when Ritsuko times out

Note: nothing here applies to used computers/RISC workstations. In those cases, get the best you can right from the start, because upgrading will always be more expensive.

So, it’s been 7 years since my last PC (Athlon XP 1800+, Geforce 4 Ti4200-> Radeon 9500 Pro). While messing around the case, I managed to strip the wires off the power switch, and they’re pretty hard to fit back on without solder to hold them in place, so right now it’s running barebones and I can see the dust bunnies flying around inside my case.

Understandably, I’m pretty excited when my parents said they would partially finance my new build:
AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition
Asus M4A89GTD Pro/USB3
4GB DDR3-1333 RAM (doesn’t matter which)
1TB hard drive (preferably Western Digital Caviar Black, because I like their hard drive diagnosis tool, Samsung’s only runs from DOS)
Seasonic S12-II Bronze 520W PSU
And that’s all. The video card (I’m thinking of a GTX 460, although it’s foolhardy to buy so soon when the Radeon 6×00 series is around the corner) will have to come separately, but that’s what the integrated graphics on the motherboard is for – to tide me over until then. The SSD will definitely have to come out of my own pocket. The 2x4GB RAM modules will also have to come out of my own pocket. So will the OCZ Revodrive PCIe SSD…

But I digress. The point of this post is to demonstrate the different strategy while building a computer this time around. This time, I’m aiming for continuous upgrades, not buying the best there is at a particular time and holding out for a couple of years. Because I did that with my Athlon XP, and look what happened, nobody bothered with DirectX 8 and went on to DirectX 9, leaving my Geforce 4 out in the cold. Since the CPU is faster than anything else I have at the moment, I don’t play games as much as I used to, and it is well known that hard drives are always the slowest component of the computer, I’ve planned out the future upgrades based on memory/SSDs. In decreasing order of speed, here are the upgrades that will make my system feel faster:

Rank 0: 4GB DDR3->12-16GB DDR3
More RAM is always good, especially when you want RAMdisks. With this, VMWare Workstation should never slow down my system when I’m compiling something in Gentoo. I’d like a 890FX board for the IOMMU support, really, but I wouldn’t dare run ESXi on my main system anyway.

Rank 1: OCZ Revodrive PCIe SSD
Sidesteps the 300MB/s SATA limit by using a PCIex4 connection. Capable of about 500MB/s sequential read/write, and thanks to its dual Sandforce controllers in RAID 0, random read/write performance is double that of OCZ’s Vertex 2. With this, I might not need a RAMdisk after all. And if I ever need to wipe the data off it for some reason, 500MB/s to my Phenom II X4 for a quick 7zip compress and then it’s streamed off to my 1TB main hard drive. Incredibly fast.

Rank 2: OCZ Vertex 2 SATA2 SSD
Cheap, and fits in one of my many many many hard drive bays. I’ll get this before the Revodrive and see how much difference it makes. Although the SB850 supports SATA 6Gb/s drives, such SSDs are still prohibitively expensive.

So now before the hard disk, I have about 2-3 choices for storage of thousands of small files (like in a Visual Studio project) that require lightning fast access. For instance, compiling a Visual Studio project in the university is limited to 50% on both cores of a Pentium D 2.8GHz, because the hard drive is limiting it (I don’t know if Visual Studio has a -pipe option). Then I’ll put a Phenom II X6 1090T and watch it scream. Or maybe AMD’s Bulldozer will really come out for Socket AM3 – which would be the best case scenario. But really, I think even a Phenom II X4 should be enough for me at this point.

With regards to GPU upgrades, the strategy of buying lots of cheap GPUs to keep pace with game requirements as opposed to buying a really expensive awesome GPU and then sitting on it for a few years also works out. A Radeon HD 5770 now, a GTX 460 later… maybe even a Radeon HD 6800 now that I’ve decided on an ATX build after all… it all makes sense, as long as you have a stable source of income.

The question now is how much of an upgrade path does your computer have before your motherboard starts to limit it all? Because the motherboard is the heart of the computer. Sure, you can replace it with another. But with that comes a new layout, new numbers of PCIe slots of differing widths, a different number of SATA ports. I’ve made a decision to splurge on the motherboard this time. It’s the most important component after all. Those lucky bastards who’ve had a new computer since the AM2 days can still run the Phenom II X6 in their boards with the appropriate BIOS update. There are rumblings to say that Bulldozer requires an AM3+ after all… oh well. I’ve waited for a few years already, why torture myself more?

Of all places, I found this at gg’s blog. The twitter that it refers to says something about a “gan”, sounds like the liver to me. Kon directed Perfect Blue (fucking awesome), Millenium Actress (almost as awesome), Magnetic Rose (psych-awesome), Tokyo Godfathers (was ok), Paprika (totally fucked up), and some others which I haven’t watched.

I will miss him.

This is what happens to you when you buzz all night in my ear and land on parts of my body, and prior to that fuck around by showing up in front of my friends right after I say “there is no fly in my room”. This is also what happens when you don’t kindly take the open window “get the fuck out” invitation, which I left open all night in the hopes that I wouldn’t have to get up. Which I didn’t, because you kept me up all night, along with the trucks outside the window. You must have really liked it in my room.

Soon enough, annoyance at not being able to sleep transformed into the greatest caffeine shot ever of hate. I’ll have you know I derived great pleasure watching you twitch and twirl in the boiling water. I saw you cocking your wings too – what a joke, think you can fly your way out of this one? And imagine my joy when I found you – having a little nap of your own, after keeping me awake all night – on the motherfucking white porcelain basin. If you pull this on me again in the next life, I’ll hit you more gently so you can enjoy your next bath in hydrochloric acid.

I'd be freaked too if a guy asked permission to kiss me

The latest episode of Amagami SS, which I have been following since its introduction because I empathize with the male protagonist, has shown just how far the men, or should I say males of Japan have regressed.

Coincidentally, I no longer empathize with the protagonist.

You see, there was a back of the knee kissing scene. And I might have watched it and said “wow maybe I should try that” if he hadn’t begged and pleaded for it, and compared himself to a fucking dog. As a result, I facepalmed through the entire scene and I don’t remember a thing. I’m even ill-disposed to watch that scene again because it might just turn me into as big of a wuss as he was.

Then to top matters off, Morishima-senpai has never heard of playing hard to get. I mean, it’s the 3rd episode in. You might think that knee kissing might come later, and of course, every girl wants to make it publicly known that she is your underling whom you must feed by hand. In the 3rd episode.

No, I mustn’t get my hopes up. As Divine at Random Curiosity said, this must be why 3D girls are declining in popularity in Japan. I gotta get myself there and get some of that poon before the “males” of Japan wake up and realize that relying on anime fantasies is bad.

It arrived in FedEx’s Extremely Urgent packaging. I’m quite pleased to see someone take my internet orders seriously for a change! Now let’s get this thing fired up and play some Borderlands…

EDIT: Didn’t work. I suspect my laptop’s Expresscard slot isn’t actually connected to anything.