Author: Paul Tomblin

Moved to tears

I’m currently listening to my iPod, specifically the Bulgarian Women’s Choir, World Tour ’93. Right now, the song is called “Polegnala E Toudora”, and for some reason it’s just moving the hell out of me. It’s so beautiful, I can’t stand it. I’d almost call it “Unearthly”, but Anna Russell didn’t seem to consider that a compliment in her “Album?”. So I guess I’ll call it “ethereal”. The other CD I have of this music is equally moving and beautiful.

Side note to the RIAA: I bought these two CDs because somebody sent me a couple of MP3s and I liked it so much that I had to own it. In my case at least, music sharing drove more music sales. So put that in your lawsuits and smoke it.

Congratulate me

Somehow, against all the odds, I managed to avoid killing my father last night. You see, he was discussing a friend of Liane’s who was expelled from school for dealing drugs, and he said, and I quote “The parents must have known. There is no way a kid could be doing that without the parents knowing.” And somehow, somewhere, I found the strength to not leap up, wrap my hands around his throat, and squeeze until he was dead while yelling “Like the way you knew that my brother was dealing drugs, using drugs, physically and mentally torturing me, and sexually abusing me for all those years while you didn’t do a fucking thing to protect me? You mean like that?”

So I think I deserve some congratulations.

Incompetent sales people

You know, FrozenCPU.com has one, and only one purpose in life – to sell cooling (fans, heatsinks, water cooling) and customization (case mods, LEDs, window kits) supplies to people with high performance computers, specficially Pentium4/Athlon/Itanic/Sledgehammer systems. So you’d think that the staff would make it their business to know a few things about cooling Pentium 4 and Athlon processors.

I went there today (and it’s a bit of a drive, about 20 minutes each way) to pick up some cooling supplies.

One of the more important things I needed was heatsinks and cooling fans for my dual AthlonMP1800+ computer, my main server which I’ve ranted about several times. When I told the salesguy (and since they’ve got such a small staff, I assume he’s probably one of the two prinicples in the organization) what I needed, he asked if it was a 603 or a 604 processor. I’d never heard of that, so I said I didn’t know. I thought all Althlons were basically standard Socket 7 processors, but I think I remember something about “Palamino” and “Thunderbird” cores although I could be wrong about that. I thought “604” meant the pre-G3 PowerPC chip. I tell him I’ll find out and come back on Monday.

So here it is, 6 hours later, and I’m finally at my parents place in Oshawa where I can finally look at /proc/cpuinfo on my computer, and it doesn’t say anything about this 603/604 business. So I do a quick google, and you know what I find? 603/604 are sockets for the Intel Xeon chips, not Athlons. I didn’t know that, because I have no exposure to Xeon chips, having all of my Linux and Windows boxes running AthlonXPs, AthlonMPs and Durons. But it’s not my business to know what heat sink goes with which processor, it was this guy’s. And he failed miserably.

I suppose if a wasted 40 minutes in the car listening to Al Franken reading “Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them” is the worst thing that happens in a day, then it’s been a pretty ok day, but I’m still peeved.