That’s it. I purchased the parts to assemble a new computer.

This past weekend I’ve played both Battlefield 2142 and the new STALKER beta. In both cases, I had issues getting my computer to handle the games without trouble.

In the case of Battlefield 2142, there is a memory leak with that game on my computer. There is no way I can play through an entire round without lagging out and crashing my computer. It’s so frustrating to have to reboot every 20 minutes while playing that game. Perhaps this could be solved with a reformat of the drives, but that won’t solve the slow loading times. Yup, I tested the slow loading issue on an older computer of mine. That older computer ran faster than this one. I think this is an issue of trying to run a game on a single, slower core of a dual core processor.

In the case of STALKER, I couldn’t play the game without adjust all the video settings to their lowest possible settings. If this is what I can expect of all games coming out this year, then I really need to upgrade to get past all this trouble.

So what did I order?

• Thermaltake Black Armor Full-Tower ATX Case
• Zalman CNPS9500 LED CPU Cooler
• Western Digital / Caviar SE 16 / 250GB / 7200 / 16MB / SATA-300 (quantity 2)
• Corsair Dual Channel TWINX 2048MB PC6400 DDR2 800MHz Memory
• OCZ / GameXStream / 700-Watt / ATX / 120mm Fan / SATA Ready / SLI Ready / EPS / Active PFC / Power Supply
• Intel Pentium D 945 3.4GHz / 4MB Cache / 800MHz FSB / Dual-Core
• Asus Striker Extreme NVIDIA Socket 775 ATX Motherboard
• BFG GeForce 8800 GTS OC / 640MB GDDR3 / SLI (quantity 2)

The only things I am moving over from the old computer are:

• Soundblaster Audigy 2
• My external audio mixing board with studio headphones/microphone
• Sony DVD RW DRU-830A
• Logitech ergonomic wireless keyboard
• Razor mouse
• JBL 3 channel speakers

Two are the parts are on back order, but for now I expect everything to be shipped and setup by March 9th.

Last year I got a Motorola Q phone. I love the ability to carry around my contacts and calendar wherever I go. Plus, it all ties into my email client which is something I use daily anyway. The problem is that I was stuck with having to use Microsoft Outlook.

I can’t stand Outlook. I think it uses too many resources. I can’t view the source code of my emails without a hack. Certain attachments come in-line of the email rather than attached to it. At least with Mozilla Thunderbird, I can  tune these issues with greater precision. Only, I can’t synchronize all this data with my phone…. or at least I couldn’t.

The magic formula for syncing those fancy phones out there with Thunderbird is as follows:

• Assuming you are starting with an Outlook setup, download and install Thunderbird.
• While downloading, clean up your Outlook folders. Delete old emails, tidy up your sent folder, etc.
• Now that Thunderbird is installed, get the wizard going (or find this in Tools) and import your existing contacts and emails from Outlook. Now, this is going to take a while… a really long while. I don’t know why, but it will take 20 minutes to 1 hour to convert your Outlook emails and import them into Thunderbird. If you don’t care about your old emails, then you’re lucky and can skip this step.
• Since you’ve been synchronizing your phone with Outlook, all your contacts and everything are there and don’t need to be converted.
• As for your email accounts, you can import them, but I prefer to set them up manually so I know the settings are just right.
• Now, to make the magic of syncing work, download and install BirdieSync. This program will allow you to use MS Active Sync to get all your data matched up between your phone and computer.
• This will also install an extension in Thunderbird which will assist in the sync process. Note that there will be a lot of pluging and unpluging of your phone during this process because each step needs to have your phone reconnected to Active Sync. (hey, this is an outline and not another For Dummies Book)
• But what about the calendar program? Well, you have two choices for Thunderbird. There is Sunbird which is a stand-alone calendar program. But since I like using Thunderbird, I will install Lightning which integrates with Thunderbird as an extension.
• With all that set, you can now sync up and be happy.

Well, the happy part will perhaps be detailed more in another post. Especially if this turns out to have all been for naught.

I started working on another website this weekend. I have an idea that I don’t want to detail here, but let’s just say it’s related to MODSonline.com.
So, as I stated above, I started working on the site. I installed the CMS software for managing the site. I created a new page banner and decided on the the colors for the site. Then I started programming the new CMS modules for the features that are to make this site special.

I got this far and began to think, “Is this a new site or an extension of the existing site?” File uploading will be involved and I would end up with two of every game file that’s already on MODSonline. That doesn’t make too much sense… which leads me to wonder if I should just share the files. Then, if that’s the case, why not just share the entire database. I could make this look like a separate site, but it really wouldn’t be all that separate in the end.
Perhaps a beer will clear this up. lol. I am sure you’re now just as confused as I am.

Some you may not know, but I am a part-time accountant. I handle personal income tax returns during what is known as “tax season”. That means from January 20th to April 15th, I have a second full-time job. Note that this doesn’t include what I consider a part-time job of working on MODSonline.com.

Now, what’s interesting about this time of year is that I also become more forgetful. It must be the added stress of all the work, but for some reason, I have a more difficult time remembering things during tax season. So, I apologize if I forget something that I should have remembered.

In job number one (taxes are job number two), I recently got more to do. Normally, my job consists of programming websites and occasionally dealing with design issues… also with websites. However, my company also does 3D modeling and animation. Plus, within the last few months, we started a game development company (more on that some time in the future… maybe). Well, this game development job just put me in charge of building 3 new levels for a game. Yeah… cool, but more work. Website programming is full-time all by itself. lol.

One day I picture myself living on the opposite coast (California) and  working solely on game development. Laugh if you want… but it will happen one day. And it will happen on my terms (I won’t settle for some job in an established game company doing repetitive work for someone I don’t like).
You know, this kind of reminds me of when I had those books to write. I had 3 1/2 jobs for those 14 or so months. Whew… that was a lot of work. hehe.

Oh… I should write about what I want to do after tax season. Hopefully I remember to do that. I got plans.