Part 2: Something In Me Was Dying


And my heart was heavy as stone.
Hard as I was trying,
I never could find, find my way home.

And your voice came out of nowhere,
Be my friend and give me your hand.
Let's take off together,
And then we can live wherever we land.

Girl I need you,
Don’t know what I would do.
Will you see the story through?

In essence of what could be achieved, but not entirely so, I've fallen in love with reality. For one, there is no other worst case scenario of which I can conceive from the conscience that once brought upon the arrival of heights I had gladly witnessed. The calling was done, it ensued but only for moments you could hardly make sense of. Instances of longing and love had touched me deadly. Yet it just aches when I think of things that I should have done.

Holy truth, I choose this mortal life.

In other news,
1. Hemlock, aka ATI Radeon HD 5970, is rumored to be released some time this week. I'm still sad that it had to be underclocked in order to keep the power consumption below 300W which is in accordance with PCI SIG (Peripheral Component Interconnect Special Interest Group) standards. But who cares!!! It's going to claim the title of 'most powerful graphics card' anyway. And no, I'm not going to upgrade mine again. My GTX 295 is powerful(too powerful I might add) enough for most games out there.

2. On Sunday, the 6th of December 2009 at exactly 5:30 am, I will be flagged off in what is now officially regarded as the toughest race in my life thus far. The whole 42.195km of it will be fun I'm sure. And in terms of my training regime, I've only ran non-stop for 1 hour 20 mins. That might be a new record for myself but God knows how I'm going to last the estimated 5 hours that I'll take to finish the Standard Chartered Marathon without stopping. But still, my goal is to just complete it and that's all I'm hoping for.

3. Muse at Big Night Out 2010, HERE I COME!!! But this time I won't be going alone(yes I've learnt my lesson from the COLDPLAY concert) since some friends of mine are going along as well. My beloved mom and my beloved oldest sister(the one with the CUTE TWIN BABIES!!!) are even considering to waive the whole $131 ticket price for me since it's near my birthday anyway. Above all, please don't contact me on Wednesday, the 3rd of February 2010 from 7pm till 11pm unless you want to hear my awesomely terrible singing.

It's not that I've prophesized all of this coming, but judging from where I'm going, my future writings are going to be much more reflective of myself.



Most probably it's just apt to consider the phrase 'the sky is my shroud' from Black Burning Heart as the only one of which I can really relate to in every single key and manner. Looking at the album as a whole, Keane's Perfect Symmetry is a conglomeration of feelings that you wished you have experienced and superimposed it with someone that represents an incomparable significance in your mental imagery. 'As the needle slips into the run-out groove', and there I go once again trying to relive what it really means to have a worn out compass. But was it affected by the solar storm? I don't think so. No one has ever succinctly understood why the sun's corona is so many times hotter than its surface. But seriously, love is no different.



And now I wonder. Has it ever occurred to me then that all 3 of my favorite artists, which is fore fronted by Coldplay and flanked by Muse and Keane, all hail from the United Kingdom? Oh boy, what amazing amazement! I'm at permanent admiration for their level of music which has almost always achieved beautifully crafted lyrics intertwined with hidden undiscovered meanings and only real fans of them, such as your's truly, would go the extra mile to know what they really represent. I'm listening to Muse's Undisclosed Desires now. The slap bass is seriously something that I can never get bored of. And MK Ultra is just pure remedy to my ears. How about Exogenesis then? That is simply a clear testament to Muse's music brilliance.



When running gets boring, run faster. When Ali gets boring, nah it will never happen. I've managed to only find one person who can be said to be comparable to the level of experience, enthusiasm, knowledge and pure unconditional affection that I have for anything to do with computers and its know-hows. My first real life conversation about it with him only lasted a mere hour. But it was one of the most memorable times in my life. And if you're thinking that it's something simple to comprehend, do fret. Years after years of uncompromised daily research have brought me to the point that I really, really want to pursue a career in computer engineering for I know that it's really most definitely my overall forte, other than being a potential love guru of course.











From Windows 98 to Windows Me to Windows Xp and then Windows Vista. Finally, after almost 3 long years of waiting, I'm finally using Windows 7. For starters, it brings the blazing speed of Xp and the unrivaled security of Vista into an operation system that made me buy it only 3 days after its release on the 22nd of October last Thursday. But of course, I kind of replicated Intel's tick tock strategy somewhat;
1. To buy a high end computer one year (bought my beloved VAIO in 2007)
2. Upgrade it the next year or/and the year after that (more RAM in 2008, better HDD and new OS in 2009)
3. Let it last for another year or so (this one will last me throughout my NS years)
4. Repeat steps 1-3.









But since I'm getting a new operating system anyway, why don't I just get a faster Hard Disk Drive(HDD) to go along with it as well? And a fast HDD I did get eventually. In fact, at this point of writing, it's current the fastest notebook HDD in production. Solid state drives(SSD) are in another category of course and I'll dwell about it in the future. You do pay for performance surely ($195 in fact), but the increase in performance itself was more than enough to justify the price tag. In fact, I did a disk clone to the new HDD first before upgrading to Windows 7 Professional since the upgrade will definitely be faster on the newer one and thus taking lesser time to complete.



In comparison to my old HDD, I've upgraded from:
Toshiba to Seagate
160GB to 500GB capacity
5400rpm to 7200rpm spindle speed
8MB to 16 MB cache




It does take someone with a considerable knowledge in computer hardware to identify my new HDD as a Seagate Momentus 7200.4 just by those values alone. Yeah, it's their forth generation of laptop storage family to utilise the capacity-boosting power of perpendicular magnetic recording. Oh and I so love writing sentences like that.

And to put my pictures into words, the disk cloning process of my new HDD and the subsequent installation of Windows 7 wasn't really that straight forward in the first place. But I'm glad it wasn't anyway for I've learnt so much from this experience.





In summary, I had to clone my new HDD with my old one and then upgrade to Windows 7 Professional on top of Windows Vista Business. Sounds easy? Not quite actually. To begin with, since my VAIO was already preinstalled with Vista Business, I was somewhat forced to upgrade to the more expensive ($235) Windows 7 Professional instead of freshly installing the cheaper ($174) Windows 7 Home Premium onto my HDD. And my reason for that? A clean install of Windows 7 Home Premium will require me to install every single program and driver for your hardware again and that is simply too, and I repeat once again, too troublesome and tedious for anyone to fully embrace without any frustration whatsoever.

Since Windows Vista Business and Windows 7 Professional are in the same tier, an upgrade definitely makes sense. Either that or I could choose an upgrade path to Windows 7 Ultimate instead but at $325($90 more than Windows 7 Professional) and offering features that a only minute number of people will actually ever have any use for(support for 35 different languages anyone?), no thank you dear Microsoft.







It was seriously a first for me in upgrading to a new operating system and I've successfully managed to accomplish it all by myself to boot. That by itself is a huge experience booster by any means.



Windows 7 with my new HDD is so seriously blazing fast that it makes Windows Vista with my old HDD look slow by comparison. But wait, it's so slow that there's no actual need for any comparison at all. From a 35 sec shutdown and a 1.40min startup to a 20 sec shutdown and a 45(!!!)sec startup, I can't help but smile every single time I use my beloved VAIO. Everything seems so fast and responsive that it felt like a whole new computer once again. But at an overall price of $430, I'll consider it a real steal compared to purchasing a brand new laptop. And oh, if you want me to do it for you, just ask away since I'm more than willing to help and nothing makes me more blissful than putting a huge smile on people's faces.



'This life is lived in perfect symmetry. What I do, that will be done to me'
I can't agree much more than this.