cuchillo

Well, I'll get to the title, but first let me tell you about my new, um, passtime. I got my new computer pieced together. I suppose you can call call it new, even though most of the parts have been used before. The whole thing functioning as a computer is new. It's not too shabby for the $150 I put into it. My friend Tyler gave me the motherboard and chip (AMD 2000) with the case, Joe at work gave me a 40GB hard drive for it. He is always doing nice things like that. He puts together computers from old parts and gives them to people who need them. I bought the video card from P at work (ATI Radeon 9800 128MB, rad I might add), and I had to order the memory from newegg (2 X 512MB Corsair PC 3200).

So my passtime is playing Half Life 2. I thought it would be a good idea to get a fancy new game to try out that fancy new video card, and HL2 fits the bill. It is really impressive, and Saturday I had a blast playing it except for all the crashes. There is nothing annoying in the same way as computer crashes at random intervals into a good game. I spent the day reading threads and tweaking the settings on the video card, to where now it is pretty stable. To pass the time between boots, I worked on translating this Russian song by Vladimir Vysotsky. He's cool, I got the CD just over a year ago as a gift from La Falda, one of the best gift givers around.

Now about that title... I was working in the yard today, installing a new sprinkler manifold, when in the air, I caught the smell of death. Yes, it is pretty distinct, and pretty unpleasant. After judging the wind I looked and found a dead Prince. It was sad, because he was a good cat, and I have some fond memories of him. How many of you know your neighbor's cat's name? I had found him the other day in the dog house - injured, and brought him over to the neighbor. I guess he got away and died in my front yard. For your benefit, I won't share a photo. No I didn't take one.

In other neighborhood weirdness, a fire engine and ambulance came rushing down the street while I was mowing today. I saw them take someone out of the house on gurney. What really struck me odd was how normal my day was going while their world could be crashing just a few doors down. Was someone having a heart attack or something? I said a prayer, and kept mowing.

Word spreads quick I guess, becuase I already found out that she was taking sod out of her yard and putting it in her big trash can when it fell on her. She is okay, thankfully.