Well, its been a while sense I updated the spaces deal and all. Just kind of busy and all here and there. I think the last post noting the TLD convesion to the blog is indeed out dated now. I have converted the site back to a function website dedicated to gaming. Thats the way it started and it now has a use: hosting LAN Parties. I have been helping out in organizing them and setting them up for ages, so why not? It gives me something to do and allows me to keep up to date with it...somewhat =P. Belegarth has also been treating me well; fun stuff. I just got done with another PC build of the weekend. The Antec 900 case is nice and all but limited on the space a lot! The case also does not cater to ports that connect at parallel with the motherboard (they sit on the edge of the motherboard....maybe a 90 angle for better describe them?).Despited the space issue and the port restrictions, I got everything crammed in and running. Man, the GTX 200 series are beasts! I wish I had on myself but it would just be a waist of money to upgrade now from my pair of 8800GT's. I will just wait until the DirectX 11 cards come out as everything now seems to be DirectX 10.x. I do have to say the the machine I built (for someone else that is) is an awesome machine. Now, time to get paid (I discounted them as they were a family friend, still have to make money somehow eh?). Well, I will come back to this site sometime again....just don't know when. Peace out my wondering interweberz.

I have converted my main website, www.nationofflames.com, into a blog type site. I may or may not continue to post items here as I have uploaded all of my current posts to the main site.

I recently downloaded the DBZ Burst Limit demo on XBL. I like good fighting games that a fluid and don't have the non-escapable, one constant combo, instant life ending at the start of the match, move. That being noted, the past DBZ fighting games disappoint me. After getting the feel of games like DOA4, I can't stand anything that you can't strike back when you getting pounded by someone who knows all of the moves. I can't speak for it fully, but the demo allowed me to get out of some massive combos to keep the fun fighting rolling. Overall, the game itself (hooked up to a 22in wide screen LCD monitor) looked awesome and and had an anime look to it. I may have to get this game as it looks really good at this time. Will have to wait and see though because impulse buying on what if's can lead me to buying a Two Worlds (biggest disappointment ever!) again.

Grr! Ok...I am working through my WDS problems but every time I have found a solution on the internet, it does not work! I am currently trying to making the install of Windows XP be completely unattended. BUZZ! Wrong answer with WDS. WDS is the latest and greatest, but they pull a major functionality for legacy support. Bah, Microsoft is the king of suck right now. =(

Bagels are the bomb...they are so good they deserve a post!

For the longest time I have wanted to do water cooling. I don't over clock my machines but I am up for reducing the noise that the CPU/CPU/Case generate. I am fine with leaving the north/south-bridge fans where they are and the fan on the hard drive bay is fine for now. The main then I want to ditch is the loud CPU fan and the multiple GPU fans. The case fans can be reduced to 2 to keep a good air flow but all in all, just reducing the noise would be grand. It comes to this point that I am always hesitant in water cooling. I am not worried about liquid getting on my components due to the fact that I know there is water replacment fluids out there that are non-conductive. My worry is maintenance. The adjustable, clear, tubing method that allows you to add multiple blocks to the loop can mean places for failure/leaking. Again, fluid on the components is not my fear. My main fear is the fluid level always dropping. As I have had a problem in the past with my machine almost burning up to the point were it was dead, I do not want any cooling method to fail on me. In this way, I do not want to have to worry about filling it back up or not having the time and to return to a dead machine because it could not cool itself. I have seen closed/sealed loop set ups but I have not seen many of these. I also have seen some bad reviews for the ones out there.... so how can i trust them as well? The seal loop concept is great; no evaporation, no leaking, and no maintenance needed. I will need a better direction on this but I am still interested in water cooling to some degree...bad pun, I know.

I love me so anime! I started to watch Outlaw Star again, thing I will have to follow it up with Trigun and Cowboy Bebop. I have been trying to find Gene Shaft as I only seen a small part of that. Also trying to find Pilot Candidate as I see an episode of that which looked promising. I wonder what other good anime series are out there. Death Note is awesome by the way! KIRA!

OK! What I stated before about CyberpowerPC.com holds so true. This basis is from two orders from them, one completed and one canceled due to the issues in the order process. This will be a rant is some ways so if you wish to get the facts, please bear with me as this might get long. Now when I originally put the first order in, I did not know anything of CyberpowerPC.com other then they were good enough (or had enough cash) to get several ad-pages in Games for Windows magazine. The first order I put in was for a standard laptop for my brother, standard as in the way that they advertised it with no customization at all (he’s not a customization freak like I am....). There was a 3 day shipping offer so that was done as well. Just to give you an idea how much that was, the total came up to around $1010 (laptop was $999). By all means for what the laptop had and guaranteed three day shipping (from California), it was nice. There is another site that I wish I found before CyberpowerPC called Ibuypower. I wish I would have tried them out on round too but now sense the bad experience; I don't think I will have to opportunity. Well down to the nitty gritty stuff again. The laptop I ordered went through their processing steps fairly quick and was at my house by the next week (order was put in on a Friday after some problems with my credit card limits). So…the machine worked like a butte' out of the box; they are doing something right for the time being. It ran fast, it did everything they said it would do, and it was exactly like advertised. This is where things started to go downhill. About 2 weeks after my brother using the laptop, the screen started acting up. Every place on the screen where the black pigment was to be, was a dark pink hue. To make sure, a few reboots were done, battery unseated and reseated, and the display moved from closed to fully opened back to a viewing angle. This all did not work so next we looked through drivers for the video card. It took me 2 days to get a hold of their tech support. Oh, by the way, their site notes their tech support is 24/7. Yeah, I gave up after 2 hours on hold (speaker phone while on my computer...the hold music could be better). So after I finally got a hold of tech support, they directed me to the graphics card manufactures site. It happened to be 3rd party so I couldn't find it until they dug through the laptop component list. You think they would include all the drivers for the past two main Windows OS versions and their variations (32bit and 64 bit for the new CPU's they are using). This was all due to the machine shipping with Windows Vista Home Premium and me putting Windows XP Pro on it a few days later. So the tech support pointed me to a page to try and find the drivers and sent me on my way. If I didn't know what I was doing, I wouldn't have found the drivers as the link the tech support directed me to, was a long list and took 3 additional links to get to the driver download. Way to go useless tech support! So things are no looking so good. The drivers were reinstalled with no luck. Still all of the black is dark pink even during post (which to me noted that this step is before any special display drivers are loaded, so it must be hardware related; their tech support couldn't figure out and thus I got them to just purely get me to the display drivers before I started to get ticked. I was a little better at teching the issues then they were so I figured I would continue with my troubleshooting due to my lack of confidence in them...). After playing with the laptop a little more I finally just closed the laptop, left it sit for a minute and reopened it. BAM! The thing now worked fine. It its working now, don't mess with it anymore right?! Well that what we did. I was not going to open the thing up and check for loose cables just to have something else go wrong. I do not think it would be loose cables as much though as the laptop worked fine after shipping from California and worked fine for two weeks. The laptop was not left out in an area would it could be knocked into and it was safely and gently secured every night. Seeing as the machine was an investment of a grand, I totally understand the care that was put into keeping it nice....so the failure was unacceptable. Seeing as the machine was working fine after that issue and not wanting to go without a machine for some time, the issue was just ignored. Again, this laptop is for my brother so I would like to provide the best service and product for him as that just the way I am. If it was mine, I would be a little less worried and I would just deal with it. So about a week to a week and half later after the display issue; the machine would not boot. The laptop would start up to the post screen and not pass it. The keyboard would not let me enter into the BIOS screen ether because the keyboard would not work or the machine would not function. So I went through the troubleshooting steps of pulling the battery, trying the AC cord without battery, putting th battery back in, and trying the AC cord w/ battery. Nothing! I couldn't boot to CD, could not boot to HDD, could not boot to USB! By all accounts, the machine power on to display the POST screen but was dead! So the fun again comes when trying to call tech support. Most likely, if its not there business hours, your not getting through. Some of the numbers that are listed in documentation disconnect you when you are put on hold which i think is BS. Other numbers, you only get one quick change to leave a VM, then you on hold for eternity. The 24/7 tech support on their site is a lie. You can leave Voice messages but no one ever gets back to you. Emails, that a joke as well. To get any kind of call back, I had to spam the sales agent that helped me with emails and voice messages (this was for the first time I had to use the tech support; I wasn't as lucky the second time around). Sorry guy, you work for a crappy company; good thing you only take orders eh? So finally after calling and emailing a bazillion times (technical term =P) , I got to speak to a person. I told them what happened and they could not offer any more ideas what to do. Before I made the call, I did not checking online to see if other people had this many problems. Well, to keep it short, CyberpowerPC bones quite a few people. If you check out their site, you will only see 4 and 5 star testimonies. They snuff out anything bad that’s said about them within their control. Pop them up on NewEgg.com or TigerDirect.com! 1 egg/start rating most likely. So back to me getting to their tech support… They try to get me to get it fixed or replaced. This does not fly well for me. A $1000 laptop dead within 30 days?! What, are they just going to fix it to keep it alive beyond 45 days and take me outside their 30 day money back guarantee? I think that’s what they do half the time anyways. They don't fix your machine correctly, sent it back and then you’re outside the 30 day stage for full money back, or you’re outside the 45 day stage to the point you can return it for a refund period, or outside a year so your warranty is up. If the issue is reported before the warranty is up and is still an issue that you as the seller have no fixed after the warranty time, you should still be obligated to fix the issue as the problem started under warranty. Oh, let pop the broken machine back into a box, send it back out. The customer will never know and it will cost less as well won’t have to support them anymore....BS! So they couldn't get me to go for a fix, so they tired replacement. WRONG ANSWER! Give me another crap machine so I can go through this all again? Nope! your getting the machine back and I'm getting my cash back there buddy! In the middle of all of this mess for the laptop issue, I placed an order for a desktop. I put everything I wanted in the beast. I was doing reading to see what power supply I would need to make sure I could power it all. For me, I found between 600watts and 650watts would work just fine. But default on the customize button, 600 was an option, but I bumped it to 650 to be covered. So as I said, I get everything in there I wanted. Two Geforce 8800GT, the New AMD Phenom CPU, 4GB of RAM, 500GB of hard drive space, Water cooling, Wireless networking, DVD+-RW, many even a small country. When I checked into the power requirements, I figured this in as well as another hard drive, another DVD drive, 4 more gigs of ram, and a PCI card just encase I upgrade down the road. Well a 650watter was still looking fine so I placed the order. We get through the hassle of my credit card again and the order is placed. A week goes by...checking the order status....still in the warehouse. Hmm; ok... So I call them up and see what is going on. The rep I speak with tells me what I see on the status screen. So I am thinking what the heck. My brother’s machine was put through processing and shipped in one week. It would take me only a couple of hours to slap together a machine and maybe another couple to install the OS and hardware drivers. So I let the rep know this and he says there is nothing they can do. Alright, alright, I will just have to wait right? So we get looking at the order to make sure he is looking at the right one when I ask him about the power supply. He then notes that I should get the 750 to make sure all of mu stuff runs. I'm my mind this should be checked on the site before I get shipped a non-working machine. So I drop some more cash into the thing to upgrade the power. You think that now they whole machine could be compatible and able to run now, that they would build it. NO NO NO! You, my friend, are thinking to logically here. The machine sits in the warehouse for another week. As this time, I have had it. Before all of the CyberpowerPC stuff happened, I was going to order a gateway gaming laptop. They made me wait and wait so that’s why I ordered the desktop. I am not going to wait for months on end to get the machine that I have already paid for. You have my money so get to work! They didn't start to work on it at all despite them not being able to sort out power problems until the customer mentions something! So my other order was canceled. When I got my money back, the same day I placed an order for parts from TigerDirect.com. Next day, noon, the parts were in my hands. Never, and i mean NEVER, buy a machine from CyberpowerPC.com if you can build the machine yourself. I thought that it would be nice for them to do it as I am always busy, but I ended up wasting more time dealing with them then it took to build a machine from scratch. I did the same when I refunded my bothers machine. We are both quite happy now and sense the machines were built, not a single problem! If you trust tard-monkeys to put together you computer, then you’re going to get a tard-money machine. ....Long live Tigerdirect.com! ....Long live Newegg.com!

I have been helping with the set up of a Windows Deployment Server. This is a newer server that boots from the network into a Vista like Pre-Environment in which you then select the OS image you wish to install. Well; as this is Vista based deploying XP there is several issues.Trying to find documentation from Microsoft itself in order to do an unattended install is like trying to find a needle in a haystack. GRRRR!

Well, my internet at home sucks! I have Qwest DSL using their Silver package because I can't go any higher. Qwest has been reliable but I am finding their service to be slow. I don't mind having lower bandwidth but they could at least give me some speed! I am a gamer which likes to play online. Lag really sucks! I was trying to play some Half Life 2 Death Match online the other day and it lagged me all to hell then booted me due to the lag. I know this was not hardware lag as I can max out my settings on single player w/ bots and have no problem what so ever. That is including AI on there that would tax my CPU that would cause some sort of lag. So; it now appears that I am on a search for another ISP that I can get broadband from without having to pay out the rear due to not bundling.

Hmmmm. Well, after doing some checking to back up my lust to buy computer parts, I am finding that getting an additional 4GB of RAM would be kind of useless at this time. As I am running Vista x64, this may help a little bit but other applications will have no use for the extra 4GB of RAM. So....I will not get the RAM.....at this time (thought may come up in the future as I may want to max out my rig if I can). Checking into my CPU cooler deal, I am finding that the temps seem to be find and maybe.....just maybe the MBM5 software is misreading something? I don't know how if I set the setting the same of both machines and they both have the same hardware. The difference in cases and PSU locations should not result in a 30 degree difference....maybe 10...but not 30! So, I may not being getting a new CPU cooler and the closed loop liquid cooling can wait until later. So I guess I am down to another hard drive and maybe possibly some fans. After an over heating problem in the past and the smell of burning electronics, I have been obsessive over having enough air flow in my case to cool a whole room. I have been looking at a cross flow fan for the Cooler Master stacker series of cases. Looks like a nice concept and may help cool the other components on my motherboard down improving overall functionality. Another HDD would be nice to seeing as I am down to 100GB of free space on one of my brand new HDD's. I'm totally a data pack rat. All your data are belonging to meh! Hehehe.

I recently got a new computer with my tax rebate money. It been about 2 months now but I still want to keep adding to it. Currently I am running a Core 2 Quad Q6600 cpu (2.4ghz times 4 cores), 4GB of DDR2 PC6400 RAM (2x2GB sticks), 2 Nvidia Geforce 8800GT (512MB DDR3 RAM/PCIe 16x 2.0), 2x500GB SATAII HDD's, 1000Watt PSU, XFX 680i LT SLI Motherboard, and a Thermaltake MaxOrb CPU cooler. Now I have learned from the MaxOrb cooler which does fit the LGA 775 CPU socket on my motherboard (not much real estate around the socket on the motherboard) but does not perform the best compared to a cheaper one I got my brother. As I am the PC guy in my family, I tend to build my other family members PC when the want new ones and are not quite happy with the prefab ones from Dell/Gateway/HP/Toshiba/Acer/Etc... This is both a blessing and a curse at times for me. Its nice to do some trail and error with their hardware but it also sucks when I find things that work better for less cash I shell out. Back the the MaxOrb deal. The MaxOrb, if you do not know, is a massive aluminum finned Cooler with 3 to 6 heat pipes that run through the fins. The whole set up is the cooler fins are stood up and arranged a circle much like the paddle wheel on old steam boats. In the center of these fins (recessed) is a fan. If in any way the fins are bent during shipping or installation (which I by no means would be hard to do), the fan hits the fins making a annoying ticking/grinding sound. I contacted Thermaltake to see about getting this thing replaced and its loud and annoying and they return the quarry with "...just bend the fins to prevent the contact with the fan..." I thought this was BS as, if I were to break the thing while trying this, they most likely would disregard anything they noted prior to a report that I broke the thing doing something it was not intended to do. So after trail and error, I get the thing working to a degree in which it does not make the annoying sound. I cannot turn the fan RPMs up any more then they are or the evil fan sound of doom will return. If this does not push you away, here is some more "suck." The cooler is massive and has a lot of fins. Yeah, yeah, you said this already; right? Well yes and no. Let me do some comparison for you. This cooler is about as big if not bigger then a pack of 50 blank CD/DVD's in the plastic container. The base of the thing gets to about as small as a 50 cent piece, but as you can guess, there is space requirements for this beast! On another note, you would expect the with the size, amount of fins, and fan arrangement, this thing would do some major cooling...NOT! Now i may be over reacting on this, but my CPU temp sits at or around 33 degrees Fahrenheit (F). My PSU sits over head of my motherboard and has its fan point down at the CPU cooler. I tried to off set this by putting 1 fan in back by the I/O ports, and one on the side of the case over the CPU cooler. This apparently did not work. Here is what I mean. As I noted before, I put together a machine for my brother. Same motherboard, same CPU. This should keep things comparable to match the CPU Cooler performances. With my cooler, I went with a highly recommended thermal grease. With his, I stuck with what was pasted to the thing when it was shipped. His cooler, just to reference, is a Cooler Master Hyper TX CPU Cooler (using the LGA 775 parts in this case). I set up Motherboard Monitor 5 on both his machine and mine (WinXP SP2) with the same settings. Mine shows 33F at idle, his shows 5F.....5! His Cooler was around $30 bucks, and mine was $50. A 30 degree difference and being cheaper...come on; what is wrong with that picture. Here is a couple of things that could help his as well. His CPU cooler is a bunch of fins in a stacked tower arrangement with a fan blowing through them from the side. The heat pipes go from the CPU up through the fins much like the heat pipes on the MaxOrb, just the fins are set up totally different. There is a plastic shroud around the unit which directs the air flow one way through it. Put fans on in a different path other then its own air flow will not help due to the shroud. In his set up, there is no additional fans helping his cooler out. His PSU is on the bottom of his case with the fan facing down towards a vent at the bottom of the case. This seems like a way to vent them majority of the hot air it makes out but it would also prompt the hot air it doesn't push out, raising up straight in the path of the CPU. Both of our cases have plenty of air flow so air getting trapped would not be the case. His CPU cooler does not have an adjustable fine like mine but his operates so silently, you don't know its there...and again...5F at idle. I put in some rebates to get some cash back from my PC purchase. I am tempted to buy more parts that I do not need. The CPU cooler being a disappointment based on the info just given was going to be the first thing I replaced. After doing some reading, a lot of people have noted their CPU sits at 30F to 40F idle as well with some high end air coolers as well. This then made me thing what else I could get. My next thought was RAM. Another 4GB of RAM would be nice. My motherboard has 4 slots and I am only using 2 at this time. I have "upgraded" sent the CPU cooler tests to Vista 64bit so it will read all of my current RAM. 8GB of RAM sounds nice. After this idea got firmly set in my head, two more popped in. Maybe a sealed loop liquid CPU cooler to reduce over all sound in my case and overall cooler my CPU better. The sealed loop is maintenance free but is not upgradeable. The other idea was get another 500GB of Hard drive space. I know it is not needed, but I am a data pack rat. I make images of my Cd's I get and use the all from hard disk for the fear that I will lose the physical copy if I keep moving it around. This fear came true recently when my wife moved some of my software in which I am no longer able to find it. This software was worth around $700 (I got it at a previous job due to a MS partnership for30 dollars) in which cannot be purchase easily again. The space would be used in the future but is not needed now. So the question is posed, what should I get or should I save the money? 8GB of RAM sounds good to me, so does 1.5TB of storage, better yet, a silent PC using liquid cooling.... Urgh...I WANT IT ALL but I only have around $120 coming back from the PC component rebates. The RAM is around $100 and well as the 500GB HDD. The CPU cooler kit would run around $120 to get a decent sealed loop kit (CPU only/non-upgradeable) that wont break in 5 minutes. Saving the cash would be good but it is hard to control my lust over buying computer parts. I will just have to wait and see in the coming weeks to see if there is any good sales that I can get maybe a new CPU cooler AND the RAM. It was a major disappointment to see my $50 CPU cooler was beat by a $30 cooler. Oh well, that is my lose at trail and error. Oh, by the way, the cooler is older then 30 days so the seller wont take it back and Thermaltake only replaces the coolers with the same model so I'm kind of stuck with what I got.

Well it’s another day folks. I felt like getting my MSN space back in working order to some degree. It still sucks that I can claim my public nickname back. In the past I have had other email addresses that I have used and was known by. I change my nickname on that first then went from there to create the email account. Well I went to change the nickname to something else so I could claim it on the email address for it but...that didn't work as planned. Enough about that though. I got to play some GTA IV the other day. It’s a blast! The game mechanics haven’t changed much with the same mayhem and carnage like GTA3 and on. The multiplayer mode is nice; but my internet connection sucks and lag is quite present. I would love to see a superhero-ish type game the mixes Crackdown and GTA. As in GTA you play the guy that gets in trouble all of the time in which the cops come after you and in Crack down, all the bad guys want to kill you as you’re the cop. Maybe this could be an update for GTA IV, like say, cops vs. robbers’ mode or something. It would be an interesting dynamic and would be fun all the same. Well off to work I go, will see about doing updates every now and again. Guess I could always use the RSS feature on this blog module and link it to my website that I have neglected.