May 27th, 2010
First of all, I smoked a pack a day for 4 years. I picked up my first e-cigarette more than a year ago, I dropped it and started smoking again for a year. Then I picked up the e-cigarette again. I stayed with them for 3 months, and I still use it daily, a lot more than snus. (currently, anyway)
A number of things point to e-cigarettes being relatively safe (however there needs to be more research done) and I have used them for months, guess what? My lungs have cleared up, I can finally breathe again. I feel good, generally.
I’ve heard about snus being a pretty healthy alternative to cigarettes as well, and some people combining it with e-cigarettes to finally “lay down” cigarettes completely. One day I had no batteries for my e-cigarette and I was out and about, so instead of buying a pack of cigarettes (which would’ve broke my 3 month long cigarette free streak) I opted to pick up some camel snus. I felt something familiar, a “good feeling” not like when I vape on my ecig to kill withdrawal, that’s a completely different feeling. Then I remembered that there are MAOI’s in tobacco, and that’s…
Tags: addiction, cigarettes, E-Cigarettes, tobacco
Posted in Insanity | No Comments »
May 24th, 2010
I picked up another monitor for productivity reasons – but I already had a 1680X1050 (22″) & 1920X1200 (24″) screen. I’ve picked up different monitors over the years and never bought them as sets. The 3rd monitor is e-IPS 1920×1080 (23″) – because I knew I wanted to start moving to IPS technology. The other 2 are obviously TN panels.
While doing all this, EyeFinity was not the priority. The priority was more screen space to work with. However, since I had the whole setup basically, why not mess with EyeFinity?
I had to set all of them at 1680X1050 since that’s the lowest resolution out of the bunch. That gives me 5040X1050 – which looks horrible out of games. I was pretty much expecting everything to be horrible since like I said, all 3 are different monitors, and the LG screen has these horridly big bezels. So, by far not the best setup for something like EyeFinity.
After getting in game however, everything looks good. I’m shocked. The bezels don’t bother me - I’m shocked. I was able to get the other 2 to line up with my 24″ – I’m shocked. My games are more immersive and I’m enjoying myself a…
Tags: ATI, Graphics Cards, review, Triple Monitors, Video Cards
Posted in Technology Reviews/Guides | No Comments »
May 13th, 2010
I picked up some cheap Kingston V Series 64GB SSD from NewEgg the other day because they seem to be all the rage lately. Not just that, but I am performing system wide upgrades, started with the chair, but my final setup is coming close now.
Anyway, I’m not going to show you a bunch of benchmarks because I’m sure you already know SSDs are fast, depending on which one you get they may be blazing fast. What you may not know is how they change the feel of the overall system. Boot time is cut in half, roughly, but I didn’t really care about that because I don’t even turn off my PC all that often.
What does surprise me is that applications overall feel more responsive! Any application you put on the SSD for general use pops open faster and feels better in the interface. Not sure why they feel better while already opened, but I have separate windows + apps on the HDD and SSD and I compared how they functioned, the SSD wins hands down. Probably because the program still accesses the hard drive on and off while in use.
Storage: if this is an issue for you (like…
Tags: hard drives, hdd, solid state drive, ssd
Posted in General Tech | No Comments »
May 9th, 2010
My old chip was a Q6600. Why was I upgrading at all you may ask? Well, my Q6600 could only hit about 3.2GHz, I wanted some more power plus the extra cores is a nice touch. Generally speaking, the Phenom II X6 is close to the performance clock for clock of my old Q6600. I also snagged a deal on frys.com where the processor + motherboard was only $260. I combo’d that with $80 DDR3 Corsair XMS3 ram (after rebate) from tigerdirect, and picked up a H50 cooler at retail price from newegg. ($80) I also intend to sell my old parts on eBay in the near future to help recoup some cost.
specs:
GA-890GPA-UD3H
4GB Corsair XMS3 DDR3 1333
Corsair HX520w PSU (If you don’t think this is enough.. I’ve done the calculations and even with the processor at 4GHz at max I’ll hit 480w or so, with everything fully loaded, 100%. Corsair PSU’s are slightly under rated, and will deliver 520W continuously without issue. I don’t intend to keep my CPU at 4GHz though so there really is no issue, or “pushing” the limits.)
1055T (stepping: CCBBE CB 1015BPMW)
ATi Radeon HD5850
Corsair H50
1x 320GB 72k drive
1x 500GB 72k drive
1X 1TB 72k drive
Overall, pretty cheap…
Tags: 1055T, computer, overclock
Posted in Technology Reviews/Guides | 2 Comments »
