On the 27th I ordered some computer parts for the computer. I recently received said parts and a friend of mine and I put together the computer. The little project was fun and had me excited. Once the computer was put together, the excitement continued as it booted up and I installed Windows 7 on it. This computer runs VERY smooth. Here are the specs:

AMD Athlon™ II X4 620 Processor – 2.59 GHz
OS: Microsoft Windows 7 – Home Premium
Graphics: ATI Radeon X1650 – 512 MB (From Older Computer, Soon To Be Replaced)
Memory: 2 GB (Soon To Be Upgraded)
Hard Drive 1: 500 GB SATA
Hard Drive 2: 160 GB IDE
Network: 10/100/1000 MB

The 160 GB IDE is going to be removed after I have backed up the information so that I can get my old computer up and running for my brother. I am going to give it to him so that he can now have his own computer, I am just waiting on my graphics card so that he can have my old one which will work for playing some of his games like Garry’s Mod and Counter-Strike: Source.

I would like to announce the semi-launch of the new Exiled Systems website. It’s still a work in progress but for the most part users can see what the website looks like. We are currently working to continue to push its development over the next week or so in order to make sure all of the features are working properly. This includes template features, animations, and even an up-and-coming feature that will allow users to communicate directly with Exiled Systems staff and receive help with their issues with service.

Here’s the link: http://www.exiled-systems.com/

Right now I am currently writing this while I should be asleep but I am having a hard time trying to sleep tonight. I decided to update my blog with some information including some recent changes to my computer’s setup at the current moment. I am typing this from a Linux computer running Ubuntu. I have always been fascinated with Linux and have installed in numerous times on computers to test certain things and to see how easy it is to run both a personal computer and a server. I installed it onto my laptop via Wubi which allows me to install Ubuntu inside of Windows. I am able to run both Windows and Linux on this computer together without any problems which is very nice since I will be able to test websites from both a Windows and Linux perspective. Of course, I am using Firefox as my browser on both computers but I am able to test Internet Explorer and Safari from Windows while I can do Firefox and a few other browsers on Linux. It’s rather nice.

I understand that with the latest version of Ubuntu and the versions before it, the community has been working to create a version of Linux that is for the average computer user. The installation for Ubuntu on this computer was painfully easy, and having installed Ubuntu back in 2007 for the first time, it was a lot easier to do than in previous versions. I have installed every single version since then and have used the operating system with different applications to see how well each application runs on the computer compared to Windows. I really like the performance that I am receiving and the whole visual scheme, it is easy to run and everything run smoothly. I must admit that after turning on the advanced graphic features that there is a bit of a strain on the computer but beyond that from the default settings everything seems to run fine. I haven’t been able to test the music and media features on here aside from installing Flash in order to watch some videos, the flash videos run just fine and I am able to hear the audio as clear as I would on Windows. I will test a few different audio formats to see if it all works properly.

Thought I would go ahead and take some lunch time today at work to update the blog since it really needs it right now. I did indeed go to the Metallica concert on Thursday, it was an amazing show. It’s going to be insanely difficult to explain it in works considering that the show had a lot of great moments in it but I think I can do my best by telling everyone that it was the best concert I have ever been to. Gojira was alright, Lamb of God was really good with their music, and Metallica blew the roof off of the Conseco Fieldhouse with how loud the music was. You could easily hear it from outside of the stadium with how loud it went off not to mention the moving parts and with the crowd being as loud as it was.

I spent most of the weekend doing nothing for the most part. I was absolutely tired from the concert which took a lot of energy out of me so I just spent my time recovering. I did a bit of work and got a few things done here and there including cleaning my room quite a bit. I moved the server running in my room into the corner to get it away from the walkway and worked on organization, hoping that I could get some more room into my room. Sunday morning I woke up with a large spider bite on my right leg. I must admit, it was rather interesting to wake up having not felt any bite last night or anything like that. I was feeling sick that day though; it at least subsided.

On September 17th I will be going with my father and my sister’s boyfriend out to see Metallica in concert. The venue also features Gojira as the opening act as well as Lamb of God. I’m currently looking forward to this concert for quite a few reasons:

1) Metallica

2) Lamb of God

3) It’s a concert

4) Time away from home

I am currently planning on writing up information about how the concert went as well as the experience here. Now, I am not too sure about the whole picture here but there is a rumor circulating that Metallica’s next tour will be inviting a few bands to their tour. It’s being speculated as the “Big 4″ tour or something along those lines. I don’t want to continue to circulate rumors if there is no truth to it, but here’s what I have heard:

Metallica, Megadeth, Anthrax, and Slayer. I’m not entirely sure but I am doing some research and will be working to post more information based on my findings. I am also hoping to attend the Mastodon and Dethklok concert coming up, but I am not sure if I will be able to purchase tickets or find a ride up to Chicago for that event. It’s rather sad considering that one of the reasons I wanted to go to the Metallica concert was because Mastodon was playing there and since then they have pulled out of the concert to go to concert with Dethklok.

For those unsure of who Dethklok is, they are actually a fictional band from the Adult Swim television show “Metalocalypse”. The television show is more of an adult show, therefore it appears on Adult Swim rather than on Cartoon Network itself. There are a lot of gruesome scenes of gore and violence as well as scenes of a sexual or implied nature in the show but for those that aren’t bothered by that sort of thing and love metal, perhaps this is the show for you. I personally loved their first released album and will be waiting for the second one coming out this month.

Just got finished with school for the day and I am pretty tired, I had a decent sleep last night but I never actually had my morning coffee or anything like that. I have decided to go without caffeine for the day and haven’t really thought about it until the point came when I was actually starting to fall asleep in class. I had an interview today with one of the sisters here at the school and it was a rather interesting interview. The objective was to gain some insight about the topics we are going to be writing about and I would have to say I got quite a bit of insight out of it all. It was for my Writing I class which I am currently enrolled in and I think I am ready to start writing the paper based on the input that I received from the individual.

Right now I am currently waiting for Zak to finish his classes since he is my ride home for the day and we plan to study some of the Financial Accounting stuff that we need to prepare since there is a test coming up. It doesn’t honestly feel like it is Wednesday but according to the calendar it is. I didn’t have school on Monday and I had to work on Tuesday so I think it’s understandable that I would be a bit thrown off by the timing of everything. It just doesn’t feel like a normal school day partially because the first day of the week is usually ended with a class at around 5:45 instead of ending my classes at 2:15 for the day. I have to work on Thursday just to come back in on Friday and take a test since this is my first year in college. Once that is done, I may or may not go into work on Friday since I may not have enough time to get anything done by the time I get out of school. That’s pretty much my entire week in a nutshell, though there is more to work than is explained here in the blog.

This post has been more about my personal experience today than anything, I plan to have some more interesting posts coming here shortly in the next few days as I start posting about some of the things we are working on project-wise for Exiled Systems. James and I are currently working to get a few servers up and running on Linux to see what we can get running on those systems. Hopefully the experience will lead to some game servers or possible some decent web hosting off of the machines though it will be a pain to implement beyond the development stage. That’s something we are looking into doing.

I have been working on recreating the blog here in order to organize it and better maintain it. I want the blog to be successful so I need to be able to keep a good track of the information inside of it as well as the comments. I am currently working on getting some plugins that will hopefully help me out with managing all of this but for now I am going to mainly work on the wordpress installation itself.

I have also been active on Facebook despite the fact that I personally dislike most social networking sites. I have a hatred towards MySpace for how flawed the design is in my opinion while I like blogs that are on a personal website because they are easy to maintain and you usually have complete control over what is on the blog. This is aside from some social networking sites that will randomly ban you because of an automated script that has determined that you’re a spammer on the social network without having a human to check it over. However, I have noticed that there are actually people that I want to talk to on Facebook and there are people that I want to keep in touch with. More or less it’s a place for me to see what people are doing and how people are moving on in their lives now that we have been out of high school for some time.

When I moved to Indiana I lost contact with a lot of people that I used to talk to and hang out with. I lost some close friends of mine, but through Facebook I have been able to find a select few of them who have Facebook profiles. I am going to try to keep in contact with pretty much everyone that I have been friends with and hopefully one day our paths will cross in the future. It’s more or less just a personal preference, I may not be the kind of person who likes to party or goes out to dances and what-not, but I like to keep a tab on where my friends are at and how they are doing because it’s nice to know that they are alright. It’s also nice to talk to them and see them as well as hang out with them and do something interesting.