I’m a sucker for cover songs, mash-ups and sampling of any kind. On a related note: Statik Selektah - Punch Out, which uses samples from… guess where?

A few days after, one of Tina’s friends came to stay a couple of days while he waited for his new apartment here in Oslo to be ready for him to move into. Nice enough guy, met him once before. Watched Speed Racer during that weekend, a live-action movie based on the old manga/anime. Wasn’t quite sure what to expect, not really very good at all, apart from a couple of “oh wow” moments as it had a couple of cool looking scenes.

Yesterday I watched The Dark Knight. I absolutely hated the previous Batman movie, but well what to say… wow. I was a bit skeptical to all the hype and what not, specially about Heath Ledger, but he really is amazing as The Joker. Very different character from the lovely Nicholson version, but in a good way. The movie in its entirety was flat-out incredible.

I sent my XFX GeForce 8500GT in for a replacement, and I got a ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT in return. Initially I had the most annoying problem with the ATI card; every time I rebooted I’d get a blank screen and the monitor would turn itself off. Booting into safe-mode helped, apparently the drivers got messed up every time I’d shut down, so I’d have to go into safe-mode, uninstall drivers, reboot, install drivers, reboot again and voila. Then if I shut my computer off I’d have to repeat the same process again. A bit of a bitch to say the least. I have no idea how it got sorted out, but it just stopped happening eventually thank god.

In WoW-related news, my mage pwns (well excuse me, but it does!). I’m basically stuck with it upgrade wise, as the notable upgrades I can get at this point are all from Mount Hyjal and Black Temple content, which my guild has not yet progressed to, though we plan to start on MH this week. I’ve got my warrior up to level 65, where it has been stuck forever now as I really hate the slow leveling process in Outland. My rogue is currently 62, pretty much stuck with that as well. My other characters are still lingering around the 30 range, easily the most painful place ever. Not sure which character I’ll concentrate on next.

I really was hoping to write something a bit more interesting when I sat down to write this post, but this is all you get, sorry.

She’s currently staying at my place for an undefinite duration, unfortunately not a very positive reason behind it. Last monday she asked me if she could come over, it sounded like something was up, which was confirmed when she got here crying. Long story short, she hasn’t had the easiest life in the world and doesn’t have the best relationship with her parents, and this time they had a bit of a serious fight and she just couldn’t stand staying at home any longer. So yea, not sure how long she’ll stay here, but I don’t mind it one bit at least. I just wish I could do something, I feel a bit helpless in it all. I can’t really do much more than feel sorry for her for having to put up with everything and let her stay as long as she needs to. Apart from that, the last week with her has been rather nice, she seems to be dealing with it all in a pretty good way luckily.

After ordering a new power supply for my computer last month, I decided to also upgrade my computer a little bit in the process as I had a little money in the bank left over from my birthday/christmas. Considering that my computer is getting quite a few years old now, it was a nice little noticable upgrade, just by buying some current mid-level parts.

EPoX EP-9NPA+ 939 —-> MSI K9A2 CF-F Socket-AM2+
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ 2.0GHz —-> AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+ 2.8GHz
TwinMOS PC3200 DDR-DIMM 1024MB —-> Crucial DDR2 BallistiX PC8500 2048MB
Leadtek 6600GT 128MB —-> XFX GeForce 8500GT 256MB

Of course I had to run into problems… ugh. Any 3D game would freeze the computer completely (no way to alt+tab/ctrl+alt+del/whatever out of the game) at seemingly random times. I did all the driver updates I could possibly think of to no avail. Even though it’s a silent card with no fan, it’s definitely not a heat issue either as it has been barely warm to the touch even after heavy gaming sessions. Another strange thing was that it refused to output 75hz on my CRT monitor. I took it out and replaced it with my old 6600gt card and it worked flawlessly, so I’m currently stuck using my old card. Gonna try replacing the XFX card and see if it was something with the card itself, or if it’s some weird compatability problem, hopefully I can replace it with another silent card in the same price-range from where I ordered it. Luckily, with the CPU and memory upgrade, my old graphics card does the job quite nicely in WoW, which is pretty much the only 3D game I play anyway.

Currently reading A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami, lovely so far. Only the third book of his I’ve read, but I’m already in love with his stuff, can’t wait to read more of it.

I ordered a Corsair VX450W, and it didn’t take too many days before it arrived here and I got my computer up and running again. So far so good. As a sidenote: the Corsair VX450W is the best smelling computer part I’ve ever received. Don’t act like you don’t smell your packages too.

Yesterday I went out with a couple of friends and had a few beers, it must have been months since I last got drunk, ’twas nice. Definitely noticed the lack of drinking as I laid down after coming home, as even after just a six pack or so my head started spinning in that god awful way it only does when drunk. You know when you can’t control your vision and it keeps shifting to the side, then sort of “resetting” before it start shifting and drifting off to the side again? Well whatever.

Also, today was my birthday, yay me.

I really do hate writing these feeling-sorry-for-yourself type of things, but I shall do so anyway, as the only thing I can keep thinking about is how it’ll probably be another 23 years until the next time I’ll get a chance to experience something like this again.

Christmas was rather uneventful. We’ve usually had a couple people from the family over during Christmas eve, but now that my dad passed away it didn’t really seem the same, so it was just me and my mom and uncle together. Strange how as a kid I was looking forward to presents like crazy, but now it’s not quite as exciting (not that I mind getting them!), and now it’s more fun to figure out gifts to give to other people instead. I fulfilled the male stereotype (i.e. being boring and unimaginative) and got Tina some sexy underwear. My oh my, did she look tantalizingly good in that.

As for new years eve, I completely slept through it, go me!

Bought myself a nice Christmas present; The EC Archives: Tales From The Crypt Volume 1 + Volume 2, along with Vault Of Horror Volume 1. I remember reading “Iskalde Grøss” as a kid (it was the norwegian name for Tales From the Crypt more or less — though it was actually composed of various other E.C. Comics series as well. A sort of potpurri of horror comics if you will), and how incredibly awesome the drawing and writing was. I was pretty young at the time (wohoo for kind parents that never really set any limits) and they scared the shit out of me, but I still read them. Ah, good times. Can’t wait to get those in the mail and reminisce.

Hmm what more? Well I’d tell you all about my awesome WoW adventures now that I’ve reached lvl. 70 (current level cap), but this post is boring enough as it is, so I’ll refrain from that.

Happy new year etc.

Gotten quite strong feelings for Tina, but it feels rather one-sided and useless at the moment, trying to stay hopeful.