Wednesday, January 02, 2008

Blogapalooza 2008

Happy New Year to all readers and visitors to the blog. I'll be back to my irregular rantings in future posts.

Establishing what seems to be a New Year's tradition, the mad angel and I both came down with a nasty case of the flu and sinus infections again this Holiday Season, and we upgraded another computer. The mad angel felt that, after it's many years of faithful service, my computer should join the 21st Century and thus as my Christmas gift.

Before (cutting Edge 2001-ish But Now Kinda' Crusty Technology)
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  • AMD Athlon 1.4 GHz
  • 768 MB RAM
  • Abit Motherboard
  • GeForce FX 5700 AGP / 256MB
  • 200 GB EDIE Hard Drive
  • 400 Watt Power Supply
After (Bright Shiny New 2007 Technology)
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As you might imagine, I noticed some improvement in performance. A good two word summary would be Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww Yeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaah. My thanks to the mad angel for an outstanding gift.

This also drove me to downloaded the trial version of Lord of the Rings Online at the recommendation of Jar(egg)head. Mmmmmmm sweet graphics. Going to slog through the training missions and then set off to Rivendell. The sites and journey are supposed to be very faithful to Tolkein's books so I'm very much looking forward to it. My own "There and Back Again" if you will, or I suppose in my case more like "Halfway There and Hopefully Back Again Without Dying Too Frequently." Oh the fun we could have had back in our D&D days with technology like this.


Received the new CD by Devil Doll for Christmas. A little different for the "Queen of Pain" CD, but still the same Doll. I very much recommend checking her out if you like the retro-punk of Social Distortion and rockabilly styles of the Stray Cats with a twist of the Dresden Dolls and a dash of Betty Paige for looks. Can't find her on iTunes but you can take a listen on her site. She's going to be performing in Austin in February so me and the mad angel are planning a day off and a trip up to see her.


For New Years Eve dinner we went to Mark's American Cuisine. A really cool little place housed in a renovated 1920's church on Westheimer in the Neartown District. Very ritzy, small, with a very "Haute cuisine" menu with dinner served in 4 courses over a period of 2 hours. All prepared by an experienced Master chef. Not somewhere I would go on a regular basis since big pieces of burned dead animal flesh is more my style, but it's perfect for an intimate and relaxed special occasion type dinner. If you're craving big hunks red meat, stay away. If you're starving and / or in a hurry, stay away.


All in all, a good way to end the year...minus the excess mucus. ACK!

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