I'm getting completely sick of college. I have to do everything on my own and I'm the one who has to plan and schedule my own final examinations. I filled out special forms that they were supposed to forward to my campus so I could walk in and take certifications, but I haven't heard anything and here I am getting warnings about getting classes and assignments done on time so I can get the submitted before the last day, which turns out to be May 5, not May 10 like the syllabus says.

I email my instructor and, lo! Behold, they have absolutely no idea what to do, so they forward the message to someone who can "help". Then I get the message saying May 5 is the end of class deadline, so I ask ths instructor if they've heard anything back. Apparently not, and I need to contact my own campus to do the scheduling, so here I am emailing the Kokomo campus because nobody else directly responsible for my courses is doing anything and, hey! Guess what? The department that handles certifications is closed for this week for absolutely no reason! This is the exact thing that happened last semester! Nobody told me what the heck to do, and when I started digging and finding names of people to talk to, it turns out that they're all on vacation during school when I need to be talking to them.

I have sooo many people telling me that school prepares you for the work force, not just by educating you, but by giving you a taste of how the world works. If this is what I have to look forward to, please... Kill me NOW. If work is going to be like this, I should just cut my losses and go offer my services to a local business who isn't going to find the skills I have (a professional network engineer living in Indiana?) and just find another job if they manage to hire someone with a real degree who actually wants to stay in this forsaken pit of despair. If work is like school, I'm going to be giving up and moving to another job every 5 months anyway and my resume full of quitting is quickly going to overshadow anything my degrees have to offer.

This is ridiculous.

So, I did some reading on benchmarks and comparisons between GeForce 9 and GeForce 8 cards. Basically, whoever I read that said GeForce 9 was weaker? Was wrong. A single GeForce 9800 GX2 clearly out-performs  a single GeForce 8800 GTX. In most cases. According to these benchmarks by Tomshardware, one major issue with the 9800 GX2, when you start pushing it to the absolute limits, is the amount of RAM... Or, rather, the lack thereof. Antialiasing takes a colossal amount of RAM, and while the GX2 advertises 1024MB of RAM, since the card has two graphics processors, each processor has a measly 512MB at its disposal. I still remember when someone who will not be named (from the Myst community, surprise-surprise) was a major proponent of NOT paying extra for video RAM on the card and I was completely opposed. Especially now, I think it's quite clear who was right (again). Me! However! Putting the 9800 GX2 into SLI seems to help dramatically with the frame rate and RAM, as you can see in these benchmarks from Rage3D.

I like how Rage3D decided to test Oblivion at an Oblivion Gate... With all the heat waves and refraction and general distortion of the environment when you're up close to one, it is easily the single hardest thing to render in the game. But, so far, it looks like the 9800 GTX is on par with the 8800 GTX, both in single and SLI modes. However, this is running at a resolution significantly lower than where it pushed the RAM. But, seeing as how I don't want a uber giant monitor, I'm only going to run 1920x1200 anyway. (Possibly 1920x1080, just for HD compatibility, hmm.) Either way, though, I'm not sure which one I want... They're both priced the exact same, so I guess it really doesn't matter, except for amounts of RAM, but the 9800 is reported to have better shader technology, and thus runs games like Bioshock and Crysis a little better.

I would totally be willing to pay the extra money for two 9800 GX2s that would run in quad SLI (each card has two processors, put into SLI makes four cards show up), but, as far as I know, that would require a motherboard upgrade that would require DDR3 RAM, which is really expensive. But... If I can find nVidia certified 1066MHz DDR3 RAM? I could still use the slower quad-core Q6600 processor and not bust my wallet (more than I am already) on ultra bleeding edge tech. Hmm... This will take more research.

Remember that thread from SGW I posted a couple days ago? The one where they were talking about roleplaying and how they were overlooking certain points that would anchor arguments and provide proper resolution? Well, either my post mentioning that we were derailing the topic curbed the tide of approaching flames, or it just died out on its own, but it managed to stop. However, last night, someone came along and made it absolutely clear that he was "offended" by the notion that channels should remain In Character, and how roleplayers who support this are no better than "leet speakers". They were offended.

This is a word that is getting MASSIVELY overused. People feign offense if you tell them that you don't like their favorite meals. People feign offense if you tell them that their favorite is boring. People feign offense for all sorts of things, and it's getting stupid. Being offended is like... a buzz-action. It's the in-thing to do these days, just like "tolerance" and "discrimination" are two politically correct buzzwords of the day. The words have been programmed into us to gain a reaction, and people use them to get the reactions they want. It gets (or should get) pretty obvious that these words are getting overused when we're "discriminating" against Muslims for merely pointing out that terrorists generally turn out to be Muslims. We're supposed to "tolerate" their lifestyle and not "offend" them... Tolerate their desire to kill us all? I think not!

But back to the point... If you are honestly offended by the opinion someone has about chat channels in a game that hasn't even been release yet, you have some serious issues with reality. I can easily understand if you disagree with someone's opinion on this matter, because everyone seems to have their own opinion of what works and what doesn't, but to be outright "offended"? Isn't that a little bit of an overreaction? You are offended that someone says we shouldn't be able to speak Out of Character on a public chat channel? Really? Offended?

Kind of like that website that's managed to get sued for making it mandatory to ask your sexual orientation. Of course, it gets sued because someone got "offended" that it asked if they were gay or not. What in all heck? You guys are parading yourselves at every little chance you get, but as soon as someone asks, then you're offended and being discriminated against? Tell me how that makes any sense? As a straight guy, I really don't want to room with someone who's going to be checking out my butt while I'm doing school and sleeping in the same room as he is. Fine, I'm discriminating against you and your beliefs (however insane) for saying that. You're discriminating against me and my beliefs for not allowing me to choose if I want to share a room with someone who is going to treat me as a potential "partner". You would even think that asking orientation would be a good thing for you confused people. You could find similarly minded people who you could room up with and be perfectly... I don't know if I'd call it happy. You'd be perfectly... Doing whatever it is you do. Let's not dwell. But, no... Someone got "offended" that someone or something DARE ask if they're gay or straight and now they've gone out and sued someone and they can't ask anymore.

This is like... Getting offended that a site asks you what your name is. Well, what if I don't want to share my name? You're discriminating against me because you make my name mandatory! It also asks my gender... What if I'm not happy being a man, but I can't afford a gender change, so every time I sign my papers with "Male" I get depressed and upset? That's offensive and discriminating. You shouldn't make me choose what gender I am! Heck, you assume I'm a human! That's discriminating against all intelligent canines like myself. I'm shocked and offended that you don't let us pick what species we are. You ask what country I was born in? You make me pick a country, but what if I don't want to? That's discriminating and I find that offensive! I know! Let's make it so nothing is mandatory to be asked for this site about finding roommates, so all anyone has to do to sign up is create a nickname, but not fill anything out! Yeah! That would smooth the fur on all these people you've discriminated against... AND DEFEAT THE ENTIRE PURPOSE OF THE SITE LETTING PEOPLE LOOK FOR A ROOM MATE! Come on, people. This is a site that lets somebody browse a site THAT IS OPTIONAL TO JOIN to look for a compatible roommate that you'll get along with! It's a good thing getting smashed to bits because the outspoken minority is getting all in a tizzy. I don't even know why they're getting in a tizzy... Can someone please share the knowledge? Anyone? Mister Anonymous?

People seriously need to get a grip on reality.