Making a new old friend.

History, way back yonder in 1998-1999 I worked for a local Computer builder / ISP A-Z Computers. Great place to work, except toward then end we had to start bringing our paychecks directly to their bank to make sure they didn't bounce... Anyway, my first "real" computer job. I will forever have fond memories of that place.

A few months ago, a coworker at my current place of employment gave me an old machine he was about to scrap. People throw computers away?! /faint Low and behold I see the case badge and imediately fall in love with it. Granted it was filthy, filthy filthy, like with dust bunnies half wedged out of every vent and oriface and then glued to the plastics... gross. So the machine didn't power on and it looked like crap. Set it aside, I'll deal with it later.

Fast forward a few months. I'm feeling nastolgic as I sometimes (frequently) do. I rip the thing completely apart, Everything, down to the bare metal chassis. I take all the plastics off and everything gets soaked and scrubbed. Turns out the case cleaned up rather well. I decide I'm going to put some "era" guts in the chassis and throw the box in to my little computer family.

 Specs:

Pentium 233-MMX, 128MB of ram (4x 32mb simms), 4mb Diamon Stealth 3D PCI graphics card, 4mb Diamond Monster 3D PCI Voodoo card, Creative AWE32 ISA sound card w/ 2mb ram. Linksys 100mbps PCI card, 30GB maxtor 7200rpm IDE drive and a 52x CDROM. This bitch is bad ass! Fastest most stable Windows 95 machine I've ever had the pleasure to play with.

Loaded the BEAST with Windows 95c + Plus!, Office 95 (seemed appropriate) DirectX 8a. Latest drivers... And a bunch of games. Mechwarrior 2 3dFX patch. Myst, Need For Speed II SE and of course the obligatory Quake. Damn fine performance from a Socket 7 machine. I shall sleep well knowing this machine is safe and sound and fully operational!

My Bike & Current Evolution

My Bike, a 1983 Suzuki GS450 as purchased in April of 2010 for ~$100? Just under 7000 original miles. It came from a friends father whom I guess just wanted it out of the garage it had been living in for the last 20something years.

 As of September 2010, my bike was painted metallic charcoal, the original maroon & brown just wasnt my thing. A little chrome polish never hurt no one either... I removed the windshield because... I wanted to. I would later add the chrome Suzuki emblems back on after I cleaned them up.

My bike as of March 2012 @ ~9000 original miles, Lost both side covers, assumingly blew off while going down the highway. Yes, my friends, it can get to highway speed with my fat ass on it. Granted its whining out at 7000+ RPMs at 65mph.. if you listen really close you can hear the engine screaming "GET THE F*** OFF ME!" SO yea, Replaced highway bar foot pegs, also fell off at some point. Noticing a trend here? Added a riser bar to the luggage rack, very usefull when I need to tie something down. Replaced the curvy handle bars with ones that don't hit my "larger-than-average" self when I need to make sharp turns, not quite a straight bar, handling I feel has increased. I really miss those side covers....