financial sector… Not cool.

Lost (the ABC TV show) is starting to wander into dangerous narrative territory. (SPOILERS IN THIS PARAGRAPH.) I’ve loved the show since the first episode and usually watch each episode at least twice to make sure I’m absorbing as much as I can, but all this time-travel business is starting to get on my nerves. As an author myself, I’ve always viewed time travel as a weak plot device that can allow you to get away with anything. I’m hoping that the show’s writers can keep away from the whole deus ex machina crutch and make it worth our while, but the odds are against them. I like my plot elements to have consequences, and time travel basically destroys the whole cause-effect continuum when you give the characters the ability to stop the cause whenever they want. I’m still watching, but I’m more leery than ever that I’m going to be disappointed at the final outcome.

Gears of War 2 on the Xbox 360 was decent, but nowhere nearly as slathered in Awesome Sauce as the first one. Part of this waning impact comes from the fact that the first Gears was in a different graphical league than anything else out at the time, so the “Ooooh, pretty!” effect had a lot to do with it. And the chainsaw bayonet? Pure genius, but it’s just more of the same in GoW2.  I’m also finding it maddening trying to play GoW2 online; the matchmaking takes too long and the game is unfair if the teams are unbalanced by even one player. I enjoyed the campaign and the darker territory it enters, but I feel like I could have gotten away with a rental on this one. Better luck next time, Cliffy B.

Domino’s delicious cheesy bread keeps shrinking. I get delivery pizza quite a bit, and sadly, Domino’s is one of the only places that delivers to me. They’re not bad for chain restaurant food, but I prefer the mom-and-pop shop pizza when I can get it. At any rate, I do really enjoy the cheesy bread side order, but every time I get it, it seems to shrink, though the price of my order seems to keep going up. ($2 delivery charge? Really? I could see this when gas was $4 a gallon, but come on now…)

Ryan Seacrest is the best host of anything, anywhere. I know it’s somewhat fashionable to bash Ryan Seacrest, but as someone who has hosted anything from a Clear Channel radio show to a sumo wrestling match at a state college, I can tell you from experience that the level at which Seacrest operates is not easy to achieve. That guy never seems to get rattled, and he’s always a good sport, even when weird stuff happens live on American Idol. I only wish I was as good (and wealthy) as Ryan.

With that, I’m off to throw down my DJ mojo at the Crowne Hotel in lil’ ol’ Wyomissing, PA. Tremblay out.

Twitter? What’s Twitter? More importantly, why should I care? I was asking myself the same questions about a month ago, because I had been hearing about Twitter.com for a fairly long time now, but had never bothered to investigate it. The Net is a big place, and I’m a very busy man who doesn’t really need any more distractions. Being a big geek, however, my curiosity usually gets the better of me before long, and I almost always cave in and give most tech-related phenomena at least a cursory glance.

Yawning,  I hit the Twitter site, spent five seconds registering for the service, then sat staring at its simple interface, almost dumbfounded that it was causing such a fuss out on the notoriously finicky Net. How, exactly, was a message of only 140 characters (a “tweet”) going to change my life, or even accomplish the more modest task of making it more interesting? (It does, I’ll admit, help a writer like myself to flex the brevity muscle.) After all, applications like Facebook and MySpace offer the same thing through their status updates, as well as other tools like photo galleries, video embedding, user-created applications, etc., so I didn’t really understand how a one-trick pony like Twitter had anything useful to offer.

Still, I figured I’d be a good geek and give it a go before moving on to the Next Big Thing, which I’m sure is waiting just around the corner waiting to usurp Twitter’s zeitgeist throne. I started searching the legions of Twitter users for keywords I might find interesting and started following a few contributors, which usually engenders reciprocal follows; it’s an interesting snowball effect.

I quickly learned that while there are plenty of people who are using Twitter to waste time, there are probably just as many people using it to network with other users in useful ways. In the few short weeks that I’ve been using Twitter, I’ve already written an article for a fledgling employment company, helped with a coast-to-coast test of an interesting iPhone application, and read/seen some really interesting stuff, solely because of connections that I’ve made through Twitter; not bad for a service that just broadcasts 140 characters at a shot.

It’s not all sunshine and roses, of course… I’m already tired of people sending out blind links to stuff I couldn’t care less about, and there seems to be a small (for now) community of spammers already polluting the waters with unsolicited links to dubious products and services, but that’s to be expected. It can also be another addictive distraction, just like anything else that can steal your attention while you’re supposed to be working.

Still, I’m happy to tap out my 140 characters and see what others have to say, offer, and request. If you decide to give it a try, do yourself a favor and download the free multi-OS TweetDeck to make it a little more manageable. The Twitter web portal will get the job done, but TweetDeck is just a little sexier. You’ll also want to become familiar with URL shorteners like TinyURL.com or dwarfurl.com to make your 140 characters go a bit farther if you want to direct your followers to web pages, pictures, videos, etc.

For the time being, sliced bread still wins for innovation, but Twitter is still more fun and useful than I ever would have expected. Follow me on Twitter; my user name, as you might expect, is JasonDTremblay.

Tweet on, my friends… Tweet on.

Today, I decided that I was going to try to get something accomplished for myself; this inclination usually ends with me either leaning back in my chair with a smug “Mission accomplished, because I’m awesome!” look on my face, or with a disaster of my own making that requires an investment of time that I’d probably rather not make. Today was a little bit of both, really…

I started this blog about a month and a half ago, stumbling though the setup process with practically zero experience with doing that sort of thing. I could have made things easier on myself by simply joining Blogspot and letting them worry about it, which I actually did for a few days, but I then decided I should just host the blog myself, especially since I’ve been paying for a web hosting package that I haven’t been using for over a year.

My web host/registrar, GoDaddy.com, is kind enough to offer a relatively painless Wordpress integration as part of its hosting packages, so I performed the aforementioned stumblings, created a blog in my root directory, and I finally had something other than the “Sorry, but this guy hasn’t bothered to do anything yet, but he might soon” landing page at my main domain address. Now, I have delusions that I’ll soon get cracking on trying to build an actual website by directing my stumblings into Dreamweaver, so I decided it was probably time to move the blog, and since I noticed a new update to Wordpress was available, it seemed like a good time to try it.

This is where things go askew… Since, as I mentioned, I know virtually nothing about web programming, I’ll usually start poking around in my admin panels and start making semi-educated guesses. This, of course, almost always ends badly, as it did today. I managed to delete just about all of the relevant blog files in one fell swoop, eradicating my poor blog with extreme prejudice. It was so young…

Once I realized that I’d inadvertently done the ol’ nukeroo, I decided to begin anew, and I think it actually worked reasonably well. Upside: as the address bar will tell you, should you take a moment to flick your eyes up there, I managed to create this blog in its own subdirectory, freeing up the landing page for whatever my heart deigns to place there. Downside: a bunch of finely crafted, ever-so-witty and/or vitriol-fueled postings have vanished into the digital ether.

The real kick in the (insert favorite body part here) is that I think GoDaddy will automatically update the Wordpress files for me with the click of one button, which I discovered during my reconstruction. It was a small consolation to note that they’re not installing the most current version of the software, but I’ll be keeping an eye on the situation in hopes that I can avoid this sort of nonsense in the future.

So I guess this is the part where I could lean back and look smug, but I really need to get to work on that whole Dreamweaver thing. I need to get a landing page back up, if only to direct the curious to this reborn blog. I’m starting to think that I should have gone for an IT degree instead of the Professional Writing degree that I earned…

It’s no secret that the job market is brutal right now; at the start of 2009, the economy is the worst that it’s been in decades, and there don’t seem to be enough jobs to go around. Given the state of things, standing out from the sea of job applicants is more important than ever. Here are a few things to consider when you’re searching for a new job, especially if you’re a recent graduate or are changing fields.

Think about your online presence and how it will look to potential employers. Considering how connected (and in some cases, over-connected) today’s college students are, this one is a primary area of concern. Sure, social networking is fun and can be really useful, but think about what you’re actually putting out on the Net for anyone to see. Do you think it’s going to help you land a job if the HR manager you just visited finds pictures of you on Facebook or MySpace doing a naked keg stand or lying face-down passed out in a pool of your own vomit? Do your Twitter followers need to know that your toilet is clogged? I suppose it might depend on the job for which you’re applying, but my guess is that you’re not going to get an offer with that sort of stuff floating around in the digital ether. Take a good look at what you have out there on the Net and get rid of anything that might hinder your success. You might be surprised at what a quick Google search of your name will reveal.

It’s both what you know and who you know, so network intelligently. Sometimes being the smartest person in the room isn’t enough, especially if nobody else knows it. Despite what I just said about Facebook, MySpace, etc., they can be very powerful tools to get in touch with the kinds of people that you want to know and emulate. Remember, digital relationships can prove every bit as useful and powerful as those in the so-called “real world,” so take care to manage them appropriately and with respect; you never know where your next opportunity is going to come from.

Take all the help you can get from anyone who offers, but be wary of paying for it. Most, if not all, colleges have a career services department, which may offer placement assistance, internships, résumé editing, etc.; many will even provide these services long after you graduate, so use them. There are also plenty of commercial services that promise to help you get a job if you pay them a membership fee, but you should carefully consider if they’re offering you a service worth paying for. There are oodles of job boards on the Net, and you should take a crack at them before you start paying someone to look for you.

Job seekers are products, so pay attention to your packaging. Courting a new employer is almost like dating, where first impressions go a long way, and you need to think about what you’re saying without speaking. Do you have a professional-sounding email address? If you’re still using the same address you created when you were a teenager, chances are you should change it. Consider buying your own domain on the Net, which will allow you to create your own email address; it’s cheaper than most people think, and it will also give you a place to create, develop, and maintain your own personal brand. It doesn’t need to be fancy, but it should be professional.

Know your limitations and seek the help necessary to transcend them. Does your résumé sound like it was written by a second-grader? Ask a literate friend to help you, or hire a professional writer to write it for you. I’ve always been a writer, so I’m OK with that sort of thing, but I make sure I hire someone to do my taxes every year, take my car to a reputable garage when something’s amiss, and visit the dentist every few months. We all have a part to play, so do your best to play well with others.

Finally, and most importantly, be tenacious and don’t get discouraged. It’s tough to get the job that you really want, especially now, but make getting that job your main focus until you get it. That often means spending hours writing the perfect cover letter, tweaking and re-tweaking your résumé, making follow-up phone calls, and countless other things that you’d probably rather not be doing. Remember, you’re not the only one who wants a particular job, and other applicants may be going after your ideal job with both guns blazing.

Good luck to you all, and here’s to a happy and prosperous year for everyone. Visit me on the web at www.jasondtremblay.com, and on Twitter at JasonDTremblay.

Let me begin by saying that I am beyond angry. Livid. Enraged. Furious. These words don’t even begin to describe how I feel about this situation, largely because of the fact that it adds yet another layer of uncertainty to the super-sized, high-calorie Desperation Sandwich that my fiancee and I are being force-fed lately.

My fiancee, Steph, has been employed by Wachovia (and its pre-merger variants) for over ten years. She’s been the top performer in her department for the majority of those years, earning awards and a decent paycheck for her loyal efforts. The problem that she now finds herself faced with is the impending acquisition of Wachovia by Wells Fargo, a company that has no need for her specific job. This is unremarkable in itself, as the proof operator job that she performs has apparently been replaced due to advances in technology.

The real rub comes from the situation that has been foisted upon her, as well as everyone else in her department, in which they have been forced to choose between accepting jobs which, in my fiancee’s case, will result in a pay decrease of approximately 50%, or becoming unemployed.

In a nutshell, she’s been earning a modest hourly rate which is supplemented by a performance incentive based on her hourly productivity, similar to sales commissions that a car salesman might earn. Since she was so efficient, her incentive pay made up a significant portion of her earnings. The new job she’d be offered will only be paid a low hourly wage with no incentives.

Since the deal was sealed, the higher-ups have been promising Steph that she would get a reasonable severance package since her pay would be so drastically reduced by this new position and pay scale if she didn’t want to take such a large step down. Having been through several mergers during my employment history, I was quietly confident that this wouldn’t actually happen, since new owners don’t ever care a whit for employees of the company being absorbed, and companies aren’t in the habit of doling out large sums of money to employees who are leaving, regardless of why, but I had hoped that maybe she would be taken care of in some reasonable fashion.

Recently, I’m afraid that I’ve been proven correct. She was informed by the aforementioned higher-ups last night that she will, in fact, NOT be eligible for severance because the difference between her current base rate of pay and what she would be making at this new position is not greater than 15%, as Wells Fargo refuses to acknowledge the large portion of her earnings that come from the incentive program that has been in place for years.

Though it should be obvious, let me point out that it is unconscionable that employees should be expected to eat a 15% reduction in pay, a reduction in benefits, and a less desirable schedule if they want to keep a job that they’ve had for a decade or longer. Loyalty is rewarded with a kick in the teeth and the warning that you should be grateful for it. I suppose one could argue that Wells Fargo has no obligation, moral or otherwise, to people who are just joining their company, and perhaps this is correct; the culpability, and abject failure in protecting its loyal employees, belongs to Wachovia, who, despite their desperation thanks to their own inept management, should have made provisions in the deal to protect employees.

This is made all the more infuriating by the fact that this is a banking job, and America has just footed a bill to the tune of over $700 BILLION to help the banks, and I haven’t seen one bit of good come to anyone but the banks from it so far. It’s still hard to get credit, and I’ve even seen a reduction in previously available credit for no reason whatsoever. Instead, it seems like the banks are taking that money and sitting on it, saving for the rainier days that are almost surely ahead.

But back to the problem at hand… What are we to do about this situation? We haven’t quite decided yet, since it seems that the policies being implemented in this deal are constantly in flux, as they always tend to be in situations like this. I’ll tell you what we’re not going to do: roll over and take whatever pittance Wells Fargo deigns to give the employees who have toiled at their jobs for years, renegging on the promises that were made to the faithful.

Steph isn’t the only one being wronged in her department, though she’ll feel it the most monetarily. I’m already researching legal remedies for this unacceptable situation, and I think there are plenty of lawyers who would enjoy a small class-action lawsuit to get American workers what they deserve, if only for the publicity of taking on a bank that has almost certainly benefitted from a bailout that most of us didn’t feel great about in the first place.

Wachovia and Wells Fargo: do what’s right, and save everyone a lot of time and heartache. You might even save yourselves some money.

Think we’re bluffing? Try us.

I am a technophile, there’s no question about that. If there’s a new gadget or super-cool new software on the horizon, there’s a good chance that I know about it, lust for it, and am plotting how I will acquire it. Sometimes this “early adopter” mentality is OK, even if it’s generally really expensive, as long as the item in question succeeds and is supported for a good time to come. My first CD player, for example, purchased when I was 15, was a single-disc Sony behemoth for which I paid $199.99; almost 20 years later, that player is long gone, but I’m still buying CDs. The same could be said for my first DVD player, which was a $299.99 (or maybe $399.99, I don’t exactly remember) Panasonic single-disc player, also long gone.

Of course, things don’t always work out so well. Want to buy a Sony Mini-Disc player (home component or discman version)? How about a Toshiba HD-DVD player and about 15 movies? I can give you a good deal on either of these ill-supported failed technologies for which I paid top dollar…

The point, I guess, is that I’m predisposed to jumping head-first into new technology and hoping for the best. This presents a bit of a dilemma at present, because I’m now doing my best to resist the siren song of installing the new Windows 7 beta on one of my PCs for a few reasons.

My trusty desktop, which is a very dependable, somewhat updated and reconfigured VPR Matrix (a short-lived Best Buy house brand, if I’m not mistaken), has been running Windows XP since it was born at least five years ago. I’ve changed the guts around a few times, added and removed probably at least 100 applications, and generally put this machine through the paces for a long time now. I’m not really keen on the idea of messing with success, especially with a beta release, so I think that idea is out.

My laptop, a Toshiba Satellite, was purchased a few months after Vista was released, and I hated Vista from the moment I powered up for the first time. Sure, it looked pretty in a cute-but-not-really-sexy sort of way, but I wasn’t really impressed by anything it did to really enhance my user experience. To make matters worse, the first few days of use were spent trying to figure out how to disable all of the frequent and oh-so-annoying pop-ups. I think Microsoft could have saved themselves a lot of ill will if they’d simply asked if you were an expert user or someone who needed to be protected from yourself, and adjusted the security settings accordingly.

Anyway, I’ve had this laptop for about a year and a half now, and once I got past the super-annoying setup, Vista really hasn’t been that bad. You get used to some of the things that seemed weird after being used to XP, and Vista has been reasonably stable for me, and I’m something of a power user. I will admit that the startup/shutdown times are truly awful, especially when I was trying to run it on my Centrino Duo with only the factory-installed 2GB of RAM. Once I bumped up to 4GB of RAM, things went much faster, but still take a lot longer than my XP desktop, which is only a single core 3.06Ghz Pentium 4 with 2GB of RAM.

Since my desktop is a safe haven, the real question is whether or not I should take the plunge and nuke Vista out of my laptop, which is something that I’ve dreamed of doing since getting the thing; if I’d been presented the option of downgrading the laptop to XP for free, I would have jumped on it. The problem with rolling the dice on a beta version of Windows 7 is that I presently use the laptop to earn my living as a mobile DJ, and I can’t have an unstable or incompatible OS mucking things up while I’m trying to throw down my DJ mojo in the middle of a party or club night with 400 guests. Virtual DJ, which is by far the best affordable pro DJ software out there, runs reasonably well on Vista, and that’s fine with me. It seems like Microsoft doesn’t get even most of the problems out of an OS until at least the first service pack, let alone a beta release, so I don’t think it’d be a wise move to try it out just yet, despite my strong desire to do so.

Has anyone else tried it out yet? I’d be interested to hear how it’s working out for you.