Bow down before the one you serve.

"Because the OS will feature technology called Aero and Flip that will allow for a more 3-D viewing experience, companies like NVIDIA are creating what they call a "graphical processor unit," a board that is designed to fit in a computer and make sure it properly makes use of Aero once Vista is installed."

*record scratch*

Woah, there, buddy. Flaw in your causality. Unless I'm way misinformed (and being a fairly serious PC Gamer you can bet I'm not) we've had GPUs for quite a while now. Average Users probably won't have heard anything about them until Vista but that's because an OS has never required hardcore graphics processing before. I'm not sure that's a 'feature,' myself, but call it what you will. All that aside, though, it's infuriating for you to not only imply but to literally say that NVIDIA is making GPUs 'because' of Vista. Patently false. Microsoft may be the monolithic god of the machines for most users, but not everyone in hardware and software bows and scrapes at Gates' feet.

What NVIDIA and other ARE doing right now is working on a Physics Processing Unit, to take the load of dynamics and collisions and the like off of the CPU. Why? Gaming. Nothing drives hardware development the way gaming does -- server technology is probably the next closest thing, but that's almost entirely bus speed and CPU cycles; storage is cheep unless you make it really fast, and even at that the prices are coming down.
Anyways. My inner- (and outer- I suppose) geek couldn't stand the idea that everything Good and True in the world is because of and catering to Microsoft and it's cludgy operating system.

Not a meteor -- a lightning bolt!

So I was reading a Slashdot article on how the dinosaurs died and came upon This in the comments, some guy apparently contesting that electrical charge, and not gravity, makes the world (and everything else) go 'round. Not sure how much I buy it, but I'm always a little tickled by alternate views of reality.

The Perks of Not Being A Wallflower

It just occurred to me, as I'm sitting here with little to do -- my hardware being fritzy, my email being down, and my boss being sick -- that confident people are a lot more... approachable than someone who's shy. That's a bad way of putting it, but I can't really find the words I mean. This not-quite-epiphany (I've known this sort of thing more or less for most of my life) dawned on me when I randomly recalled how my little brother's girlfriend, Kitty, behaved when meeting the family. She's almost visibly frightened. She keeps her head down, her arms close to her body, she doesn't make eye contact, and she talks very softly. And while she has every right to be shy -- my family is amiable enough, but anything times ten is a lot -- she comes off, unintentionally, as very unapproachable.

And in the moment that I thought of this, I thought, "I don't want to be like that." And generally speaking, I'm not. I think it's one of my personal strengths that, generally speaking, I can be casually comfortable in most situations, though especially in one-on-one or small-group interactions (amusingly enough considering the scale of my family, it's amidst large groups of people that I've found I feel the most uncomfortable). there are times, though, when I feel shy, and my 'shy' I mean 'frightened.' In particular when re-meeting people I used to know after a lapse of years, or when interacting with someone who's opinion (1) I care about and (2) I can't predict (this second criterion being why I'm alright with my good friends, because I know how they react).

Ughn, I'm exhausted. the 4th day in a row when 3:00 rolls around and I have nothing at all to do for the last hour of my workday. I just want to go home.

More Meme

I'm kind of avoiding doing anything meaningful.

So, the idea of this Meme, given to me by Raen and Eileen, is to go to http://www.popculturemadness.com/Music/Pop-Modern/????.html where the ???? is replaced by the year you turned 18. For me that's 2001, which is unfortunate because the meme calls for the top seventy-five songs and apparently music in 2001 was so bad that they could only find forty. Forty. And let me tell you, even those forty aren't all winners. Anyways. You go there and take the top seventy-five (or as near as you can get), then you bold the ones you like, strike the one's you hate, and italicized the ones you're indifferent to. The ones you simply don't know you just leave alone. So: have-at.

1. I'm A Believer - Smash Mouth
2. Lady Marmalade - Christina Aguilera, Pink, Lil Kim, and Mya
3. Ride Wit Me - Nelly featuring City Spud
4. Get The Party Started - Pink
5. Follow Me - Uncle Cracker
6. Bootylicious - Destiny's Child
7. Ain't It Funny (Remix) - Jennifer Lopez
8. U Remind Me - Usher
9. Pop - N Sync
10. Hero - Enrique Iglesias
11. It's My Life - Bon Jovi
12. I'm Real - Jennifer Lopez
13. Smooth Criminal - Alien Ant Farm
14. Family Affair - Mary J Blige
15. Angel - Shaggy
16. With Arms Wide Open - Creed
17. Where The Party At - Jagged Edge with Nelly
18. Bouncing Off The Ceiling - A*Teens
19. Hey Baby - No Doubt
20. Independant Woman part 1- Destiny's Child
21. Whenever, Wherever - Shakira
22. The Space Between - Dave Matthews Band
23. Turn Off The Light - Nelly Furtado
24. Hit 'Em Up Style (Oops) - Blu Cantrell
25. It's Been a While - Stained
26. I'm Real - Jennifer Lopez
27. Fallin' - Alicia Keys
28. Hanging By A Moment - Lifehouse
29. The Call - Backstreet Boys
30. This Is Me - Dream
31. What Would You Do? - City High
32. Survivor - Destiny's Child
33. Start the Commotion - The Wiseguys
34. All Or Nothing At All - O Town
35. I Wanna Be Bad - Willa Ford
36. Flavor Of The Week - American Hi Fi
37. In The End - Linkin Park
38. Superman - Five For Fighting
39. Drops of Jupiter - Train
40. I'm Like A Bird - Nelly Furtado

Wait, what? We got "I'm Real" by Jennifer Lopez twice?! Ok, not I REALLY feel gyp'd!

And her name was...

So, as Dawn noted, it's been over a week now since I mentioned meeting and kinda falling for a girl named Ashley, and inquiring minds want to know. What it is, exactly, that they want to know I haven't the foggiest idea, but I've been meaning to say more on the topic anyways. So, here goes.

I guess the first thing I should set down is that her name, not-contrary to popular belief, is Kira. I say not-contrary because her name is Ashley, too. Without going into all the details, Kira is her middle name, but she's hopped back and forth between being Ashley and being Kira; in fact, on the site she named herself as Ashley Kira. i asked her, though, what she uses when she thinks of herself -- much as how I'll answer to many names, but when I think of me I think 'Andrew.' She said she thinks of herself as Kira, and so she shall be.

( Cut so that I can leave this half-finished and no one will know. )

Finishline