So, I’m getting ready to move this weekend. I still have a lot of packing to do… I hate packing. I’ve bribed some friends with pizza and beer to help me move my stuff. I’ve bribed another friend with more pizza to help me paint the walls back to the boring off-white color they were when I got there. I’ve secured a killer vacuum cleaner to rescue my rug that my grandma gave me, and will be renting a super steam cleaner to get the carpet back in passable condition so I don’t have to pay to have it replaced. My plan of attack is to finish packing this week, move the stuff on Saturday (and by “move my stuff” i mean “drive the truck and let the boys load/unload”) during the day, unpack the important stuff Saturday night, and paint the walls and clean the carpet Sunday.

I hate moving. I’m kind of excited though. Xoie will have a friend to play with, since my friend that we’re moving in with has a dog, too. I think having more places to go will help calm her down, as well as running and playing more. Pod is going to bring his computer over to my house so that we can get a little more spread of where we spend our time, cause I’m *always* at his house, and I would really like to spend more time at home, but still spend time with him. We haven’t been playing EQ a whole lot, cause we’ve been playing a lot of Left 4 Dead, which is totally awesome. If you’re on Steam, add me as your friend. lifelessmind. I’d link to my profile but I can’t find the URL while I’m at work cause anything fun is surfblocked.

I had to take back the super sweet 3.16 dual core processor I bought. Turns out my motherboard only supports 65nm processors. So I already bought a new power supply, and got a video card sent to me, and if I bought a new motherboard to go with my new processor I’d need new RAM cause mine is slow, and I’d need a case, and at that point I built a whole new computer and that just wasn’t in my budget :( I did pick up a 2.2 dual core, which is the best 65nm I can still find at this point.. which, yea, is still better than the 1.8 I had in there, but not NEARLY as exciting as the E8600. Cest la vie. I’m excited for my new video card My friend Shawn says the video card will do me more good than the processor anyway, so the combination of the two is pretty good I’d say.

I’ve also been doing a lot of designing/coding lately. I’ve started (and scrapped) a good 4 or 5 layouts for this site already. I’ve got the main page (mostly) coded for the one I think I’ll be keeping. Here’s a sneak peak of it. Don’t bother clicking any links; none of them work yet. If you have any feedback, let me know. I always like hearing other peoples ideas. I’m also starting a new project. Domain has been bought… but I’ve also scrapped 2 or 3 layouts for that one. I don’t want to get too much into specifics until the site is up, but it was inspired by this random freak-out I had over the weekend. While Kat Scratch Fever mostly is about the NOW of my life, this new project will give a little more insight about my past. I’ll let you know when it’s up and running.

Oh, and I got a new tattoo. I suppose technically it’s 2 tattoos (that technicality meant I had to fill out the paperwork twice! that, and I split it up into two sessions cause we ran out of time the first day). I just got the second one last night and it’s crazy swollen and red still. The left one hurt more than the right one. Probably because I’m right handed so the muscles in my right arm are stronger and more used to abuse. Anyway I don’t have pictures of both of them together yet, but they look the same, just mirror images. Pictures on my Flickr. Go look, leave comments!

That’s all for now.

So, with the impending release of The Sims 3, I’ve been carefully scrutinizing the hardware in my computer, and have come to realize that while it was sufficient a year and a half ago when I bought it (read: “good enough”), I am quickly outgrowing the system.

Which leaves me in a slightly uncomfortable position, having bought a pre-built Dell computer. They don’t exactly make changing hardware the easiest thing sometimes. However, it’s not under warranty or anything like that, so I’m just going to trust my previous hands on experience and have at it. Worst case scenario, my computer blows up. (.... wait, that would suck. umm…)

Anyway, I’ve already added more memory, an extra hard drive and added a FireWire port, which was easy.

Now I’m looking to replace the processor (mine doesn’t even meet the system requirements), which makes me nervous. Lots of little pins and stuff… if I have to replace the motherboard I might as well just build a new computer (which, I can’t, as much as I would love to). I’m looking to get the Intel E8400 (3.0 ghz dual core that runs circles around my current 1.7 dual core). It’s"cheap” but still good.

While I was looking at that, my buddy Shawn pointed out that my video card sucks. This is lower on my priority list (despite his protests) because while yes, it’s not the greatest video card on earth, it *is* on the list of supported video cards for Sims 3, while my processor is lacking in ghz. I do, however, want a new one because mine wasn’t that good when I bought it, so now it’s really subpar. I haven’t started looking too much at those yet; any suggestions? (nothing too fancy though; I do, after all, work a mediocre job :p)

These upgrades will also make the video-editing process not suck so much, and I may actually make more frequent use of my video camera

So now, mostly I’m crossing my fingers that the IRS is good to me and brings me a decent refund when I file my taxes. W-2’s take too long. /waits impatiently.