Random Crap

So yesterday I had to make a long journey across the suburbs. On my way home I was reminded that in the Chicago area, speed limits are merely a suggestion. I was heading south on the tri-state when I noticed the car ahead of me was a cop. Instinctively I glanced at the speedometer. 80 mph. I looked around me and noticed that I was just keeping pace with all the other cars. I think the speed limit there is 65, maybe only 55. I’m not really sure even though I drive this piece of road frequently (further evidence of the speed limits’ irrelevance). Anyway, I sure as hell wasn’t going to slow down if nobody else was. The cop didn’t have his lights on and he was going 80, so fuck it.

Jack Black and Jack White should really do an album together. Or at least present a grammy together. Given the scarcity of talented musicians these days, what are the chances that two of them would share a first name and have opposite last names?

Saw a car today that had a license plate frame that said “It pays to consult a realtor”. The car was a brand new BMW. Guess it pays the realtor at least.

This post brought to you by Mr. Brain’s Pork Faggots.

Fry’s is Cool

My house is on what must be the most shitty, antiquated piece of the power grid in the country. My power’s always cutting out at the strangest times. We could be having an ice storm with 80 mph winds and everything will be fine. The next day will be calm but a bird will land on a power line somewhere and take down the whole fucking neighborhood. This apparent randomness ensures that my computer will be on whenever the power goes out.

It happened again a couple weeks ago, just like I described. Power stayed on through the snow, ice and wind, but the next day it went down. It didn’t just suddenly switch off either, no that would have been nice. Instead it took its time deciding whether or not it wanted to go completely out. The lights dimmed, came back up and finally went out. Before I could reach the power switch on my computer it had cycled power three times in quick succession. Guess I should have set that “system restart on power failure” CMOS setting differently.

Anyway, I always thought I was safe having my shit on surge protectors, but when ComEd finally got us back up 3 hours later I discovered that every few minutes the signal to my monitor would disappear and not come back without a reboot. I’d try to do a clean shutdown blindly (Alt-F4, Alt-F4, Alt-F4….) but it didn’t seem to work. Eventually through trial and error I figured out that as long as I was running without the nVidia drivers and using windows default VGA settings my computer would work. I could go clear up to 32-bit color at 1280 x 1024, but my refresh rate sucked stanky ass. Sure acted like a video card problem, and eventually by trying different drivers I was able to get my computer to not boot at all and give me an informative beep code confirming it. It was really annoying having my display suck so badly, but for some reason (oh yeah, I had no money!) I put up with it for a week or two.

So anyway, once I had it budgeted I knew I needed a new video card and a UPS so it wouldn’t happen again. Well, I didn’t feel like waiting for delivery and we all know that Best Buy completely sucks, so hey, perfect opportunity to check out the new Fry’s Electronics in Downers Grove.

Now Fry’s has been around for awhile in California and in the southwest, but I’d heard of them on slashdot and other places. Now they’ve come to Illinois in what I hope is the beginning of the nationwide slaughtering of Best Buy and CompUSA. I hate monopolies as much as the next guy, probably more, but I really hate Best Buy and CompUSA.

Overall I’m pretty impressed. Imagine if Best Buy was bigger, geared more towards computer stuff, had a really good selection, decent prices, and was decorated like a Barnes and Noble. That’s Fry’s, or at least the one in Downers Grove. They seemed to have everything a computer geek could want. It was not nearly as warehousey as I expected. In fact it wasn’t warehousey at all (yes, I said warehousey again…and again!). Think they even had a coffee shop. Kind of a shame, because I imagine without all the fancy architecture and shit they could lower prices, but god forbid a stupid yuppie cock would have to shop without sipping a fucking latte.

As I mentioned, I was on this quest for a video card. A cheap one. I’ve got no illusions of my computer ever being able to run Doom III and I’ve got a Playstation2 for gaming, so as long as it can render Windows apps and porn I’m happy. I found a decent nVidia-based Leadtek card for $50. Looked it up online and found it for $46. Not bad if you consider shipping would’ve been $1.50 minimum. I’m willing to fork over the remaining $2.50 to have it now instead of now-plus-one-week. And you know what else? You can’t get a $50 video card at Best Buy.

The other thing I needed was a UPS (Uninterrupted Power Supply for those lacking the geek gene). Found a decent Belkin one with shutdown software for $35. Same one is available online for $33, but they weigh a ton, so with shipping considered I actually came out ahead on that one. When was the last time you saved money by not shopping online?

So in summary, Fry’s is cool.