I'm lying in bed typing this with my wireless keyboard and mouse listening to O&A.

My "old" computer bit the dust. It was less than a year old. What a waste of money. I think either (or a combination of) lack of power and excessive heat killed it. It all started with my monitor going to sleep and the PC freezing and random times. This problem occurred off and on for awhile, seemingly fixing itself at times. Then I couldn't play GTA4 for more than 15 minutes without the computer dying. I thought this was due to my video card lacking power. I bought a new PSU, but this didn't change anything. I then bought a new, very powerful graphics card, but to no avail. The PC started to freeze at random times. I thought the cpu was too hot, so I bought a new heat sink, but this made no difference. If I left both fans of the heatsink plugged in, or my IDE hard drive, the PC would freeze almost immediately. I put up with the freezing for months, because it wasn't that common. Sometimes it would go a few hours, other times a week, before it would freeze. There wasn't much rhyme or reason to it, except it happened more frequently when I used VMWARE. In a last ditch effort to stop the freezing, without spending anymore money, I used a paper clip and some electric tape to hook up two PSUs to the PC. This looked like shit, especially with the case all town apart to try and keep the temperatures down, although it was constantly too high, but seemed to work for a couple days. When I woke up a couple nights ago, the computer was dead and wouldn't turn on. After switching out on of the PSUs, I smelled smoke coming from the CPU.

Because the lugnuts that attach the heatsink to the mobo are stripped, the heatsink, cpu, and mobo are stuck together. Additionally, I can't really trust any of these parts, as they have been nothing but problems for months. So I broke down and bought new everything. New mobo, cpu, ram, case, heatsink, and fans. It cost me about $800. I used my dvdrw drive, hard drives, and graphic cards for the new PC, as I fairly sure those weren't the problem.

The PC took about 6 hours to build, and ultimately didn't work. The mobo I bought took about 3 minutes to start up, and windows wouldn't load. I was going to go ahead and begrudgingly reformat, but my laptop wouldn't burn a live cd, so I could get to my Windows 7 installation files on my hard drive, and the mobo wouldn't boot from my usb thumbstick. I was getting pretty frustrated. Later the mobo stopped detecting my SATA drives altogether, and I was kinda relieved as I was forced to take back the peice of shit. I got a new mobo, and plugged everything in. The new case makes replacing and fixing hardware much easier. I started the PC up and Windows loaded with no problems. That's the great thing about Windows 7, it detects all your hardware and installs all the drivers automatically. So without reformatting, or losing anything, my computer booted back to the way it was. Formatting would have really been a hassle, as my desktop is highly customized, and nearly every program I use is skinned. Although I make auto backups every week, this would have been useless if the computer required a fresh install. I am thankful that was not the case.

That's the great thing about Windows 7. I have 4 monitors and getting them all to work in Windows XP took hours of troubleshooting crashes/BSODs. I had to take both cards back to the store so I could try my luck with two others. This summer I installed Windows 7 on a trial basis. To my great surprise, all 4 of my monitors sprang to life half way through the installation. I haven't touched XP since then.

Right now I'm staying at the luxurious Ten Flag Inn, located in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Although there was a storm recently, the massive damage is mostly due to neglect. The other businesses in the area were hit just as hard, and none of them look anything like this. The Ten Flags is a wreck due to an absolute lack of maintenance, not a hurricane.

This is our "suite." Although it's a little hard to see, the bed on the right side is completely broken, and leaning heavily.

Who would have ever thought a designer bed frame like this would break?




We got the no fringe suite, free of such frivolous amenities as vents and smoke alarms.

Our floor, aka 2 patches of carpet laid near each other. We named the cockroach roaming around "Ike."




The roof. At least if they ever replace it they will save money on the removal.

My friends paid for a 2 bed room, but since 90% of the rooms in the hotel are unlivable and unavailable for rental, the hotel only had one 2 bed room left, and for some reason it contained only 1 bed. The next morning they brought in another bed. This is a picture of the back of the mattress, I didn't get a pic of the front, but it was covered in horrific stains.




Our bathroom door with no lock.




Last night I heard gun shots about midnight, then again at 3:30am. I wasn't too surprised. When we first arrived firemen had to come to pull some crackhead out of his room. A few minutes later police chased a woman through the parking lot and onto the highway.

More than likely I won't vote anyway, but I took this quiz for the hell of it. I don't think Chris Dodd is even running anymore.

64% Chris Dodd
63% Rudy Giuliani
60% Bill Richardson
59% Hillary Clinton
58% Barack Obama
57% Joe Biden
57% John McCain
57% Mitt Romney
55% John Edwards
55% Ron Paul
51% Dennis Kucinich
48% Mike Gravel
47% Mike Huckabee
46% Fred Thompson
43% Tom Tancredo

2008 Presidential Candidate Matching QuizI