.5 This is a techno-geek alert. There will be computer-speak in this post. You’ve been warned. 🙂

.7 Writerly stuff starts at point 3. 😉

1. That beast is my main machine. I put this rig together many years ago, and spared no expense on the case.

So now it is time to spiff it up. The case itself is in as good a shape as it was the day I bought it, sans some scuffs and grime.

The interior has served very well…but it is getting seriously long in the tooth.  I’ve been saving a few nickels here and there over the last year with plans to either replace it, or upgrade it.

I love the case to much to scrap. So guts upgrade time it is.

I just ordered a new Gigabyte AM3+ motherboard, new AMD FX 6-core (Vishera) cpu, 8gig ddr Corsair ram, new 850watt EVGA power supply, new fans and an additional 2 terabyte drive to add to the storage capacity.

That drive should put me at about 20 Terabytes internally, with another 10T in external USB drives. I archive all of my movies/tv shows digitally, and yep, good quality A/V adds up quickly. 😀

This gear isnt’ top of the line, but the price vs. performance will get rid of the bottlenecks I was experiencing with memory constraints, as well as upgrading the USB capability from the older slower 2.0 to the 3.0 spec. (Huge throughput differences when copying data from one place to another –internal to external storage devices.)

i’m hanging onto my Nvidia GTX260 maxcore55 video card for now though. I’m not a gamer (much) anymore, and the 260, while getting older, is still an excellent card for watching videos/surfing/writing and occasional Gimp photo stuff.

I’ll probably bump up to a newer graphics card in a bit, but not necessary at this point.

1b. It is very interesting to see that building out a rig rather than hopping off to the computer store is still less expensive for more powerful gear. I guesstimate about 250$ in savings by piecing the stuff. Some things haven’t changed. 🙂

2. Slower driving night…but after several busy nights, I’m happy to take the downtime.

3. Writing progresses apace. Spent a little time last night tweaking the outline as well as reconfiguring some chapter breaks. As the book takes shape, I always slow down at certain points to make sure the “flow” is where it should be. Chapter breaks are a very important part of this. The outline gets tweaked as new “revelations” pop into my head about where things are at / are going, and rather than “pants” which I hate, I make sure to adjust things so I don’t get myself into a confused knot later in the narrative.

3a. As an aside, when I use the term “pants” I am referring to the writerly term. It means to “fly by the seat of the pants”. I hate doing that for anything other than short stories.  (I was badly burned by “pantsing” with a massive brick of a space opera that augured in about 400 pages into the narrative.)

3b. The opposite of the “Pantser” is the “Planner”. This is what I am to a large extent.  I get the story in my head in a rough shape, and then proceed to outlining it. As the writing progresses, the outline will evolve as things change, but the overall direction of the narrative stays on track. This way the only surprises I get are the good kind where something new and wonderful twists things up…but not off a cliff.  heh.

4. Friday is here…and so is my busy part of the week in the driving side of things. Be safe, have a great weekend all of you out there in blog-o-land, and remember to tip your drivers/servers/bartenders/dancers/etc.!