The first PC I ever owned was one I built back in 2006. It was decent at the time, even for what the pros called an entry level set up. Eventually I upgraded it as far as it could go to a 3.4 Ghz Pentium D dual-core processor (Luckily the D101ggc motherboard supported it), a couple of gigs of ram and a decent video card for the time.

Recently the temperature sensors on my current graphics card have died. A good way to tell this is to look at the readings on your device's software (i.e. AMD Catalyst). If the temperature in the overclock section reads something like, say, -128 Celsius, that usually means the sensors are screwed. As a result, the fan now runs full-blast regardless of activity, meaning the fan will likely burn out sooner or later.

So, I've been a bit absent the last few days from the internet because I've been a tad busy. Building my computer, as documented in my "Hot Rod" Essays. But Now that it's all said and done, I have a few philosophical thoughts.

So, went on down to Free Geek today to buy the motherboard that I had my eye on... which had been sold.

yes, I was going to go on a rave about market research and the voodoo involved. Next time! For this one we'll ask the question...

So what good are computers? Have they made our lives better? Am I being a Luddite when I say that before computers people had to know how to spell and how to add? Pre-computers we had J. Edgar Hoover and his goons snooping around, writing reports, getting people blacklisted, blackmailing others. So the world wasn't Eden.