TonyNguyen.com

So like Britney… oops I’ve done it again. I’ve created yet another web design company. This time, I really need it to succeed. So help me out and let people know about it. Here’s a screenshot of it. Again, please refer your friends. I could use all the help I could get.

Well, I’m back at it with building computers. I bought a P182 case and now I’m in the process of spec’ing out my internals. First thing’s first, motherboard. Here are some tips I went through when deciding…

I’d start here, where you can get some decent benchmark numbers from the various dimensions of hardware components they’re testing out. From there, you have some more questions to ask before you can find the answer you seek. Are you planning to overclock the chip? Half the draw to the Core2’s is the fact that an E6300, rated at 1.86 gHz, can reasonably be expected to hit 2.5 gHz, and some have been seen as high as 3.5 (!), albeit with superior hardware running around it. If you’re looking to run the chip at stock speeds, you can probably get away with a cheaper board (something like the ASRock 775Dual-VSTA). If you’re hoping to overclock, you’ll need a board that can handle higher front-side bus speeds, and you’ll want to buy an OEM chip and buy an aftermarket heatsink and fan to cool the beast. (A separate topic unto itself)

What other features are you looking for? Do you know what kind of video card is going into the machine, and is there a possibility you might want to go SLI (dual cards working in tandem) either now or down the road? If so, make sure you’re buying a board with support for it.

Do you need more than 1 IDE slot for older drives, or are you mostly going to be using SATA drives?

What kind of RAM are you looking to buy? Some of the boards that support Core2 chips won’t POST (power-on self-test) with the better RAM that’s available, since the boards only put out 1.8 volts by default, and some RAM kits require 1.9 or 2.

Do you mind installing a BIOS chip yourself? Some boards that purport to support Core2 chips do, but not until a later revision of the BIOS… motherboard companies will sometimes ship you a BIOS chip for free, but replacing it can be something ofa feat.

So, in short, there are a lot of issues that drive this decision. I’d recommend perusing the forums over at Anandtech, since there are a whole lot of guys over there who know a whole lot more about it than I do, and I’ve seen questions similar to yours asked and answered very adeptly.

FWIW, I bought a Gigabyte DS3… hopefully, it’ll arrive today, and I’ll let you know how the installation goes.

So as a parent, one of my biggest worries is how my children are going to grow up. Will they be pushovers? Will they be cocky? Will they be the bully or the victim? I guess there’s no way of knowing… yet. But I know one thing for sure, my boy Zachary can take care of himself.

Not that I’m proud that my boy hurt another person. See the other day, Jonathan, our nephew was buggin Zachary. Zachary did try to avoid him but he kept on buggin. So… Zachary pulled a Mike Tyson on Jonathan’s nose. No, not 1990s 30 second 1st round knockout Mike Tyson, but 2000s 12th round ear biting Mike Tyson. Jonathan now has a scar on his nose. Poor little guy.

The narcissism that once consumed my life, has since grown into a chronic state of worry. But now, now I can sleep. I can rest knowing my boy… at least for the time being… my boy can handle his own battles. Sure I still need to wipe his butt. But hopefully it just makes him neither a bully nor a victim, but… a man.

At first I was a bit disappointed that we didn’t go with the full-on throwbacks. But after seeing them in action at Mini-Camp and then in some of the pics, this year our Bolts are lookin good when they’re lookin good! Yup, I went to check out the boys at minicamp at the Chargers practice facility. It was PACKED. I saw the tight ends work out and some of the first team drills. LT is faster from 50 feet away than from the 50 yard line seats. LT, obviously, was lookin particularly good. But dayom, all of our draft picks didn’t seem like rooks. Sproles might have some competition returning punts. He “Eric Parker’d” a few of the punts. But our first rounder looked quick went returning punts. Speaking of Sproles, he looked smaller than me! That Nannee guy is huge for a wideout. He was on the tight end drills, that guy is gonna block for LT!!! Anyway, it was nice seeing the new uniforms. I want one of those helmets now!

 A student at the Houston-area Clements High School was arrested, sent to an “Alternative Education Center” and banned from graduation after school officials found he created a video game map of his school. After being suspended from school, fellow students rallied behind the student’s right to develop software.

School district police arrested the teen and searched his home where they confiscated a hammer as a ‘potential weapon’. ‘ “They decided he was a terroristic threat,” said one source close to the district’s investigation.’ With an upcoming May 12 school board election, this issue has quickly become political, with school board members involved in the appeal accusing each other of pandering to the Chinese community in an attempt to gain votes.”

“He’s always been very controversial,” said Mike Hawk, a fellow student. “He’s always making fun of my name!” The student also allegedly “flamed” a racial slur in a on-line war game, Counter-Strike, he was assaulted by a fellow student. “Only gooks are allowed to call other gooks by that word, ” exclaimed a frustrated Jean Claudde Nguyen. The photo depicted here was taken seconds before Nguyen “went all Bruce Lee up in (the teen’s) ass.”

 Okay okay, here are the real stories:

• Student Arrested for Making Videogame Map of School
• Break Dancers Photographed Looking Like They’re Falling

So I guess it’s May. My April boycott of my blog has been nothing but fruitful. I’ve had time to comtemplate. I’ve had a chance to reflect. I’ve looked deep into my soul. I’ve spiritually renewed myself. And… nothing. I’ve got nothing. I still don’t know what my blog should be about. I don’t know what I should even be writing here. But… here goes.

April was hectic to say the least. So where should I start? Well, let me start with new toy. I got a new Canon 400D (aka Digital Rebel), my first DSLR. I just got the body, so Hung helped me pick out a nice 50mm f/1.8 lens. Just getting into it, but it’s not only fun, but I get a lot of my family photography done.

Earlier in the month, we celebrated my boy’s first birthday! Damn time goes by so fast. He’s just my joy and my life. I look forward to every day that I come home and he greets me at the front door. It’s like meeting him all over again with a great big hug. Can’t beat that feeling, I tell ya! He’s running now. He’s tryin to talk. He’s climbing. He’s pretty athletic. He’s graduated from Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and now he’s into Blue’s Clue. So yeah, he’s one year old…

And I’m one year older. April is my birthday month. And no, don’t ask how old I am. But anyway, for my birthday, we took a small little trip to the happiest place on earth… No, not there Jim… Disneyland! It was a great testbed for the new camera. I took a lot of sweet shots. Kylie is the most photogenic. She looks so cute in this pic, if I say so myself. Well, I have no part in her cuteness… but I did take the pic.

So for my birthday, I got the sweetest present ever! Well, not to many people, but to me. I got a Voltron Masterpiece Collection figure. This brings me to my next April addiction, I’ve been pretty active on Ebay. So I sold an older version of the Voltron robot, only to save up for this Masterpiece version. But, thanks to great friends, one in particular, I got it for my birthday!

April also marks the first full month of working without… the notorious and infamous one and only Brian. Oh how sweet it is. It’s amazing how a person can be so delusional as to think they were performing their duties in a satisfactory manner, when all other signs, coworkers, and management say otherwise. But, the nightmare is finally over. Now, we actually have to produce.

That’s about it for April. Now onto May. I’ll try to figure out what my blogs will be about. But… I hope this was a nice recap of my April. Later.

So I’m in the process of cleaning out my garage to make room for… wait for it… a GUY ROOM!!! No no, don’t picture YMCA or anything like that. Kathy has approved of my proposal for a “Guy Room” where our 3rd car garage is. This is what I had envisioned:

• Plasma TV or projection system with full surround. Our current TV location and setup doesn’t account for it that well… and let’s face it, Kathy doesn’t like it.
• Pool table that we can convert to a poker table, table tennis, or air hockey.
• My XBox360.
• The basketball game from the kids play room.
• One arcade game. I’m leaning towards old school Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat.
• My jerseys framed up on the walls.
• A fridge.

Since you’re all familiar with my house, you will remember the built-in desk area. Which currently houses the world’s largest junk drawer. I’m going to tear that down along with the closet, move the closet to the other side, and create a bookshelf that secretly opens into the Guy Room.  I’m toying with the idea of putting down hardwood floors. But since it’s in a perfect rectangular shape, it’d be cool to have it mimic a basketball court. I’ll also need to reinforce the walls to include sound proofing for all the media stuff. Of course the wiring of the media stuff and for the lighting is key.

So to make room for all of this, I’m selling my old toys that once occupied the garage space. First on the list… a 1997 Die Cast Voltron set. It’s currently on Ebay, but if anyone is interested… Holla!

More to come to an Ebay near you will include a Cingular 2125, a pink SLVR, 2 16″ Sparco Tarmac rims, 2 hamster cages, and a partridge in a pear tree. So, I will be recruiting any and all volunteers to help with this venture. I’ll probably never finish this project, but it’s nice to know I have the management’s approval!

Two Japanese college school students took die cast modeling to another extreme. A different extreme. The car they are seen here building is a recreation of a Matchbox car that costs $3.99 (US). Their 1/4 scale die cast model is about eight feet long and has a non-functional engine, making them more like toys than real cars, but they still look like they’d be a lot of fun to drive around in. Not that I’d actually put in the 40 hours of required labor to build one or trust the reliability of my handiwork once I was finished, but it’s a neat idea at least.

“Onry probrem is, I not so good at coloring and painting with pencir to get da appropriate shadow, ” says Hiro Narutomatsuko, an engineering student who spends his time watching anime to complement his studies. “I buill Mecha since I was tree year old. This my neck step up.”

Actually, here’s the real story…

My dad just bought himself a really nice birthday present… I wish he would buy us kids something nice! But yeah, its a really nice phone. Although I never tried making a call with it. I only played around with the 3.0mp camera, the settings, and the media player. From what I could tell, it was way too advanced for my dad. It was just not intuitive. It was very slow (3-4 seconds after pressing a button before the screen would load). The camera settings were very confusing. But… it now has a background image of Zachary so he’s happy.

So we took my dad out to Bully’s near State for his birthday. He loved it. We hit the early bird specials because A) I was paying and B) I’m cheap! But the self-proclaimed “Best Prime Rib in San Diego” actually lived up to it’s name. I had the prime rib with garlic mash potatoes and Kathy had the top sirloin. Very good.

The atmosphere is nice and private even though we ate in the middle of the busiest time and the UCLA vs. Kansas game was on. So even with 9 people (My mom and dad, Timmy and Terry, Kathy and me, and the three munchkins), we had a nice private meal and our kids didn’t seem to bother anyone else either. So this made our time there more enjoyable. So all in all, we thouroghly enjoyed the food, the service, and the atmosphere. Although their birthday singing left something to be said. But… try the mud pie! OMG!!!

Rating: Highly Recommended.