I’ll keep this short and sweet: ~synonymous blue has a new home on the web.

http://blumyhue.blogspot.com

Why? Because I felt like it. I might still update my LiveJournal from time to time. Or not.

Thanks for the good times, LiveJournal. I’ll always remember you as the home of my first blog. :)

So, what’s better than a cool, new t-shirt? Three cool, new t-shirts! And what’s better than three cool, new t-shirts? Three cool, new t-shirts for $5 apiece, that’s what. ;) I received my April 2010 three tee grab bag from TeeFury.com today, my third such purchase from them. Basically, you pay $5 a shirt (+ $2 S&H), pick your size, and TeeFury sends you three random shirts from that month’s offerings. Never heard of TeeFury.com? They feature an exclusive new design for $9 (+ $2 S&H) on their site every day. When the day is over, the shirt is removed, never to be seen again (unless you’re lucky enough to get it in the grab bag). Eleven bucks shipped is pretty darn cheap for a new shirt as it is (and these are quality shirts, people), but $17 shipped for three shirts is just too good of a deal to pass up, even if you have no idea what you’ll be receiving. I think I get the grab bags more for the mystery and surprise than anything else. Always very exciting to see what designs you get. In any case, I thought I’d showcase the designs I’d received in my three grab bag purchases:

SEPTEMBER 2009 GRAB BAG

Do Yourself a Favour ~ joelnz | Hahaha… this one’s awesome because it appeals to my techheaddness (errr…) and it’s so true. Comic Sans is truly a blasé, overused font. Very ‘90s. Please don’t use it.

Starry Four Eyes ~ Sir Euan | Very bright, interesting design that I didn’t mind sporting. Also, brown tees are always cool.

Snake Pit ~ Chris Parks | I wasn’t too keen on the design (skulls, scorpions, snakes, etc.), as that’s not really my thing, but the tee is black, which is cool, and a shirt is a shirt.

FEBRUARY 2010 GRAB BAG

Colbert Nation ~ Caitlin Burns | Okay, so I’m constantly having to ask Bubs to remind me who the guy on the far right is (far left if you’re wearing the shirt). Apparently, that’s Stephen Colbert (pronounced cole-BEAR) of The Colbert Report. I’d never heard of him, though I vaguely recognized the title of his show. But, apparently he’s a pretty cool guy and deserves to be part of Mt. Rushmore, so I’m cool with the shirt. ;)

The Pinwheel of Death ~ Joshua Kemble | I really like this shirt. It’s navy blue. Again, I’m not generally a skull person, but the simple, kind of grunge skull with the bright rainbow wheel is just awesome. Also, it (intentionally?) resembles the “Punisher” logo, which is also awesome. This is probably my favorite shirt I've gotten out of the grab bags.

Love Mac ~ Charaspower | I feel very ironic when I wear this shirt. I feel that way because the shirt obviously represents a love (hence, the heart) of the Apple brand (hence, the Apple logo). I am a PC (hence, the irony). When I pulled this one out of the bag the shirts are shipped in, Bubs just started giggling uncontrollably. He knows of my strong hate of aversion to the brand. I haven’t actually worn this one out in public, but not because I dislike Apple. It’s because the shirt is white, and white tees are icky. Also, I accidentally put it in with a bleach load of other whites one day, and the design got faded/filmy. You know I’m just weepy over that one.

APRIL 2010 GRAB BAG (received today)

Pyramid Scheme ~ zom-bot labs | This is a (thank goodness) light gray tee with a very interesting design. I am guessing that the design was meant to resemble—in various ways—the back of a US dollar bill: the pyramid/eyes design from the left side of the bill, the eagle/US seal from the right side, and the money-green color. It’s a very clever design, because pyramid schemes are all about money. The tentacles seem to represent how these “programs” can grab ahold of you and pull you in against your will, inextricably wrapping you up. It’s hard to tell from the image above, but the little men working on the pyramid represent the various stages of wealth. The men at the bottom are performing heavy labor and are wearing only loincloths; the men on the second tier are wearing togas and doing less labor-intensive tasks (one of them looks a little confused, as if he's not sure what he's doing there); the men on the third tier are sporting business suits, and are bowing to the top of the pyramid, offering suitcases full of money. A very good representation of the whole charade, and a cool tee.

Glade ~ Yanmos | A neat, navy blue tee with a cool blue-green design. If you can see, different types of birds are represented; birds of prey, sea birds, etc. Plus… did I mention it was blue? :)

Emopolis ~ Inner-Monster | Another awesome blue tee (it’s the brighter colored the women’s tee is pictured in). I’m not too crazy about the design (probably because I don’t get it), but I don’t dislike it, and like how it runs lengthwise down the right side of the shirt. I’ll certainly wear it.

So, I actually had kind of a “real” workweek this past week (ending 03/12), working 7-10 hour days, Monday through Friday. I punched in at 6am or 7am and punched out when I finished what I had to do. Needless to say, 03/12 held a definite TGIF moment for me. It was a rough week, going most days without a lunch (or any kind of) break and getting knocked over Wed. late-afternoon with some kinda demi-flu. Beginning of the day, feeling fine, finishing up the day, I felt like a truck had hit me (and then backed up) with all-over achiness, hot and cold waves and the shakes. I say “demi-flu” because by the time I got up, had some coffee, punched in and got going Thursday morning, all of these symptoms were gone. Freaky.

Anywho, after so much insanity, I decided I needed a little reward on Saturday (my one-day weekend), and decided to recommission my OLD, old PC, the first one I actually purchased myself (a pre-built, yes…). This one got closeted when I built v1 of my rig, and I decided to keep it for the parts and the case. Well, a buddy of mine ( tarheellassie ) had paid me a visit over winter break and brought along her little Asus Eee which sported the Linux-based Ubuntu as its OS. I thought it would be neat to put Ubuntu on the old machine just for kicks. Also, I just wanted to see what I could scrap together from the heap of parts I’ve had lying around forever. Results:

The new build. Not much to look at, but it’s pretty clean. I kept the MoBo that was already in there (an Asus), though it’s fairly old. I had a slightly newer MSI board that I guess I could have used, but don’t feel like swapping out at this point.

The old machine was an HP (probably the only pre-built brand I’d ever buy). Working in a micro-ATX is a little claustrophobic after experiencing a cavernous ATX case!

In went an Intel Pentium 4 chip from the old den/downstairs/main PC that got junked when both the bros finally got their own notebooks and it was no longer needed. Poor thing was faithful to the end. A little rumbly, granted, but with coats of dust, hair and the abuse of getting kicked, electrocuted and left on 24/7, it never quit. Granted, I put in a new MoBo and memory at some point during the course of its life, but that was only because a lightning strike to our phone line fried the stuff. (Sadly, the PC was repaired and the phone line remains all but non-functional.)

I had previously yanked a media card reader out of the machine because I figured I’d use it in my new build, but, of course, the ATX case for my current rig did not have any 3.5” slots, and the front panel was an old-school HP gray-blue, so I just threw it in a drawer. Go figure, I ended up stuffing it right back into it’s housing on the original machine (d’oh).

Also re-secured a too-big CPU fan that I’d added when the machine was still my main PC. The old one died in screeching agony, and (apparently) that particular size fan could no longer be had just anywhere, so I got the next size up and secured it over the heatsink by twist-tying two opposing corners to the heatsink latches. A little too “Red Green” for my tastes, but it stayed put, didn’t rattle and kept the CPU from melting.

I would like to take a moment to thank my sponsor, Metropolitan Vacuum Cleaner Company, operating since 1939 for all your… no, seriously, if you work with a lot of PCs/electronics and go through a lot of canned air, do yourself a favor and pick up MetroVac’s Electric Duster. You get a strong, steady stream of air that does not fizzle out (or freeze your hand off) in ten seconds. It comes with multiple attachments, it’s small, convenient, and with canned air at $3 a pop, this thing will pay for itself very quickly. You can grab it on Amazon.com for $43 shipped. It’s better than a vacuum because, while your vacuum nozzle may not be able to reach into the tiniest of crevices, a strong blast of air can. This little thing is a whiz. Love it.

Also added an extra case fan to the back. The vent and screw-holes were there, but I couldn’t find the original fan. Four wide screws were just the right size to bite into the plastic and hold it in place. Also stuck my very old, but very loyal Lite-On DVD read/write drive into the expansion bay (it was also returning to its original home). I’d originally bought the drive from Best Buy for that machine. I can’t remember whether it was because I’d just wanted a second drive to fill the bay, or because the original drive that had come with the machine crapped out (whatever HP uses in the builds sucks, they always break), but I’d had it in my current rig. Took it out and gave it back to the old machine, though because the ugly off-white drive looked pretty nasty with my solid black Thermaltake case. The HP case has a clip-on front piece with accommodating tray flaps for the disc drives.

I put an 80GB WD Caviar drive inside (alas, there was only one HDD bay), and partitioned it into two halves… one for WinXP Pro and one for Ubuntu. Also stuck in a D-Link Wireless Ethernet card that is, unfortunately, missing its antenna. A piece of wire is playing makeshift for the time being, but a very anxious-looking single bar network connection is not going to hold out for long. I hit up eBay for a Netgear USB adapter, which will hopefully arrive sometime this week. Also grabbed a $20 Logitech Mouse/Keyboard Combo at the club before heading home today. Upon booting up the machine, I realized I had no keyboard to get into setup (ack! LOL) and had to keep moving my main cordless Logitech model (and its receiver) back and forth.

The only thing I’ve left to get is a new stick of RAM. I couldn’t believe it, but my old machine was running on a single 256MB stick. Don’t know how I managed before, but needless to say… it’s slooooowwwwww now. The board will only support 1GB from what I can tell, so I’ll probably grab a stick off of Amazon. Was gonna go to Best Buy, but FRAG, they’re expensive.

Also had this old 15” Dell monitor. Actually, I had a 17” Samsung that had been my previous monitor before the current 22”, but I’d promised my mom I’d swap out and let her have the 17” since I only needed a “whatever” screen for my old junk PC. (She’d been using the Dell which she’d acquired from a friend.) The Dell suits its purpose just fine. :-) (Note: I’m not in any way endorsing the brand… have never like Dell machines.)

So, that’s been my little pet project this weekend. Gave me something to chill out over after a harrowing week at work. Also, it’s something I’d been meaning to do for a while. The machine is trying to install some XP updates, right now. Multiple attempts at SP3 have failed, and I’m wondering if it’s because of the low memory…?? And I’m not sure which PC that 80GB hard drive had been in (probably the old den comp.), but it’s fraggin’ chatty. Just grinding away, but it seems to be functioning okay, sooooo… hope it lives.

Well, this is my first post via a little program called Windows Live Writer. Apparently, I’ve had it on my PC for quite some time, but I never knew it existed, or at least never bothered to learn about what it did. Having realized that Windows Live Writer essentially “makes it easy to share your photos and videos on almost any blog service” (to quote their site), I decided to include it in my installation of the Windows Live Bundle and later check it out. Sure enough, as soon as I gave Writer my blog URL, username and password, it gathered all my scheme and design info and plopped it into a screen for me to type out my blog post. Now I am all excited because Writer makes blogging fast and simple, and now I have this absurd notion that this ease-of-posting factor will cause me to blog more often (you can laugh… I am. Or… at least… my more practical side is). In any case, it was the cause for the post you’re reading now, so I guess that’s a step in the right direction.

1. The Original Lava Brand Fire Fly Lamp
2. Memorex External 20x Lightscribe DVD Recorder
3. Buquet Supply, Inc. Pail #4 Bright Red
4. 2x "One Cheer for Broccoli" Woot Tees - Men's Sz. Large