In 4 days, it will be the 3rd anniversary of Kim’s passing.

I’ve not been around a lot lately, off doing my own thing (lying in bed, being depressed mostly, with long stents of not eating due to lack of food)…

This will be the first year that I won’t be able to make it to Michigan city also.

Sure, I might be able to do it in a month, or even in a couple weeks, if good things suddenly happen, but once again…

I HAVE FAILED.

I promised her I would be there every year, and up till now I have.

So as with everything else, I have once again, Failed Kim.

-P/KAF/PT/The Failure

Due to the fact that the friend we normally stay with when in the area, has to move to Tennesee that weekend, we are moving our yearly pilgrimage up a week…

I miss her so very very much. I don’t cry quite as often as I used to, but that doesn’t mean that I miss her any less.

I wish so much, that she had been able to share everything she knew, and everything that she was with more people, but unfortunately, her time on this earth was cut short.

It’s hard to express in this blog how I felt about her. She was the person that CHOOSE to be a Mommy to my LG self. She WANTED to be my Mommy, and I wanted to be her little girl. It’s quite hard to think that I found someone in this world, whom wanted to be near me, and share her life with me, in a non sexual way, just to have her ripped away from me way too soon.

I’m not sure why I’m posting this for everyone to read, other than I wish people to know that she meant so much to me, that we plan to do this pilgrimage every year.. I guess I also want her to know that I miss her deeply.

Last year we left Pizza for her… Not flowers… But a personal “Noble Romans” pizza… Her favorite..

Right now is definately not one of those times whem I’m not gonna manage to keep my tears inside. Kinda like Memory Stars every year at camp.

N-E-Ways, if anyone wants to know more about our trip plans/itenerary, let me know via email or YIM (or PM me on LGTales, GirlTalk, LilBrats, or BigCloset). I don’t know how much time we’ll have for extra excursions, but who knows.

-HuGgLeS-
-Kirstyn Amanda Fox/PiggilyTails/The girl in the salty puddle…

• AMD Phenom II x4 955 BLACK edition CPU (3.2GHz native, currently running @ 3.42GHz)
• Gigabyte 790XT – UD4 Socket AM3 motherboard
• Visiontek ATI Radeon HD 4870 GDDR5 1GB PCIe x16 Graphics adapter
• 2x2GB OCZ High Performance DDR3 1600 Memory (Low Voltage) (Board only supports 1066 native, but I over-clocked it to the full spec)
• OCZ Game(X)Strean 600W Power Supply
• CoolerMaster Hyper TX3 CPU Cooler (W/ Direct HeatPipe Contact)

It’s not a super super beast. But she does what I want of it. The slowest bit on the machine is that I currently have 2x250GB Sata1.5gb/s drives on it… Which lowers my Windows Experience Index from 7.4 (determined by processor) to 5.3.

I did finally get, and have Windows 7 Ultimate installed. You can see my 3D Mark Vantage Basic results here.

It plays GuildWars like a dream. In fact, I was playing GuildWars on the Primary Monitor (Viewsonic VA2226w 22inch LCD @ 1680×1050) whilst I had a 720p MP4 of Bruce Almighty simultaneously playing full screen on the Secondary Monitor (ACER P205H 20inch LCD @ 1600×900) and the movie never sputtered once, and GuildWars was consistently doing over 60fps.

I’ve played FarCry2 and Bioshock (the Original) with not an issue. Well, at the beginning of Bioshock it sputtered for a second once I was initially dumped in the water). Fallout3 had issues with the opening cinematic, it was stuttering briefly, but I think that might have been a drive access issue.

QuakeLive plays almost TOO fast/Smoth, and one of my favorite games, RollerCoaster Tycoon III runs beautifully also (once I let windows choose the desired settings for the installer).

I plan to install more of my favorite classic games, like UnrealTournament 3, and then entire Quake series when I get a chance.

N-E-Ways, that’s all I have for now. I just wanted to take a moment, and brag about my new computer.

-P/KAF/PT

Now on to todays topic.

I recently built myself a new computer…

AMD Pheonom II x4 955 BLACK processor

Gigabyte Motherboard w/ USB3 and SATA3 support

4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 1600 RAM

And an ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB (GDDR5) PCI-E x16 video card.

Now, this is the best system I’ve had in a while. Good strong Processor, I have enough memory to start, and room to grow.

Pretty nice Video Card, which I hope to use to play GuildWars2 when it releases…

But here’s the thing. There is currently an issue w/ my MSDN account, and I can’t download the OS I wanted. (Windows 7 Ultimate 64Bit). So I tried running the live USB version of eLive that I installed on my Acer Aspire One netbook, and my Dell D810 laptop.

None of the OpenSource drivers included would work my card, and they, like most distrobutions, don’t include the closed source ATI driver.

So I downloaded FedoraCore12 DVD…. I was able to get into Gnome, with Dual Monitor support, and work most applications just fine… But when I tired to install the ATI Official closed source driver I found out 2 things.

1. ATI does NOT officially support FedoraCore
2. FedoraCore12 DOES NOT support the ATI closed driver.

So I did some googleing, and I found that OpenSuse11.2 had both open drivers, and was:

1. An Officially Supported Linux distribution according to ATI
2. They had easy instructions on their Wiki for how to install the driver.

When I had trouble getting 3D working using the open driver, I did some more googleing. One of the threads I found was the one on this page:

• http://forums.opensuse.org/pre-release-beta/423808-11-2-rc1-x86_64-ati-radeon-detected-but-fglrx-missing.html

Whilst the page does give some useful information, there is one posting that just SCREAMED out to me. THIS kind of posting is the kind of reason why Linux still has a bad name with people. Why people CRINGE when you suggest Linux!

This may surprise you but nothing is wrong!

I get very similar results on my system. You have a 2D grafix driver, which supports a desktop and most applications.

What you do not have is 3D grafix acceleration enabled and installed. For the RV7XX series Radeon HD GPUs, I believe we’ll need the ATI Catalyst drivers for quite some time.

Really as sunscape suggested, I should wait for ATI driver release, before you worry about getting 3D working. Hopefully you have a previous release to fall back on in meantime.

I would expect the ATI Catalyst to start supporting 11.2 in late November shortly after the release is actually made.

How can someone actually say “Nothing is Wrong”! Sure, the driver doesn’t support 3D acceleration, I can accept that (except, it does according to other posting elsewhere). Something is DEFINATELY WRONG! Why would ANYONE want to buy a $150-$200 3D video card, and NOT have 3D support? I mean, if all you want is 2D support, there are plenty of REALLY NICE workstation products, or even lesser expensive 3D cards.

All I can say is this… Answers like this is why Linux is still a 4 letter world amongst the population at large.

-P/KAF/PT

I stopped drinking caffiene a ways back.

I’ve been mostly “up” since then, and I guess, didn’t have the need to vent as much.

I just booked a flight from PHL to MKE, where I will meet up with Cat, and we will do some things in the area and abouts, then fly back here…. Then I should have enough $$ to still go to camp in the spring.

I should be so extremely happy about this.

But I’m not.

Yestaerday I recived all the parts to build my new computer.

and I was even mildly happy about it.

Then I started building it. And things just started going wrong.

Nothing major, cept Microsoft seems to think that my MSDN Membership, which acording to the info page, expires in 2012, has gone and expired. Therefore I don’t have an OS to install on the new box.

I’m downloading FedoraCore12, but this was to be a “Gaming Machine” so linux isn’t exactly the best OS for windows games.

Today I’m upset and I’m taking it out on everyone in sight. Bill/Pickles, the dog, and anyone that even opens an IM window to me.

I think I just need to be alone for a bit.

-P/KAF/PT

Apparently this issue was caused in LARGE PART to Yahoo Instant Messenger NOT delivering messages when it should!

It has been more than 24hrs since the person I consider my BFF and true Siter has spoken to me.

this hurts as much as when Kim passed.

Everyone has been completely wonderful! They even waited till Cat and Myself (and Karen Marie shortly before us) showed up to order Pizza for dinner, even though they already had a decent group. I was so happy that I decided the least I could do was go get the pizza from the pizza place so I volunteered Cat and I to go get it.

(It’s entirely possible that I was just nervous and needed out of the lodge for a few mins to make sure I didn’t puke).

After returning to RMR w/ pizza in hand we all sat down for food w/ wonnerfull friends. I didn’t puke once!

After a long evening of goofing around and chatting, Cat, Alice, Karen Marie, and I were the last to go to bed so we turned off lights and headed off to sleepy land.

As I lay here now I’m in my room, terrified to death again and afraid to even open my door. I briefly opened my door to talk to Catrina when I heard her open hers, but that was a couple hours ago and she wasn’t really concious.

I’m still in my jammies, not yet dressed for the day. There are LG activities planned for the day but was talk of going to WallyWorld also.

More girls are still to arrive today, mote reason to be scared. I just wish I knew how to handle the overload.

-Sighs-

-P/KAF/PT/The 110v girl in a 220v world.

I was some place I recognized then as home. My mom and dad were frantically looking for my nephew. (my parents had custody of him).

I ran and found one of my nephews friends, they lead me to a field where he was lying lifeless in the mud.

I ran to him rolled him over and he was just barely breathing.

One of his friends removed a small bandaid from my nephews wrist ti reveal a gash cometely from one side to the other.

I was using one hand to try and slow the bleeding whilst trying to dial 911 with the other but the blood was making it difficult.

I don’t remember ever successfully dialing 911 or my parents or anyone arriving. I just remember waking up.

There was another dream too but I’ll leave that for another posting.

-P/KAF/PT

Last night I had a dream/nightmare. In this dream it’s not clear weather I was a boy or a girl bur Kim was there and she was my biological mommy in this dream. I was teen aged and we lived/worked in a zoo.

One day a visiting vet was treating our lion for something and the lion had a bad reaction to the drug/treatment. It got agitated/escaped and started chasing people. It locked on to Kims trail and went to attack her. I of course went and threw myself between the lion and Kim.

The lion was tranquelized but not till after I was fairly badly mauled but survived.

Now the next bit of the dream had Kim and I pleading for the lion to not be harmed/put down since it was agitated by treatment that wasn’t from our normal vet.

Now is when things get weird. I woke up. Not dream woke up but real woke up.

Now I nothings really wrong, but if I happen to let my mind blank and stop thinking, I start to feel pain where the Lion maed me in he dream. When I think about it it goes away. And if I poke and prod those places I feel nothing more than poking or proding.

Does anyone have any idea what this all means?

P/KAF/PT/Champion Lion Wrestler Girl.

So not only do i feel better, but im up And about And actually doing what needs to be done.

It may not seem like much to some, but it Is a just improvement for me.

HuGgLeS,
-P/KAF/PT