This kid is just amazing.  I imagine that she'll win the whole competition.

This boy was also very good, but I was more impressed with the six year old.

Erin and I went to Woof Stock today, along with the dogs of course.  It was pretty good, even though the dogs got hot and tired after a short period of time.  I took the camera with me and took some pictures of the event.  

I've also uploaded the pictures from my annual camping trip with my friends from university. 

As always, click on the images to be brought to that album.

Erin and I had a great long weekend, filled with lots of good stuff.

Starting on Friday, I was able to finally pick up my new video card to finish of my new PC.  I also discovered that I didn't need to reinstall Windows and could "repair" the install I already have; migrating all of my installed programs from the old PC to the new one.  It runs like fucking silk now.  I can play all my games with the settings cranked to the max and a consistent frame-rate of at least 40 Frame Per Second.  FEAR, one of the most demanding FPS games, has a min/avg/max frame-rate of 44/100/240, with everything at maximum.  

Saturday was even more fun.  We went to the beaches and we bought Erin a scooter .   It's a little Honda Jazz, and she'll be using it to get to and from work.  It's got a 50cc engine, and although it's only made for one person I'm still going to try and ride on the back.  Erin and I aren't very big so if I can get my ass on there then it'll be all good.  We'd just use it for getting to Bloor St. or the Eaton Centre so it's not like we'll be climbing any hills with it.  

Erin will be taking her Motorcycle written test this week (I'll take mine on Saturday) and we'll be picking up the scooter on Saturday.  My dad is really jealous and has said that he'll be on his way to our place as soon as we've picked it up - so that he can take it for a ride. 

I'll be brining the camera with me to take pictures of Erin in her pink helmet on her new ride. 

On Sunday we had dinner at the Gladstone Hotel and I spotted Sandra Oh (Grey's Anatomy) doing an interview at another table.  I told Erin to go and say "hello" since she's a fan, but we were too polite and didn't want to bother her.  

Monday we went to the Vaughan Mills mall, and as much as I loathe that place we had a pretty good time.  There is a go-kart track and we paid the $20 to take a bunch of laps around.  Good fun, even if some punk kids kept running into Erin. 

Courtesy of YouTube.

This year looks to be a great year for PC gaming.  Personally the games I’m looking forward to the most are those based off of the Source engine developed by Valve.  There are a few other games by other companies that look promising, but nothing like these ones.  Left4Dead (a zombie survival co-op multiplayer game), Insurgency (a HL2 multiplayer mod, with realistic modern day combat), Half-Life 2: Episode 2, Team Fortress 2 and Portal. 

Most of all I can't wait for Left4Dead.  That game looks amazing. 

Last Friday I’d decided I was going to build a new computer for myself.  It’s something I’d wanted to do since 2006 and I’d been telling myself 2007 would be the year to do it.  I noticed last Friday that the prices on the Intel Core 2 Duo chips had dropped dramatically and I decided that it was time for me to make my purchase.  I got the OK from the boss and went into Canada Computers on Saturday.

Only, once everything was set-up the video card wouldn’t work properly.

I think the issue was the drivers.  It's really weird, because historically (at least a few years back) nVidia has always had much better drivers than ATi.  However, nVidia is still running on beta drivers for the 8000 series cards.  Their Vista drivers are pretty crappy apparently, and the XP drivers aren't complete either.  Once I would install the drivers the screen would go black and the TV would display an internal message saying "Signal not compatible with this input".  That means that the card is either trying to display a resolution that isn't supported, or a refresh rate that isn't supported.  I could boot into XP in VGA mode (8bit colours, 640x480) but if I tried to change the resolution to anything it would go black and give me that message again.  I tried forcing it into a supported resolution (1024x768) at 60Hz and even still I would get that message.

I tried reformatting; I tried the drivers online and the ones included with the card.  No matter what I did they just wouldn't work.  On top of that, the utilities that are supposed to ship with the drivers never installed so I couldn't go into the nVidia back-end to try to get things working.  It was a frustrating ordeal.

I'm going to wait two weeks for the Radeon HD 2900 XT to hit stores and get that.  From what I've read online ATi really has their shit together.  The card will be able to support HDMI in the future (it has a sound chip built in), and they've got great drivers for Vista.  I'm hoping that ATi's drivers will be better since I know my X800 can work on my TV just fine.

It’s very frustrating since I have a sweet case with awesome hardware just sitting there for two weeks and I've had to go back to using my old PC.  

I can’t believe I’m playing this game.  Normally I play things like Day of Defeat, or Oblivion, not Bejewelled.  But I heard enough people talk about this new Pop Cap game Peggle and I had to try it out.  It’s like Pachinko only with goals and a few other rules.  I was trying out the demo and going through the first level thinking, “eh…it’s OK.”  And then the ball was about to hit the last orange peg, everything slowed down, the screen zoomed in, a trail of colours started behind my ball along with a drum roll, it hits, and then Beethoven’s Ode to Joy starts blaring out.  The ball lands in a pot at the end for extra points, fireworks explode, and a giant rainbow streaks across the screen.  It was completely over the top and all I could do was smile.

I wanted to chase that feeling.  An hour later I’d bought the game and then I spent the rest of the night playing.  Now all I can think about is playing freaking Peggle.  Talk about addictive.

Will Ferrell did a funny little clip for the internets! 

I tried to embed the video using the link the website provided me but it wasn't working so I'm hosting the file myself as well.  You can see it here also. 

I think the cat is trying to replace the dogs.

Turns out I should be what I am, a Scorpio. I wonder what Erin would show up as.

You Should Be A Scorpio

What's good about you: intense and energetic, you can easily transform the vibe of a room What's bad about you: if someone rubs you the wrong way, you'll sting them! In love: you experience very strong feelings - both passion and jealousy In friendship, you're: likely to demand loyalty and dump friends who don't provide it Your ideal job: circus performer, hypnotist, or hunter Your sense of fashion: revealing, daring outfits - you love taking fashion risks You like to pig out on: spicy Thai, Mexican, or Indian food