Category Archives: Administrative

Administrative, General

Yeah, We Felt It

18 Comments

We were at Lowes, buying some casing for a new front entryway that I installed last weekend, and you could feel the entire concrete slab that the store was on start to gently roll. It went on for many seconds, and equipment hanging overhead was gently swaying. I told Patricia, “That’s a big quake, somewhere, many miles away.” When we got to the car, and turned on the radio, we heard that it was down in Baja, probably about 180 miles or so southeast of us. They got a lot bigger jolt down in San Diego and the other border towns, I’m sure. I haven’t exinspected the house here for damage, but I’d be surprised if there was any.

[Update a while later]

For those interested, it was at the Lowes in Hawthorne, at the end of the runway of the airport. And SpaceX is right across the street (Crenshaw) from it.

Administrative, Technology and Society

Graphics Card Question

11 Comments

So my Samsung LCD monitor gave up the ghost (less than a couple years old, I think), and I went out to Frys to get a new replacement. I was looking at the displays and some of them looked like crap (blurry letters). I asked the salesman, and he said that they were being fed with VGA analog, whereas the sharp ones were digital (DVI or HDMI). If I were the manufacturers of those monitors, I’d be pretty unhappy with that situation, but I digress.

Anyway, I determined to not only get a replacement monitor, but to upgrade my video card as well to digital output. So I bought a new LG 21.5″ screen, and an MSI card with an NVidia N220GT engine, and a gig of DDR2 memory.

I got home, put in the card, and it turned out not to work without having to update Linux drivers from NVidia. But in changing it out, I also noticed that the old card (also an NVidia, with 128M of memory) had a DVI output, so I didn’t really need the new one in terms of digital output support. So I’m running with it now.

Question: I’m not a gamer, and don’t do anything really graphics intensive, such as video processing. Is there any point in updating drivers and reinstalling it, or should I just take it back and get my sixty bucks back? Will I see any performance improvement from it?

[Monday morning update]

Thanks for all the input in comments. I don’t need any of the things that y’all say the card will help with, so I’ll be taking it back. If I ever do need it, I’ll get a better one, cheaper, at that time.

Administrative

Blogging Break

3 Comments

Or at least big slowdown. If anyone is wondering why I’m not in the fray this weekend (or moderating comments), Patricia and I are having a romantic Valentine’s weekend in Colorado. Continuing to renovate the house. Today we finished painting, tomorrow is flooring day.