joeschaffer.com

Dear Blog,

I’m sorry I haven’t written in so long. Please don’t be mad. You see, I found these two new hot younger micro-blogging platforms called twitter and facebook.

I admit I tried to avoid their wily temptations and come back to you numerous times–but honestly the thrill of a quick 140 character or less written thought–brings immediate gratification.

I promise I’ll try to pay more attention to you and update you more. After-all you are the more stable and solid platform for me. Plus, there are times when “the other two” are being fussy and don’t want to let me visit because they get overloaded by serving traffic to millions of other users. I sure hope they practice safe web serving!

Yours Truly,
Joe

After doing some research on the web I found a few websites that covered similar principles and so this is “my version” of those principles.

I think it worked out pretty well. The only thing I might change is to use a bigger box next time to photograph bigger items.

I ordered a customized netbook from them with ubuntu installed. I made my order on May 1, 2009.

A few days later I got an email that the estimated delivery isn’t until May 18. Confused I contacted customer service and inquired as to why it would take so long to get out such a simple system…they didn’t really have a good solid answer.

Then the day before yesterday I got an email saying my order would be delayed even further with an estimated ship date of May 26.

That is very unprofessional and in my opinion, utterly ridiculous. I have canceled my order and requested a refund. They did cancel the order, but I specifically asked yesterday when I can expect a refund of my money. So far I have not gotten an answer. I find it funny because they sure did take my money within minutes of me finalizing my order.

Quick to take the money, but not quick to give it back. Not cool Dell, not cool at all.

I’ll make a post later with the specifics of the parts I used in my AMD home-built PC, but in the meantime here are some screenshots outlining my current performance. I think I can actually squeeze more out of it too. I’m currently slowly working on figuring out the best way to step it up to 4.0ghz per core (if I can).

Important Note: This post is NOT for the GA-MA790FXT-UD5P which is a similar but entirely DIFFERENT motherboard. I repeat DO NOT install this firmware if you have the GA-MA790FXT-UD5P.

I created this post to help out my fellow AMD system builders who bought this motherboard expecting it to run the AMD Phenom II x4 955 Black Edition chip straight out of the box and realized that the cores were NOT running at 3.2ghz as advertised, but was instead running at 1600mhz or lower. This new firmware update fixes that problem.

It is not yet posted on the Gigabyte website because it’s considered a beta release. Please see this thread at the AMD forums for more details. Once Gigabyte posts the firmware on their website I’ll point to their download.

I won’t go into any installation steps as there are plenty of places around the internet that cover that. Additionally the user manual for your Gigabyte motherboard explains how to use the q-flash utility, which I recommend you use.

Download the m79xud5p.f4a firmware here. (updated link to send you to gigabyte’s website as they have now posted the firmware)

Do not install this if Q-Flash says that the checksum is anything other than 3900.

As the economic times get harder we’re all looking to pinche a few pennies. So I followed some advice I found around the web and got some pretty good results. In this post I’ll share what I did. In future posts I’ll share any other tips I find along the way.

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I just witnessed an accident on the way to work today. An aggressive driver tried to cut into the left lane, but all he succeeded in doing was cutting into a lady who was 6 or 7 months pregnant.

Her car flipped at least twice. She was lucky to walk away. It’s weird how parts of the car look untouched.

Pics of the scene:

Here is an image of what we had to do to Logan after he attempted to cut his own hair.

I’m seriously somewhat annoyed right now. I got my first ever ‘courtesy’ call today to remind me that my auto loan is due in a couple of days. Seriously? So now banks are so paranoid that you now get collections BEFORE payment is overdue?

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that according to a recent Federal Survey: Banks have tightened lending standards over the past 3 months. Where’s your financial bail-out now Federal Reserve/US Treasury?

I was one of the folks that got to pre-order the new T-Mobile G1 (formerly known as HTC Dream) on 9/23/08.

I’m stoked. I can’t wait until it gets shipped on October 21.

Here’s a sweet youtube video ad of it: