BrapBlog

[Personal] System Requirements Met

Wow. Just wow. I am in what feels like a perpetual state of awe lately.  It’s mind-blowing…and in such a good way.    Let me back-up a bit and give the bigger picture before I share what is so staggering in my experiences of late. 

Several weeks ago, a glass truck dropped out of The Universe and landed in the side of our car out front of our little (TINY!) home here in Salinas, CA.  This was the second time for a car getting destroyed out there…but the first glass truck.  Both times, the driver bailed and we got screwed financially, in short.  Last time, my wife was not my wife and the car was actually mine.  I loved that car dearly and it was completely paid for.  I got a few thousand in insurance and handed it over to Manda to get another car, her having the job and all.  I did it with only half a blink and never regretted it; Baby (Ford Contour) upgraded into a Bob (Ford Taurus) and life continued.  At the time, my health was such trouble that I was plenty distracted as it was.

Anyway, this time it was Manda’s turn to deal with the circus we call Insurance and all of that.  She got a new loan and another car (Kia Rio) that she loves even more than Bob (seriously, the USB port connected to the sound system is an awesome idea and we had no idea when we picked the car) long before the meager (OUCH!  Hey! Stop that!) insurance arrived.  Some few weeks before a check was cut TO us, Manda said she wanted to hand me the insurance this time.  She told me to upgrade my studio and my life with it.  Though my focus is rarely very material beyond a few XBOX 360 games and occasional new CDs from well-loved artists that I have followed for years (c’MON, Orbital!  Give us some already!), I saw the beauty in this idea instantly.

I had a 2.4GHz Pentium 4 with a couple gigs of ‘fast’ RAM.  I got it in 2003.  Early 2003.  The biggest hard drive was 300GB and I had managed to retain some space on that.  The best part of that computer was Ableton Live 6.  I bought the download version of it some years ago…they are on Live 8 now and have been for awhile, anyway.    Oh, and the kickin’ monitor Manda bought me a couple of years ago.    While I love this old machine and have done SO MANY things with it that have enriched my life, every time I hit ‘the technology wall’ in writing, I wanted to dropkick it; that computer would always let me know when I was out of processing power.    Sometimes most painfully, creativity-wise.

NO MORE.    Shit happened, we rolled with it and came up firing.

I now have a new computer and I built it myself.  It is a very satisfying feeling I have here right now about that part, too.    It was the first time I built one from the ground up and slow insurance processing allowed me to truly labor over each and every decision, detail after detail.  The build went through at least one new iteration every single day for almost 3 weeks.  I am so Virgo, it’s funny to some, self included.  I studied forum after forum, review after review, product after…obsessed is a useful word here.  Where I landed was a far sight from where I took-off, too.  This is what I rock now:

• AMD Phenom II x6 1090T Thuban 3.2GHz hex core goodness (WOW.  Really.)
• Gigabyte GA-890GPA-UD3H motherboard (on-board video, this machine is not about games but can play them a bit anyway)
• 8 GB of A-DATA 1600G RAM (I wanted G.SKILL, but was surer these would work…it’s all good)
• G.SKILL Phoenix Pro Series 60GB solid-state drive (SSD for system and smaller programs only…it quietly screams)
• Two Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB fast SATA drives (one mirroring the other, another such pair planned in the future)
• Windows 7 Professional 64-bit (I am now truly a convert from XP in less than one week.  Thumbs up, Microsoft.)
• Ableton Live Suite 8 (now if only they would make it 64-bit and allow me to use all 8GB of RAM…)
• badass Patriot 8GB USB drive (had to mention it cuz it truly rocks…and will rock the car, too, heh)

All of this in a budget case, little dressing beyond the internal organs above.  Tomorrow marks a week since I first assembled it all and I just got the Ableton package 2 days ago, but I can already tell you wholeheartedly that I am in love with an object…with this tool that I have born from loving research and effort.  It will enrich my life daily and I plan to use it to further enrich the lives of others.  The limit for my music has become my imagination, in many ways now…the rest is up to me and my capabilities.    Never have I see such a beautiful, blank piece of paper waiting for ink.  It is very exciting and words fail beyond that. 

The new machine is simply dubbed ‘Bob Junior’.  It has two wheels more than its daddy. 

I will add some pictures here later; I am still migrating from old system to new and don’t have stuff handy to share.  I will leave you with this wonderful photo, though:

The Zalman sits in its box, after I read that using it would void the AMD warranty. WTF, AMD? When I am sure enough to try it, I will add a glowing blue heart to the machine by installing the Zalman.

And yes, that is Civilization V there. While it’s not about gaming, I did include something I had looked forward to until I realized my old computer did NOT meet Minimum System Requirements.

More to come, oh yeppers. Peace out.

UPDATE!  11/4/10 – I have not been able to get pics off the old computer, as my wife needed the little monitor I had on it.  I will leave you with this one that did make it over in the migration.