Goliath Online

Fun and action-packed weekend. Friday we actually grilled for dinner (it was in the 40s!) and watched #4 of the final 10 Battlestar Galactica.

Saturday, my new PC was FINALLY scheduled to arrive via FedEx (hooray for Saturday deliveries!) and at about 12:45pm there it was. While we had plans for the rest of the day, I couldn't resist opening it up and at least booting it. All I can say is, COOL. The last few new PCs didn't have a really noticable speedup - same operating system, same sort of processor, just a little faster and a little more memory. This one...well, going from a single core to a quad core with hyperthreading and 6 GB of memory, and a 64-bit operating system, well, it's night and day. The main thing I notice is that I can actually do 4 things at once and it handles it. I don't really think the 6 GB of memory probably get taken advantage of, but I'm sure it's not paging as much. Windows Vista? Well, I think all I've heard is basically true. If you have a big fast powerful machine and high-end graphic card, it works great. It's much smoother, much more is built-in (e.g. integrated Windows Mobile sync for my phone), and the network/driver support is great. Downsides? Well, most applications aren't written or compiled in 64-bit mode. They can run in 32-bit mode ok, as long as they don't do anything "weird" - I've had a few hiccups, but nothing major.

Shortly after, we picked up and headed to Eau Claire to surprise friend Caryn for her 21st birthday. It worked out perfectly - she was totally surprised, and we got to hang out with her all afternoon and had a nice dinner at the Haymarket Grille. After watching Caryn try on outfits, we headed over to her boyfriend's for the big bash. We didn't end up staying too long, as it was a 2-hour drive back, but we got to meet a bunch of her friends.

Sunday I had coffee with friends Bill and Eric, and we solved the world's problems (or at least we would have if people would listen to us :) After spending some time finishing up my computer and prepping my old one for Erin, I met friend Ryan to get fitted for tuxes for his wedding. Besides Mestad's being super busy on the bridal side, it only took us about 15 minutes. Erin and I hit lunch at Timberlodge, and I was back home to finish redoing all the computers so that mine was all set up for Erin, while finishing installing everything onto my new one.