I’m back watching Voyager again, now up to the latter part of season 6. Battlestar Galactica is back on too.

I had my performance review with my boss at work, and it looks like I might be moving into an area of more enjoyment this year. Though that was insinuated last year too, and the year before. Maybe I won’t believe that until it happens. Fingers crossed. I’d rather not leave to get away from the mind numbing boredom especially when there’s so many more interesting things that other people do here. I’ll have to play it by ear.

The PC fiasco continues. In this chapter we move onto what I should have done in the first case (pun intended) and go down the white box pc path (rather than the shuttle). So I ordered what I thought was an awesome case, the Silverstone TJ04 and a quiet power supply, the Zalman 460w one. Because the place of pain changes 3% surcharge for paying by Credit Card (normal technology surcharge!) I pay by Direct Deposit. Sadly this means they wait for payment before ordering my stuff, even though their agreement says it’s binding and final ! (I have come to hate short order stores.) After a week I get an email saying my order had been put on hold and a representative will contact me, this was 3pm on a Friday. At 4.45PM I get a call from their representative, who informs me they can’t get the case I ordered and wanted to know what I’d like instead, like on the spot! I said I was about to rush out the door and would look over the weekend and get back to them. This is when he told me I they couldn’t get the power supply I ordered either. I said oh. He then said if there was a price difference they would give me a discount for my inconvenience. I said great and ended the conversation.

Over the weekend I trawl over various sites, and come to the conclusion I can’t get a plain PC case that is decent, and obviously the answer is to buy rice. So I look around for the most riced up case I can find that meets my requirements. My requirements were not great: good looking, small but not too small, preferably 120mm intake and exhaust, good hard disk drive mountings (ventilation), lighter is better. I end up settling for the Antec Super LANBOY case. It’s light, looks ok, small (short, but normal height), 120mm intake and exhaust (fans included), rail mounts for hard drives that mount sideways with a fan in front of them, and made of aluminium. Then to decide on power supply, well the other power supply I was looking at was a Tagan, made in Germany so hopefully it will be better designed than the designed in USA made in Taiwan crap that all the other places produce. Don’t get me started about my Antec TruePower 550, lets just say 1100w power draw is the highest I’ve seen it and say it’s not fully loaded, 75-80% efficient MY ASS.

Monday rocks on round and I email them indicating I’d like to update the order to the lanboy case and Tagan power supply after confirming a few questions I had: Firstly is the case available WITHOUT power supply (sidenote: the case is available without power supply elsewhere, but not shown on this stores site. The included power supply is a 350w ATX supply (20pin) not an EATX 24pin like I need) I also asked about availability of both items. Shortly later (maybe 45 minutes) I get a response saying they have the lanboy in stock and have changed my order. HANG ON, my order had been changed without answering all my questions, in fact, they only answered one of them. I email back asking the remainder again, and I get a short response about the case including a power supply, not very helpful there, I can read their site. Another round of emails and I find out the ETA for the power supply (which the site said ETA Next Monday for the past 2 weeks) is Friday. Next up the order gets split in two, the case and the power supply being separate, the case being fully paid for, and the power supply has $41 owing (due to price difference, the new PSU was 580w vs 460w originally anyway). I email asking what are my chances for a discount considering the trouble I’ve had, delays and that I’ve pimped them at the past 2 public lan parties I run (dang I gave their name away) I also suggested they update the 2 items I had ordered to say ETA unknown until they know so other innocent unsuspecting internet users might not fall into this trap. So far all this email between us was on a Monday, I did include my phone number in the emails and did ask to be called to discuss the details. A whole day passes with nothing except an automated email indicating my case has shipped. Strange, it should have shipped Monday because they had stock and my payment had been received. Ahh I guess not. First thing Wednesday morning I email them in reply to my request for a discount indicating that I take their non response to mean a no, and I’d send through the additional money. I deposit the money in and send the receipt through. Thursday morning the 2nd order is updated to paid status, still no response to my request for a discount. It is now Thursday night, who knows when my power supply will arrive, I will be on leave tomorrow and all of next week, so if they email saying they can’t get it I won’t know for a week! I will never shop there again.

On the hard disk front, I’ve had many ideas regarding what to do with a drive that doesn’t play well with others, and I’m leaning towards selling the lot and building a mega array with newer, Raid Edition drives such as the WD4000YD which has NCQ!

Random linkage:

MTX Jackhammer: 6000 watts RMS of subwoofer. An episode of Pimp my ride put this baby in a little hatchback.

Tardy slip for doing hair LOL and this guy keeps going, best ebay purchase ever and I tend to agree, that was a good deal. Just browse through his archives and you’ll find something interesting.

Somehow I found cribcandy, a site of cool stuff you can buy, including The Slanket ! which is obviously the best blanket ever and is going to take off as a world wide phenomenon.

Yellow Zipper Pokemon Laptop. No further explanation necessary, though it is a potential use for a Libretto 110.

Linada: if a gamer guy meets a gamer girl, who cooks dinner?
Samirol: pizza hut
omgrawr.net