Classical

I've started listening to classical music again. I first caught the classical bug in high school. Still have a lot of LP's. My CD collection is very small. But I hope to add more CD's this year. My favorite composers include Beethoven, Bruckner, Debussy and Bartok.

I also enjoy classical guitar music, especially the recordings of Ida Presti and Alexandre Lagoya. They are widely considered to be the greatest classical guitar duet ever. They were both talented musicians even before they married and embarked on a duo guitar career. Ida Presti, in particular, was special. When she was still young and studying with Andres Segovia, he was quoted as saying "I have nothing to teach her." That's how good she was. When she and her husband began their career as a duet, there was almost nothing written for two classical guitars. They spent a lot of their time transcribing material. Eventually some composers wrote music for two guitars. Presti and Lagoya gave hundreds of concerts and toured the world, before her untimely death at age 42. Equally sad is that there are very few Presti-Lagoya recordings in the catalogs now. If you happen to come across one of their albums, you might want to buy it. I think you'd like their music.

Health

Just wanted to give a brief update on my health. The radioactive iodine treatment has done wonders. I have a lot more energy now and my general mood is much more positive. It's amazing. I've been taking prescribed steroids as part of the treatment. Only real bad side effect from the steroids is severe muscle cramps from time to time. The steroid treatment should end in a few weeks.

FB-DIMM

Newer Intel-based server boards require the use of FB-DIMM's. FB stands for fully buffered. FB-DIMM's use serial communication to the chipset's memory controller, versus the parallel communication of standard DIMM's. The technology allows for up to eight modules per channel. This increases both memory capacity and speed. This is type of memory I'll be using in my upcoming Woodcrest build. Will keep you posted when the system is up and running.

B-r-r-r-r

The temperatures the last few nights has been really cold for my area. It's dipped into the 20's. My folding units are running cool. But that's about the only benefit I've seen. Of course, what's considered cold is all relative. I lived in the Midwest for awhile. I remember when the temps got into the minus-Fahrenheit range.

Case

I've ordered this case for my Woodcrest build. It's made by Supermicro and it's big! It will accomodate extended-ATX boards, though the one I'll be using is regular ATX form factor. It comes with a power supply and has eight hot-swappable SATA drive bays. Probably more features than I really need. But I looked at a lot of cases and this one seems to fit my needs the best.

Anniversary

Thursday marks the one year anniversary of this blog. I wanted to thank everyone who's stopped by to read or post comments. I haven't posted new entries as often as I did in the beginning. Perhaps I've run out of things to say. ;) But again, thanks.

Woodcrest

I've decided to go the dual-CPU dual-core route. In the coming weeks I will be putting together a Woodcrest system. Woodcrests, for those who don't know, can be overclocked, though they are designed for server boards. Hopefully I'll have a system up and running before the end of the month. The above picture shows a Woodcrest wafer.

Million

Finally accumulated a million points on the World Community Grid. I've really enjoyed folding. A lot of camaraderie among members of a team.