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 ‘Overclockers Club’
Back To Basics
Monday, January 25th, 2010Back From Vegas
Wednesday, January 13th, 2010It’s Wednesday morning and I’m back to work. I’ve not had a full work week since mid-December, and still won’t until the end of this month. That says something, considering we are on a 4/10 schedule. It’ll be odd when things finally get back to normal.
For the past week, I’ve been in Las Vegas, NV helping OverclockersClub.com cover the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show. If you have not seen OCC’s coverage, the guys did a heck of a job covering things related to the PC enthusiast market. I say the guys did a heck of a job, because truthfully I did very little by comparison. Sure, I was there to talk to people, and help out as needed but the pictures, writing, and hard work was pretty well covered by the other staff and not me. I feel bad for not doing as much work as the rest of the gang, but I did warn them ahead of time that I had neither a laptop nor a decent digital camera and yet somehow I was still asked to come. (more…)
OCC’s 2009 Christmas Contest
Tuesday, December 15th, 2009If you haven’t gotten yourself entered in OCC’s 2009 Christmas Contest, you still have a few days left. The contest will officially end sometime on the evening of 12/24. Follow the instructions on the link above, and you’ll be entered. Those of you who are signed up for the OCC Newsletter or are fans of OCC on Facebook will get an additional entry for a total of three chances to win.
In addition to a kick ass gaming rig, you can also win a ton of stuff from Mushkin, ThermalTake, CoolerMaster, Sapphire, Asus, OCZ, VisionTek, Antec, and others. There is currently a total of 65 prizes available to win, and we may get some more added before the contest comes to an end. You never know. 
During last year’s Christmas contest (before I re-joined the staff) I won a Sapphire Radeon HD 4750!
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. 
OverclockersClub.com Folding@Home Contest
Tuesday, February 17th, 2009OverclockersClub.com is running another contest. This time, all you have to do is be an active member of the OCC Folding@Home Team (#12772). There is a number of really cool prizes, and a chance that there will be some additional prizes added.
More information can be found in the OverclockersClub.com Forums.
Keep in mind, while you could win a prize for participation, the real goal here is to encourage more people to run Folding@Home even if you don’t continue to do so for our team after the contest is over with. By running the program, you are helping find cures for cancer and many other nasty diseases.
OverclockersClub.com Userbar Contest
Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009The submissions are in and now it is time to vote for the 2008 OverclockersClub.com user bar. There were 19 different entries into the contest, and now it’s time to vote on the winner… in addition to having their design used around OCC, the winner will also receive a Sapphire HD 3850 video card.
Go vote, and if you need help deciding on which one to vote for, I’d highly recommend #6! 
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.
OCC Folding@Home Contest – Coming Soon
Tuesday, January 6th, 2009Hot off the heals of that awesome Christmas contest, OverclockersClub.com will soon be running another contest of similar awesomeness. This new contest however is aimed at those that run Folding@Home for the OverclockersClub.com Team. More specific details about the contest, including prize information, will be announced sometime in the next few weeks.
Do you have a PS3 or a computer running Windows, Mac, Linux, Unix, BSD, or some other operating system? Good news, you can run Folding@Home, and participate in this contest! There is more to it than just this contest though. You see, Folding@Home is a research program that is looking to find a cure for cancer and various other diseases. The program is designed so that when you aren’t busy using your computer (or PS3) it’ll run as a screen saver or background process. After it’s up and running, you’ll probably notice no difference with your system, unless of course you enable the screen saver option.
To join the OCC Folding@Home Team, simply plug in 12772 when it ask you for a team number. If you have any questions, or need any help getting it running feel free to drop by the OverclockersClub.com forums, or leave me a message in the comments.
I’ll let everyone know when more details about this contest are available.