Author: Greg

Dead Graphics Card

I built my current PC back in October 2005. When I was deciding on the parts I decided to get a BFG graphics card because of their lifetime warranty. My friend bought a BFG card a few years ago and is currently on his third card from them after having the first 2 replaced and each time has been an upgrade for him. I purchased the BFG GeForce 7800GT OC 256MB card. This has been a great card and plays anything at full resolution my my Dell 24″ screen.

For Christmas I got the new game Company of Heroes, which I played a few times before noticing that my graphics card fan was getting extremely loud. So I downloaded RivaTuner to see how hot my card was getting. I had it log the temperature and the graphics card was getting up to 110C, which is extremely hot. When it’s not under load it’s around 64C.

After a couple days Company of Heroes stopped loading. It was getting me an error saying it cannot find a rendering device. I fired up dxdiag and my graphics card had “n/a” listed for Total Memory. I tried reinstalling the nvidia drivers and directx9, which neither had an effect.

So, I then decided to call BFG, who has 24/7 support and all are in the U.S. I called around 5:30PM and was on hold for a little over 15 minutes, when I got a hold of a live person and told him my card model and that it was getting 110C under load, with the fan getting very load. He asked a few questions of things to try, but pretty much came to the conclusion that the card was dead. He issued an RMA and I shipped the card off on 1-4-07. They said it’s usually a 2 week turnaround time. Hopefully it won’t be quite that long, esp. since they are actually located in the same state as me.

I must say I will recommend BFG from now on. It is so nice being able to actually talk to someone in the U.S. and he really knew what he was talking about.

California Trip

This post is extremely late, but I guess it’s better late than never. If you don’t know last month I went out to California for a weekend. The original plan was to see Breaking Benjamin play in Reno, NV, but the plan fell though when the concert was canceled. My tickets were already bought so I was still gonna head out to California. Dave, the guy who runs the Breaking Benjamin site was the one who was flying me out there.

I was hoping that Apple would release the Core 2 Duo Macbooks before I left and they did, but I didn’t have time to buy online so I could use my NAPP discount. I decided it was worth it to me to just go ahead and go out to an Apple store and buy one anyway. On November 9th I went to the West County Apple store in St. Louis and picked up a White Macbook. This is my first Mac and I am loving it so far, hopefully more on that in a later post.

I woke up around 4am on November 10th to catch my 6:15am flight. It took about 15 minutes to get through security. I only had a 15 minute wait or so once I got to my gate. I boarded the plane and we left on time. This flight wasn’t a non-stop, so I had a stop in Denver, then I got another flight to Sacramento, CA. On the way to Denver I watched Tommy Boy, a classic. 🙂 it wasn’t full, so I had an entire row to myself. It was nice on the flight When I got to Denver, CO I decided to see if I could get on the wireless and boo to Denver. You have to pay to use their wireless, so I didn’t bother. On the flight to Sacramento it was full. I watched Black Sheep. I guess I was in a Chris Farley and David Spade mood.

Once I got to the Sacramento airport I got a call from Kat who is Dave’s wife saying that she was on her way to come get me. I waited outside the airport waiting for them and when I saw Elvis, their dog, I knew it was them. I had never met Dave or Kat in person before.

We went back to their house, where I met Dave for the first time. We hung out and just talked for awhile while we waited for Chris’s flight to arrive. Chris is another one of the guys I work with on the Breaking Benjamin site. We all went to go pick him up at the airport then we went to the33rd Street Bistro to eat. While we were waiting outside this homeless guy comes up saying he works for the CIA. He asked if we wanted to know what they call him, we said sure, he says he is known as the “Rocketman”. He told us he was in an accident, so he could “rocket” much anymore. Needless to say that was an interesting way to start things off.

We went back to their house after we finished eating. The rest of the night was mainly just spent hanging out. Jim also came by from the Breaking Benjamin site.

On Saturday Dan came by and we all went bowling, which I hadn’t done in years. I bowled horribly, probably the worst I ever had. I don’t even recall how low it was. That night we played some Texas Hold Em. I won, too bad we weren’t playing for money.

On Sunday Dave took Chris, Jim and me down to San Francisco. Things are definitely different out on the West Coast compared to the Midwest. I had my Canon Rebel XT and a 70-200mm F2.8L IS lens, which belongs to the photographer I work with. We went and saw the Golden Gate bridge, of course. Then we went down to Haight Street, now that was different. I got asked if I could spare some cash so this guy could get a sex change operation. I am gonna go with, no. We walked around there for a little while. We then drive down the windy road, Lombard Street. Next was a trip up to Coit Tower. Jim and me decided to pay the ~$5 to go up in the tower. The view was great from up there and I was able to snap some good pictures. We made one more stop before heading back. We stopped at Treasure Island. It was dark by this point, but the view was excellent back on San Francisco. I only had a monopod so it was extremely hard to get any good shots. Out of 20+ I maybe got one good one.

I had a 10am flight, so the next morning I was up around 8am. Dave took me to the airport, which is an extremely small airport. One real nice thing is free wifi at the airport. It was a full flight once again on my flight to Denver. I watched episodes of the third season of Arrested Development, great show. Had about a 90 minutes layover in Denver, so I had to try and find an outlet, not an easy task. Watched some more episodes while I waited for my flight and on the way home to St. Louis.

I would first like to thank Dave and Kat for inviting me out. They are both 2 of the nicest people I have ever met.

I had a great time in California, but I realized I am definitely a Midwest kinda guy, lol.

I will work on getting my pictures into the gallery tomorrow, but it is currently 1am, so it will have to wait. I shot Raw only, so the files still need to be processed.