So the ol' 1.6 Athlon setup finally choked. Hard to say what it was, I've failed to diagnose the problem hardware having independently swapped everything out. I'll revisit when I'm setting the box up as a terminal in the garage.

The new stuff:

• ASUS M3N78 Pro mobo. $100. Supports all the nice things, particularly sli and 1066 ram.
• AMD Phenom X3 2.3. $110. Three core, their second tier.
• PNY GeForce 9800GT. $160. Listed for a whole lot more. The gig of video memory should help with photo editing.

Of course, Fry's gave me the X3 2.1 and I didn't realize it until they'd closed. I had to stop by the following day and recover the 200,000,000 hz they owed me.

The near-term purchases include a sata disk, another two cheap gigs of ram, and maybe a new display.

And, well, I'm borrowing Curt's monitor, the power supply is sitting on the case, and there are boards sprawled about my desk area. But at least everything is functional.

The hiatus is explained, now rewind.


Thanksgiving was good. The new house accommodates well.


I snagged Madden '09 for entertainment purposes. My dad picked it right up and Jon wouldn't be separated from the game, save for by real football. There's not much to say about it - being an EA franchise - except it's generally enjoyable, graphically unimpressive, and Cris Collinsworth follows Madden's act very closely.


Taboo was a riot, particularly the last round where Mom, Connie, and I netted several points from Mark, Jon, and Erik.



The hallway floor went in fine. 'How did you overcome the itis?', you might ask. Well I peered in the fridge and made a glorious connection:

• Red Bull
• Orange juiceIced and stirred together, pure genius. It's like Sunny D with stimulants.

The stairs are the only remaing hardwood to be done. You've come a long way, baby. The constructon tiredom led to my second genius (derived re-)invention: post-Thanksgiving pizza.

• A fresh pizza from Round Table: the canvas.
• Leftover turkey piled on top.
• Mashed potatoes piled on top.

Delightful.

Thanksgiving weekend also saw d'Chris's d'Brickapult claw its way from the grave to a winning record and fourth seed in the Medieval Gridiron playoffs. Similarly, Santos surmounted the impossible and overcame a large point differential to knock James out of contention. It's been a white knuckle end to a unimpressive season.

This weekend I'm up against Potats' team, which is predicted to beat mine by 25 points even after his tight end netted zero on Thursday.

Sunday also featured the long-awaited return to the water. It was pretty good-sized, but rides were characterized by straight drop-bottom turn-close, so not exactly elegant. It's phenomenal how life on land maintains absolutely zero of the muscles required for paddling.

A few quotables:

Schooled three little college guys. They seemed not happy to lose to a girl.

Go Raiders! ... We're horrible. Marty! Marty! Marty!

I heard you put Rob and Dave against the glass.

I am ridiculously addicted to yr blog. Will you please update it more often?

Epilogue:
I'm a firm believer in giving the people what they want, so I'll break you off one more piece of culinary revelation.

• Sirloin burger with ample Dorchestershire sauce. You probably don't have that, so you can substitute Worchestershire sauce instead.
• Leftover turkey.
• Fried onions.
• Sourdough.

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