This sign is on the elevator at the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino. Notice there’s no mention about babies? Apparently it’s OK with the county if you leave a baby in a hot car. Everyone knows heat only kills pets. Either that or Clark County is getting really sick of babies…

Who isn’t?

I’m currently in a gentle grassy meadow, surrounded by cartoon popups, neon blue curtained windows and a dog that pants endlessly when I ask him to look at my hard drive and find my slippers… in short I’m in XP Hell.

Dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century, I now have my new motherboard up and running with USB 2.0, a gig of primo 3200 DDR RAM and that 200gig Seagate HD I picked up for $99 doesn’t hurt the rebuild either. And so, my last excuse for not running Windows XP Pro went away the minute Sean and OCZ got that RAM to me.

The rebuild went easy, save for frying one of the 3 USB headers. That’s what you get for trying a proprietary USB/Diagnostic panel on a different mobo to hook up more USB ports. Hehe, my bad. I’ve spent a few days tweaking it and except for a minor quirk on shutdown/startup that’s VERY intermittent I’m extremely pleased, excited and totally loving my newly refurbished box. That new motherboard is sweet!

It’s fast, it’s zippy and I’ve made XP a LOT less cartoony. I haven’t installed everything under the sun in case I have to re-install XP to get rid of the intermittent start/shutdown problem but so far I’m in geek heaven researching XP to all hello and back. I LOVE troubleshooting!

So that’s what I’ve been up to folks! Now excuse me it appears I have to play another game or two, to uh… er… troubleshoot some more. Yeah, that sounds right… *waves*

Thanks guys!

THE RAM ARRIVED TODAY!

***HIP! HIP! HOORAY!***

I can’t freaking believe it, but I hold here in my hands a gig of OCZ Technology’s PC-3200 Platinum Enhanced Bandwidth Dual Channel DDR RAM! It finally arrived after all the waiting, the screaming, the endless trials and tribulations! Holy %^@$#! Batman, it’s really here! I’m kinda in that weird moment of actual disbelief that all the waiting is finally over. I kinda got used to it.

I’m stunned, deliriously happy and a little sad. I’ve waited so long I kinda miss it. The wait. I can’t believe it’s over. What the heck am I going to do now?

(blink)

I’m going to tear my system apart, that’s what I’m going to do! Put in that new motherboard Gizmo (thanks man!!) gave me that I’ve been dying to put together, install that RAM, the new 200gig HD and slap Windows XP Pro on the sucker. WOO-HOO!

THE RAM ARRIVED TODAY! ***HIP! HIP! HOORAY!***

Stay tuned in a few days for a more elaborate THANK YOU blog entry! Afterwards this blog will probably be entirely comprised of rants against Windows XP…

Thank you for the free RAM Sean Sinha and OCZ Technology!

I’m Vincent Navarino.
Product/Company Whore.
In Training.

It was one of those days where, given that my colon was full I had to expel the unabsorbed residue of the digestive process, aka expel the solid excretory product, aka eject the waste that you really don’t want to taste. So I did. As they say, everything went smell, I mean well. Now you see I don’t normally talk about such things ass some, er, as some things are butt-er, er, better left unsaid but it was afterwards that this story really dumps, er… tanks.

Have you ever accidently taken a drink in there with you while you toot-tooed? I say accidently because I really don’t want to think it’s something you people would do on purpose! Right? Hey, it’s not like anyone that doesn’t have major health issues would need to rehydrate in the middle of an evacuation. I’d like to mention that I also don’t understand the sickos that read on the throne either. You people really need help, you know that?

Well, this lead to a strange, yet alarming assmosis realization. You see kids because the drink was in there when the remains of 3 days of digestion processes finally had to come to their leap-for-freedom moment, and it was an open container (a glass) I started to remember all that osmosis/absorption earth science lessons from my teachers. You see kids, particles have this weird way of being drawn from an amount of higher concentration to an area of lower concentration. Which kind of made me think, ponder, get scared yet adventurously intrigued.

Since the air was filled with the gaseous and befouling result of my brave foray into making #2 and the glass of water wasn’t… you see where I’m going with this kids? I started to wonder if by chance the glass of non-ass filled water had a chance to absorb some of the air-laden anal residue of my going doodey. This made me curious, yet scared. Scared that the glass of cold, inviting icewater might contain a not-so-secret not-so-appealing noxious ingredient. Scared because my lack of sanity and sanitary impulses made it more than remotely possible that I just couldn’t resist finding out by sampling the possibly befouled water. Also I was getting a tad excited in making a bundle exporting ass-water all over the globe to thirsty consumers in France and Britain… they love the stuff! Think of it, a line of water made foul by the process of assmosis! Perfect!

Long story shi– er, short I tried the water. It tasted like ass! I really don’t know what to rinse my mouth out with to get rid of the taste…. hey, look here’s a whole bowl of Mountain Dew… *gulp* *gulp* aaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAaaaaaa!

Note: this blog entry inspired by real life events and Martin Sargent’s Unscrewed show.

Whoa what a heck of a week it’s been. For those that don’t know it, my brother came for his first visit to Vegas for Mother’s Day!! (See pic on left) He came in last Wednesday and my (now complete) family have had a great time together! It was very nice for all the mean and nasty Navarino clan to be united together and yeah you probably heard about the carnage in Las Vegas that resulted from our combined wrath. I miss my brother (he ducks) already and we wish the visit could have been even longer. Especially today since I had to wake up at 5 in the friggin’ morning…

… which reminds me. Dear Priceline.com: you suck. I am going to make you pay for this. Live in #$@!ing fear you hear me, Priceline?!

Anyways, as I was saying we were all very happy to see my brother and had a great time; lots of fun! On the strip, off the strip, all over Vegas. My feet are sore from all the walking, I’m exhausted and I’m really going to sleep a lot tomorrow to recover from all that running around. Will someone please inform me why people want to see stuff in Vegas? There’s nothing here! It’s a desert. A barren wasteland. Nothing to do except eat, sleep, drink and oh yeah there’s all those casinos. Where the $%#@! did they come from? When I get a hold of that genius that put them there, well, let’s just say we’re going to have a painful yet highly satisfactory conversation with much bruising…

… seriously I had a lot of fun, but I am bone tired and exhausted. I didn’t even know there was such a thing as 5am and all I can say is that 5am is a stupid stupid invention! That’s 2 inventors I owe a bashing.

Anyways, we did some stuff like see a white Motown singer that wasn’t a motown singer, walk about a bazillion and a half miles and make fun of many many people. Minnie joined us for lunch and the show and that was cool too. I love my brother and it was good seeing him and we all had a tremendously hysterical, good time.

Yeah, I got up at 5am so yeah I’m hysterical. Anyways, viva Las Vegas bro! And look at that pic… isn’t he a cool guy?

(pause)

Oh… errr… that was the Ferengi wearing my Boulder Station cap that was sitting next to my brother. They looked awfully the same so you can understand my confusion.

(peers closer)

Well, that could be my brother after all. I am a little bleary-eyed. Did I mentione there’s a 5am? *shudder* See you all next time on Vin’s Adventure Kingdom. I’m going to zone out some more. I love you, brother! (If anyone goes awww I’m going to rip your nuts off. If you don’t have nuts, I’ll sew some on and then rip ‘em off.)

PS. Where’s my RAM, Sean? (*I* didn’t forget.)