For an older rig I have (see build 2), the mother board’s built in LAN chip is unreliable, sometimes causing the Ethernet adapter to not show up at all when Windows starts.  I wanted to try using an older PCI Ethernet card I had – Linksys’ LNE100tx.  The problem is Linksys never wrote drivers for this card for Windows 7.  Scavenging through the internet, I managed to find this post about the topic:

http://homecommunity.cisco.com/t5/Wired-Adapters/LNE100TX-Vista-64-bit-driver-get-it-here/m-p/263032

One of the posters “Crimson Behelit” modified some Infineon an983b drivers (which apparently can serve as an equivalent set of drivers to the LNE100tx card).  Unfortunately, the link  Crimson Behelit posted has since gone dead.  The user “rook_” in that same thread posted the drivers here:

http://www.filefront.com/15094629/lne100tx-64bit.zip/

I TAKE NO RESPONSIBILITY WHATSOEVER FOR THE USE OF THESE DRIVERS.  USE AT YOUR OWN RISK.

In case rook_’s link goes dead, I have also hosted the drivers here:

http://nshorter.com/Blog/Files/lne100tx-64bit.zip

I wanted to make a quick blog post about an article I came across for getting “quick launch” for Windows 7 :

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/888-quick-launch-enable-disable.html

Unlike previous windows versions, Windows 7 does not come with a “quick launch” menu by default.  Instead, you have to create a tool bar menu to emulate it.  The above links you to a forum post that helps you create a quick launch for windows 7.

Why they did away with one of my favorite features in windows is absolutely beyond me.  Like hell I want to use your start menu…

There are several freely available programs I use for Overclocking my computer.  These utilities are great for verifying your computer’s overclock (such as the ram and processor speed) as well as your computer’s stability.

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This past Saturday, after plugging for over 13 consecutive days at over 10 hours a day at dissertation work trying to crank out a 27 page journal paper, I finally took a break and helped Frank build his new computer.  I am really proud how awesome the journal paper came out, my adviser and I should be submitting it soon to a prominent geo-spatial image processing journal.  This super productivity streak is mostly to blame for the lack of blog posts lately, when trying to graduate this semester, the blog gets pushed to the back burner.

The break was indeed a much needed one and although I only had 3 hours of sleep by time I got to Frank’s apartment, I was really happy to have the priviledge to help him build his new machine.  For me, the actual building of the computer is one of the funnest parts.  Never again will I buy a pre-built machine from IBM (like I once used to when I was in high school).  When you do buy pre-built machines from Bestbuy, Dell, etc. you actually pay that company to assemble the computer for you (the construction cost is what makes machines bought from these companies more expensive than building the machines yourself).  If you are a gamer or building a computer for intensive simulations and graphic rendering, it will most certainly behoove you to build your own should you so choose to do the research behind building your own.  You can find pictures of the last machine I built <here>.

I have to confess, Frank did all of the research behind building this machine.  With my dissertation work, there was little consultation I was able to provide when it came to component selection.  About the only advice I gave him was when I thought a particular component was overpriced or simply incompatible with what he had selected elsewhere.

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One of my biggest complaints with Windows Vista has been trying to setup a working VPN connection to remotely connect to UCF.  The VPN would grant me a local IP address and would make my home computer appear as though it existed behind UCF’s external firewall as though it were locally connected somewhere on campus.  This (perfectly legal) then gives me remote access to my lab computer and access to shared virtual resources on campus.  I recently found a website which helped me figure out how to setup that working VPN connection to UCF.

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Finally, a blog post!  Yet again, it has been too long since my last blog post.  As you may have noticed, the wordpress template for this blog has been changed.  I have been meaning to change it again for quite some time and am quite pleased with this new template.  You can find this template free of charge from siteground.  The other templates that were close seconds to almost being implemented over this one were as follows:  Auroa,  Edublog, Purple Swirl, WP-Standard, Fashion (previously used template), and Baroque.

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For some reason good 1920×1200 background/wall papers are difficult to find.  For the most part, I have been using Interfacelift.  But every now and then I find some good stuff on other sites like DeviantART.  Here’s a pretty awesome one I can across recently and am currently using.  I figured I would share it with the rest of the class. 

The full version JPG can be found <here>.

As the title indicates, I have quit WoW (again, for the 5,000th time). As usual, my complaints and reasons for quitting are always the same. I was raiding with a really awesome guild, experiencing the end game content. What was really convenient was this guild, at the latter bosses of Black Temple (BT), only raided 13 hours a week. Most other guilds in BT actively raid 20+ hours a week. Even at 13 hours a week, you sign on an hour before the raid start and usually stick around to at least 30 minutes after the raid start. Furthermore, there are other activities the game entices you to participate in: farming (to raise materials and gold to support your raiding), arenas (PvP) and other smaller encounters (Karazhan, Zul’Aman, etc.). Before you know it, you’re dumping in 25+ hours a week into this game. While I had not gotten to this level quite yet, I could see it was headed in that direction.

The problem with raiding is you cannot put the game on pause (this is also true with the smaller encounters as well). Meaning once the group starts the raid/encounter, you’re at your computer for 2 to 5 hours (depending if it’s a raid on BT or Kara, ZA, etc.). Granted you get to take bathroom breaks, etc; there’s no getting up and going to take 30 min to watch TV in between or go outside for a walk. Due to the gargantuan time the game demands, along with my intent to graduate this Fall semester, I had to let the game go. Heh, and by let the game go I mean a complete uninstall and the cancellation of my subscription.
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I come to you this week plugging Ikarium. This game is like a Civilization MMO. It is a free web browser game. No client, no downloads, no payments. The game is kind of slow in the beginning but once you complete your first colony it really takes off. One piece of advice, keep restarting (make a new player) until you get on a colony with either wine or marble. All other resources are kind of useless to you in the beginning (sulfur and crystal glass). You do need a legitimate email address for each player you create however as an activation email is sent to the account. But you are able to use hotmail, gmail, etc. I definitely recommend this game, it is wicked amounts of fun! Futhermore, because everything takes time to mature in the game, your decisions are limited to 1 or 2 active choices in the game per hour. So it’s a nice small thing you can have open in your web browser while multi-tasking doing more important things. By the way, I’m playing as Yojo on the Gamma server.

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I recently acquired 4 more gigabytes of OCZ SLI ready Edition Ram (5-4-4-15 Timings). I was running Vistax86 and had only 4 gigabytes of memory to start. Despite how cheap DDR2 800 ram is right now, I refused to upgrade being that Vistax86 (32 bit edition) would only recognize 2.5 gigabytes of my total 4 gigs of ram. I recently however acquired a copy of Vista Business Edition (x64) and can now utilize up to 128 gigabytes of ram. That being the case, I pulled the gun on the aforementioned, and on sale, OCZ ram from New Egg and reformatted my computer to upgrade to Vistax64.

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