Need to update!

Wow I haven't posted in awhile! There are quite a few things going on in my life I can make an update on :-)

On October 14th, I turned 23 years old. I feel older yet still young at the same time. It reminds me of that Blink 182 song "No one likes you when you're 23, my friends say I should act my age, whats my age again?" I am becoming more of an adult but still want to have a good time. As my Japanese room mate Bibby would say, "I just want to have special moment." Wise words..

I got a new job! I was briefly working for UPS loading packages onto trucks, but still looking what seemed like in VAIN for IT jobs. Prior to that, I had worked as a Network Technician for my college. I have to work with my passion, computers. Boxes are not my passion sorry. I was offered a position at Robert Half International shortly after my birthday! Much to my surprise, they found me a job right away, a 4 week contract at the Twin Rivers Unified School District IT Department in Mclellan, Ca. I didn't really know what to expect when I went in on the first day. I thought I was going to an interview but they put me to work on the spot. After 4 weeks I learned the contract had been renewed now I have been working here for almost 3 months now with word I may be hired on as a permanent employee. This job is great for me, I get to use all the tech I know to help users throughout the school district, and I learn something new almost everyday.

I'm still going to a lot of LANS. In November I went to Oregon for the first time for PDX 12.5. I flew with my friend Cameron. We are so hardcore, we LANed on the plane. :-) Unfortunatley my battery died right away, so I was only able to get my hero to level 2 in Warcraft III. The LAN was a blast and I got to meet some cool people. One of my friends won about $2500 worth of computer hardware. I chose to drive back with some friends after the LAN, it was about an 8 hour drive from Portland, Oregon back to Davis, CA. Cameron had a power inverter, which we were able to use to charge our laptops, however mine drew too much power so we were only able to plug them in one at a time. But were able to get another game of Warcraft III in. LANS are a ton of fun and I want to keep going to as many as possible, hopefully this summer I will be able to go to Quakecon in Texas.

I am still very into video editing. The staff of a LAN I go to, Ascendancy Gaming, were impresssed by the videos I had edited and put on youtube for my Team Fortress 2 clan, and chose to "hire" me as their video editor. A few weeks ago I recorded footage for their WinterWonderLAN. I still have to finish editing the video, I regret not finishing it right away but I have been very busy at work and got several offers from IT companies to work for them. Bascially been pretty busy.

I'm really looking forward visiting my parents in Santa Cruz this Christmas, as well as some friends from high school. Going home will give me a chance to work on some of the projects I have been meaning to get done for awhile. However my parents archaic DSL connection does not help my productivity very much. >_<

I'm sad I won't be seeing my twin brother Nick this Christmas. He is attending Waseda University in Japan and won't come back to America until September. I really want to visit him, if I can save up some money. Its odd spending 22 birthdays and christmas('s?) with someone and now they are not here. : ( I'm really happy for him though it seems like he is having a good time over there.

This has been an update on Cooper's life. Cooper McKay signing off...

Games I am currently playing

• Team Fortress 2

Tf2 needs no introduction I have been playing it almost every day since its release almost a year ago.

• Halflife: Decay

Halflife: Decay is a cooperative 2 player game that was included with Halflife when it was released for the playstation 2 in 2001. It was only included in the ps2 release, valve was planning a PC version but it was canceled for reasons "beyond their control". A group of people managed to extract the maps from the ps2 version onto the PC and using this method ported the game to PC, albiet 7 years later. It holds up suprisingly well though, it uses the high definition model pack that came with blue shift, so the character models actually look very good for the half life engine. Its fun playing it for the first time so many years later, because its like I am getting to play half life for the first time, its the first offical halflife game in awhile, of course the PC version isn't official, but decay is new for a lot of PC-only gamers. I think its exciting for fans of the original half life because you get to visit places that were in the original game, and theres more story, plus its really fun playing with a friend.

• Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People episode 1
  
  Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People is a game based on the internet cartoon Homestar Runner. I have been a fan of the homestar runner since 2002 or 2003, I think thats when it came out, because I was still a junior in high school. The game is basically an old school adventure game, but its hilarious! The graphics look really good too, its kind of simplistic but they use neat effects like panning the camera and zooming around. It was only $8.95 and they have a second episode out now. But I want to beat this one first :D
  

Awesome new electro song from Super Mal.

Alice Deejay

Alice Deejay was a popular Dutch electronic dance group that performed from 1999-2002. The group consisted of record producers Pronti (born Sebastiaan Molijn), Kalmani (born Eelke Kalberg) and DJ Jurgen, with lead singer Judith Pronk and background dancers Mila Levesque & Angelique Versnel. They were VERY popular after their single "Better off Alone" in 1999. in 2000 they released an album entitled "Who Needs Guitars Anyway" (The only CD I ever bought.) In 2002 the lead singer, Judith Pronk retired to work in the cosmetic business. Alice Deejay was disbanded.

In 2004, a new act was formed from the same producers called Candee Jay, but had no where near the success of Alice Deejay, after two hits it the project was disbanded.

In the summer of 2007 Alice Deejay performed at Winterfresh with a remixed version of "Better off Alone" Judith Pronk however, was not there. Producers Pronti & Kalmani formed a new act called Dash Berlin, focusing on trance rather then dance music. Their single "Till the Sky Falls Down was released in April 2008 and was a huge sucess.

note: most of the above was copied from wikipedia, I tried to rewrite it in my own words but its like 4 AM , anyways, just citing it to make it legit :)

In 2007 a song appeared on youtube called "Far Away" but whether or not Judith is singing is to be debated, sure sounds like her though. Will Judith Pronk ever return? Her energy is unmatchable.

Graphics Cards recited from memory IN ORDER

Graphics Cards recited from memory IN ORDER, I won't remember all of them but I will try. Cards in bold means I have owned one. I love video cards each one improves upon the last, offering new features and faster framerates. The first video card I bought was a VGA 2 MB VESA card, and the first graphics accelerator I bought was the 3dfx Voodoo Banchee.

3DFX: 1995-2000
Voodoo, banchee, 2, 3000, 3500, 4, 5, 6

ATI: 1997-present
Rage, Radeon, Radeon 8500, 9500, 9600 pro, 9700 pro, 9800 pro*, x800, x800 pro x1600, x1650, x1800, x1900, x1900XTX, HD 3800, HD 4800
(Wow I am terrible at remembering ATI, their naming scheme is harder to remember and I never owned as many of their cards)

Nvidia: 1997-present
TNT, TNT2, TNT Ultra,
(All from here on have Geforce name before them ) Geforce 256, 2MX, 2GTS, 2Ultra,2 Ti, 3 ti 200, 3, 3 Ti 500, 4 ti 200, 4 ti 4600, FX 5600, FX 5700, FX 5800, FX 5900 Ultra, 6600, 6600GT, 6800, 6800 GS 6800GT, 6800 Ultra, 7600 GT, 7800 GS, 7800 GT, 7800 GTX, 7900 GT, 7900 GTX, 7950 gx2, 8500, 8600 GT, 8800 GT, 8800 GTS, 8800 GTX, 9600 GT, 9800 GTS, 9800 GTX, 9800 GX2

GTX 260 , GTX 280

Video card interfaces:
ISA, PCI, AGP, PCI Express

Note: this is mostly in terms of when they were released, but a few are in order of performance, for example; the Geforce 3 ti 200 came out after the geforce 3 but was actually slower.... Heh, I had a friend that "Upgraded" from the geforce 3 to the Geforce 3 ti 200, what an idiot... I may have missed a few this is reciting from memory hehe.

New Nvidia video card may be appearing in June

Nvidia might be releasing a new graphics card series "GTX 2xx" this summer, a successor to their 9800 series. Originally called the 9900 GTX, Nvidia has ditched their previous naming scheme. Their new flagship gpu (Graphics Processing Unit) will be called the GTX 280, rather then GTX being at the end like the 9800 GTX. This will be the first time Nvidia changed their naming scheme since 1999 with the introduction of the Geforce 256 as a successor to the TNT2 Ultra. It looks a hell of alot better than the 9800 GX2, it will be the first gaming GPU to feature 1 GB of ram in a single GPU.

The previous Nvidia Speed king, the 9800 GX2 had 512 mb on each board and was essentially two GPU's in one, and the same is true for ATI's Radeon HD 3870 X2; which adequates to not fully utilizing 1 GB. The older generation 8800 GTX actually performed better than it at high resolutions due to it having 768 MB over the 512x2 MB in the 9800 GX2.
In my opinion the 9800 series offered nothing new but higher framerates, and not enough higher to justify owners of the 8800 series to upgrade. When the 8800 GTX was released in late 2006, it was a significant improvement over the 7800 Series: Direct x 10 support, stream processors, onboard physics acceleration, and shader model 4.0 just to name a few. The GTX 2xx series however, looks like it will have new features in addition to faster framerates.

The GTX 280 has a entirley new architecture: GT200. (9800 series is G92) I hope to be seeing more than 40 FPS in Crysis on Very High . That is what the 9800 GX2 performs at and is simply unacceptable; not much of an upgrade from 30 FPS on the 8800 GTX. The new architecture means we will be seeing a much greater leap in framerate then the 8800-9800 series.
However the negative side, Nvidia doesn't seem interested in supporting direct x 10.1. The new card from ATI, the HD 4800 series, will. I am looking forward to this June when we will hear more about this exciting graphics card, and I hope it will be worth spending $500 to upgrade from my almost 2 year old 8800 GTX.

If you are interested in reading more about the GTX 280, I recommend you search for it on tomshardware, that is where I got most of my information.

My top 5 most anticipated PC games

1. Starcraft 2 (TBA, December 2008?)
2. Deus Ex 3 (TBA, guessing late 2009) http://www.deusex3.com/
3. Mafia 2 (TBA,guessing fall)
4. Grand Theft Auto IV (TBA, probably October-December, all the other GTA's took 6-8 months to come to PC)
5. fallout 3 (September 2008)

(Games I will play but most likely bit torrent and only have interest in due to the hype)
Mass effect
Spore
farcry 2