Retirement

I officially retired from work about a week and a half ago. I decided that the time was right to enter a new phase in my life. So far, I haven't really missed work at all. No telling how I'll feel a few months down the road. My goal is to stay active, both physically and mentally. My wife and I have decided to move overseas. We are both adventuresome types and look forward to experiencing a new culture. Will keep you posted.

Fall

Wow, Fall is already here.

Built a new system during summer. ASUS Sabertooth P67 board and Intel Core i7-2600K. Seems to be running fine. Southbridge cooling is essential if you're overclocking.

Spring

Peonies have been blooming.

Sandy Bridge

Intel has released its Sandy Bridge CPU's. These are very nice chips. They overclock well and consume less power than their predecessors. The motherboards are also reasonably priced. I'm using a 2600K with a ASUS P8P67 board (see pic above). The new ASUS boards use UEFI which is the replacement for the old BIOS. Takes a little getting used to, but it makes overclocking very easy.

Update: Intel says there's a chipset defect that could cause the SATA II ports to fail On Sandy Bridge boards. The reseller that sold me the board is offering a full refund or a replacement board (when the revised boards are available). So far, I have had no problems with my board, so I'm keeping it until the replacements are available.

January

Happy new year to everyone. I've been lazy and haven't posted much. Or maybe I've lost interest. Maybe a little of both. Nothing much has changed in my life. Just getting older. You know you're getting up there in age when AARP is sending letters every week, asking you to join.

Our cat is amazing. Six years ago, he had an enlarged heart and at least two vets said there was no hope for him. Fortunately we took him to another vet who wasn't so pessimistic. He took the cat off most of the medicines that the other vets prescribed. The cat recovered and is as spunky as ever. No one will believe us, but the cat says "hello" every day. He can also say "ohayo" which is the Japanese word for "good morning." He only does this when he's alone, never around people. But my wife and I can hear him. We've tried using a cell phone to record audio of the cat. But he knows when we're nearby and stops talking.

Fall

Fall has arrived. I replaced my main PC. Now using a Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R and Intel Core i7-930, along with a solid state drive. Boot-up times are much faster now. Programs open faster and some file transfers are much quicker. So far, no complaints about switching to SSD.

Summer

Over the past couple of months, I've built three new PC's to run the WCG project. I have two machines running Intel hexa-cores and a third PC using a Core i7-860. It had been awhile since I built a PC. The first thing I noticed is that heatsinks have gotten a lot bigger, especially the better ones. One of the heatsinks I bought is the Noctua NH-D14 (see pic). It's even bigger than it looks. But it does a good job of cooling.