Welcome to my home on the web. My name is Patrick Egan, and my online alias is Nazgul. The Nazgul were the dark riders who Sauron had enslaved with the power of the Nine Rings in J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord Of The Rings, hence the theme for this site. The name of the site is taken from the poem on the title graphic, which figures prominently in the book. I hope you enjoy this site, and possibly gather some useful information from it. I built this site mostly as a place to call my own, and as a place to put things I felt others might like to see. I have some info about myself on here, some humorous items I picked up on my cyberjourneys, and some tech support information I have found useful. Most of it is just information I collected from the Internet and organized in a way that made sense to me. Some of it is original work, and if any of it is helpful to you, then it's served its purpose. In addition there is a links section of sites I enjoy or recommend for various reasons. That part of the site hasn't really been worked on yet. I have a whole lot of sites I want to list there, and I need to find a way to organize them. I saved that part for later because I didn't want this page to be just another lame website that was nothing but an HTML version of my browser bookmarks. I hope to continuously expand and improve this site, so if you have any suggestions feel free to email me. I can't promise I'll reply to or carry out your suggestions, but I promise to read them all.
What follows is kind of an online journal, or a Personal Log for all you Star Trek weenies out there. :) It's a format I've grown to like on sites that I visit, so I thought I'd do it here. In it I'll talk about significant things that happen to me, changes to the website, and pretty much whatever I feel like spouting off about at the time. So sit back, relax, and enjoy.
May 14th, 10:00am
Happy Mother's Day to my mother and all others out there. Before I go off to call my mom, I figured I ought to update the page, seeing as how it's been quite a while. There's a couple of things I'm working on to include here, one on the personal page and one on the tech page. Funny, but the idea for both came from the same person, and one of them is something she's been bugging me about for quite some time. If she wasn't such a dear friend I'd be annoyed about it by now. :)
Well, what's been happening in my life? I'm still at my new job, and I'm absolutely loving it. After training they put me on swing shift for a couple of months, and at the rotation I switched to graveyard, and am still getting used to that. It's been a tricky transition, because of things that have come up during the daytime on my weekends I haven't been able to full adjust to graveyard sleep hours. Once that happens I'll be fine. I love working on graveyard shift. I've got a fun shift team, and it's nice and quiet(not to mention dark). The disco ball we just set up in our part of the floor helps too. :)
I've been fortunate to get back in touch with some old friends of mine lately, which has been great. I've gotten to hang out on occasion with my friend Katie, and even help her with a lock-in for the parish she's the Youth Minister of. That was a blast, and it's the kind of thing I need to get back to doing. Plus, last weekend I decided that I wanted to get out of town for a day, so I decided to head down to Williamsburg. It had been quite a while since I'd been down there, and this was the last year I'd really know anyone, so it seemed like a good time. They were at the midpoint of exams, and true to William and Mary tradition, they had noon mass every day of the week for those students in need of a little extra prayer. I went down for the Friday mass, wandered around Williamsburg for a while, and spent some time chatting with an old friend who started the same year I did, and who I hadn't seen in a while. It was great to talk to him and to see some other familiar faces. Yesterday I went down again, this time for their graduation mass, which was a blast. My old friend Dan was leading the music, and blew the roof off the dump as usual(if you're wondering why I'd refer to the church as a dump, it's and old joke that you had to be there for). Got to see a few of the seniors that I remembered as freshmen(good God I'm getting old), and a couple of other folks who came down from Northern Virginia for the mass. As a surprise treat, I ran into a friend I hadn't seen in probably two years. She'd been teaching in Williamsburg after graduating, and I'd lost touch with her a while back. It was great to see Kristin again, and hopefully I'll be able to keep in touch with her this time.
Well, that's about all for me, I'm off to call home, get some work done around the house, and catch a nap before work.
February 22nd, 6:00pm
Yes, you're reading that right, 6:00 in the EVENING. For the next few weeks at least, your friendly neighborhood Nazgul has to live the life of a sundweller. Why you ask? Because today was the first day at my new job. I am now working in the Internet Abuse Investigations department at UUNet, a division of MCI-WorldCom. My training schedule has me working day shift hours for the first time in over 6 months, and let me just say that it's taking a little getting used to. My training will last 3 to 4 weeks before I get my shift assignment, which will rotate every 4 months, so my year will be evenly divided between day, evening, and overnight shifts. As much as I am not looking forward to working days again, I think the variety will be nice, since it means no one in the department gets stuck on a schedule they don't want for very long. I'm very excited about the new job, I think it's a field I will enjoy and will be able to do well in. Plus, UUNet and MCI-WorldCom seem to run a pretty good outfit, and are growing like mad.
As for the rest of life, things are actually going reasonably well. Not perfect mind you, but that would be asking an awful lot. I hit a couple of rough spots there with a friend of mine, but we've worked things out pretty well and I don't think those hiccups will come back to haunt us. No, I'd say that overall things are going good for Patrick right now, and the future is looking brighter than it's looked in quite a while.
On a completely silly note, my friends over at Udderinsanity.com have been making some additions to their website recently, so go check it out. Be sure to read through everything, including the legal disclaimer, as it's all really funny stuff. BE WARNED, there is much foul language and toilet humor(to quote Kyle's mom from South Park), so don't let the kiddies read along with you or you'll have to sit them down for a little talk afterwards. :)
That's all for now(all? that's two site updates in the same month, what more do you want from me?) , hope to talk to you again soon. Now that my schedule is a little less crazy, soon might actually mean soon this time. Maybe I'll get around to putting that modem guide online too. :)
February 11th, 10:30am
So much for the New Year's Resolution to update this page more frequently, but this time I have a significant piece of news. I am no longer employed by RCN. That's right, Patrick has taken an offer from another company and will be starting there later this month. I'm very excited about the new job, it's work I think I'll enjoy and be good at. I'll post more about it when the job starts.
To all my friends at RCN, especially those I do not normally see outside of work, let me take this opportunity to thank you all for the wonderful experiences over the last three years. If there is one thing I will miss most about RCN it's the people. I was blessed with some great co-workers there that made the job easier, more rewarding, and a lot more fun. I will miss you all, and I hope to stay in touch with you in the future. Best of luck to you at RCN, or wherever your career takes you in the future.
To any co-workers who may be paranoid about my tech page going away(and there were a few that expressed concern), it's not going anywhere. The domain may at some point get moved onto a different network, but the webpage and email addresses for it will still exist. I still hope to add to it, in fact I have a new modem guide that will be going up soon, possibly later today, but if not then definitely sometime next week. It's already written, I just need to format it for html.
That's about all for now, I hope to post again soon.
January 8th, 3:00am
Damn, over two months since my last post. I gotta work on that. Maybe it'll be one of my New Year's Resolutions.
Let's take a minute to take stock of things here at the start of the new year. On the work front, I got promoted to Supervisor and moved to the evening shift, which has turned out to be one of the best job decisions I've ever made. I am absolutely loving working in the evenings. The atmosphere is better suited to me, the time better fits me and the things I do, and I really like the people I'm working with on the evening shift. There's still frustrations at work just like there would be at any job, but I must say I'm much happier at work now, which is a very good thing. I still plan on advancing my career, which almost certainly includes leaving RCN Tech Support, but I'm still working on where and when that next step will be.
On the home front, life here at the house is still doing well. I don't see the other guys in the house nearly as much as I used to, since they are often not home before I leave for work, and if they're home when I get back they're asleep. That's fine though, since there aren't any problems in the house, so I can't complain. I probably won't be changing my housing situation till later on in the year, but that's a ways off yet so we won't worry about that for a while. I've also made some new friendships this past year that are some of the best I've ever had, which has helped me a lot. It's been one of the biggest things that was missing from my life after I left college and lost touch with a lot of the friends I had there. Now that I have those kind of close friendships back, life is much happier and things just seem more right.
Overall I guess you could say 1999 was a good year for me. It was not without its low spots, don't get me wrong. But if I look at my life now compared to a year ago, I can definitely say that things are better than they were, which is about as much as I can ask for.
November 7th, 3:30am
Once again, here I am up late, finally getting around to writing something new for the webpage. My reasons for not posting this time are a bit more solid. Due to recent departures and promotions on my shift, we've been working with a reduced number of supervisors lately, and for a significant portion of the time I've spent on the floor recently, I've been the sole supervisor on duty. This means a couple of things. One, I'm not getting as much done as I would like. Two, I'm a fair bit more frazzled than usual, and a lot more tired. Things should be getting better soon, as one of the other supervisors returns in the middle of this week, and another one finishes the special project he's been assigned to in a few days. That, combined with the promotions of several people to new supervisor slots in the next week or so should make things a lot less crazy. I'm kind of surprised that I haven't completely snapped, as I really haven't worked under these kinds of circumstances before, but I think I'll make it, and I think I'll come out of it better equipped to do my job.
So what's been happening in my life? Well, I celebrated my 24th birthday this past Monday. I tend not to make too big of a deal out of my birthday anymore, and 24 doesn't really have a big event tied to it. The next one is probably the last big one worth looking forward to, since at 25 my car insurance goes down. Of course, my mother frequently reminds me that my insurance would also go down if I got married, but that's mothers for you. :)
One thing my mother would be glad to hear about is that I'm actually starting to develop more of a social life. Granted, I'm still not the kind of guy who goes out every night just on general principle, but I am interacting with my friends more often by non-electronic means, and it feels good. When I started working after I left college, I kind of drifted away from my college friends, and didn't really make many new friends to fill the void. That's started to change last spring, and has been slowly but surely growing. The friendsips I've developed are not many, and range from casual buds to deep friendships that I hope last a long, long time. Besdies, I've never needed a huge amount of friends to feel complete, just a few close ones I can share parts of my life with. That had been missing for a while, and it feels good to have it back. Or course, being someone who is "slightly irregular," to use a phrase my mother lovingly describes me with, my friends are also not what I would call normal or average. That's just the way I like them, even if it creates some odd situations from time to time. It definitely keeps life from being boring.
Along the social vein, some of us went to see The Bone Collector the other night, a film which I highly recommend. It was well written, had good acting, and some genuine tension. Unfortunately, a friend and I already knew who the killer was before the movie started, because you hear the killer talk in the movie trailer, which we'd seen several times in front of other movies. It's a very unique voice, and we both knew which actor it belonged to, so as soon as we saw the actor appear on the screen, there was no mystery. It's a credit to the well-conceived plot that we were still interested in the story all the way through to the end. Next Friday's show will be Dogma, by Kevin Smith(the man behind Clerks, Chasing Amy, and the much maligned Mallrats). There's a fair amount of controversy surrounding this film, with many people saying it's one giant attack on the Catholic church. Of course the Catholic church itself hasn't taken an offical position on the movie last I heard, most of the protests are coming from the same kind of people that have tried to get stuff like Wizard of Oz and Catcher In The Rye banned from public schools in the past, so I'll take it with a grain of salt and make my own decision about the movie. With the actors they have in it, the pieces of the storyline that have been shown on the trailer, and the ever-hilarious Jay and Silent Bob returning to the screen, it looks to be pretty damn funny, if somewhat irreverent. I think the two Fridays after that are The World Is Not Enough(the new Bond flick), and End Of Days(Arnold vs. Satan), both of which look to be pretty cool. Looks like our Friday night dinner-and-a-movie crowd will have something to look forward to for a while.
There's more stuff I have planned for this site, but they'll probably have to wait until things at work settle themselves out and I have some more time on my hands. Until then, there is no spoon.
October 13th, 12:58am
Sure has been a long time hasn't it? I've been meaning to do some work on this website for a while now, and the housekeeping type stuff I need to do with it just hasn't motivated me. Then, last night I got inspired to add two things. One of them is up now, and one of them will probably be up within the next two weeks, but I need to try and figure out exactly how I want to present it. Both will be in the new section of my site for just miscellaneous stuff that I feel like adding. You might notice the Stuff button over on the right has been added. Right now it only links to this new thing I've added, but eventually it will go to a page where you can pick which Stuff item you want to read. It just seemed kind of silly to put up a selection page with only one selection on it. What is this thing I've put up you ask? It's something from a talk I gave while I was in college, and recent events in my life have got me thinking about it again. Most notably, I've recently gotten back in touch with some friends from college I haven't talked to in quite some time. It meant a lot to me when I gave the talk, and it's something I think we all need to remind ourselves of from time to time. You can click on the Stuff button, or you can just click here to read it. It's a little long, but it's worth it.
The other item is something that expands a bit on what's covered in the About Me section, dealing with Myers-Briggs personality types. They can really give you a good insight into what goes on in some people's heads. I hope to have something up that will be a quick and dirty way to get a good estimate of what your Myers-Briggs type is, and hopefully provide a little info about each type. Since there are 16 different types, this may take a while. I'll probably come up with the survey first, then add detail about each type. Keep an eye out for that in the future(hopefully not too distant).
What else has been going on in my life? In a word, chaos. Workload's getting heavier, hopefully some things will happen soon to help with that. When that happens I should have enough time to post here more often. Until then, updates will be sparse at best, but I'll do what I can. Also, my father's side of the family got two welcome additions recently. My cousin Chris got married, and my cousin John(Chris's brother), had a child. Congratulations to Chris and Charo on the beginning of their new life together, and to John and his wife Kelene(spelling?) as they bring baby Jack into the world and into the family. For any Egans who happen to be reading this, I have posted pictures from the wedding that my father sent to me. Drop me a line for the link, or you can also get it from my parents.
Well, time to go to bed, or at least the next thing that'll distract me from sleep. Hopefully It won't be as long before the next update as it was before this one.
July 25th, 1999 2:35am
Yes, I'm awake at 0-dark thirty again, but I have a much better reason this time, and it has to do with the primary reason for this update. I have a new job title, and a new work schedule. I am now a Tech Support Supervisor(you can stop applauding now), and am working the 3pm-midnight shift. So far I am absolutely loving it. I've been working mornings since I started with Erols, and it's nice to be able to wake up and not immediately have to go to work. That was one of the biggest problems I had with college, getting out of bed and going immediately to class. I guess that's why I was asked to leave, twice. :) Seriously though, I'm enjoying the new shift and the new responsibilities, I hope I can live up to the expectations of management.
As for the site, I haven't really done much with it lately. I threw up the menu buttons I've been meaning to get done for a while. I'm not one hundred percent sure I like the ones on the tech page, but the style I used on the main page didn't work properly, the text on the buttons was too long. I may toy with that some more in the future. I still need to work on titles for the separate pages, that plain red text is starting to get on my nerves. I don't want it to be exactly the same as the main title, but I don't want it to clash, either.
Since this site does have a bit of a Tolkien theme, I thought I would mention that I got word of a sweet bit of casting for the Lord of the Rings movies being shot in the next couple of years. Apparently Ian McKellen has signed on to play Gandalf, which I think is a fantastic choice. It's one I hadn't really thought of, but I think he'll do a great job. What impresses me the most is that he would make such a long-term commitment, as it will keep him busy for nearly a year nonstop(they are filming the three movies back to back so they can release them six months apart). The word on the grapevine is that he read the three scripts and fell in love with the project. New Line was supposedly very enthusiastic about getting him, so they worked out the scheduling so he can still play Magneto in the upcoming X-men movie. Gandalf isn't in most of the first half of Fellowship of the Ring, so they probably have some room to juggle things around. If you hadn't guessed, I'm really looking forward to these movies. Not only are they going to be live-action, but the director seems like he's got a lot of great ideas, and is committed to staying faithful to the original stories as possible. New Line, who is financing the project, also seems to be excited about the project, as they just recently increased the budget by a significant amount, and the director has had nothing but good things to say about his dealings with them during the process. The Lord of the Rings is a truly amazing story, but because of the length of the books, and Tolkien's very detailed and somewhat wordy(but not in a bad way) writing style a lot of people just haven't read them. The only movie adaptations of the Tolkien stories were pretty brutal in the amount of content that was cut out, and were moderately good at best. Finally, it looks like Tolkien's masterpiece will be brought to the big screen in a way that does justice to the author and the story, and will hopefully encourage more people(especially kids) to read this fine work. If you haven't read them yet, I highly recommend them to anyone. They cannot be read quickly, but don't worry. The first of the movies isn't scheduled to hit the screen for a year or so.
July 10th, 1999 1:15am
Yes, I'm still awake, but with good reason. I have finally finished the reorganization of the website, and am proud to reintroduce you to my home on the web, Where Shadows Lie. The page can still be reached at http://users.rcn.com/pdegan, but I would rather you get used to using http://www.whereshadowslie.com, in case I decide at some point in the future to host this site elsewhere. You will probably not notice a huge difference compared to the old look, as most of the changes were in the file layout on the web server(the files are organized much better now). I made a few changes to the graphics, updated the mailto: links, and spun the Tech Support section into it's own full page, located at http://www.whereshadowslie.com/tech. Because of this, I now have separate counters for the main page and the tech page, and both have been reset. Before I killed the old counter, I had passed 11,000 hits. Way cool.
I still have some work to do on the site, but it will be a lot easier now that the big reorg is done. For those that have used my Tech pages in the past, the old URL's are still there, with pointers to the new location. If at anytime you encounter a broken link or image, please reload the page and try again, and if it's still there, please email me, telling me which link on which page so I can fix it.
That's about all, I'll post again soon. In the meantime, thanks for your patience. I'm going to bed now. :)
July 7th, 1999 10:35pm
One brief addendum to today's post. Some pages may be inaccessible for a while. I'm sorry if they contain information you were looking for, I hope to have them back up soon.
July 7th, 1999 6:05pm
This will be the last update for a little while. The website will be going through some changes, not the least of which is that I am getting my own domain name finally. It took me a while to decide what I wanted, but I finally have. Some people may already know what it's going to be, for the rest I'll let it be a surprise. Along with the new name, I'm going to be reorganizing the page a bit so it's easier for me to maintain. I may also dabble in Style Sheets a bit, but I'm not sure about that, as it will mean folks will need a 4.0 browser or higher. Then again, if you are still running Netscape 3.0 or God forbid MSIE 3.0, then crawl out from that rock you've been hiding under and get with the times. If any URLs of popular sections of this site are broken as a result of the reorg, just go to the main page.
Okay, what's been going on with my life. Well, I went with some friends to see South Park, and laughed very hard. I was happy to see them strictly enforcing the R rating, but I honestly wish it would be enforced for all movies the way it was for South Park. It amazes me how people can complain when something they weren't supposed to have in the first place is taken away from them. What's even worse is there are parents taking their 12 and 14 year old kids to see this, and they are probably going to be the ones complaining the loudest about how filthy it is. That's why it's rated R you morons! Any parent to takes an underage kid to see a rated R movie and then complains about how offensive it is for kids deserves absolutely no respect in my book. Parents have to take responsibility for content they explicitly allow to be shown to their children. If you're afraid of what the kid may see, go see the movie first without the kid. Look the movie up in the newspaper and on the Internet. The website of the MPAA, http://www.mpaa.org, maintains a database of movie ratings and why they got those ratings. Encourage your local theater to provide crib sheets explaining any content that may be objectionable. If you still aren't sure if you want the kid watching the movie, don't take them. I've got to stop ranting right now, but I might have to write up a separate article about this soon, as it's an issue that really strikes a nerve with me.
That's about all for today. I'll leave you all with one last word of advice. Never assume that a collective reference doesn't apply to you(those of you who know me or work with me will probably have an idea what I'm talking about). In other words, don't be the object of "What part of 'all' don't you understand?"
June 29th, 1999 12:30am
Well, ten days and so much has happened. Let's see, when last I left you I was heading to the Uptown to see Star Wars for the 11th time, on a hay-uge screen. That was a lot of fun. I met up with three friends, headed up there, caught dinner, and then met up with one other friend to see the movie. Even though I've seen it a lot, it's still a great movie, and I've lost all annoyance at Jar Jar now.
Next was Monday and the trip to Kings Dominion with 5 friends. I'm glad we had an even number, because more often than not if anyone sat out a ride, there were two wimps at once. I admit I was said wimp a fair amount. Not because of any fear of the rides, but because I got beaten up on a couple of them and had a headache for part of the day. I had forgotten how banged up you get on some of those rides, and some of the ones I hadn't been on were absolutely brutal, although the launch on the Outer Limits ride was cool(standstill to top speed in a matter of seconds, no hill climb). It was definitely worth it for the road trip, however. Especially since it's the first such trip with this particular crop of friends.
Work has gotten interesting. My job description now includes walking the tech floor answering questions for my whole shift. While I'm actually surprised that I am not really very tired at the end of the day, my feet are certainly paying the price. We'll see how long this lasts, but in my totally unprofessional, unsupported, personal opinion, I don't think this is the cure for what ails us. Not that I know what the cure is, but I think it's more than just the number of Resources available to answer questions. It's not like the rest of us weren't answering questions the whole day before, it's just that before we were taking a lot of questions while we were sitting down. I won't say anymore about this issue except that I will definitely give the new policy due time to have its effect, because Lord knows I've been wrong before.
Friday night I went with a friend to see Adam Sandler's latest, Big Daddy. Very funny stuff, well worth checking out even if you aren't a big Sandler fan. I like that he's starting to show more acting ability, but he's still doing comedy. I had also forgotten how enormously cute Joey Lauren Adams is, and she does a great job in the movie as well.
Sunday was a great day. I met up with a friend(after barging in and waking her up, but she told me to do that) and went to the National Zoo, which is oddly enough right near the Uptown. If you haven't been there before, I highly recommend it. I haven't been there yet where they didn't have at least a couple of "Coming Soon" signs up for future exhibits, so it's worth semi-regular visits. We had a blast, and learned a valuable lesson. Do not go to the Zoo in the middle of the day. It opens at 6am for a reason. :) After dragging her away from the North American River Otters twice, we finally left, grabbed a meal(I believe the only one of the day for either of us), and went to our respective homes to crash. Unfortunately, her computer got the same idea, so I'm sure she's looking for something heavy to bludgeon it with. It was still a good day though, and I can't blame her about the otters, I mean they're so cute!
June 19th, 1999 2:03pm
Well okay, so I won't be able to get to this every day. Sue me. I will try and update more than once a month, however. Let's see, what's new. I've seen Star Wars several more times, and am meeting some friends in a couple of hours to see it again, this time at the Uptown in Washington DC. For those of you who don't know it, it's the largest screen in the DC area, and seeing movies there can be a lot of fun, depending on the movie and who you're with. It's the theater people camp out at for tickets around here. Phantom Menace is now in 7th place with $309.2 million, in less than 5 weeks. Most impressive. Next stop, Lion King. I will take great personal offense if Star Wars cannot beat a Disney cartoon, even one as good as the Lion King.
One more bit about Star Wars, I'm finding that as I watch the movie over and over, Jar Jar is growing on me even more. I never really had a problem with him(although he did get a little annoying), but now I genuinely like him. To all those Jar Jar haters out there, give him a chance. You might change your mind. To all those who think George sold out by putting him in, get over it. He didn't make the movie just for you, he made it for kids of all ages.
I finally got around to adding the other Lucent command to my modem strings page, now that folks are bugging me about it. Also, I have a request. If you are a tech from somewhere other than Erols/RCN, please email me and tell me where you work and where you heard about my page. I've been hearing reports that folks at other ISP's and even computer manufacturers are using my page, which is odd considering I never registered the page with a search engine. I'm very curious to find out how far word of this page is spreading.
Yay for me, I passed 10,000 hits! For a page I never registered with a search engine, that's kinda cool.
On the computer front, I got Internet Connection Sharing working, and it's very cool. My roommate was able to use the full bandwidth of the modem on the host computer, so there's little overhead. I don't know how it affects lag in games like Quake however, I still have to check that out. I'm working on an article on how to get ICS working, I hope to have that finished soon.
I changed the About Me section today too. I originally had a short bio in there, but the new content is a lot more interesting and will give you much more insight into why I'm like this. I highly recommend you check it out.
That about wraps it up for today, I'll be back soon. For now, just remember the four words that will help you accomplish anything:
There is no spoon
May 19th, 1999 2:30pm
Ladies and gentlemen, the iceberg has arrived! That's right, I have seen the new Star Wars movie, and everyone out there who doesn't think it will beat Titanic is on crack. That movie was incredible. If you want to read my review of the movie, click here. I kept the plot spoilers out of it, the only pieces of the storyline I mentioned were those that were either part of the trailers or were part of the original trilogy. There's a link on the review to a page with more of my thoughts, and that page contains spoilers for those who don't care or have already seen the movie. Now I've got some things to take care of before I head out to see it again. Yes, I am seeing it twice inside of 24 hours, you got a problem with that? :)
May 17th, 1999 1:45pm
Well, I decided it's high time I start updating this page more regularly. I can't promise that I'll update it daily, but I'll try. Let's see, what's been happening? For one thing, I am currently less than 35 hours away from seeing Star Wars: Episode 1, and I am stoked! I'll be seeing it with friends of mine, in a great theater, should be a lot of fun. I'll also be seeing it again less than 24 hours later in the same theater with even more friends. Before you go thinking I'm a freak, I am by no means the only person doing this. And while I'm on the subject, for all those who think people like me are weird for treating this event like the second coming, take a look at yesterday's User Friendly cartoon for an excellent commentary on the subject.
On to more technical things. For all those who treat my hardware recommendations like holy writ, some interesting things have been happening in the world of gaming hardware. The TNT2 Ultra is looking to be the dominant video card for a while, with the products from Hercules, Canopus, and Guillemont taking the lead due to their higher clock speeds. I personally will be looking hardest at the Hercules card, as they have done an excellent job with their Dynamite TNT card. Interesting things are rumbling with Matrox, however, as early gaming benchmarks for the G400 are starting to appear, and they look very competitive with the TNT2. That combined with their hardware environment bump mapping, which if you haven't seen it in action is truly amazing, look to make this card a definite contender. If the G400 Max can deliver numbers close to the Ultra TNT2, and they can get a stable OpenGL driver out by the time the product ships, then they'll have a real winner on their hands. As for processors, the P3 line had an enormous price drop recently, with the P3-450 currently at $270 on some sites. With the new SSE instructions of the P3 finally getting put to use in applications, the P3 is becoming more than just a more expensive P2, especially combined with a TNT or TNT2 card, which scale well with high-end processors. That combined with low memory prices means you can build yourself a very pimped-out rig right now.
I got my hands on a copy of Windows 98 Second Edition the other day, and I must say they did a very nice job with it. It has IE5 and DirectX6.1 built in, which saves a lot of download time after a reinstall. Everything runs nice and smooth, no real problems so far. The new Internet Connection Sharing(where one computer on your LAN dials up to your ISP and all the computers can access the Internet) has the potential to be a really cool feature, but it's not the easiest thing in the world to set up. I told the setup program to install it during setup, but that caused some problems getting my network setup working. I pulled it out, set up my LAN settings, then reinstalled it, and now things seem to be a little better. I still haven't gotten it working, because I'm doing this without any instructions(the Win98 help files on this are not very helpful). Once I get it set up, I'll write up an article on this for the Tech section, including instructions for setup and possibly how to deal with in from a Tech Support perspective. And before all you anti-warez people start yelling at me, I have every intention of paying Microsoft the $20 for the Win98SE upgrade CD when it's available. This is a very nice upgrade, and the Internet Connection Sharing functions alone would cost at least $20 to get from a third-party program.
That's all for now, I'll post again when I have something interesting to say.