Graham

Almost everyone likely to be reading this is going to be totally uninterested. However due to some rash statements I made in my youth that can be found on Usenet if you are sufficiently determined, and the impending threat of the C++0x standard, I thought I might reaffirm my position on the language.

Briefly, it is the most terrible programming language anyone has seriously advocated programming in for the last 20 years.

( details, if you're curious )

My laptop’s hard drive is dying. Fortunately thanks to the new Mac OS X I actually have backups, so I’ve ordered a new HD. It seems one can get quiet or low power but not both (although occasionally neither).

It’s a good thing I ordered cherry (my iMac) when I did, I’m finding out…

Many moons ago, I bought a PC for the express purpose of playing City of Heroes. I enjoyed the game a great deal and played incessantly, but in time I found that my mindless MMORPGing was being impaired by my bargain basement video card. Thus, I desired to upgrade, and in particular I thought that I would buy a decent nVidia card.

( Enter the nVidia 6600. )

When the devil and his majordomo had a child, that child was so ugly it broke the universe. And this video card was the afterbirth. Those look like copper traces but really they are solidified hate, powered by the fires of hell itself routing elemental particles of frustration from some infinite fount into the rest of my darling computer, poisoning it from the inside. Not even liquid nitrogen could quench its burning loathing for mankind. When I rip it out of my computer, still trailing the gossamer threads with which it has infested my case, I am going to put it in its packaging and then put that into a lead box and seal it with unicorn blood and the tears of a saint and then put that into a car that I will put into a shipping container that I will put on a ship that I will sail into the Pacific, over the Mariana Trench, and then I will blow the ship up and watch in a submersible to be sure that this vile thing returns back to the center of the earth whence it came to ensure that it will afflict no other human beings.

And I defy anyone to argue that this is somehow unreasonable.

Original parts remaining after graphics card "upgrade":

• Case
• CPU
• Motherboard
• Hard drive
• DVD drive
• One stick of memory

Parts replaced/upgraded/bought:

• New CPU fan
• Two case fans
• New power supply
• NVidia 6600
• One stick of memory

On the other hand at least my CPU runs at 45 C instead of 72 C now.