Apparently everything is bigger in Texas. That includes food. Some of you already knew this. You lucky bastards that got to visit Casa Ole’ or Whataburger can certainly agree that Texans know food. Italian is no longer an exception. I had thought I’d be stuck with the crap-shoot that is Olive Garden forever, but no! Tonight we stopped at a little place called simply “The Italian Kitchen”. There was also a subtitle along the lines of “Mama Mia’s” so I’m not really sure what it goes by. In my book it shall simply be know as the single Italian place that doesn’t suck. I got, and I’m not exaggerating, three huge (full steak size) pieces of veal parmigiana. I ate one and the rest will be lunch and dinner for days to come. Best part is that it’s cheaper than the OG.

As for that dribble about audio things…

I’ve given up with Creative and Sound Blaster products all together. Period. The next card that goes in the next machine to come will probably be a Turtle Beach. And that’s only if I don’t get a mobo with some nice 5.1 Dolby built in. You might remember me mentioning having this rig hang or restart from time to time, usually when playing games. A few of you might even have witnessed the “clicking” issue where games will produce a horrible high pitched clicking until it eventually crashes. For years I couldn’t trace the problem to anything in particular. Now, out of a last desperate attempt to play more than 20 minutes at a stretch, I’ve finally yanked the Audigy card out of the computer and set up the nforce’s onboard audio. That was a few days ago. I haven’t crashed yet. Things are looking promising.

It took a little bit of work to get the onboard up and running though. A few driver packs and some hardware IRQ moving (to basically get rid of the prior existence of the Audigy) later, it’s all good. I’m not sure why windows won’t understand the name of the product, but if that’s it’s only hang up we’re probably doing good.

Lastly, before I go relax with Lauren and our latest Netflix delivery, have you guys seen the new Nvidia card. Holy cow. The GeForce 6800, according to both Tom’s and HardOCP which I trust explicitly, is going to absolutely smoke anything out there right now. Plain and simple. I don’t know what to think at this point. I’m pretty happy NVidia got their act together after the NV30 and NV35 crap. Apparently they’ve done good this time around. The $500 street price is kind of unpleasant but who knows. Maybe in a year or two when I’m ready to get one it’ll be cheaper.

g’night kids.