I ran 3DMark05 on my new vid card (Radeon x850, AGP) and it has..

5267 3DMarks

This is roughly 2.75x better than my 9600XT in 3DMark05. It’s certainly not the most absolute best I could do, of course, but probably just about the best I can squeeze out of my current hardware. Good enough for now, I think.

Of course, my next computer will probably be liquid-cooled with PCIe. But, that’ll be in about a year. That’s about when it’ll probably start getting to the point where I can’t stand my rig any longer. lol.

Then again, by then, I might wanna just go with the PS3. hehe.

Where the heck did this weekend go? Would it kindly rewind back to the beginning? 😛

SciFi Friday was just unbelievably awesome. My initial reaction to the Galactica finale hasn’t changed. It was absolutely the best finale I’ve seen in years in pretty much any SciFi show. It’s re-run on Monday night. I might say more about it after that–if you haven’t seen it by then, you’re frakked. lol.

Saturday was quite awesome. I went to a birthday party with Ruthie for two of her friends’ kids. I played on the PS2 with one of those kids, and was quite surprised that I was able to hold my own. He only beat me by varying scores ranging from 10 points to a couple thousand (5-10% greater score on average). Of course, it was my first time playing the game and all, so I think I did fairly well. I doubt I’ll do so well when I’m 50 🙂

X-Files boxsets are now $50 😮 It’s about time; I guess they got rid of a lot of fluff and kept the content to mostly the series. Thank goodness; Those $150 sets were way overpriced. I will finally be able to start collecting them and not feel as if I’m wasting moola on frivilous stuff. lol. Bonus features are kewl and all, but not kewl enough to me to blow $150/set on.

Today will be a bit of relaxing, going to Mass, RCIA with Ruthie and then who knows? There’s the possibility of a double date with her sponsor. That should be pretty spiffy.

*sigh* So, really. Can we rewind the weekend back to the beginning and start over? 😛

…

And we have to wait 7 frakking months for more?!?!?!

Cassini Finds Signs of Liquid Water on Saturn’s Moon

Quite the awesome discovery, that’s for sure. Europa is very much covered by ice, possibly with under-ice oceans, and a very tenuous atmosphere. Mars has a whispy atmosphere, as well, and is covered with a wee bit of water (but mostly frozen CO₂).

Perhaps if earth was seeded with the rudimentary building blocks of life, it came from one of these.

I’m kind of reminded of the movie 2010, where they found Chlorophyll on Europa. Hopefully next we won’t find a zillion monoliths in Jupiter’s atmosphere 😉

Happy Friday to all!

It got cloudy 🙁 *sniffle, sniffle*

So, I took my telescope out on this fine and clear afternoon to look at the sun. In general, you won’t see many sunspots right now; we’re in the trough of the 11 year solar cycle.

The only filter I had on it was the Aluminized Mylar filter over the aperture. I’m thinking about getting a Hydrogen Alpha filter; it would help view the prominences that are associated with the sunspots. We’ll see. Those filters tend to be expensive. My dad was thinking about getting one; perhaps I’ll see if we could invest in one together.

There really wasn’t much solar activity today; there were two spots in the SE corner of the disc (which actually isn’t the SE corner of the sun, because the image in a Newtonian reflector is always inverted). There was a smaller spot and a larger; the smaller one was located NW of the larger. It’s probable that this was a prominence; one sunspot is indicative of one end of the prominence while the other is the opposite end.

So, despite the lack of activity, it was kewl taking the scope out. I’ll probably do a little bit of observing tonight…so, entry to follow 🙂

So, I went to my first hockey game ever last night. I went to the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) for a good frickin’ amount of time and I never ever went to one before, ironically enough. Instead of a football team, my alma mater touts a pretty kick-ass hockey team–which almost seems like it’d be sacrilegious here in the south, considering how mad everyone else is about football 😉

It was a really interesting game. Those who’ve been to hockey games before told me that those games outside of the collegiate arena (NHL, pro, etc) are definitely a bit more violent. Both sides found themselves with power plays quite often, especially in the last period.

Ultimately, UAH won the game 6-1 despite having as many as three players in the penalty box in the last period (the 1 point scored by Wayne State was in the second period, so they really worked pretty hard to hold them back).

Today, I have a tummy ache :-\ Maybe it was the popcorn last night, maybe the wings I ate after. I’m not sure :-\ I think that I would most certainly like to take this day to rest and relax. And maybe watch some Olympic hockey 😀

The iBook arrived *wipes sweat from brow*

*sigh* It is depressing. One of the bad things that could happen is the instability in Iraq will embolden the terrorists further. The instability in the region creates a vaccum of power, with the legitimacy of the government coming into question. Iran eventually comes in and fills the void, making what is literally a Super Iran.

They start bullying their neighbors, much as Saddam did with Kuwait. They build an even more Super Iran. All the while, they continue building nuclear weapons (and I have absolutely no doubt that’s what they’re doing, what with all this pussyfooting with the UN).

Eventually, they go after an ally. Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, etc (though I suppose Iraq right now is an ally in bloom). We step up our activity in the region even more. Time passes and it all breaks down into nuclear conflict with Iran’s newly built arsenal.

Of course, this is mostly out or my arse.. Take it with a grain of salt. The Iran thing is something that not only we take seriously, but also the world. Nevertheless, what’s going on over there is really frightening–not only for the ones we all care about but for the rest of the planet, too :-\

Our military forces were told specifically not to touch mosques. Period. They’re sacred. And they did that. Of course, many of us over here would get pretty uberly miffed if they started bombing our churches. It shows exactly what these terrorists are all about that they show their own disrespect in gutting out a shrine of Allah.