As you can see, I’m back to the default WordPress theme right now. It sucks, and that is part of why I’m using it right now. You see, I’ve been unhappy with my old theme for a while now, and I’ve been wanting to get something new posted. Hopefully this will encourage me to get that done. Of course, before I do anything to my site I have to get the new forum skin finished for OverclockersClub.com, which I am more than a little late on wrapping up.
Posts Tagged ‘d3bruts1d’
Back To Basics
Monday, January 25th, 2010Vacation was good
Monday, May 11th, 2009Hello, remember me? You know, that guy that uses the odd handle “d3bruts1d”? The owner of the site that you are looking at right now? Still not ring a bell? Can’t say that I blame you, updates here have been few and far between over the last several months. I’m not going to make any promises, but hopefully that’ll change. 
I’m back from a long over due vacation. The wife and I headed over to North Myrtle Beach for the first part of the month. Sand, sun, and food… lots, and lots of food. I’ll try and get some pictures posted over the next few days of everything.
Even though I’ve been to Myrtle several times now, this is the first time we ended up at Broadway at the Beach. That place has a lot of cool shops and restaurants. Two of my favorite places there included Key West Grill and the KISS Coffeehouse (better than Starbucks!). Farrah enjoyed Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville (I like Cheeseburger in Paradise better!) and It’s Sugar a wall to wall candy store. Of course we also visited the outlet mall and Barefoot Landing.
Aside from Myrtle, we also drove north to Wilmington, NC and toured the U.S.S. North Carolina Battleship. I enjoyed the self tour, and seeing everything on the ship. I’ll let Farrah describe her experiences’ on her own blog. 
I took some photo’s with my iPhone, and I’ll upload them to Facebook or Picasa over the next few days. I think she has already posted several on her Facebook page.
I’m home now and back to work… and all I want to do is get away again already!
I’m Your Captain…
Thursday, February 26th, 2009It wasn’t but a few months ago that OCC and I were still at odds. But you wouldn’t know if if you looked today, matter of fact, you’d probably think I never left… and in heart, I hadn’t. It wasn’t but a month or two ago, when I was asked to help out on the news team. To be perfectly honest, I’d have been happy staying there. Reading this site, you’d probably guess that I enjoy rambling on abut things.
I was eventually given moderator powers, not that I recall having to use them. Then last week was the big shocker, I was asked to become an admin. Yeah, if having a Mac user on the news staff at a PC enthusiast site wasn’t odd enough, they now have a Mac using admin. It’s been a busy week for me remembering how to do things in Invision Power Board, as well as getting use to OCC as the company it is today. It certainly isn’t the site it was when I left, and that’s a great thing! So far everyone on staff has been awesome.
In addition to doing the admin thing at OCC, I’ve also been asked to do some news posting over at Neoseeker. Both Neoseeker and Overclockers Club are part of Neo Era Media. I’ll try to keep getting things posted to OCC as well, so if you enjoy my ramblings, be sure to check ‘em out. 
Coming To An End
Tuesday, February 17th, 2009In the current state of the economy I feel fortunate to have a job, much less two jobs. – Though technically I have three, although the wife continues to argue that the 3rd one is just a hobby. 
At any rate, I’ve been able to work my ass off for a while now. Using the 2nd income to pay off property tax, bills, buy a couple of nice things, but mainly to pay down the obscene amount of debt that has been accrued over the last few years. When I started the 2nd job, which is an hour drive one way, I knew it wasn’t going to be permanent. Heck, I’m surprised that I stayed there this long.
Last weekend I was notified that I should plan on that work coming to a stop by the end of April, and that for the next several weeks I should plan on training my replacement. While I’ll miss the money, I sure wont miss the 4 hours I spent traveling each weekend or the time away form my wife. Though I expect them to call me back within a few months after I’m gone. (more…)
Full Circle
Monday, January 26th, 2009You may have noticed things are a bit quiet around here as of late. Part of the reason, as most of you already know is because I work two jobs and don’t really have a lot of time to really do much of anything. In the midst of my already busy schedule, I decided to take on a third job. Wait, I’m not as crazy as you think… or maybe I am.
After a lengthy conversation with an old friend, I have decided to work for… wait for it… OverclockersClub.com. Yes, there have been issues in the past between myself and certain people that are thankfully no longer associated with the site. Those issues are behind us now, and we’re working to make OCC an even better community.
So, what will my involvement there be? Due to my already busy schedule we agreed that it would be best if I was not on the review staff. After all, I’m a “Mac guy” working at a PC enthusiast website, and there is no way I could commit to any kind of deadlines with my schedule. Dave (aka Bosco) asked if I would mind helping out the news team by posting items to the front page. So I guess I’ll be focusing on software, Mac, gaming, and internet related stories… i.e. the same kind of crap I have been posting here on d3rbuts1d.com for the last several years. :p
Where will this go from here? Who knows… maybe nowhere if they decided I suck as a news editor. :p
New System
Wednesday, January 21st, 2009So, it’s been an incredibly long time since I last built a PC, or really done any kind of hardware work. Heck, where I work we have to wait 2-5 days for a union electrician to come and install a new HDD in a removable rack, and if we try to do the two minute job we’d get a grievance filed on us. It sucks, but thankfully I spend my days stuck inside of PHP code and an Oracle database.
After making the switch to OS X, I really didn’t think I’d ever be inside a PC again. Oh, sure, I opened up my Mac Mini and added some memory and swapped out the HDD, but that’s no big deal. Well, a few weeks ago I had a mysterious package arrive at my doorstep. After ensuring there was no white powder or explosives inside, I opened it up to find half a computer system courtesy of Dave, an old friend at OverclockersClub.com.
With the parts he sent me, and the graphics card I received from the OCC Christmas Contest, I had the beginnings of a damn nice PC. Just needed a few more things and it’d be good to go. Once everything was ready, I dusted off my old custom Lian Li PC70 Disturbed case, and shoved all the components in.
And, nothing… no video, no error beeps, no post, nothing. My first build in ages would power up and proceed to do nothing. A few hours later, I had given up. Actually, I thought I may have damaged the CPU or motherboard when installing the heat sink.
This afternoon, I decided to give it another try. Took the video card out, and nothing. Took the memory out and the system beeped at me. Hmm… so I put the memory back in, put the video card back in, and magic the system booted. Stupid PC! :p
So, now I’m up and running. Vista (Ultimate 64) is grinding away downloading the first round of updates, all 84 of them. I now find myself wondering, what the heck am I going to do with this system? My wife chirps in often with the same question. Truthfully, I have no idea. I’m not crazy about Vista (or the much improved Windows 7)… everything I do these days is on my Mac.
Perhaps I should blow it away and install Linux (it’s been a while since I’ve messed with Slackware). Maybe this will become a test web server, or some kind of FTP/file server. Though it really would be a waste of that Radeon HD 4870. Hmm… MythTV maybe?
I Won A Sapphire Radeon HD 4870
Friday, January 9th, 2009Back in December I was talking about the 2008 OverclockersClub.com Christmas contest, where they gave away over 50 prizes including a fully loaded Intel Core 2 i7 gaming system that I estimated the worth around $5K. Sadly, I didn’t win the gaming rig… well, to be honest, I don’t know what I would have done with it. However, I did win a pretty slick video card.
Thanks to OCC I now have a brand new Sapphire (ATi) Radeon HD 4570 video card with 512 MB GDDR5. Just so you know exactly how much of an upgrade this is, the video card in my current system – yes, despite being a Mac user, I still have an old AMD64 rig – is a VisionTek X1550 256MB (DDR2) AGP. I didn’t even know video cards were using GDDR5! When did 3 & 4 come out?? Ok, so it’s been a good 5 years since I built a PC. I’ve just not had any reason to build a new rig.
Enough talk, right? I’m sure everyone wants to see the prize now… so here it is.
Now, I just have to figure out which end plugs into the motherboard, the power, and the video cards.
Happy Birthday
Friday, January 2nd, 2009Happy birthday to my wife who turns twenty-something today. I’m forbidden from revealing her actual age. We both have to work today, so she got to unwrap her gifts yesterday, and we’ll be going to P.F. Chang’s China Bistro tomorrow for a birthday dinner.
In related news, our dog Oskar turns two today.
Returning To OCC
Saturday, December 20th, 2008I received an early Christmas present a few months ago when I found out that my ban from OverclockersClub.com had been lifted. It’s kind of strange being back, as a lot has changed since May 2007. It’s like revisiting a house that you grew up in, but haven’t seen in 20 years. It’s very familial, yet so very different. (more…)
And I’m Back (Again)
Friday, December 19th, 2008I’m back again. Upgraded my site to the latest version of Wordpress. I must say, I’m really liking the changes to the dashboard!
I’ll play around with the other features later. Now, I just need to figure out what I want my next theme to look like… I wish I was more artistic in that regard.