The car didn’t pass inspection. It’s way worse than I thought it would be. It ended up being multiple things… The tires were fine I guess. I ended up needing upper and lower radiator hoses, Serpentine belt, brakes, and rotors. I guess Monday we are going to be fixing it up so that it can actually pass inspection and I can get it registered. I hope everything goes as smooth as it sounds in my head, because it needs to be done soon or I’m technically driving around illegal.
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The dreaded Inspection
Today is the day of my inspection. I’ve been dreading this day due to the fact that I know that they’re going to fail it for some reason or another. My tires were never replaced and they said last inspection that they would pass it, but it really needed tires for it soon.
Hopefully whatever is wrong with it this year, they get right on it because I had to drive all winter long with practically bald tires… And that’s no fun. I don’t know how many times I spun out or almost crashed into something on my way back from work.
I’ve noticed recently that electronically my car is starting to have problems. It doesn’t have anything to do with the alternator since the car always starts normally. It’s just that when I kick the heat on the car lights end up dimming and such.
All well, whatever happens, happens I guess. The appointment is 10:00AM this morning and I have to work at 4:00PM. they better not take their sweet time getting it done, because they like to do that often.
Adventure Suites
As you may know, Britt and I went to Adventure Suites for our little “vacation”. Honestly, we just wanted to get away from everyone/everything and not have to deal with stuff for a while. When she first told me that she was going to do this for our anniversary, I was kind of hesitant, but excited at the same time.
The whole reason why I was hesitant about this was because of how much money she told me it was going to cost her to book the room. When it comes down to it though, it wasn’t too bad for the great time we had. The staff was excellent, even though they were doing construction the next day when we woke up and we had to listen to them banging their hammers and such.
Brittany ended up booking the room called “Champagne Mist”, which cost her around $170 for a night. The room was small, but it was cozy at the same time and made you feel right at home as soon as you walked in. The room also had a Jacuzzi in it, which was completely awesome! In the picture you can see that they even went as far as rolling the towels up into two swans kissing each other which formed a heart shape. It was just plain out cool.
To be honest, I wasn’t expecting this place to be this professional when it came to stuff such as this, but they really went that distance to please you and gave you what you wanted. They even had a ginormous movie selection. I don’t have a picture of it, but it was HUGE! When I mean huge, I mean over 2,000 selections to choose from. If you could think of a movie, they had it, even older titles!
What made the stay even more awesome was the view that we had out of our back window. It was just simply stunning. You looked out the window and there was an amazing view of the mountains. The other great thing was the fact that you took a step outside and you could smell the fresh mountain air, there isn’t anything better than that.
Overall it was a really fun time and completely enjoyable. We will be heading back there for Britt’s birthday in July. Can’t wait to stay another night in a different room this time. We were thinking about something that was a little more expensive to stay in, but I think it will totally be worth the money for the great time we will have!
Dell XPS X8300
I decided that I was finally going to get a new computer with my income tax money. I ended up throwing the idea of buying a computer from iBuyPower for the fact that I just didn’t want to wait that long to actually receive my system. I know, it’s kind of stupid and you all are probably thinking “Why the hell would you settle for something that isn’t as good just because of the wait?”, but that’s not the case at all. I took all matters in perspective and ended up finding the computer that I’ve wanted at BestBuy.
I ended up purchasing the Dell XPS X8300. This computer is one hell of a computer for off the shelf and it has some specs that compete with most computers from iBuyPower. The only thing that isn’t to great about it, is the fact that it has a AMD Radeon 6540 in it for a graphics card. Now this isn’t the BEST, but it does do what I need it to do for now. On the plus side the graphics card is not integrated, so I don’t have to worry about not being able to replace it with something that is way better and more up-to-date.
Before even thinking about buying the system, I had to take a look at what was in this and what was behind it backing it up. I’ve heard many years ago when these systems first came out on the market, that they were just amazing for just off the shelf computers. My system specs are as follows:
- Graphics: AMD Radeon 540
- Processor: Intel Core i5-2320 CPU @ 3.00 GHZ
- Ram: 6GB
- System: 64 Bit
- Hardrive: 1TB
Personally, I don’t think that is too shabby for getting this at BestBuy. The bonus to getting this system is that it has extra RAM slots I can put more RAM in and it even have expandable bays that I can put other hardrive/CD drives into. Even thought the i5 isn’t all that new, it is still pretty damn good when it comes to gaming.
This is a random shot I took of my computer when I was just fooling around with my camera. You can semi see in the picture that there are air vents down at the bottom for better ventilation. There is also vents on the left side of the computer tower for the same reason. From what I’ve seen with this computer running for days on end downloading things, that it doesn’t get hot one bit. I’ve even played a system heavy game for a while and it didn’t heat up at all.
Currently the game that I’ve gotten into is RIFT. I didn’t know if I would like it that much because a lot of people were just stating that it was is “a WoW ripoff”, but this statement is totally incorrect. Yes, it does take the basic elements of World of Warcraft, but it takes those and vamps them up ten times as much. Just the whole feel of the game is amazing and what it is based around makes it that much better. The game overall is just really awesome and I will have to write a review about it soon. For now, if you’re looking for a new MMORPG to play, check it out. I promise you won’t be disappointed.
New computer at it’s Finest
So I thought about purchasing a new computer from iBuyPower. It’s not that I don’t mind my current laptop, I just want something that I can game on and that will perform halfway decent. After browsing iBuyPower’s website I noticed that they have a lot of cool features to make your desktop and/or laptop yours. My father, last year, ended up buying a desktop from their site and hasn’t regretted it one bit. He was the one that actually recommended the site to me.
After taking a gander through all of their options I finally built the PC of my dreams. Overall the desktop is really cheap when compared to other prices of gaming systems and on top of all this, the thing is a beast spec wise. Put it this way, iBuyPower has a performance meter on their site which shows how well the PC will perform with major titles (Shown on the right). Just to make sure the PC was good enough I put it’s specs up to Crysis 2 and it told me it would play it in the “mid” range. To me, that is all I need to hear for it to be an awesome desktop.
Personally if I was to play any games on it, it would most likely end up being World of Warcraft, Guildwars, Battlefield 3, and probably minecraft since I haven’t really had the chance to play it as it is. The PC would obviously handle all these games really well, which means that it’s going to be the best bang for my buck, so to say.
Take a look at what it would look like if I were to buy it with this gaming case:
As you can see, the cost of the unit would be $834. This is a big chunk sum that would be coming out of the bank, but I do get my tax money soon. I don’t know if I’m totally going to go through with buying it right now, but it is a thought that is going through my head as of right now.
What do you think? Do you think that the PC is actually worth it and that I should get back into computer gaming, or should I just stick to my good old xbox 360? I’m not totally sure yet!
Britt put Louie on her chest and he squirmed his way up to her face and then went to sleep. He’s such a good lizard!
Louie snuggling up on Britt
January 24, 2012 in
Personal, Photography with
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Back to the old, out with the New
Just recently I’ve gotten back into Halo Reach. It’s been about two years since I’ve actually have picked up the game, so it was a little weird feeling getting back into it due to the fact that I’ve been so used to playing the bigger title releases such as Battlefield 3 and Modern Warfare 3.
To be honest with you, I’ve missed this game. I don’t know what it is about the Halo series, but they’ve always intrigued me more than the Call of Duty games, multiplayer and campaign. I just love the simplicity of the game itself and how easy it is or complex you make it. Plus, I needed a “new” game to play, even if it was an old title.
The first game that I had when coming back to Halo Reach was playing Swat and going 14-4. I don’t know how I did it since I was just getting back into the groove of things, but it happened. Only downfall to Reach is that not many people that I know play it anymore because the bigger titles are dominating the older ones.
On the plus side of things the game is still widely played among the loyal Halo fans. When you go on you can still find a game no problem and Bungie still is keeping up with their servers and not abandoning them like Infinity Ward did with Call of Duty 4.
Halo Reach is running around $39.99 new and $24.99 used based on http://GameStop.com‘s website. The reason it’s still up there in price is because it’s still a semi-popular game. If you are looking for something different to play other than the major titles this year, or you are just simply bored, be sure to check this out.
iOS Lag Issue
Ever since I purchased my iPhone and installed the iOS update 5.0.1 shortly after, I’ve noticed some lag. This was really surprising to me due to the fact that when I first bought the phone it had zero lag at all – pretty much null. The other thing is, is the fact that everyone stated that the iPhone was always pretty much lag free and was the best phone they have ever used in their life.
I ended up finding the problem to what was happening that was making the phone lag once iOS 5.0.1 was installed. Come to find out it was a really obvious and simple issue. The issue was iCloud, at least for myself. I never really have given it a thought that all this syncing of data would be slowing my phone down tremendously.
I then took the step of turning off some features that I find pretty useless that we’re never put to use in my behalf. Those features were the document and data storage along with the bookmark storage. Once these were turned off I have about zero lag with the keyboard when texting a message to someone and zero lag when typing something into Safari.
I think this is a sort of “bug” that is evident to apple and I’m sure they will be trying to fix it next iOS update that is launched, at least let’s hope and keep out fingers crossed.
Take the test. Does turning off some of the iCloud features help your phone free up? Or is it still acting it’s same sluggish self? Let me know what you think!
This is a shot that was taken a while back of Louie, our bearded dragon. The shot was taken using the app “Snappr”. It’s a pretty cool app that adds a retro feel with a touch of fish-eye. Check it out on theSnappr homepage, or download it here.
