If you read my post about my dead graphics card, then I am happy to say I am back in action. I sent out the card on Thursday, Jan. 4, it arrived on Monday, Jan. 8, at BFG. They shipped out the card the next day and I got my card back on Wednesday, Jan. 10. I am very impressed with the turn around time. The rep. gave me an estimate of 2 week turn around time and I got it in under a week. They sent me another BFG GeForece 7800GT OC and it seems to be running fine. I wanted to take some time and test the card out before officially stating that things are running fine. I am happy to report that I am getting temps in the mid 30’s C when it’s not under load and an average of 68C while under load. Kudos again to BFG.
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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.
Pointfest 2006
First I would like to thank Freddie!!! (Tour manager for Breaking Benjamin.) I gave him a call and he hooked me up with a photo pass and allowed me to shoot during the entire set.
I had pit tickets because I did not know Freddie was gonna be hooking me up, but I did not use them. Along with the photo pass Freddie got us seats. Very good seats too, 3rd row.
Me and my friend got there about 4:30pm, I gave Freddie a call and he said my pass would be waiting up front for me. Originally I was supposed to get a backstage pass, but Freddie said he could not do it.
BB is pretty much the only band I wanted to see, so I was mainly just hanging around until their set.
After 3 days grace I went down to the front barricade. I asked the security guy if I was allowed behind the barricade and he said sure. He then said usually they only allow photos for the first 3 songs. I only him that Freddie said I could shoot the whole show. He said he would go check on that for me. Another guy who had a radio came by and asked my name, he went to go check with Freddie and he said I was good to shoot the whole thing, thank you Freddie.
While I was waiting for BB behind the barricade I met Adron, the web guy from the point. He was a really nice guy and a big BB fan.
I work at a photography studio, so I was able to use some of our equipment. I have a Canon DigitalRebel XT and I used a wide angle lens on that one, 11-18mm. Then I borrowed a Canon 20D along with a Canon 70-200mm f2.8/L lens.
This was my first time trying to photogrpah a concert and I must say it was extremely challenging. I took a total of 251 pictures, not all turned out. I am still working on fixing them up and everything, but I added some to my gallery.
Ben gave a big shout out to TSB. He said we rock and the old HR site sucked.
In case anyone is wondering, I was the guy rocking out behind the barricade in the grey BB shirt. One of the security guys was like dude you are supposed to be taking pictures not having fun, ha!
After BB me and my friend left. I have seen Staind many times before and they are nothing special live.
Please take a look at some of the pictures that I took of Breaking Benjamin at Pointfest.
Sad iPod.
This past Saturday I went to use my iPod and 
is all I see. I went to the website the iPod says to go to. I first tried to reset it many times, using Play and Select, no help. Then the website said to connect it to my computer and try to restore it. Problem is the iPod is not showing up on my computer, so I am unable to restore it.
So, I am basically getting the idea that the hard drive is dead. I tried searching for solutions, but the consensus was that it had to be sent away for repair. I am sure Apple would want way too much to justify having it repaired and it would make more sense just to buy a new one.
Luckily, when I got the iPod back in July 2004 at BestBuy, I went ahead and got the 4 year warrenty for $40. So, I went up there to GeekSquad and told him I had the Sad iPod icon. He took the iPod typed up the info and said I should have it back in 10-14 days.
I can tell you I already miss it. I hate having to carry around all of my cd’s. I used the iPod everywhere, my car, work, etc.
Court Blocks Illinois Video Game Sales Regulation
I have been playing violent video games for years and I am not a homicidal maniac. People need to stop trying to blame everyone else and take some responsibility in what their kids do. Instead they expect the government to do the parenting for them. Let’s just plop kids in front of the TV and do whatever we want and just let the FCC control what our kids see.
Violence has actually gone down. The murder rate for 2004 actually hit a 40 year low. Also, most studies show almost no relationship between violent video games and violence. Only 12% of video games are rated “M”, while 55% of movies are rated “R”.
Firefox 1.5
Firefox 1.5 is now out. The mozilla.org site has also been given a facelift and a relocation to mozilla.com. Anyone know who did the redesign? I know that silverorange did the previous design.
I have been using 1.5 since the first Release Candidate and have had a good experience with it. Just about all of the extensions that I use have already been updated. The automatic updates have worked without any issues. The reordering of tabs is a great feature, that previously required the use of an extension. You can read all of the changes in the Release Notes.