Day 5: Favorite female singer

Kay, I lied. Favorite (gender) singer is not that hard to identify. I just couldn't think of a male singer. On the female side, however, I cannot imagine a more favorite-esque woman bard than SJ Tucker.

Her website streams all of her stuff. Go there.

http://music.skinnywhitechick.com/album/mischief

PS3 Shenanigans Pt. 1

So, the Playstation 3, bane of my time spent best elsewhere, and home theater champion, has crapped out on me, again. This is actually the third time THIS system has died on me (I got a replacement about six months ago when my first one died.).

Since Sony refuses to replace it for free, I am left with little choice but to fix it on me own. And I have done so twice now. The yellow light of death is a symptom of a cracked solder on the Cell processor. It's a microscopic crack due to either over heating, or uneven heating. To fix it, you heat up the processor to about 700 degrees F and it melts and reforms, then solidifies as it cools, allowing the proper connections to be made and maintained.

That is, unless your heatsink has two gouges in it from faulty manufacturing. Like mine.

The original heatsink will repeatedly cause this problem for me no matter how much thermal grease I put on there, and no matter how cool I keep the system. It's going to heat unevenly and cause differing rates of expansion along the surface. The constant uneven (oxymoron?) shrinkage and expansion will only serve to ruin my goodies.

Solution? New heatsink. Added awesomeness? Playstation 3 submerged in a bath of mineral oil.

Heck. Yes.

Check out this video for an idea of what I'm doing:


Except with a Playstation instead. I have most of the materials assembled: Fish tank, heatsink, fan, plan... Once I decide how to mount the generic PC heatsink to the proprietary Cell processor, and then buy five gallons of mineral oil, I'll get started for realzies.

Pics included.

I have a lot of thanks for Rachel, who has been absolutely fantastic in supporting this ridiculous endeavor. She drove me to Wichita twice now to get parts, and also gave me a pep talk when I felt like it wasn't going to work.

Theft

My car was broken into a few days ago. I knew it was coming, so I'm not upset. I lost one 12" Subwoofer, one 600 watt Amplifier, and about 50 CDs that I've collected over the past two years.

Really, I'm not upset about it. My girlfriend was much more upset about it than I was cause the theft occurred in front of her house right on the street. I didn't lock the car, so it serves me right. I hope the perpetrator enjoys the high quality sound of the Pioneer system s/he took, or at least is able to pay the bills this month after selling it on the street. According to the pawn shop I went to, that's what they would most likely do. Wichita is a good place to sell something like that right on the street.

In other news, I'm loving Resident Evil 5. It's a blast to play co-op with a friend or certainly special friend of the female inclination.

Also, possibly going to be moving next month when Curtis moves back to Utah. I don't want to pay so much for utilities in this house if I can manage it.

Turn-downs and frowns upside-down

I went to the mall in Wichita the other night cause Walmart here didn't have Batman Begins in stock on Bluray. It's only a 30 minute drive, so we took off. We got to the mall, and not 20 steps through the doors, we get hounded by some foreign chick trying to sell us a fancy nail-file for 60 bucks. Well, Laurie got hounded, I just kept walking, and then they yelled at me and had me stand around and make sarcastic swipes at everything swipable. I eventually told the girl, "Hey, we'll take some of your devil cream for one date. A date with me." She laughed. "If you play your cards right, you might even get lucky."

She said, "The cream for a date?"

I said, "No way. The date for the cream!" Implying that there was no way I'd accept such a product, unless she paid me, in the form of a date. (I just want that to be clear.)

So then she said, "I have a boyfriend!"

"Can I beat him up?"

"I dunno, ask him."

"Where is he?"

She points to a guy not five feet away, listening to our whole conversation, selling the exact same lotion and nail-file crap. He waved. I said, "What'sup?"

Then I ran.

Also, today I got a call from the El Dorado Correctional Facility. They want me to come in for a test/interview on the 24th to become a jailer/correctional officer. Go me.

Cracked.com Blog Circle and my night's events

If you look a little to your right (more or less, depending on your monitor size and resolution) you will see a new sidebar section with links to other blogs. Take a look through them if you like, you might find something worth reading. The Silly Addiction is written by Tim Cameron, who is a delightfully funny and very talented musician. Northside Food is a blog about food, which I assume descends from a higher latitude than it is eaten in. The blog also has the exact same layout as my own. Crazy, eh? Kybard and The Dolby Apposition are both written by fellas who enjoy writing real stories and such, rather than the emo crap that I put out.

So, tonight I watched I Am Legend again, except with the alternate ending. I'm slightly torn with both endings. The Theatrical version completely tossed out everything they led up to, and took a steamy deuce on the book, but at the same time [spoiler alert] Robert dies [end spoiler], which is always a plus for me when I see a good tragedy.

However, the alternate ORIGINAL ending preserves the book's ending and keeps all of the little nuances intact for the conclusion, but it is awfully feel-good, perhaps too feel-good for my tastes. I think that if they reshot the original ending a bit, tied some scenes together a bit and maybe drew it out a little more, it would be best, but unfortunately we seem to be stuck with two incomplete rushed endings.

Also tonight, I ran into my old friend's ex-girlfriend and her new husband. The dude and I have always gotten along, but I've never really liked his bride. She's... not the type of person I like? I don't know how to say it without being painfully blunt: I think she's a total idiot. We do not see eye to eye on anything and I find her to be superficial. Not the point, anyway, she just got married to this old acquaintance of mine and I ran into both of them tonight. We had a nice conversation. I will never see them again most likely, so it is, in a way, bittersweet. On one hand, I'm always anxious and nervous to have to meet new people, but on the other hand, I don't want to see many of the people I know ever again. Naw, that's too harsh. It's not that I don't ever want to see some of these people again, it's just that we aren't heading toward any type of future where we'll be best of friends. If I were to live in this town for the rest of my life, I would never quite have the friends that I did in middle and high school. They're moving on, most of them, and I need to as well. So, best of luck to the newlyweds (Chuck, if you keep peeing on her in the shower it's not going to last very long, I promise.) and best of luck to the people I will miss.