TechgnosisWeb Prime

Well, two things. First: finally broke down and bought myself a new video card since my old GF4 Ti4200 fried. I’d been keeping my hopes pinned on a shiny Radeon 9800 Pro, but, frankly, if I just sit back and wait till the next time that I have ~$500 just sitting in the bank gathering dust and waiting to be spent, I’ll never get a video card. So I stopped by my local wholesaler (working for a computer services company has its perks ) with every intention of buying a low-to-mid range GF4 MX 440 like Natalie has for about $60, so I can at least play some games under my Linux box. I get there, and they’re all out of those, but they tell me they’ve got a Radeon 9600 128MB for about $150. Now, the 9600’s a good card. Not quite a 9800, of course, but still good hardware. However, Radeon support under Linux is a little spotty still (which is weird, when their drivers are open source, while the Nvidia ones are closed.. but that’s a whole other rant)… I thought about it, and then said ‘What the hell’, and stepped up to the counter to get it… at which point they tell me that, no, they don’t actually *have* the 9600’s… What they actually have is a GeForce FX 5600 256MB, which is about equivalent to the Radeon 9600, but with twice as much video RAM, for the same price. Well, at least I know that the Linux Nvidia divers are fairly decent, so I decide to go with that one. And now I have a shiny new blue GeForce FX 5600 256MB DDR video card with dual monitor support and TV-out sitting in my Pimprig, for abot ~$150. As Wario would say: “Excellent!”

Was playing around with it last night, installing and the like, and I have to say I’m pleased. The drivers work well under the 2.6 Linux kernel, they install themselves pretty flawlessly and even compile themselves a new kernel interface all on their own. I just wish that there was an easier way to get X to recognize the video card without having to delve into the XF86Config-4 file. But after some judicious applications of the vi editor to that file, everything seems to be working fine. Running glxgears showed everything running fine (and some obscene 2000+ fps ratings), and I could finally play Chromium, which is a pretty decent and hardcore shooter game. Pretty graphics, and they finally move at a playable rate! I tried to test out WineX 3.2.1 by installing Max Payne 2, and ran int no major porblems, but was unable to finish the installation due to not having enough room on my HDD for it (turns out it’s mostly my log files that were eating up room, 3 of them alone had grown to over 1 GB in size). I’ll do some spring cleaning in there and try again tonight. If that one works, I’ll try out a few of my other games, like Homeworld and WC3. Maybe even some GTA3.

In other, less happy news, Natalie lost her job at the Julia de Burgos shelter. She’s pretty broken up about it, as can be expected, I suppose.. but on the other hand, I do think it’s for the best. From what she tells me, the place wasn’t really very good. They barely helped the women there, treated them often as badly as their own husbands had treated them, and the people who worked there were basically clannish, incompetent, and unwilling to let anything or anyone new make a difference. They never really cared for Natalie’s position there, seeing as it was forced on them from outside, and they did everything they could to keep her from doing her job, then fire her because she’s not doing her job. Well, fuck them. It’s their loss, because Natalie was doing her damndest to do her joba nd help the women there, and the current employees there stonewalled her every chance they got. Well, it’s their loss. They lost one hell of an employee, someone who wanted to make a difference. And I’ll be sure to go out of my way to tell everyone about the sheer level of incompetence that is shown there, and why that organization is not helping anyone.

So what’s next for her? Not sure yet.. she’s hunting for another job allready, but she’s also seriously considering going back to school and getting a second BA in Graphic Arts to go with her Psych one. I think that’d be a good idea. More preparation and flexibility is always good. Whatever it is, I’ll support her, though. We’ll see how it all works out. Either way… new video card! W00t!