My old computer was, well, old. I bought it just before I started college — 7 1/2 years ago. Of course, three years is a long time in computer technology, and my system was twice that old.

I’ll probably try to post some reviews of the particular components I purchased sometime in the not-too-distant future, but for now, I’ll just list what I had and what I upgraded to. My old computer was a Dell Dimension 8100 series. It had a Pentium 4 1.3 Ghz processor, 384 Mb of RDRAM, a 20 Gb hard drive, a Creative SoundBlaster Live! audio card, and a 16 Mb nVidia graphics card. It also had a DVD player and a separate CD burner — two fairly up-to-date items 7 1/2 years ago. The monitor was a 17″ Trinitron CRT, and I have a set of speakers from Altec Lansing. It was getting slow. Even the Internet was rough, since there is a lot of RAM-intensive content out there now.

My new computer has the following components:

• Intel i7 920 processor — 2.66 Ghz quad-core with QPI
• ECS X58B-A motherboard — includes two gigabit LAN ports, 8 USB 2.0 ports, 6 SATA II, 2 PCIe 2.0, two 1394 ports
• 6 Gb DDR3 RAM from GSkill
• EVGA nVidia 9800 GT graphics card
• 500 Gb Western Digital “green” hard drive
• LG Blu-ray, HD DVD, DVD+/-RW, CD-RW combo drive
• Cooler Master Centurion 5 case
• PC Power and Cooling Silencer 500w power supply
• Asus VH242H 24″ LCD widescreen monitor with HDMI, 1920 x 1080 resolution

I’ve kept the same speakers, at least for now. The motherboard’s onboard audio is very nice, but it takes advantage of some newer technology than my speakers are designed for (optical digital output), so the configuration is a little funny at the moment. It’s working well enough though.

Assembling the components wasn’t as hard as I thought it might be. I’d never done a whole computer before, so things like the processor made me a bit nervous. It seems to have worked out all right though. I suspect that if I did it every day, I’d be much faster, since I’d be able to anticipate potential problems (e.g. the graphics card is so big that you can’t fit the hard drive in around it, and the SATA cables are hard to get to). The instruction manuals were of varying usefulness. The case’s instructions were pointless. The motherboard manual was OK, but the processor’s was terrible. The graphics card was pretty good, but it’s also really easy to install.

I also have dual booted Windows XP Professional (32-bit) and Windows 7 Beta (64-bit). I will certainly plan to review Win 7 sometime fairly soon. For now, I don’t think it is handling the motherboard very well, but that may be because the MB manufacturer has a fairly lightweight BIOS that Win 7 doesn’t know how to use.

So far I’ve really emjoyed being able to multitask on the new machine. I’ve had it only a few days, but it is amazing how much faster everything runs and how well it allows me to multitask. I suppose that’s to be expected, but it made me think about how incredible the rate of change in technology really is. 75 years ago, a calculating machine with this many switches (then they would have been vacuum tubes) would have required a small warehouse to enclose. Now, I have a chip that will fit in the palm of my hand that holds over 780 million transistors.

Pictures of before and after. Please ignore the mess and forgive the poor image quality. It was kind of dark.

[Show as slideshow]

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

First, some background. The movie is based on a popular novel for girls, much like the well-known Princess Diaries. In this story, four teenage girls are preparing to spend their first ever summer apart from each other. Just before they separate, they find a pair of jeans that fits each of them perfectly, despite their obvious differences in size and shape. They agree to share the pants through the summer by mailing them to each other. Each then goes to her summer destination: one to Greece, one to South Carolina, one to Mexico, and one stays home in Maryland. The movie chronicles their experiences throughout the summer.

The script and the directing are generally pretty good. The story is not pedantic; we aren’t always told exactly what is going on, especially when it’s obvious. The solid acting performances help fill in some of the plot and much of the emotion. The photography is very nice. It’s not quite as if you could freeze any frame and print it, but many of the shots are well-composed and thoughtfully orchestrated without seeming “artsy.”

In a brief commentary on the DVD, three of the actresses decide that the movie is superior to many other girly movies because it is more realistic. Without spoiling the plot, I want to address that claim. It is true that the movie deals with more substantive issues than, say, the Princess Diaries. It is also more plausible, though plausibility is rarely a valid standard for a good story. But the actresses say that their movie is better because it doesn’t deal with trivialities like pimples and homework. And yet many teenage girls’ lives are largely consumed by similar trivialities, punctuated by more serious issues. This movie deals with those punctuation marks more than the mundane, which makes it in a sense less realistic. Good stories are not “realistic” in the trivial sense. They don’t trace the mundane.

It is interesting that the girls claim to have been friends for their entire lives, since their mothers took a birthing class together. But their parents never see each other throughout the rest of the film. Perhaps the book is different, but one wonders how four girls from such different backgrounds and having such different tastes could remain friends for so many years. Examining the set pieces in the movie provides some explanation. None of the girls lives in a shack—despite their attempt to seem like ordinary girls, one goes to Greece and the other to Mexico for the summer. Few girls would be able to afford that kind of opportunity.

The movie is supposed to present relevant issues realistically. The issues at stake are serious—divorce, suicide, terminal illness, and love are all directly addressed. But the results are fairly sentimental. It is a feel-good movie, for the most part. Ultimately the solution is unoriginal—be yourself, and enjoy your friends. And yet the friendship aspect gets the most attention, which mostly redeems the story from trite psychobabble. Decisions carry consequences, if relatively minor ones. Wrong actions fail to satisfy desires, and there is forgiveness for wrongdoing. The moral tone is soft and very modern, but not as far off-base as some stories in this genre.

My second thought was that this story wouldn’t make any sense if the characters were boys. Of course, some of the details would have to change, but are their any stories out there about four teenage boys and their friendship? I can’t think of any. I suspect that any such story would devolve into coarse language, rude humor, and over-sexed lust. Or else the “sexual orientation” of the boys would be called into question (though in the case of the girls in this movie, that would be impossible).

Why are there no stories about male friendship? Can boys not be close friends anymore without inviting questions about their motives or descending into crass humor? There two genres that have this kind of male friendship (that I can think of) are war movies and westerns¹ . The problem is that boys have no movies to model good friendship, and rarely look for it in other media. But even other forms of media could be suspect. One could look back at older literature, but unfortunately, even a good friendship there might invite some speculation. Consider even the biblical story of David and Jonathan. There is no indication of any kind of sexual relationship there – indeed, each of them was married to at least one woman – but some contemporary “academics” want to read some kind of illicit connection there.

So I wish that someone could make a movie portraying a close bond between teenage boys similar to the one in Sisterhood. Though the girls’ movie could be better, at least there is something there. If anyone knows of a comparable boys’ movie, I’d love to hear about it, but I suspect that there aren’t many, if any, recent choices.

1. Older westerns. Brokeback Mountain is a famous recent example that suggests even this genre might be up for grabs. back↩