The human memory system is a funny thing. If you're blessed with one that's ultra-reliable, then you seldom forget great moments that you've lived. However, if yours is anything like mine, then you probably have very poor recall of even the best parts of your life.

That's one of the great blessings bestowed by modern computing technology for which I am so thankful. Tonight, as the first step of reallocating my systems and deploying a couple of them to different tasks, I backed...

txtmstrjoe

At my job, I've acquired a bit of a reputation for being a tech-head. I built a machine for a co-worker's son last year, and they were quite pleased with it. Apparently, because of this, word spread that I know a little bit about PCs and how they're put together and how they work.

So imagine the (good-natured) ribbing I took when, whilst working on some proprietary purchasing software, I lost a huge (90+ line item) purchase order and had to redo everything.

(Doing...

txtmstrjoe

By and large, PC enthusiasts are a very spoiled, greedy bunch. Many of us expect our machines to forever be at the top of the mountain when it comes to performance. Perhaps because we put so much into our machines -- money, time in research, effort in making tweaks -- we expect plenty in return.

If we use our machines to play games, we want every single last FPS we can squeeze out of it.

If we do media encoding, we want to get the job done in the very shortest time...

txtmstrjoe

There's something to be said about rooting for the underdog. In some ways, I suppose it's a bit like the rush a gambler feels (not that I'd really know): Knowing that the odds of a favorable outcome are against you naturally exaggerates the tension before any kind of resolution occurs.

Of course, a distinction must be made between rooting for an underdog and hoping against the inevitable. There is a fine line between optimism and baseless hope.

Rooting for the...

txtmstrjoe

I didn't mention this here before, but a couple of weeks ago I purchased a SanDisk Sansa e280 from NewEgg. I'd long been pining for a "disk-less" mP3 player for my car (which actually only has a cassette player, if you can believe that), so I'd researched various solutions over the last couple of months.

I considered following the crowd of sheep and willingly get slaughtered by Apple's marketing prowess by getting an iPod, but I like exploring alternative solutions. ...

txtmstrjoe