Woo hoo! It’s 2:19 in the afternoon! And nothing is happening! Well, okay, Outlook is archiving a whole crapload of ancient e-mail. That’s about it, though. It was weird—I got handed a big project earlier this morning, then the same guy who handed it to me came back fifteen minutes later and said, “Hold off on that.” So I’m “holding off.” Other than that, it’s a pleasant day, with mild temperatures and a brisk breeze in the air.

Got a lot of work to do after hours. Yeah, I finished up the bikini website but now I have the satellite tracking project to work on again, and there’s a laundry list of things that need doing. A lot of it is high-concept type of stuff like coming up with a better logo and a couple more sets of icons, which is always a drag because you can’t just sit down and say, “Okay, going to whip this out now!” Because it takes creative thinking and prior consideration, and oftentimes, a lot of trial and error before you render something you like. So, after the ridiculously fast-paced set of days I had last week, and then the “reload Windows and all software” marathon weekend, I’ve been just chilling and playing games for the past couple of days.

Speaking of which, I downclocked my machine back to 2500+ speeds. It has never once run at those velocities before. From day one I had it cranked to 3200+ with an 11x multiplier, a 200 MHz FSB and aggressive memory timings. Perhaps the whole mess was too aggressive, because many games would crash after varying amounts of time (although most waited several hours so it didn’t bug me all that much), but the worst offender was Half-Life 2. It would friggin’ crash constantly, and never in the same intervals. One day it would take a dump literally every minute or two, and after a lot of cursing and banging around, it became obvious that you just weren’t gonna play the game that day because the system had a headache. Anyway, I tried every possible fix that I could find on a whole slew of message boards, and none of them worked.

So when I was reinstalling Windows from scratch this weekend, I thought I’d try to solve two problems at once. The ridiculous amounts of heat my system generates were due, in part, to the overclocking, so I decided to return to stock speeds and see how many degrees that would save me. Not only did the CPU idle temperature drop from 50 to 44°C, Half-Life completely stopped crashing. I’ve been playing it for the last couple of nights, and am about halfway through Ravenholm at this point—all without a single crash. This is unprecedented, in my experience. I’m also very happy about it. And I’ve decided that I’m not going to overclock my next system. Because the other thing I noticed is that there is no perceptible performance difference—in games, anyway—from when I was overclocking and now, when I’m not. So I say, why introduce all that stress, heat and instability for an imperceptible benefit?

Yeah, maybe I’m just not enough of a “connoisseur” to appreciate the difference, like those audiophiles who react like you just sodomized the family dog when you tell them you can’t hear the quality differences they’re gushing about. But I also don’t spend a lot of time running benchmarks or judging system performance based on numeric data. To me it’s all about how the game plays, and right now, my games seem to be playing just as well as they were a month or so ago, except without all the crashing.

Anyway, that’s the story back at the home office. In other news, here at the work office, they’re doing construction on the huge suite across the hall, and the construction crew seems to be going out of their way to completely destroy the rest of the floor in the process. There’s paint spattered all over the place, glass wall sconces that have been completely smashed by what I don’t know—some dude carrying a ladder or something, I’d guess—and the men’s room…sheeeeyit. What a sight. I went in there today, and it looked like somebody put an M80 in a can of white paint and left it on the sink. Paint spattered all over the place. The landlord also replaced the carpet out in the hall, which seems like a pretty stupid move considering all the ongoing construction work. Waiting until the renovation was done seems like it would have been a better idea, but that’s just me.

Last night, Apple and I booked a couple of nights at a hotel in Toronto—we’re visiting the city for a couple of days during our venture to Michigan next month. It’s been a long time since I was there. 1997, to be exact, for an event which shall go unnamed here due to its asininity—and it’s been even longer since I actually saw any of the things Toronto is famous for, like the CN Tower, Centre Island or Queen’s Quay. (Is it famous for Queen’s Quay? All I know is, we always used to go there.) The hotel we picked connects to the PATH “underground city” (for want of a better term), is a suite-style hotel with cool amenities including microwaves in every room, and pretty good rates. Sounds like it’ll be a fun time. Thai food is a big thing in Toronto, so we’re going to sample the local fare, as well as some tasty seafood.

This Friday, the conclusion to last week’s Star Trek: Enterprise, episode, “In A Mirror, Darkly,” will be airing, and I’m gonna be glued to the TV. This is a reaction that Enterprise has not prompted in me since the end of the third season, so it’s a bit weird, but any show that includes a humongous, hourlong fanwank over all things TOS Trek is a show worth watching, in my opinion. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: They ought to just stop screwing around and make a whole new series based on TOS Trek, with the same goofy sets and everything. Hell, everything else is going retro these days. Is it any more ridiculous than the return of ‘80s fashion?

Which gets me thinking, what is ‘90s fashion going to be known for? Forgetting to shave? Forgive me, but I was alive throughout that entire decade and I can’t think of one uniquely identifying factor, other than “crap.” But that’s not a unique factor, so I’m stumped. And no, I don’t want your help, so keep it to yourself.

I’m actually really jonesing to get out of here and go home. Tonight’s agenda? Among other things: Eat a hearty meal of tuna salad sandwiches and Chunky Classic Chicken Noodle soup (It’s the Soup that Eats Like a Meal™), finally fill out our ballot for the proposed amendments to the HOA covenants, and go back to Ravenholm and burn the hell out of the evil, evil headcrab zombies by firing gas cylinders at them with the “Zero-Point Energy Field Manipulator,” or gravity gun. Hehehe. HL2 is so much fun. Yeah, it was pseudo-fun before, but all the crashing kept me from enjoying it. Now it’s great fun!

All right, just got some work-related stuff to look at, so off I go.