my new video card came in the mail the other day. this by itself is not is not unusual nor newsworthy. but what this enables me to do, however, is newsworthy…if you have the incurable techie bug.

i got the [url=http://www.sapphiretech.com/vga/9600-xt.asp]sapphire 9600xt video card[/url]. this card enables dual head display. that coupled with what i’ve already got enables me to do…well, the unthinkable: a three monitor desktop!

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my desktop:

just the sight of it brings previously unimaginable joy to my life. i still have overlapping windows, but this is definitely a step in the right direction. 2 – 1600×1200 desktops plus an addition 1280×1024 desktop. oh dear. it’s just so overwhelming!

the one thing that is a little annoying is that my head has to move now to see the monitors end to end. i guess i have to work on my peripheral vision a little. i guess if i were to have a problem, this would be the ideal problem to have. =P

i was doing some work over the holidays and it’s really nice to be able to keep all my work stuff on one desktop while the rest of my stuff is somewhere else.

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i went snowboarding the other weekend. i guess the thrill of it is lost on me. i’m not really into doing anything crazy anymore for fear of hurting myself. after the shoulder injury i had earlier this year, i am much more reluctant to put myself in high risk situations that may affect my day to day life. it was absolutely horrible when i had to stop playing volleyball and ice my shoulder at work. it was awful when i couldn’t lift my arms up to pick up things. i just don’t want that kind of hardship again.

i fear i am getting old.

but anyway, i went snowboarding and it was still a lot of fun. i got some good runs in and the snow was actually quite fluffy. i think that there may be another trip or two in for me for this season and then i’m out.

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i found them on the cheap and got me some. i bought out the inventory that the store had, it was a shame that they didn’t have more. oh well. they are some NICE poker chips. it definitely makes the ones i have feel pretty flimsy and it makes the plastic set feel even cheaper. i think that i may need to buy a few more from the set to even out the numbers, but i’m pretty happy with them.

it seems that there is only one manufacturer that makes the 11.5 gram poker chips and it seems that they only make a few varieties of it. it’s a shame that there isn’t more variety on the market.

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over the weekend a few friends of mine got together to relive some old memories via a LAN party. for those of you not in the know, a LAN party is when a bunch of people drag their computers over to somebody’s house and then network them together and play games against each other.

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what this entails is people bringing massive amounts of hardware (computer, keyboard, mouse, monitor) over from their homes to my place. it is conveniently at my place so i don’t have to move a thing. =P

so anyway, people came, and we set up the massive network. cables were strewn everywhere. computers were humming, headphones were blasting music, and hard drives were whirling away. it was a nice walk down memory lane. we used to do this all the time. it was a lot of fun back then…still is, a little. but i didn’t get burned out so quickly before.

but it was fun. i think i’ve had my fill of LAN partying for a while now. i think that i may have had the most fun playing tetrinet2. man, it’s been a while since i last played tetris.

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[url=http://www.kitchenetc.com/Products.cfm?sku=000979161]this[/url] has got to be the coolest stuff i’ve ever seen. what is it? gelled fuel. what is that?

it turns out that it is a gelled liquid fuel for fondue sets. what’s even cooler about it is that there are special shipping restrictions for this product. it turns out that due to the nature of the product, it is not legal to ship it by air. so instead it must be shipped ground. i suppose if you buy a billion of these bottles of fuel, it’d be bad if it caught on fire and set the plane on fire.

so instead, you’ll just set a truck on fire. which can’t cause as much damage as a plane. makes sense, i guess. but this gelled fuel is used in place of those little capsules of fuel typically used to heat catered food for a fondue set.

i like some of the warnings on the bottle:
-this product is highlt flammable.
-breathing of vapors may have narcotizing effects

it’s a canadian company, but it was made in switzerland. i wonder how they got it from switzerland to the united states. by boat? probably not.

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i’ve been doing some research recently into poker chips. there apparently are several different grades of poker chips for the discerning poker player. i think it can be broken down into 4 distinct categories.

the first category of chips are the plastic chips. these are probably the most common and the cheapest poker chips you can find. they usually are made out of cheap plastic and can be found as interlocking, stackable chips. they have a very unsatisfying clinking sound when thrown into the pot. the benefit of these chips are that they usually are found very cheaply for about $5 per 100 chips.

the next category of chips are the plastic composite chips. these usually weigh in at about 4 grams or so and are also usually found pretty cheap. though they have a more solid feel to them, they still don’t quite have the right weight that one sees in the casino.

the third category of chips are the 8 gram poker chips, usually found in many game and hobby stores. these chips used to be the closest approximation to casino chips that you could buy on the market. they are usually molded from some composite of materials, clay being one of them. these are pretty decent chips and can usually be found for $15-20 per 100.

but the holy grail of poker chips for the consumer are the 11.5 gram poker chips. these are casino quality and weight poker chips. they usually come in at about $35-50 per 100 and they can be custom stamped or logo’d for more. these are the chips to have the closest weight and feel to casino chips that you can get. simply delicious.

i am thinking about getting some more chips, but i’m not sure which ones to get just yet. i think that i’m leaning towards the 8 gram chips. the 11.5 gram chips look very tempting, but i just don’t think that i can justify spending that much on those chips just yet. it’s not like i’m a hardcore poker player or anything.

it was a completely unexpected surprise. though, i suppose that one cannot have an expected surprise…in fact, one could say that the phrase unexpected surprise is redundant. but then one would realize that we are straying from the point.

and the point is that at 3:06pm my bundle of joy came into my life. she was just too eager to come out and play with her daddy and despite all of the indications that she wasn’t due until next week, she came today.

when i first laid eyes on her, tears of joy were welling up in my eyes. we don’t have a name for her yet, but soon enough i’m sure that something will come. she is, of course, my new 20″ LCD!

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i forgot to mention that my volleyball team on monday advanced past our first two matches but finally got eliminated in playoffs. it was our first season together and i think that we did pretty well. it was fun playing with them and i look forward to the next season. altera had sponsored two teams and we played the other altera-sponsored team and beat them in a very close match. all in all a pretty fun monday. i didn’t play as well as i had wanted, but oh well.

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ann made me some mint chocolate bricks topped with m&m’s the other day. i brought it into the office and started snacking away on them. i ate brick after brick without realizing how much i had eaten.

well, i think that i had eaten way too much because while i was at volleyball, all throughout the first game i felt very jittery and nervous. i was just a wreck. i couldn’t figure out why, but i think it’s because i had a sugar overdose.

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’tis the season to be spending uncontrollably…fa la la la la la la la la.

no, but seriously, it IS a time to go christmas shopping, isn’t it? with the new camera, i got a new card reader and some batteries for it. i love [url=http://www.sterlingtek.com]sterlingtek[/url]. they always have GREAT deals on camera batteries. If you need a digital camera battery, i highly recommend them. prompt, courteous service all the time.

sometimes the camera is just sitting there on my desk and it looks so pretty. what can i say? it just is begging to be used. i’ll have to find some more opportunities to take pictures with it.

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my mom’s birthday is coming up. the last time i saw her last week she was complaining about a potentially partially torn rotator cuff. (is it rotator cup or rotator cuff?) anyway, she was complaining about how heavy the new vacuum is. so i decided that she shouldn’t be doing all that heavy lifting. now, what kind of a son would i be if i were to buy her a vacuum for her birthday? probably not a very good one. BUT, still, i couldn’t resist this little gem. it will make her life easier because she won’t have to vacuum. that kind of a vacuum is ok, right? i don’t know. hopefully she’ll like it. i got her the roomba robovac. i tested it out last night and i have to say that i was pretty impressed with it. the charge time on the batteries take FOREVER though. i think that my dad will have to invest in a few batteries and a quick charger for that thing.

risky business
[url=/images/2003/1209/IMG_0043.jpg][/url]over the weekend, geoff, nelson, mike, and i got together to play risk. we haven’t played in a long, long time and it was fun to be able to get together and play again. it definitely brought back some good memories. there was the usual onslaught of name calling, paranoia, and finger pointing, but at the end of the day it was all good fun. geoff had some very unorthodox strategies that actually proved him to be quite a threat. each of us became a threat at one point and i thought it was a fun round all along. i actually snuck by at the end and lead a surprise attack that won the game. ahh, world domination.

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