Siddharth Abbineni

I am in the middle of an ongoing experiment, where in I am trying to get a Bluetooth headset to work simultaneously with my windows mobile phone and also my PC. I recently got my hands on a Nokia BH-209 headset, I tested the audio quality on the and its amazing! I tested it with skype by pairing it with my PC and the voice clarity is brilliant. I have always been searching for a good reason to ditch my table Mic and this headset maybe the one.

Right now, I am still unable to make it work with both the PC and the phone at the same time, so I need to pair it to the device every time I need to use it. Although pairing is not a tedious process, it still needs some manual labour, like deleting existing devices, adding and re-pairing. Almost a 5 minute task every time I want to use it. I want to avoid this hassle. Yes I am lazy.
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With friends visiting home from the USA and a sudden inflow of cash led to me upgrading my system. This is third and probably last version of my System.

It all started off when I was in Delhi where I bought my first PC.
2.8GHz P4, 2×512 DDR400, 2x80GB RAID0, Geforce 5600XT, Gigabyte GA-8KNXP.
That time everything cost me 10k each, processor 10k, RAM 10k etc. The Mobo was quite expensive, it cost me around 13k. It worked fine all the time I was in Delhi, sometimes the RAID setup was giving me a lot of problems. Other than that it was all fine. When I returned back to HYD the 5600XT fried, so I then got a 6800GT (import). That was probably the worst thing every happened to me.

I was so happy when I got the card, but all that joy dwindled soon. As time passed, almost every component started failing, hard disks first, RAM, then finally the mobo. The mobo was the worst, the whole power circuitry melted in front of my eyes and I could smell the smoke. Lucky me, the mobo had a Dual Power System, as a result it JUST worked. The reason behind all this was very trivial, none of the components were getting any power, especially in stressed states. The culprit was the 6800Gt, it hogged so much power, that nothing was left for the rest. I managed somehow, without gaming or any other GPU intensive tasks.

While I was in a miserable state and with no cash to buy a proper SMPS, I got the news that Guns was leaving to the USA. I was happy, not coz he was going but coz then I could snatch is Antec 500W. He left, I snatched. To my horror, that Antec was already in a dire state. You might not belive this but its true, I had to heat the SMPS for 10 mins with a Hair dryer just to make it start. After starting though, it was all stable and was able to power the 6800GT.

I then started gaming again and since god likes to screw with me, one fine day the whole mobo went bust. This was around 4 or 5 months ago, at that time there were no motherboard supporting the processor. I was stuck.

Then Monster v2 arrived. This time I didnt buy it but I snatched Guns’ WHOLE system! :D. It was an AMD 3200+, 2×512 DDR400, MSI K8N-SLI and a 7800GT. It was working great.

The Antec died (FFS). I gave it for repair as it was still under warranty and got myself a Zebronics 500W. I worked fine but I was still weary of the power quality and thus never actually stressed the system much. They returned the Antec to me but it still had the same problem. I needed the Antec bad, so this time I took a screwdriver and smashed some of the capacitors/resistors on the inside. I had to make sure it didnt work. It didnt! I returned it.

To my amazement after a month they gave me an Antec 550W TRIO series! Apparently they didn’t have the old model and had to replace the old one with the new model. All this though wasn’t that easy, stupid Guns didn’t tell me where he had bought it from. I had to go to the reseller for replacement and they refused to take from end customers. After some 20 calls and a merciless bombardment of the word “WHY”, they accepted to take it and replace it.

Meanwhile my college paid me for maintaining their website. I instantly got myself a Viewsonic VX922 to replace the dying Samsung.

I considered upgrading the v2 to an AMD X2 and a 7900GS. But Guns was scheduled to visit India and as usual he was being a dick and wanted his system back. I wouldn’t have a system then. I was calculating the future.

After a week or so after my discussion with Guns, I read an article on AnandTech, 8800GT – The only card that matters. I was very impressed. I dreamt of playing Crysis on it and assumed it will remain a dream. But, all of a sudden all my projects paid off. There was a sudden inflow of cash in to my account. I did the obvious and decided to go all out and buy myself a completely new system. I asked Guns to get the 8800GT and another friend of mine, Srikar, brought me the RAM.

After careful planning and perfect execution , I have my brand new Monster v3!!

Monster v3

Intel Core 2 Duo E6750
Biostar TP35D2-A7 (Intel P35)
XFX GeForce 8800 GT 512MB DDR3 Extreme (Alpha Dog Edition)
Patriot Extreme Performance 2x2GB PC2-6400 Enhanced Latency Kit
1x250GB, 1x500GB – Seagate 7200.10
Viewsonic VX922 (DVI)
Antec True Power TRIO! 550W
Creative 5.1 Inspire
Hauppauge Xfones PC2400 (cordless Dolby Headphones)
Windows Vista Ultimate x64
Liteon 16X DVD-RW
LG 16X DVD-RAM

Crap, monster gave up when I left it idle and went out. HDD crashed and the now existing windows install says “UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME”. The SMPS is acting so gay, even the motherboard is reporting a “Fail” status to core components like VCore etc. I don know how long I can make this thing last. Above all this there is this problem of keyboard and mouse dying all off a sudden when I’m working. Although I have Guns’ Antec SMPS, the true power 500W one, it make the system dance on power, so thats useless. I’m on my trustworthy FC6 install now, my vista expired so this was the only last option I had. This works really well so I’m gonna settle with this tonight.

Virat seems to be having some big personal issue. I wonder what it is. His blog post is vague and doesnt reveal any clues. I gotta get it out of him but he refuses to type all that and now I dont have voice chat. (/me searches for skype linux.). He says its 100 time worse than the problem thats been bothering me since 2 months (mines no way related to computers). I don’t think his is either. Where are you dude!! I am waiting!

If anyone comes to my house I might play with their blood
- kvickyk when i asked him what he was doing for holi.

When Vik showed me this pic, my mouth was filled with saliva.. a mouth watering treat.. evidence that I have reached the pinnacle of geekdom and never returning back. :(
and

As you all know the screen of my laptop was broken since ages and I was using it a server. Today though, I was dead bored at home, monster was throwing one problem after another if I start gaming and I had no TV series to watch. The laptop on the other had was sitting idle coz I de-commissioned it as I couldn’t get wireless to ‘not crash‘ my router. If I had to put it on a wired connection, well let’s just say, there was space limitedness. The LCD was redundant it had no use practically, so I removed it.

It took a while to remove the screen, because removing it physically just wasn’t enough. I had to solder some contacts to bypass the monitor circuitry, just to tell the system that there was nothing at the ends of the wires. I had to do this because it was detecting the external monitor as a 2nd monitor and is automatically stretching the output. Well anyway, after I removed it, the laptop looked like one of those dell rack mount servers. Here are the pictures.

The Abandoned Screen

Game: Formula One Championship Edition (PS3)
Release Date: TBA
Formula One 06 is a formula one racing game for the PlayStation 3, which features live interaction with the PSP for use as a wing mirror.

NOW.. thats COOL!

Windows

Linux

Ofcourse all this was before the screen broke to bits and pieces. Why I am posting this now? Coz I thought of posting this long back and found it now when backing up stuff on monster. Why now? Coz Theres no fuking monster and I cant think of a way to spend time :D.