I gotta say – today it was a good day…

I gotta say – today it was a good day…

So many updates!

  1. Brutal hours lately – been pulling a good number of 12-18 hour days lately – ugh.  Thank goodness they’ve come to a close.  Great stuff at work – argh – I can’t tell anyone about it.  But I needed a break so…
  2. I went horseback riding on the 4th – ahhh – analog systems rock – especially when they are horses.  Analog controls, force feedback, rumble seat.  Went on a ride on Cannon Beach and it was exactly what I needed.  Got to ride a big beautiful Belgum named Waffle. 🙂
  3. New round of graphics cards that are an actual improvement – nVidia drops the 200 series – which are what I expected the 9xxx series to be – an actual performance improvement over the 8xxx series.  And they do deliever the goods – nearly 2x performance.  Sadly, though, they are a hefty $600 price tag.  However, ATI comes along with their 3800/4800 series at 1/2 (or less) the price – and almost exactly the same performance(!) .  Benchmarks show the $300 ATI 4870 as faster than the nVidia 260 for $600.   nVidia was surely surprised by this – and is now likely going to have to eat some crow and drop prices after having promised it’s fabs a nice profit.  Rumored as early as today.  The profit earnings correction and chipset problems gave nVidia stock a huge one-day 26% spanking on Thursday and a 60% year-to-date drop – OUCH.  The chipset problem was a manufacturing problem, but it must sting to see your stock options go in the tank.  I should I know – I owned some of Intel back in the day. 🙂
    But I picked up a 4850HD this weekend to play with and I found it to be really nice and smooth.  Very rock-solid performance/framerates and no software hickups – even in Vista64.   Not sure if it’s a keeper yet.   But at $200, I could get 2 of these in crossfire mode before I could get a 260. Would love to get one of the 4870’s, but vowed never to do a dual-slot ATI solution again after my x800.   The performance is great -but those fans are just horrifically loud.
  4. Hand-held cel-phones while driving banned in California and Washington – THANK GOD.  This has been WAY too long in coming.  There has never been a legitimate reason to allow this behavior.  Just pull the heck over and talk – is it that hard?  Mythbusters showed driving and talking is as bad as driving legally drunk.  Folks that call me and I can tell they are driving get told to call me back when they’re not driving.  Last thing I want to hear is your death on the other line in a pile of twisted metal.  Com’on socialist republic of Oregon – you can follow suit – ban texting too.  No, just in general – ban it.  I’m tired of spending time with friends/coworkers/people I just met who are constantly fiddling around in their phones – its rude and tells the other person you don’t care about them/you’d would rather be doing something else.
  5. Pending Mt St. Helens climb?  We canceled an earlier climb, but looks like enough snow has melted that we might be able to go.  Plan is to climb up and snowboard down.  Nice!  Now to get back into a little better climbing shape.

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