Karl and Angela Rees

I finally got all the parts for his new silent computer on Thursday. Some of you may be curious about what's inside, so here's the list:

• Intel Core 2 Duo Processor (E6550)
• Intel DG33BUC Motherboard
• 2x1GB Kingston DDR2 800 RAM (Model KVR800D2K2/2GR)
• Seasonic S12 430W Power Supply
• Antec P180 Case
• Zalman CNPS7000B CPU Fan + LGA 775 fan clip adapter

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I bought a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ7 camera for Angela on her birthday. It's sub-SLR digital camera, but seeing how it was less than half the price of any digital SLR, and that it's easily the most complex and versatile camera we've ever owned, it's perfect for us.  read more »

A few months ago I bought an bluetooth iBlue GPS receiver coupled with iGuidance 3.0 driving navigation software. For those non-geeks out there, what this basically allows me to do is use my Pocket PC (a Dell Axim X5) to navigate anywhere in North America (and other places, if I buy additional software).

The package worked very well. We used it all the time to figure out how to get to places in California. We also used it for things like geocaching, recording scenic routes and waypoints, and hiking trails.  read more »

I downloaded the beta version of Windows Vista this week. It was a huge download--3.2GB. After a few unsuccesful tries at intsallation (it froze up about mid-way through), I took all the peripherals out of the computer and managed to get it to install. And it continued to work fine after I installed the peripherals again. I was impressed that when it sensed an unsuccesful install, it rolled everything back to the way things were.  read more »

As many of you know, Angela and I use our computer to watch TV. Like Tivo, it lets us pause and rewind live TV, schedule recordings, and so much more (without any monthly service fee). We use a program called Meedio, but the company was just purchased by Yahoo. Yahoo took the program and made it into their own. And since it's now free, I thought I'd take a second to tell everyone about it.  read more »

Apparently they've been around for quite some time, but this week I discovered Yahoo! Widgets--a great way to make your desktop more colorful and informative. Thanks to Yahoo! Widgets I've got live weather, a calendar, alarm clocks (including a grandfather clock that chimes at every hour), a memo pad, a news reader, a to-do list, a day planner, and the latest baseball and basketball scores all sitting right there in the background of my desktop--it's like they're part of the wallpaper or something.  read more »

Last week, as I was trying to make our entertainment PC run more quietly, I accidentally erased its BIOS. I won't explain how, because it will make me sound stupid. But after a decade of reflashing motherboards and never once screwing things up, I finally found myself in the dreaded position that they always warn you about--having a perfectly good motherboard become entirely useless because its BIOS is screwed up.  read more »

This was our favorite movie for the 2005 Holiday season and we saw a lot of movies. This movie is of course based on the book by J.K. Rowlings. (The book is great too). Since the book was so long, parts of it had to be cut for the movie, but it still turned out well. It had comedy, suspense, romance and adventure. The movie is over 2 hours, but it flew by. Angela was glad that the Quidditch match at the beginning of the book was not as long as it was in the book. It took up too much of the beginning of the book. Mad Eye Moody was cast perfectly. Voldemort was great too.  read more »