Leviathan lives!

Well, sort of. In the summer of 2006 my trusty desktop computer of the time seemingly died. Several months later I put it back together again (having cannibalized it somewhat) only to find that it booted Windows without a hitch. I can only speculate that since it was so hot in the room, and since the inside had never been cleaned in the over three years I had owned the machine, that the processor was throttling itself back in order to avoid overheating.

Sadly, around this time last summer, Leviathan (so named because of its huge, heavy case) mysteriously died. I heard the beast shut down, its hard drive whine down for the last time. I got up and tried to restart it, but it refused to even start. I would hear a single click, then silence. I tried on several occasions but still nothing. I assumed either a dead power supply or motherboard, the latter of which would be senseless to replace.

And so Leviathan sat, silent and sad, for the better part of a year. Near the beginning of March I got the cleaning bug, mostly because I had bought a new bookshelf for my room and decided I would love for the place to look nice for once. And so I cleared out everything that was just taking up space, including sad, sorry Leviathan. I dragged the heavy case up into the storage room above the garage (the one where I’m spending most of the summer), basically in pieces, its door duct taped shut in a display of pure indignity. And here it sat, unloved and unconsidered, for months.

I need to explain the background here. Around Christmas in 2002, when the desktop I was using at the time had finally driven me near insane (it ran Windows ME *shudder*), I decided I needed a new machine. I had my sights set on a Sony VAIO with some pretty decent specs for the time. However, one day when I got picked up from school (ninth grade) my mother told me that, since the model I had picked out was out of stock and would be so until well after Christmas, my father had been swayed to purchase something else. At first I was furious—knowing my parents’ collective technical knowledge approaches that of the average snail, I was quite sure I would end up with a dog. When we got to Best Buy, though, my apprehension turned to delight when I was shown the machine.

It was a vpr Matrix box. This one, in fact. This was one of Best Buy’s house brands, and unlike most such enterprises which tend to be budget affairs, vpr Matrix aimed at the upper midrange to high end. The specs on my new machine were equal to or better than the Sony, with the exception of the DVD burner (then a new technology), which the vpr Matrix did not possess. And, because the Sony was out of stock, Best Buy gave me a 120 GB second hard drive for free, including installation. Let me tell you: in 2002, this was one bad-ass computer. About the only place it wasn’t stellar was graphics—everything else was solid to higher end.

I couldn’t have been happier. Not only was it an incredible improvement over my existing desktop (whose instability increased to the point of uselessness just after I set up Leviathan), but it was absolutely gorgeous—the design is by F.A. Porsche, and it fit with my minimalist design sense when it comes to electronics. And the case is bloody heavy. I’ve never weighed it, but excepting the faceplate the thing is solid metal. It has cool blue LED status lights, just before that sort of thing became popular and then cliche. And it was fast. Audio files that had taken minutes to render on an Athlon 1.0 GHz took seconds on Leviathan, which sported a 2.4 GHz Pentium 4.

Well, as I said, sadly it seemed beyond repair this last time. However, recently my current desktop (unnamed) decided to kick up some Dickens (a failed nForce update rendered the motherboard driverless in XP). I didn’t lose any data, but I had to basically re-image every drive on the machine. Nothing was salvageable. I decided to install a third hard drive (one of Leviathan’s, incidentally) in order to make the crisis worthwhile. After a lot of painstaking steps I got it all working again. However, my new desktop came in a mid-tower and was packed with all kinds of stuff, half of it no longer useful to me after upgrades/removal of components. I was worried about heat buildup, particularly because the computer is located in my boiling hot room. Just today I was gazing sadly at Leviathan’s silent hull when a thought occurred to me: could I possibly transfer the guts from my current desktop to Leviathan’s case?

After removing everything from the case, I examined both the mobo and the power supply. Neither seemed to have any obvious problems (e.g. no blown fuses or black spots), though a few capacitors in the power supply appeared to be leaking through the top (they had that crusty stuff on them). The empty case was still heavy, and though I did leave one optical drive (the CD burner) and the floppy drive in their bays, I’m sure they didn’t add too much to the weight. Around midnight I moved Leviathan’s empty shell into my room, powered down my computer, and proceeded to switch out the insides. It took me about half an hour, but when I put it all back together (I gained an extra optical drive in the process) and powered it up, there wasn’t a single issue. Everything worked perfectly. The inside is nice and roomy, which makes it easier to service and should result in cooler temperatures. The third hard drive is sitting in an open optical drive bay, held in place properly now by a single screw. I did lose my Personal Media Drive bay (meaning I’ll have to hook up my external hard drive with an external power source and USB cable instead of just sticking it inside the computer’s case), as well as a 15-in-1 media card reader, but honestly, I never used the latter at all, and the former isn’t too big a price to pay—I’m pretty reasonably assured my computer won’t go up in smoke now. As an added bonus, the all-metal case of Leviathan seems to muffle the sound of three hard drives and multiple fans—the new configuration is actually quieter than the original case.

The best part of all, though, is that I’ve got Leviathan back again. Granted, it’s just the case, but that was certainly my favorite part. Leviathan was the only electronic device with which I ever made an emotional connection, possibly because it served me so faithfully for so long. I’ve never felt anything for my current HP computer, other than the obvious thrill of using a much more powerful machine than the original Leviathan could ever have hoped to be. It’s like I’ve got my old friend back again. Maybe this sounds really crazy, but Leviathan was there through all the emotional turmoil I went through in high school. It wasn’t just a tool; it was something that was constant in a confusing time, purring away day after day without fail. Possibly because of its unique design, it had personality and character. Now, I get all the benefits of using a modern (by 2006 standards) computer, yet I get to keep Leviathan, too.

Sometimes things just work out.

Grab bag

Summer so far has been uneventful. Over a week ago I listed a bunch of things I was considering doing last week. I didn’t do any of them. What I did do was a veritable grab bag of other stuff, none of which was particularly exhilarating, but likewise none of which was really that bad. For example, I’ve finally decided, through continuous trials, that prosciutto and sopressata  don’t belong on sandwiches—especially the latter. It’s not bad by itself, aside from the fact that it evidently doesn’t keep very long and becomes rancid very quickly. But mixed with other meats, the flavor just doesn’t work. Unfortunately, hot capicola is anything but, and without the spiciness of the sopressata the sandwich still loses something. Maybe good ole’ fashioned pepperoni would be a suitable substitute—unless anybody knows of a good, super-spicy Italian deli meat that could take the place of sopressata.

Hotel Galbadia is down again. For the uninitiated, GH is a huge, sort of home-grown Internet repository for Anime and video game music. Yeah, it’s legally dubious, prone to the occasional malware-spreading epidemic, and sort of flaky even when on form, but you can’t deny the selection. The music for pretty much every video game on every console ever made (not including current-generation consoles, unfortunately) is featured, as well as some PC game music as well. The site has a history of going down, though, and its servers are usually very slow. Plus, its current maintainer, an alleged transsexual who fashions him/herself as “Sarah”, is the subject of some rather heinous rumors (none of which I am sure I believe), and some people hate him/her with undying passion. I never much cared, considering it’s not the fault of the composers that their music is indirectly associated with such an image. On the other hand, the whole thing seems a bit dodgy, and I probably won’t be donating any money to its upkeep. It’s a pity, though, that it’s down—something tells me the site is on its last legs.

Speaking of music, earlier I decided to give Sting’s “If I Ever Lose My Faith In You” a spin. This at one time was my favorite song, though in the past decade I haven’t been listening to it much on account of the rather lifeless remastering job on my current copy. I used to have it on cassette, and I remember it sounded glorious. Granted, that was forever ago and I’m probably remembering it better than it was, but the first thing I remembered thinking upon first hearing it on compact disc was that it sounded thin, boomy, and flat. I had tried to correct it in ACID, but I went the wrong way about it—I notched the mid-bass and shelved the extreme high treble. The actual issue, which I discerned a while ago in about two seconds, was that the midrange was severely notched. A nice healthy midrange boost breathed an astonishing amount of life into the recording—it’s pretty much how I remembered it from the cassette. Vocals and pads are warm, snare drums have some body, and the bass seems to sit better in the mix. I’m pleased, and if the devil herself had not performed a (dreadful) arrangement of the song the last time I saw her, I would be inclined to apply what I’ve learned here to the other song from the Ten Summoner’s Tales album, “Fields Of Gold.” Alas, add that to the heap of songs to which I can no longer listen.

Aw, hell, though; I used to like that one!

Oh, yeah, my one friend dragged over his Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES, duh) and demonstrated the very best 2D platforming has to offer. That is to say, he generally cursed in an unbroken stream as he died repeatedly through the entire Super Mario Bros. series. He did far better with Super Mario World, insisting that contrary to what he had said whilst playing the others, that he did not hate all the Mario characters. Just Mario, Luigi, Yoshi, Peach, Bowser, Toad, Koopas, Goombas, Micro Goombas, Buzzy Beetles, et cetera. He confirmed this during Mario Kart 64, where he asserted that he was going to kill every character that got ahead of his chosen sprite (Wario). He was particularly mean to poor Princess Peach and Toad, for whom he seems to have an exceedingly vindictive hatred. Considering I have a particular affinity for Peach (also known as a crush), I was rather scandalized by this. Granted, I must be a hypocrite because I played as Bowser most of the time, but still.

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