Josh Writes a Blog

Author: zornog

  • A Trip down RAM Lane

    A few years back, I thought it would be fun to try and construct a historical inventory of my PC computers. This stemmed from a nagging desire to track down the exact brand of my very first computer, which I eventually discovered was a Systemax AMD 2400 from 2003. I dubbed it the Fortress of Consternation. Or, rather, the machine was called ALBATROSS, but the hard drive inside the machine was named the FoC.

    Ol’ Connie was my PC from 2003 through 2008–I even shipped it across the country for a summer in 2005, when I was interning at a theatre in upstate NY. For reference: I didn’t own a laptop, couldn’t afford a laptop, and smart phones wouldn’t exist for another 3 years, and I would have gone insane without my computer. So I shipped it to NY from my mom’s work, saving me money, and then when I shipped it back at the end of the internship via a much more expensive UPS option, they wrapped it in a shitload of highly static cling wrap which guess what you’re not supposed to do. Despite that, I still used it for three more years!

    me with the FoC and one of those giant goddamn CRT monitors, circa 2008

    Most of my historical digging at the start was done by searching through my gmail account for anything labeled “tigerdirect” or “newegg.” TigerDirect was my computer parts website of choice back in the day, and whenever I had student loan money I would often spend it almost immediately and without any financial acumen there.

    This post is a retrospective of over 20 years of PC ownership. This is what the kids call a “long read,” so buckle up.

    ALBATROSS

    Bought: September, 2003
    Type: Desktop PC
    Cost: $600 ($1,060 in 2026)

    The story of my descent into PC madness begins as it usually does: with screw ups.

    In the beginning, I was using my father’s computer. We had a couple over my childhood, but based on my hazy memory, the last one I used was probably this tower, a Gateway Essential 600 which was from 1999:

    I’m pretty sure it was the 600, as the 450 was taller and had four drive bays, and I don’t remember having four. Anyway, for fun, here were the specs, at least the ones I could find on this Japanese website:

    • CPU: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz
    • RAM: 64MB (DDR? DDDon’t worry about it)
    • HDD: 5.1GB “UltraATA”
    • ROM: 24x CD-ROM
    • And the ubiquitous floppy disk.

    I’m seeing a 400Mhz Celeron version on eBay, but think we had a proper Pentium. It might’ve been a Pentium II, though. It’s hard to find this shit online! Gateways were super popular back in the day, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the above image was the exact thing my dad bought. (Also you could get a PC, monitor, AND keyboard & mouse, in a bundle for like $600-700! Insane!)

    (Side note: eBay resellers are calling PCs from the late 90s “vintage” and that is causing my eye to twitch.)

    Also, sorry, sorry, but these were the speakers that were with this computer at the time.

    I had these speakers for YEEEAAAAAAARS. I used them until … five years ago? Six? They were still good speakers, right up until the end.

    Okay. Anyway.

    The family computer was in the living room, which meant I could play games on it and only search Nefarious Websites for Risque Materials at night, after my parents had gone to sleep. I lamented about it in November 2001 on my LiveJournal:

    I hate having the computer in the front room, right across from the couch where he [my dad] sits, and when I ask if I can move it into the back bedroom, he says, “But then I’ll never see you.” I wanna say, “YOU SEE ME ALL THE TIME,” but I’m too nice for that. So instead I agree and go back to the comp.

    I’m sure this only worsened my teenage insomnia. Eventually I got a job and then started college, which provided me the sweet, sweet student loan money I would need to buy ALBATROSS.

    In April 2002 the family computer crapped out on us:

    Complete. Computer. Meltdown.

    That’s what occured in the past two days. The good news? The hard drive is clean. The bad news: It was reformatted. So who knows how much countless crap that I had that is now gone. Thank god for Zip disks is all I can say.

    Ahhhhh, ZIP disks. I still have some! Which is to say, my mom saved them and gave them back to me. I don’t have a drive for them, either. Oh well.

    Despite the meltdown, I still didn’t buy a PC until the following year–or, rather, I attempted to buy a laptop that ended up being backordered, so I canceled it. A Toshiba Satellite, Intel Celeron 2.0 with 256MB of RAM and a 30 gig hard drive. A friend berated me in my LiveJournal entry for getting a bad laptop. Well, I never got it in the first place! So there!

    That was my first screw up. The next is that I bought two computers at the same time. I first bought a Gateway because the ’99 family computer was a Gateway. Pretty sure it was this one, the 310S, which was the cheapest option at the time:

    For reference, here were its specs:

    • Intel® Celeron® Processor 2.6GHz with 128K cache
    • 256MB DDR SDRAM
    • 40GB ultra ATA100 5400rpm hard drive
    • 48x/24x/48x CD-RW/DVD combo drive
    • Gateway Micro-Tower Case
    • 3 PCI Expansion Slots
    • (6) USB (2 in front and 4 in back are version 2.0)
    • Parallel, Serial and (2) PS/2
    • 17″ Color Monitor (15.9″ viewable area)
    • Integrated Intel® Extreme Graphics with up to 64MB dynamic video memory

    After purchasing this, I decided to not get it and bought the Systemax instead, because I believed I could get a better option for a lower price. But despite my protestations to their website, the Gateway PC had already been packed up and shipped, so I had to send it back. Gateway customer service was very nice about the whole thing, which was extremely helpful for a dumb 20-year-old me. They even let me keep the monitor! (Not for free, of course, but still!)

    I deleted all my old receipt and “your package is being delivered” emails that I had originally referenced to find out these old computer specs. Generally a good idea, but in writing this, I wish I hadn’t, because I was very sloppy in my data gathering. But then I had an idea to check archive.org and was VERY surprised to learn just how much of tigerdirect.com was archived on that site. It’s WAY more than I thought it would be. Even though I couldn’t access the page itself, I managed to find my computer (or the closest to it) on a listing.

    Here were its specs:

    • CPU: AMD Athlon XP 2400+ / 2 GHz 266 MHz
    • MOBO: Socket A VIA ProSavageDDR KM266
    • RAM: 256 MB DDR 266Mhz PC2100
    • HDD: IDE 7200 rpm Parallel ATA 80GB
    • GPU: S3 ProSavage8 32 MB (integrated)
    • GPU: AMD Radeon 9200 128MB
      • I must’ve bought this later, considering the original GPU was integrated. Wasn’t my first GPU; I think that would have to be a 3dfx Voodoo back in the 90s.
    • CASE: Systemax™ Black Micro-ATX Case
    • PSU: 300-Watt Power Supply
    • DVD: DVD-ROM 52X
    • CD: CD-RW.
    • MISC: 250 Zip Drive (bought later)

    256 MB of RAM! DDR! Just DDR, no DDR 2/3/4/etc. A 300 watt PSU! Nobody thought about power supplies back then. I also distinctly remember fighting over hard drive space due to all the mp3s I hoarded thanks to Napster and Limewire.

    So: Was the Gateway or the Systemax PC better? Surprisingly, there is a website that lets you compare old CPUs. And if we went with only that as a metric, then I think the Gateway wins. In fact, the only real downside of the Gateway PC is the smaller hard drive. I bamboozled myself, thirteen years ago! Oh well.

    albatross in my shitty little theatre intern dorm room in auburn, ny, 2005. i loved pepsi. also despite sending the gateway pc back, they let me keep the monitor.

    ALBATROSS was my first PC. The first once I spent my own money on (that I borrowed from the government and will never, ever pay back, but still). It went from my parents basement to my first apartment in Boise, to Auburn, NY and back, and then to Portland, OR, where I live now. It saw a lot of shit!

    I kept it until February, 2011, apparently, according to Facebook. I really can’t believe I kept it for as long as I did, considering the damage and constant freezing it would do. I guess this is what happens when you’re broke. I don’t remember what happened to it, ultimately. I can only assume I took it out to pasture, or tossed it (hopefully to some sort of e-cycling center).

    MAGRAGEEVES

    Bought: April, 2009
    Type: Desktop PC
    Cost: $430 ($652 in 2026)

    I should probably note early on that I give my computers funny names.

    So, eventually the damage from ALBATROSS’s saran-wrapped flight across the US was too much. The computer was freezing on me very often, to the point where it was virtually unusable and I had to quickly find a replacement. That came in the form of, I guess, another Systemax: The Venture Vsomething. VC? VXP? I don’t know. The case looked like this:

    This is the best quality photo I could find on the internet. But it looked like that. Here were the specs:

    • CPU: Intel Pentium Dual Core E2220 2.4Ghz 1M
    • MOBO: G31M3-F mATX Motherboard
    • RAM: 2GB DDR2 800Mhz PC6400 Memory (2GB x 1)
      • + Centon 2GB800DDR2 2GB Memory Module – PC6400, DDR2, 800MHz which I bought later
    • HDD: WD 500GB 7200 RPM
    • GPU: ATI Radeon HD 3650 1GB PCIe (2 DVI)
    • CASE: Systemax microtower mATX form-factor case
    • PSU: 250 watt!
    • DVD: 22X DVDRW SATA Drive Black

    I actually took a photo of the setup, which was listed in the case! I took it in 2020 which means I had it for that long?! Wild!

    TWO cores?! Unheard of. I also upgraded the RAM, adding a second 2GB stick.

    After doing some more research, I’m pretty sure this was one of their “build-to-order” PCs. I found one of configure pages from TigerDirect and I DISTINCTLY remember this screen.

    I spent so. much. time. on this screen, trying to pick something that I liked but wasn’t too expensive. You’ll note on the earlier spec sheet picture that it says “Free DOS,” that’s because I picked DOS as my OS because Windows was too expensive, and I wanted the GPU. Amazing. DOS! Still existed in 2009. I’m honestly super pleased that I found this. Thanks Wayback Machine!

    I ended up keeping this PC and the next one for several years after I stopped using them (up to 2020, apparently). We put one in the guest room of the house I was renting at the time. MAGRAGEEVES was upgraded with a 500gb SSD and sold to a friend of mine for very cheap (like $50). She needed it for school and I would not be surprised if she tossed it like six months later and got a laptop instead.

    For some reason I kept the GPU until a couple years ago, as if I was going to use it. It looked like this:

    Which is very funny to me considering that the GPU would be seated upside down from this photo, meaning you’d never see the fancy viking art.

    CABERTOSS

    Bought: February, 2011
    Type: Desktop PC
    Cost: $280 ($405 in 2026)

    I’m not sure exactly what made me buy this extraordinarily cheap PC. Maybe it was this picture on TigerDirect’s homepage:

    Unfortunately, the link that was on this image wasn’t archived, and I never took a photo of this PC, so this is all you’re gonna get. I’m almost certain this was a “we need to get rid of these parts” type of sale. The parts on the picture are actually the parts though! I double checked to make sure.

    So yeah, I think the allure of a cheap, quad core CPU build did it for me. But the entire setup really felt so, so cheap. This was the first PC I bought that had a dedicated computer case brand, though. Here were its specs:

    • CPU: AMD Phenom X4 9600B 2.3Ghz AM2+ OEM CPU
    • CPU Cooler: Cooler Master AM2 95w CPU Fan
    • MOBO: MSI K9N6PGM2-V V.2 GeForce 6100 Socket AM2+ MB
    • RAM: Crucial 2GB PC6400 DDR2 800MHz
    • HDD: WD Caviar 500GB Serial ATA HD 7200/16MB/SATA-3G
    • GPU: ATI Radeon HD 4650 1GB PCIe w/Dual Link DVI
    • CASE: PowerUp G54-8019 Executive ATX Mid-Tower
    • PSU: Sparkle Computer Corp PS Series 400W PSU
    • DVD: Lite ON 24X DVDRW SATA OEM

    According to my Facebook archive, I bought the CPU cooler, GPU, and PSU separately. The first two were because the barebones kit didn’t have them, and I’m sure I got a new PSU because whatever was in this thing was not going to cut it. Dunno how much those cost and god I hope I moved them into MAGRAGEEVES.

    this is a case, taken from a youtube video which is the only place where i could find a photo of this damn thing.

    I have no photos of this PC because I barely used it. It scared me. It was very cheap and the case was very flimsy. I’m realizing now, fifteen years later, that it was cheap because the parts were a few years old, not because they were bad parts. The AMD Phenom X4 was three years old when I bought it. Not a tremendous amount of time, but the Phenom IIs were already out, plus the late 2000s/early 2010s were a really wild time, in terms of components. Also in hindsight, I think the case was the only flimsy thing about this setup. I should’ve kept it and just bought a new case.

    This sat in a closet for a few years before I donated it to a friend.

    FIRGADOR

    Bought: September, 2011
    Type: Laptop
    Cost: $600 ($871 in 2026)

    My first laptop! A Dell Inspiron 14R. This is literally what the specs said in the email:

    • DELL I14R I52410M 6/640/DVD/W7HP/14 NB

    You might be able to glean what most of this means, but in case not, I found the original specs:

    • CPU: 2nd Generation Intel® Core™ i3-2310M processor 2.10 GHz
    • RAM: 6GB Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1333MHz
    • 640GB4 SATA hard drive (5400RPM)
    • Intel HD Graphics/HD Graphics 3000 with up to 1.6GB Dynamic Video Memory
    • 8X Tray Load CD/DVD Burner (Dual Layer DVD+/-R Drive)
    • Integrated 1.0 mega pixel widescreen HD Webcam

    This way back in the day when hard drives could have weird amounts. 640 is a weird amount for a hard drive.

    Here’s what it looked like:

    I still have this laptop, though now it looks like this:

    Here’s a brief rundown of how it got this way:

    1. The laptop stopped booting up several years ago. I think it’s a faulty power supply, but it’s actually just a bad battery.
    2. I get a new battery three(?) years ago; laptop boots up again!
    3. But it’s slow as hell, so I take it apart to swap the hard drive with an SSD, which speeds it up considerably.
    4. After I do this, I put it back together.
    5. Cut to last month. I never use this laptop. The moment it gets slightly warm, a fan inside it spins so loud it sounds like an jet engine taking off. I’ve decided I want the SSD back.
    6. I take the laptop apart again, and grab the SSD.
    7. I decide not to put it back together again.

    The plan is to donate it to Free Geek.

    The “fun” concept with this Inspiron line is that you could detach the cover and swap it with another, fancier cover. I never did that. As far as I can tell, nobody else did either.

    I used this mainly for D&D games, as the modern era pulled us away from physical books and into spending more money on a second copy of digital books.

    GARGAROTH

    Bought: November, 2011
    Type: Desktop PC
    Cost: $1,819 ($2,643 in 2026)

    A stupid premonition from November, 2011, via my Facebook:

    Just finished ordering parts for my latest, and hopefully last, computer build. This one should last for a few years and plenty of upgrades.

    “Hopefully last.” So naive. So, so naive.

    I present: GARGAROTH. (In the lower right corner.)

    photo from 2011. also marvel at that cable management.

    This photo doesn’t really do it justice. That computer tower is HUGE. This was the first PC I built myself, part by part. I probably ordered everything off Newegg by this point.

    Here’s the specs, which, by the way, were a lot of very popular choices at the time:

    • CPU: Intel Core i5-2500K Sandy Bridge 3.3GHz
    • CPU Cooler: MasterCooler Hyper 212
    • MOBO: MSI|P67A-GD65 (B3) P67 LGA1155 R
    • RAM: G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333
      • Just real quick because RAM is expensive as hell right now: these sticks cost $43. Total.
    • SSD: CRUCIAL 64GB
    • HDD: 4x WD 500 GB 7200RPM SATA III 16MB cache, 1 Toshiba 2TB
    • GPU: MSI R6950 Twin Frozr III 1G/OC Radeon HD 6950
    • GPU UPGRADED: to VGA MSI|R7950 TWIN FROZR 3GD5/OC R (12/2012)
    • CASE: ANTEC DF-85 RT
    • PSU: ANTEC 750W GREEN
    • DVD: Blu-Ray thing
    • KEY: Logitech wired keyboard and
    • MAUS: G9x mouse
    • FANS: Blue fan

    Let’s begin with the case. The ANTEC DF-85 RT.

    Look at this stupid ass case. This computer case is TWO FEET TALL. This computer case has EIGHT FANS. (Seven came with and then I for some insane reason bought a blue RGB fan for that side mount there, instead of red one.) The three font fans each have a little knob you can turn to make them go faster. Yes it has red RGB, of COURSE it has RGB. Each fan mount on the front opens like little doors so you can clean and access the hard drives. It has bays for three 5.25″ devices (like CD-ROMs and such), SIX 3.5″ hard drives, and one 2.5″ SSD mount on the bottom of the case for some wild reason. Plus a hot swappable 2.5″ bay at the very top.

    This case was made out of STEEL and weighed 26 pounds, on its own, without components installed.

    For reference, my current PC case (Fractal Meshify C) is 17″ tall and weighs about 13 pounds on its own.

    GARGAROTH was also my first time using the Cooler Master Hyper 212, also known as a “tower” cooler. Prior to this, CPU heatsinks were smaller and generally mounted flat onto the CPU, and the fan blew the air straight outward. The Hyper 212 turned the heatsink and fans 90°, creating the “tower” look and allowing the fans to blow the hot air from the heatsinks directly to the back of the PC. I thought this was the coolest thing at the time, no pun intended. It just looked neat and was big and bulky.

    gargaroth in action in 2014; me watching night court with jowers and also a bunch of guinness cans because it was near st patrick’s day. (also a pizza box?!)

    If ALBATROSS was my meek and mild entry into PC ownership, GARGAROTH was my brash and bold (if maybe a little garish) “I’M A PC GAMER!” exclamation. It truly was a great PC and handled almost everything I threw at it at the time. It was my first real attempt at cable management, too; I did alright. After nine years of gaming on it, however, it was time to move on. I ended up donating most of it to Free Geek, while a few components were repurposed into SMOLCOMP.

    INZHISERA

    Bought: Sometime in 2017
    Type: Chromebook
    Cost: $250 ($333 in 2026)

    This was a Chromebook laptop. It was very slow and I bought it because A) FIRGADOR wasn’t working, B) it was cheap, and C) because I was becoming a real Googlehead at the time. I could only find one photo of it and it’s this one:

    This was my “pre-colonoscopy prep” photo in 2021.

    Here are some specs I could find:

    • Intel Pentium N4200 processor (4 cores, 1.1Ghz)
    • 4GB of memory
    • 32GB of flash storage

    Chromebooks are kind of a terrible idea, but also a great one if you love Google. This one handled small tasks alright, but I tried to run a D&D game on Roll20 once and it was so slow it became unusable.

    Inzhisera was donated to Free Geek.

    BALGRAHR

    Bought: January, 2020
    Type: Raspberry Pi
    Cost: $99 ($125 in 2026)

    Before the pandemic hit, I bought a Raspberry Pi 4 (model B, 4gb of RAM). In fact, I bought an entire starter kit from Vilros, with a power supply, case, HDMI cable, and lil fan. My plan was to use it as a media player for all the movies and TV shows I legally obtain (I actually really did, through Netflix, and then used some weird Linux setup to watch it on the Pi). Along with it I bought a 3-way HDMI switch to swap between inputs, a cheapo sound bar, and a wireless Logitech keyboard and mouse. It worked fine but ended up being kind of a pain. I liked playing around with Ubuntu though! I ended up repurposing it into GOGREZ.

    THARGORAD

    Bought: April/May, 2020, but upgraded a lot since then.
    Type: Desktop PC
    Cost: Originally, $1,273 ($1,607 in 2026)

    I am typing this from THARGORAD right now. The product of those paltry covid stimulus checks, THARGORAD was the direct successor to GARGAROTH, taking advantage of newer hardware (within my budget, of course). Here are the original specs from 2020:

    • CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor
    • CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler
    • MOBO: MSI B450 TOMAHAWK MAX ATX AM4 Motherboard
    • RAM: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3000 Memory
      • Again, due to RAM shortage: this was $80 and I later bought another 2 x 8 GB sticks of the same RAM for $43.
    • NVMe: WD – BLACK SN750 500GB Internal Gaming SSD PCIe Gen 3 x4 NVMe
    • SSD: 2x Western Digital Blue 500 GB 2.5″ Solid State Drive
    • HDD: 2x WD Blue 1 TB
    • GPU: MSI Radeon RX 580 DirectX 12 RX 580 ARMOR 8G OC 8GB 256-Bit GDDR5
    • CASE: Fractal Design Meshify C ATX Mid Tower Case
    • PSU: Corsair RM (2019) 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply
    • KEY: Logitech G213 Prodigy Gaming Keyboard
    • MAUS: Logitech G102 (G203) IC PRODIGY 8000DPI 1000Hz Polling Rate 16.8M Color RGB Gaming Mouse – Black
    • MON: 2x Dell – 27″ IPS LED FHD FreeSync Monitor – Piano Black
    • SPKR: Logitech Z333 2.1 Speakers
    • FANS: 4x Cooler Master 120mm

    Some of these parts came from Best Buy, some from Newegg. Here was my setup in 2021:

    Simple, elegant, with components right in the middle of the bell curve of what people were buying at the time.

    I have since done some upgrades.

    • RAM: Added the aforementioned 2 x 8 GB sticks. These are technically 3200 Mhz, not 3000, so they are effectively underclocked.
    • HDD: Swapped the two 1 TB drives for two 4 TB drives.
    • SSD: Swapped the 500 GB drives for 1 TB drives, and then 2 TB drives. (I have too many hard drives.)
    • GPU: Upgraded to a Radeon 6700 XT 12GB in Jan 2023 and then AGAIN to a 9060XT 16GB three years later, because the 6700XT broke.
    • Bought an ultrawide monitor.
    • Bought a better webcam. (Logitech C615)
    • Bought an Xbox controller.

    Those additions cost a total of $1,640 (won’t do the 2026 version here because these were bought at different times).

    I have also upgraded some core components, but I’ll get to that later.

    the setup, circa 2023.

    THARGORAD is a nice merger between the simplicity of ALBATROSS and the powerhouse nonsense of GARGAROTH. I am a big fan of it.

    SMÖLCÖMP

    Bought: 2021 (repurposed)
    Type: Desktop mini PC
    Cost: $138 ($176 in 2026)

    So, GARGAROTH was retired, its giant case stuffed into my closet. I had gotten rid of the ancients, MAGRAGEEVES and CABERTOSS. BALGRAHR (the Raspberry Pi) was ineffective as a media player and was lying dormant in my closet. Since I had a whole-ass computer that still worked just laying around, I decided to convert it into a home theater PC, or HTPC, effectively upgrading from the Raspberry Pi situation. This would also be fairly cheap since I was repurposing the majority of GARGAROTH’s parts, but putting it into a smaller case.

    In the end, all I bought for this build was the case and the motherboard, which were:

    • CASE: Thermaltake Core V1
    • MOBO: GIGABYTE GA-H61N-USB3 Intel LGA1155 DDR3 Desktop Mini ITX
    SMOLCOMP as of a couple days ago, before i gutted it.

    Since Gargy was a decade old at this point, I had to trawl through eBay to find a proper motherboard, which was sort of exciting. It was my first time looking for used parts online, and I had heard all sorts of horror stories about getting defective parts and whatnot, but this mobo turned out great, for a while at least. The PCIe bus seems to be broken, as it doesn’t recognize my GPU, but thankfully the CPU has integrated graphics, so I can still use it.

    I still think a HTPC is a good idea, but I ended up not using this very much because I had BigTV and could just upload videos from THARGORAD to a USB drive and plug it into the back of BigTV. This didn’t work all the time (a lot of movies wouldn’t play audio because BigTV is an LG and I think there were codec issues), but it worked well enough.

    Since my big THARGORAD upgrade, I have since disassembled SMOLCOMP entirely. I’m keeping the case but the rest is going to Free Geek. Meanwhile, the case may end up being the home for a NAS in the future. We’ll see.

    BigTV

    Bought: June, 2022
    Type: BigTV, I mean, smart TV
    Cost: $1,100 ($1,228 in 2026)

    An honorable mention. BigTV is not a computer, except it is, basically. Specs:

    • LG – 55″ Class C1 Series OLED 4K UHD Smart webOS TV (2021)

    BigTV is good. BigTV make moving picture on screen look good. Me love BigTV.

    BIGTV. BIGTV. BIGTV. BIGTV. BIGTV. BIGTV. BIGTV. BIGTV. BIGTV. BIGTV. BIGTV. BIGTV.

    NA’ANTERAL

    Bought: February, 2023
    Type: Tablet
    Cost: $150 ($160 in 2026)

    I had an ultrawide monitor at this point, which I still use and enjoy, but I missed having a second monitor to watch videos on. For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to buy a cheap tablet and make it a second monitor. This did not work at all.

    NA’ANTERAL is a Samsung Galaxy Tab 8 and it sucks ass. It’s the slowest piece of computer hardware I’ve experienced in 20 years. Even your grandma would hate this thing. It was good for reading ebooks, and that was it.

    I still have it but am going to donate it ASAP.

    AGAGRAVON

    Bought: 2024
    Type: Laptop
    Cost: $650 ($677 in 2026)

    This is my laptop! Here are the specs:

    • HP – Pavilion 16″ WUXGA Touch-Screen Laptop
    • AMD Ryzen 5 8540U
    • 8GB Memory
    • AMD Radeon Graphics
    • 512GB SSD

    This is a great laptop for the price! The touch screen is cool too even though I hardly ever use it.

    More importantly, this effectively replaced SMOLCOMP, because if movies won’t play when I plug them into the back of BigTV from the USB drive, I can plug the drive into the laptop and just cast the screen to BigTV. This is how I started a rewatch of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as I wanted to watch the OG aspect ratio and not the shitty HD “remaster” and the files I found online wouldn’t play on BigTV. (Note to self: You need to finish that rewatch.)

    GOGREZ

    Bought: 2026 (repurposed)
    Type: Raspberry Pi
    Cost: $90 ($90 in 2026)

    GOGREZ is a reincarnation of BALGRAHR. It’s five things, basically:

    • COMP: Raspberry Pi 4
    • USB: j5create – USB 3.0 7-Port HUB – Black
    • SSD: 2x Western Digital Blue 500 GB 2.5″ Solid State Drive
    • CASE: 2x Insignia™ – 2.5″ SATA to USB-C HDD Enclosure – Black

    I only bought the USB hub and the SATA enclosures. I was trying to get a cheaper hub than the one I got, but my local Best Buy didn’t have it and after two separate employees tried to find it, a third employee casually said, “It’s probably been stolen.” (Also I guess I bought a power strip too but that’s not a computer.)

    AGAGRAVON lived in a shoebox for a while.

    The impetus for putting this together is to make a personal web server for FoundryVTT, so I could use a domain name rather than my computer’s IP address, allowing players to log on without getting scary security warnings from their browsers. Since then it has become a big trial-and-error Linux experience.

    I outlined a lot of the process of putting this together on my Substack. Suffice it to say, it worked, eventually, and it’s pretty cool! I just have a little website for TTRPG games with friends. Neat.

    THARGORAD 2.0

    Upgraded: March, 2026
    Cost: Upgrades, $600. In total, after all upgrades, $3,822 (around $4,100 in 2026)

    After alllllll this nonsense, you’d think I was finished, wouldn’t you. But here’s the thing: AI companies are ruining the parts market for PC builders, particularly in the RAM and storage departments, as they buy tons of it for their water-guzzling servers. RAM that cost under $100 back in the day is now nearing $200, and that’s DDR4. Next gen, DDR5 RAM is around $400-$500.

    Because of this, I had a think, and rattled some thoughts around in my middle-aged brain. Ultimately, I decided to upgrade the core components of THARGORAD to make them as new(ish) as possible, effectively future-proofing my PC until prices die down, which they probably never will. Thus, despite still having an “older” computer compared to the current market of AMD & Intel processors and DDR5 RAM, I would still have something that could compete for as long as GARGAROTH did.

    Here’s what I bought:

    • AMD Ryzen 7 5700X – Ryzen 7 5000 Series Vermeer (Zen 3) 8-Core 3.4 GHz Socket AM4 65W None Integrated Graphics Desktop CPU Processor
    • NZXT – Kraken Plus 280mm Radiator CPU Liquid Cooler (2 x 140mm F140P Fans) with 1.54″ Square LCD – Black
    • MSI – B550 GAMING PLUS (Socket AM4) AMD B550 ATX DDR4 Motherboard – Black
    • Crucial – P310 1TB Internal SSD PCIe Gen 4 x4 NVMe M.2
    i’ve never taken one of these “pics of all my new components” before. please enjoy my laundry basket in the background

    Basically, a bump in the CPU and motherboard, an AIO cooler (always wanted to try one), and, as always, more storage.

    The cost for this altogether was $600 ($600 in 2026). And everything was cheaper than it would’ve been had I bought it originally. In fact, my Ryzen 5 3600, which cost $175 in 2020, would be about $220 today–except it wouldn’t be, because it’s very old and even the budget-friendly Ryzen 5 5500, a better CPU, is under $100. Regardless, 7 is more than 5 so I got a better CPU. So there.

    I spent all of Friday night installing the new components–though first, I rearranged the furniture in my living room. I did this for a couple reasons, but mainly because my tower was on the left side of my desk in the old spot, in the corner, so I had no view inside the glass panel. The NZXT AIO has an LCD screen to display temps and stuff, and by gum I wanted to see it. So I moved everything in my tiny living room apartment around. But I see it now! I see it!

    thargorad, the next generation.

    Having the CPU temp on the LCD screen was nice but I had a better idea:

    That is this:

    But I can’t add the video because I don’t give WordPress enough money. He is running on a little monitor on the CPU pump itself. That’s just neat.

    The B550 is a big upgrade for a data hoarder like me. The B450 has one M.2 slot which, when used, disabled the last two SATA inputs. The B550, on the other hand, has two M.2 slots and when they are both in use, disables the second PCIe x16 slot, instead of the SATA slots, which is a MUCH better idea. Who uses the second PCIe x16 slot? Besides NERDS

    Installing this new setup was a real pain in the ass, for three reasons.

    First: I’ve never installed an AIO before so I had to figure that out. The issue was that my AIO is too big to fit at the top of the case for exhaust (the “optimal” setup), so I had to put it at the front, for intake instead. While supposedly less than optimal, I do like the idea of these larger fans pulling in cooler air.

    NZXT’s instuction booklet was so fucking weirdly laid out that it was genuinely hard to understand for a while. That plus there being NO indication anywhere that the pump had thermal paste pre-applied made me wish that they would have had some “AIOs for dummies” booklet. (Yeah yeah, I probably could’ve watched a YouTube video on my phone, but I didn’t want to do that.)

    Second: I basically screwed in the motherboard and then had to unscrew it because some wires from the previous setup were stuck behind it. And then, much later on, I discovered that the rear exhaust fan’s wires were stuck, notched between the rear I/O ports and the motherboard. Getting it unstuck would mean unscrewing the motherboard AGAIN, so instead I just cut the wires, because I have extra fans (and I ended up not using the extras because Cooler Master wires aren’t totally black, like the Fractal ones are).

    Third: These motherfuckers.

    from ecomputertips.com

    These little pieces of shit are the worst things that have ever existed. Why are they all SEPARATE?

    I plugged these into where they were on my OLD board and then thought I was all done and everything was great, only to wonder why my PC wasn’t booting up at all. Thankfully I glanced at the mobo instructions and noted that I hadn’t plugged them into the JFP1 pins at all. Problem was, the JFP1 pins were more forward on the B550 and the front panel plugs wouldn’t reach.

    This meant I had to pull all of these little shits out of the tiny hole on my PC case that I had threaded them through before, and then awkwardly shove them through another tiny hole, one at a time, with WAY more shit in the way. For cable management, of course. I nearly threw my entire computer into a lake because of it. I’m sure if you’ve ever dabbled in cable management, you know that I mean.

    WHY ARE THEY ALL SEPARATE LIKE THIS JUST MAKE THEM ONE BLOCK YOU BASTARDS.

    After all that nonsense, the computer did finally turn on and Windows was like “R U NEW PC?” and was like “No” and Windows was like “PLS ACTIVATE WINDOWS” and I was like “Fuck off” and Windows finally got the hint.

    And now my PC is a lot faster than it used to be! It’s kind of wild. I was fine with the Ryzen 3600 but now that I have this, it’s noticeably different.

    THE FUTURE

    Right now I have a couple of ideas about what to do for future builds:

    • First, and most obvious, would be to build an AM5 socket PC. But that is expensive and likely won’t happen anytime soon. I’m waiting for the AI bubble to burst.
    • A possible rebuild using my Ryzen 5 3600 and a mini-ITX board within the SMOLCOMP case. I’m debating whether to do this, or to store the B450 + CPU in case my new setup fails. If I rebuild, it will be to create a NAS. If I don’t, then:
    • I am going to put GOGREZ into the Thermaltake case. Just stuff it in there. Why the heck not.

    THE END

    Good golly miss molly was this a long post. But that’s the history of my PC ownership! Hopefully you gained something from it. If anything, maybe you enjoyed reminiscing about old PC specs. Or maybe you’re mad/bummed about the RAM price hike too!

    Until next time!

  • A Belated Eulogy for NaNoWriMo

    I learned today that National Novel Writing Month, or, rather, the current organization behind the project, has shut down as of April 2025. I am sad to hear about this new, despite having deleted my own account in 2024 after feeling rather icky about NaNoWriMo’s AI statement.1 It seems I was not alone, and many other people left, and that plus lack of funds meant the 25-year-old writing challenge was kaput.

    I first learned about NaNo in 2002, at the ripe age of 19. In those halcyon days, I used to write serialized fiction, posting the chapters online for my AOL friends to read. At some point, the 50,000 word novel writing challenge in November was explained to me, and I, like a lot of people, thought it was great. And I was hooked; around the end of October, I would remember that NaNoWriMo was coming and would start to plot what I wanted to write that year. (It truly is funny that I am writing this at the end of October. It’s like a mind muscle memory to think of NaNoWriMo around this time, I guess.)

    My “win” count for the site is a measly three novels, of which one I much later realized was the same plot as The Running Man (novel, not movie). And perhaps I should count my graduate thesis play, Peace, which was not 50,000 words but was, at least, completed. Most of my early novel attempts coincided with college; namely, with me being in plays and having to stop writing when the show got closer to opening. A whole lot of concepts, jettisoned and left to linger in various writing folders on my computer or on Google Drive. I started in 2002 but my first win wasn’t until 2014, which also happened to be my first year out of grad school.

    Similarly, I wasn’t very active in the forums either, or the group writes or any of that. There weren’t a lot in Idaho, where I lived when I started writing, and by the time I moved to Portland, I was so used to not doing NaNo as a group event that I just never participated, other than introducing myself on the regional forums.

    That said, NaNoWriMo was a really special event. It was the perfect introverts challenge, for starters: you put in as much engagement with it as you’d like, and weren’t expected to do more (or less). You could go to a group write, or you could write alone at your computer. It was all participation. It also resulted in a lot of fairly well known novels. Hugh Howey’s Silo series is perhaps the most famous as of this writing, due to the books being turned into an AppleTV show (which in some ways is better and worse than the books). And the weekly “pep talks” by famous authors was great. To have a community you could engage with on your terms felt very special.

    NaNoWriMo was a foundational experience for my writing history. It was a challenge that did not hold your hand and ultimately only had you as the arbiter of whether you won or not. The 50,000 words was arbitrary; a nice round number and fairly acceptable novella writing length, but it could be anything. You could write ten 10,000 word short stories. You could write a play! Or music, or poetry, or whatever. The point was that you showed up and participated. And that sense of self-fulfillment carried with me to this very day. It really taught people that you just gotta get up and do the thing if you want to get to 50,000 words, or 10,000 steps per day, or three miles run, or four … quilts made. You get the gist.

    And it’s on that note that I will miss NaNoWriMo. I think the organization ultimately shot themselves in the foot with the AI & moderator debacles, but I also remember their fundraising campaigns never reaching the numbers they were hoping for. It makes me wonder if they were bleeding money and were hoping for some sort of financial solution through AI. Trying to get a ride on that bubble. An unfortunate reality about running a business in the modern internet era. Although the AI thing really does exemplify the “You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain” concept. Oh well.

    All things eventually end, though the spirit behind them can remain a bit longer. I think I’ll still try to participate in a writing challenge this November, for example. November Novel Drafting Challenge? NoNoDraCha? Let’s see if I win this year.

    Pour a cold one out for NaNoWriMo. 1999-2025. RIP!

    1. There was also an unfortunate mishap with inappropriate behavior by moderators in their forums a couple years prior to the AI statement, which probably began to sour people’s opinions of the site. ↩︎

  • Somehow the Mongoose Got Outside Again

    Hello! My first full-length album release since 2021 is now OUT for purchase and (limited) streaming! Click the image below, or this link here, which will take you my Bandcamp page, where you can purchase the album for a measly $9!

    I am also going to have it up on ALL streaming sites ASAP. Like, next week. So there will be unlimited steaming eventually. It was a last minute impulse to sign up for TuneCore, okay? Just stay tuned.

    Want to see a tracklist? I gotchu babe!

    1. Somehow the Mongoose Got Outside Again
    2. The Breakup Groove
    3. Xmas Needed a Heretic Genius
    4. Jenny (How You Stayed Within My Sight)
    5. Mr. Two Shoes
    6. The Horizon
    7. Depressed by Figure
    8. The Cool Waitress of the Sabbath
    9. Mod Girl
    10. I Will Be Waiting Here
    11. Smoking Weed at the Bus Stop
    12. I Miss Dancing
    13. The Actress of Freestyle Cows
    14. It Ends All Lonesome

    I also have two music videos!

    If you enjoy the album, please send it to your friends, family, your favorite dog, etc etc. Word of mouth is the best way to spread awareness! Because it means it has been vetted by you and people trust that more than they trust self-promotion. That said: this is a good album full of fun tracks. I truly hope you enjoy it. Thank you for listening!

  • It Ends All Lonesome

    Hi. About a week or so ago I decided to release a new album of music I had recorded in over the summer of 2023. They’re lo-fi songs, written during FAWM’s 50/90 challenge, and after I recorded them I set them aside and was unsure if I would touch them again. But then I listened to them recently and you know what? They’re pretty good.

    Then I took a walk a couple days later and recorded it, and made a simple lil music video for one of the tracks, which is called “It Ends All Lonesome.” Here it is. I hope you enjoy it.

    The album is called Somehow the Mongoose Got Outside Again, fourteen songs about love, loneliness, gangsters, edgelord kids, the annoyance of cows, a singer’s life on the road, and, of course, a mongoose who got outside again, somehow. It is set to be released on my Bandcamp site on Valentine’s Day, 2025.

    (I’m also in the process of remastering and fixing up my album discography, which is why there aren’t a lot of my older albums currently on my Bandcamp. They’ll be there soon!)

    If you like the song, please do all the things that every influencer tells you to do with videos so that it can get seen by more people. I’d love to get enough views that I start to get hate comments. Nothing drives engagement more than hate.

  • D&D Rolls for 2025

    Oh, hello there. Long time no see.

    Last year I debuted a thing that I’ve done before, but didn’t really codify until 2024: rolling a d20 to determine my “vibe” for the year. I also pulled a card from my nice physical Deck of Many Things. I rolled a 19, which was very promising, and I pulled the Idiot, which sounds bad, but I took to mean “follow your gut, not your brain.” And, looking back on the year, I’d say I followed this more or less. The year really was a 19/20, in a lot of ways. I did lots of great stuff! And as for the Idiot … well, I did a pretty good job of following my gut.

    This year, I was going to roll another d20 but then I thought, Wouldn’t it be great to just roll all of the dice in a typical polyhedral dice set? So I made this thing: The Polyhedral Dice Reading. It’s like rolling bones, I guess, but it’s D&D dice. I don’t know if that’s appropriation; I apologize if it is, but I swear it’s just a silly little thing, and the “rolling bones” analogy came long after I came up with the idea.

    So here are my results and my interpretations, along with my Deck of Many Things pull for the year.

    The results, and my Pixel phone really accentuating the cat fur in my dice tray.

    d4 – Most Important Season

    2: Spring. Feels like a very run of the mill answer. Spring means blooms and renewed life. Perhaps the funk I’ve been feeling for the past couple of months will lift?

    d6 – Best Personal Stat

    5: Wisdom. I interpret this as a wise year, using my heart to make decisions. A sort of play on the Idiot card from last year, except instead of the instinctual gut feelings, I am trusting my intuition. Maybe those are the same things, who knows.

    d8 – 2025’s Alignment

    8: Lawful Evil. This one’s interesting! I interpret “evil” as self-centeredness (or selfishness if you want to go that far), which indicates to me that this year is meant to be one where I use predefined codes and “rules” to help enrich my own life. Which is a very surreal thing to interpret considering I have recently been using fallen oxygen masks in an airplane as an analogy for help; i.e., if things are going badly, care for yourself first so you can properly care for others.

    I think this also is giving me permission to do this; to not worry about caring for myself this year, because it will inevitably aid in others because I will be a stronger, more present person.

    d10 – 2025’s Richter Scale

    6: Strong. According to the actual Richter scale, a 6.0-6.9 earthquake results in “Damage to a moderate number of well-built structures in populated areas. Earthquake-resistant structures survive with slight to moderate damage. Poorly designed structures receive moderate to severe damage. Felt in wider areas; up to hundreds of kilometers from the epicenter. Strong to violent shaking in the epicentral area.”

    What does this mean for me? I think it means that there will be sufficient shakeups in 2025, ones that only people with a good head on their shoulders will survive. I take it to mean that it’s okay to shake things up a bit, too, to see who is earthquake-resistant.

    d12 – Month of Personal Growth

    4: April. Makes sense, if Spring is my most important season!

    d20 – Overall Vibe

    16. This is really just the most subjective thing. 16 tends to hit a monster, when you add ability modifiers. How about that?

    d100 – % of Possibility

    3. Wow, this is very low. So, this could mean one of two things: First, that all of the above stuff is bullshit and won’t happen. Possible! But it could also mean that all of the above stuff won’t happen automatically. In other words, I have to get my ass out there and make it happen. Which honestly is kind of a wake up call, because stuff just tends to fall in my lap sometimes. I gotta put in the work!

    Deck of Many Things

    I pulled Gem: Twenty-five pieces of jewelry worth 2,000 gp each or fifty gems worth 1,000 gp each appear at your feet.

    My friend Sam got this last year and interpreted it as getting a new job. I think for me it’s more about the riches that I will accumulate by pursuing the goals and vibes above. “If you build it, they will come,” if you will. If I take care of myself, shake things up, and trust my heart, I’ll come away from it a richer person. (“Rich” of course not necessarily meaning money.)

    So that’s it, really. It’s not tarot, it’s just a fun way to roll all of your D&D dice at once. Try it, let me know what you got! And hope you have a good demarcation of 365 days we collectively have agreed to label 2025.

  • You Need to Be Here So I Can Make Money

    Opening in 1965, the Karcher Mall in Nampa, Idaho was the first shopping mall west of the Mississippi. This is what I was told, at least, as a child, the type of storytelling common in those days when information was not readily available to the masses, and so people just said things that sounded right.

    This is a photo of the mall from 1985, graciously taken from a Facebook group called Vintage Karcher Mall. Somewhere on the second floor was a space for the long defunct CAN-ACT, a local community theater group in which my mother participated when I was young. I think that Thoroughbred Restaurant Lounge place became a Mexican restaurant at some point.

    Here is an overhead shot of the mall from 1986. And here’s what it looks like today:

    I think it’s kind of awesome that the mobile home park (top left corner of the 86 photo and top of modern day photo) still exists. Among all that new construction, or deconstruction, as they gutted part of the mall to make a parking lot. Joni Mitchell was right.

    I’m thinking about this because I’m thinking about social media again. Namely, how it is used to trap you, using psychology and your own likes, wants, and needs. The concept of “doomscrolling” is carefully manufactured by app developers who require you to stay on their app as long as possible, flicking through posts with your thumb so they can sell you advertising. Because that’s how they make money. And it’s capitalism, so they will do whatever they have to (within the bounds of legality) to get you to stay on Instagram or TikTok or whatever.

    It made me think about malls. Have you been to a mall recently? This isn’t about the decline of the mall, it’s more about a modern mall structure: malls are made to be easy to enter but hard to leave. There are always little things to do, stuff to see. Multiple levels where you can see storefronts both on your level, and the one above or below you. Very rarely in a modern mall do you feel like a store is too far away. It’s always within a bit of walking.

    Contrast this with the Karcher Mall (photo from the 90s):

    Karcher Mall, and a lot of the older style malls, were just big long fucking hallways with stores on either side. Karcher was one floor with a small upper section in the middle that had the aforementioned Thoroughbred Restaurant Lounge and some other, non-shopping rooms. The rest was all one floor. Once you were inside, you were inside; the lights were inside, none of that skylight bullshit you’d get later on. I remember, as a kid, going to the Karcher Mall and starting on one end of the mall and trudging–trudging!–all the way to the other end, like I was marching across Europe chasing Hitler’s army back to Berlin. The JC Penney anchor store on one end was Normandy, and my father and I were the poor Americans destined for one hell of a journey.

    So, when you look at that modern photo from Google Maps and you see they knocked down a section of the mall to build a parking lot, it’s like they destroyed Poland. Or something. Look, I don’t know World War 2 history that well, just deal with it. The point isn’t about the destruction, it’s about the concept of the mall in the 1960s and how nobody had any idea of the kind of psychological warfare social engineering that was to come. Nobody thought to make malls into a neverending spiral of escalators and angled pathways that ensured customers kept walking in circles, keeping them contained longer.

    The Karcher Mall was designed by a bunch of men in rolled up sleeves and big thick-rimmed glasses who smoked cigarettes and, staring at a blueprint of a long hallway, thought, “Just put all the stores next to each other, what’s the big deal?”

    The Boise Towne Square mall opened in 1988 and it had two floors. And skylights!

    You can see from the directory above that it was still basically a hallway, but this time there was a third hallway, and a whole other floor, and the sun shone into the mall and made it way more enjoyable than plodding down a 20 year old carpet with fluorescent lights above. It had a proper food court, and music and once you were inside it was a lot harder to get out. The Karcher Mall had exits, of course, but there were long stretches before you’d find ’em. Karcher’s method of getting you to shop was to trap you inside the building like a jail; the Towne Square mall on the other hand trapped you by confusing you and overpowering you with loud music and Orange Julius.

    Nowadays we don’t even need malls. It seems so alien to take up so much space with merchandise you could just as easily buy on Amazon, spending half an hour reading reviews of a vacuum cleaner that don’t read like they were published by Chinese AI machines.

    I don’t miss malls and never really liked them in the first place. They felt like a place to be dragged around by your mother while she shopped for brassieres. They’re all dying in their own unique ways, while developers take insane risks trying to keep them afloat. It’s just interesting to see the concept of “we must keep you here as long as possible so you will buy things” extend long before the invention of social media and doomscrolling. In the 60s, they made a long tube called the Karcher Mall and you’d go in one end and come out the other a changed man, and by that I mean you had bought a pair of ill-fitting shoes at Payless. In the 80s they made the Boise Towne Square mall, which let in the sunlight and distracted you from the outside world with food, music, and kiosks where sketchy looking men would try to sell you sunglasses. At both of these junctures in time, nobody thought that by the 2000s people would just click things on a computer screen and a haggard man who has 500 more deliveries today would throw them on your doorstep.

    Nowadays, companies use AI to discover what you like and make “personalized” ads, using your own psychology against you. Nowadays, if your screen remains on content for long enough (without even touching anything!), the app will determine that you liked what you saw and will keep showing related things to you. Nowadays, your phone listens to you and gives you ads based on what you say you want out loud.

    Nowadays, you are a brand, and you are a consumer, and you are an influencer, and somewhere, deep down in there, past the exfoliated skin cream and the muscle relaxing massage gun and the probiotic infusions and the multivitamins–you are a human being.

  • Race Recap: Race for Warmth

    Date: January 18, 2024
    Location: Vancouver, WA
    Distance: 10k
    Chip Time: 1:08:14
    Pace: 10:58/mi

    New year, new races. We’ll start with where my 2023 race extravaganza began, the Race for Warmth in Vancouver. The biggest difference besides me running a 10k instead of a 5k is the weather. Last year it was around 21°F at start time; this year it was more like 50°F. Because of that, however, I wore fewer layers (just the race shirt and shorts) and was still just as cold. I also forgot to anti-chafe the nips before the race and I just need to remind me, and remind you: ANTI-CHAFE YER NIPS.

    I know last year I talked about swag and atmosphere and all that but I barely thought about that at all for this run, which is probably a good thing. Atmosphere was great, people seemed chill and eager for the first race of 2024 (well, for some of us at least). The only swag I retrieved was free coffee–Relevant Coffee in Vancouver was giving out hot coffee and free cans of cold brew. They gave me two after the race and they were both delicious. Good work.

    As for the race itself, you can see from the image above that my splits were kind of weird. I went off too fast as usual, and probably would’ve had more even splits if I had just slowed down. But I wanted to get a sub-60 10k and my PR is 1:02, so I knew it was possible. But not a week after I basically didn’t run for an entire week because of the snow/ice storm! Come on man!

    I do find it interesting that after the 3rd mile I bumped up into a new positive split, like I had hit Stage 2 of my run or something. But I certainly did not have enough in the tank for a PR-worthy run at all. I had run fast at parkrun the day before too, which likely didn’t help. It was a tough 10k, a lot of bits of walking and my legs were tired by the first half. With that in mind, 1:08 is surprisingly good and I hope is a solid indicator of my fitness progress for 2024. I didn’t fuel during the run, though I did eat an hour beforehand. I think I would’ve done a bit better if I had gotten a gel or something in me right before the race, though.

    Oh and I did stop momentarily to take a picture of a rainbow. 🌈

    little bby rainbow

    Afterwards there was music and a little bit of soup, and people giving away Celsius drinks. I swear I’ve never seen Celsius out in the wild; I’ve only seen it at races where people give me one for free. How do they make money?

    I did drive directly to Safeway after the race so I could buy food, because I was ravenous and a small bowl of soup, albeit good soup, was not enough. I was also craving Goldfish crackers. There’s nothing like walking into a grocery store looking and smelling all disheveled from a 10k race.

    There shouldn’t be a lot of these race recaps this year. Last year I spent over $1,000 on races, which is insane. I’ve got a few lined up this year but nothing like 2023. I’ll save my money and run parkruns instead.

    The next race I have planned is the Shamrock Run half marathon, though I may sign up for something in February. We’ll see! Until then.

  • Teeth

    Been trying to think of stuff to write about for ye olde newsletter. It all feels lackluster, so here’s a blog about my teeth.

    So I was at the dentist. The dentist is one of those few places where the “Find Out” portion of “Fuck Around and Find Out” reveals itself in a slow, permanent sort of way. Oh, you mean I shouldn’t have drank liters of soda for years as a child and teenager and young adult? At least if you drive drunk without a seat belt and get into a wreck, waking up without a leg the next morning feels earned. The slow, inevitable decay of one’s teeth is a visual representation of the slow, inevitable decay of your own body into eventual wormfeed. Welcome to my newsletter!

    My teeth have been bad forever, and as a child I was terrified of the dentist. There was a dentist a couple blocks from my childhood home and I remember three things about it:

    1. They had a sit down Pac-Man arcade system that I enjoyed playing,
    2. The children’s play area entrance was an archway very low to the ground–the height for a kid to crawl into, basically. The top of the archway had padding so kids wouldn’t bonk their heads. I always thought that was crazy. What if a kid was choking in there? Would a parent have to army crawl into the room?, and
    3. The last(?) time I went there I was so terrified of whatever they were going to do that I had to rush to the bathroom to dry heave and ended up not getting any dentist work done that day.
    Fun fact: the place still exists and is still a dentist!

    My parents took me to this place when they could afford to; when they couldn’t, they took me to Terry Reilly Health Services, which is where poor people got their teeth fixed. You could tell the difference, even as a kid, between the “rich people doctor” and the “poor people doctor.” It’s all in the waiting area: the latter is louder, more chaotic, more children climbing over seats. More ethnic diversity at the poor clinic; lots of poor Latinos in southwest Idaho. Growing up, I always felt a kind of kinship with the Latino community, not because of music or culture or food (though the food is very good), but because we were both broke and just trying to get by, and I guess I saw that more with the Latinos than I did with my white friends and classmates. (Also it was Idaho, there were no Black kids to commiserate with about being poor.)

    As an adult, I could probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve been to the dentist. The breakdown of why I didn’t go very often is simple: I was poor, and mandatory health insurance didn’t exist when I was young. There’s more to it than that–a bit of bad dental genetics mixed with a much worse hygiene regimen–but the simple fact is that I couldn’t go get cleanings and whatnot because I couldn’t afford it. If I could have, I would have, even if I hated it. I distinctly remember a day in college where, over the course of a few hours, an abscess grew in my lower jaw, enough that my girlfriend at the time warned me about it. The type of rock hard fluid trapped in a space it’s not supposed to be in. I think I got it taken care of, likely at Terry Reilly, though I can’t remember, because I’ve also had abscesses that I “took care of” myself because I A) didn’t like the dentist and B) couldn’t afford the dentist. I didn’t poke my gums with a needle, if that’s what you’re wondering about. But if you press against a pressured space enough, it will pop, and you will spend the next few minutes swishing water in your mouth constantly to avoid the taste. I won’t say any more than that, but I will say that if you get an abscessed tooth, please go to the dentist. That shit can get into your bloodstream and seriously harm or even kill you. I do not endorse anything I’ve done, tooth-wise, or also probably just anything in general about my life.

    Then, in my 20s, my wisdom teeth came in. They didn’t hurt so I let them be, until they crowded my mouth so hard that they cracked molars further ahead in my mouth. I remember a very loud cracking sound when one of the molars broke. I didn’t even know that sort of thing was possible, until it happened. I had teeth shards sticking out of my gums until grad school, when I finally attended the dentistry school attached to Portland State University. I went there only because one day I was at the Cheerful Tortoise (PSU’s nearby shitty dive bar) and I took a bite into a cheeseburger and one of my teeth broke. I went to the dentist and told her that and she said, “Yeah, sometimes eating meat can cause a tooth to break.” In hindsight, I think she was being sarcastic. They pulled my teeth shards as well as one of my back wisdom teeth and the tooth in front of it; the wisdom tooth grew in at an angle and basically grew into the tooth ahead of it, ruining it. Lots of fillings in my back teeth, lots of ruin that could’ve been prevented.

    Speaking of hygiene regiment … the 2010s were quiet but also likely the worst for my oral hygiene simply because there were times–weeks, months, years?–where I just didn’t care. I remember Patrick Rothfuss saying once that he has had friends who lost teeth due to depression and I get it. It’s hard to explain, that lack of desire that prevents you from accomplishing even the simplest tasks. Empty the dishwasher. Take a shower. Brush your teeth. And then the cycle of depression and anxiety, where you know you’re supposed to shower but you don’t care, but you know you should and because you’re not it’s making you anxious, which perpetuates the cycle. It’s not that I didn’t brush every day for years, it’s that I brushed more often than not, which was usually once in the morning. Once in the morning, sometimes + Portland’s lack of fluoride in the water = the gradual and continual decay of my mouth.

    Then, the pandemic came, and you can just throw all the rules out the window. Whatever depression sat heavy on my chest starting around 2014 melted into my bloodstream by late 2020. I don’t think I need to go on.

    A couple months ago, I was eating popcorn and one of my teeth broke. I knew it would happen; I knew that popcorn would betray me one day. It wasn’t the microwave kind either, it was the bagged pre-popped stuff. I don’t know why, but pre-popped popcorn always has the most egregiously dangerous kernels. The bottom scraps of the bag are like playing Minesweeper with your teeth, and I eat popcorn like someone in a trance.

    A week after the Popcorn Incident, I was eating almonds and another tooth cracked, this one a fillinged molar. I knew popcorn would betray me, but almonds?! Now where would I get my easy source of protein and magnesium?

    At that point the die had been cast. I had to go to the dentist. My work doesn’t offer a dental plan1, so I bought my own, because you have to have insurance, right? Why else would you get work done without insurance? Well, long story short is that my dental plan is one where you don’t get all the stuff right away. An “incentive” plan which has incentivized me to drive off a cliff. It makes the entire point of getting a dental plan for the purpose of dental repair absolutely fucking worthless. It did pay for my cleaning though, so there’s that. I basically have to have it for a year before it really kicks in, and the big stuff I need to do (crowns, root canals, etc) aren’t covered for at least six months, and then when they are covered they only cover 15% for the first year. Wow! Such luxury!

    Insurance is the capitalist mafia, by the way. The only difference is that while the actual mafia breaks your actual knees if you don’t pay them, the capitalist mafia breaks your financial knees if you don’t pay them.

    So anyway, I’m sitting here now, writing this with a root canal done and likely another one on the way. TV shows and movies really made me nervous about getting a root canal. They always presented it as if it is the worst thing ever, but mine didn’t hurt at all, even after the lidocaine wore off. I’m going to get a couple of crowns placed, but after the root canal my gums were too inflamed so they had to wait to seat the crown. The doc then drilled out the filling from the tooth behind my root canal tooth because of a cavity, which is where he discovered that there was a crack in the tooth and that it needed a crown as well. So currently I have some temporary sealant stuff on my teeth and will be back in a couple of weeks to get it fixed.

    I dunno why I’m writing this. I find the entire experience incredibly embarrassing; it feels like stuff I should’ve dealt with decades ago, but I couldn’t because I was poor, which is also embarrassing. For some reason, writing about embarrassing things is cathartic for me. I guess. Or maybe you’re embarrassed about your teeth and me writing about it allows a bit of kinship in that. Teeth are absurd. We only get two sets and the second set we get until we die, and then we discovered how to basically inject sugar into our gums via the sticky tack that is Swedish Fish. Teeth have been bad since the Egyptians, for fuck’s sake, and probably before that too. We should be commiserating about our fucked up teeth!

    That’s my life right now. Teeth time and car repairs. My car has been repaired, by the way, and I took it in to get some anti-theft thing installed on it the same day I went to the dentist.2 This is how it works for me: I have a whole lot of nothing most days, and then everything suddenly happens on the same day for no reason.

    Anyway. Hi. Welcome to 2024.

    1. Lisa needs braces. ↩︎
    2. They also gave me The Club for free. I’m surprised these still exist but they do and lots of people in Portland use them. ↩︎

  • 52 Days Out #1: The Iron Claw at Cinemagic

    One of my New Years resolutions is to dedicate one night of my week away from my cozy, comfortable apartment, out doing something in the world. Something that, ideally, takes up the entirety of the night, and, also ideally, benefits my local community.

    Luckily, the amazing Cinemagic movie theater here in Portland is within walking distance of my apartment, meaning if I can’t find something to do, I can always fall back on the awesome golden sheen of the theater’s curtain.

    Cinemagic is great for several reasons: the atmosphere is amazing, the prices are decent, the seats are old and squeaky, and their film options range from first runs to old VHS movies they show on the first Friday of the month. We need more spaces like this–small movie theaters that are never packed. I know movie theaters in general are never packed these days, but this space has so much charm and you can tell the people who own it really just want to give moviegoers a proper experience, rather than a gigantic screen with the audio turned up to the point it hurts your ears. Kudos to you, Cinemagic!

    For my first outing, I went to see The Iron Claw, a new film and the reason why Zac Efron looks jacked as hell lately.

    Honestly, Zac looks great in the film. Jacked but not overbearing. This photo makes it look like he’s on HGH (human growth hormone), mainly because of those abs that stick out like that. Probably was, and on steroids too; it’s Hollywood, what can you expect. But you can tell he really worked hard for that physique.

    The film is very good; I talk about it briefly on my Letterboxd, which was more of an immediate reaction. The longer burn is that it is the morning after watching the movie and I am still thinking about Maura Tierney’s face and Zac Efron’s face at the end of the film. Really powerful and moving film about brotherly love and fatherly apprenticeship. I’m still thinking about it and feeling it, which is probably my favorite thing about films, that feeling you have after watching one.

    I have a feeling a lot of my nights out this year will be centered around Cinemagic. They’re showing the 90s Gamera trilogy next week (plus a Q&A with Ayako Fujitani, one of the stars of the film and … Steven Seagal’s daughter?!). Then after that they’re showing Mel Brooks films, and I feel obligated to see Blazing Saddles in a movie theater in honor of one of my father’s favorite films.

    Hell, maybe I’ll spend two weeknights out, who knows?!

  • D&D Roll for the New Year

    This morning I began a little Dungeons & Dragons new year tradition.

    First, I rolled a d20 to see how 2024 would fare for me.

    A 19! Not bad at all.

    Next, I pulled a card from the Deck of Many Things. (The OG deck, not the new one.)

    The Idiot: Permanently reduce your Intelligence by 1d4 + 1 (to a minimum score of 1). You can draw one additional card beyond your declared draws.

    Since I could draw an additional card, but didn’t have to, I rolled a d20 to determine if I would. 1-10 = yes, 11-20 = no. I didn’t film it but I rolled a 12.

    So, what does this mean? Well, nothing, officially or unofficially. It’s just a fun thing to do. But since the human brain loves to extrapolate from nonsense, I can presume that the 19 on the d20 roll means that 2024 will be a good year. Not the best year of my entire life, but one of my better ones. If anything, the number represents my ability to cultivate a good year this year, not necessarily that “good” will be handed to me on a silver platter.

    I choose to interpret the Idiot to mean that I should refrain from acting or trying to be smart this year, and instead trust my instincts and intuition. I may make some stupid decisions, but overall if I trust my gut it may make my year better.

    For the record, I also pulled (read: clicked a thing on a website) a tarot card for 2024. I got The Moon.

    Which, upright, apparently is all about intuition and “trusting the moonlight to guide you.” So the Deck of Many Things and the tarot deck are in alignment? Or, maybe the Idiot just means I’m going to be a goddamn idiot this year, but it will be a lot of fun.