Essentially, the SSD made me the slowest component in my computer’s operations. No longer do I have to wait minutes for the computer to boot up; gone is the application start-up time; say goodbye to thumb twiddling while waiting for the loading screens.

While there are still many factors affecting a system’s performance, a SSD upgrade is probably by far the most rewarding upgrade one can do to a computer, and the users can feel it too. Sure, it would not suddenly make an old machine calculate floating points faster, nor would it allow you to pay Crysis on a 10 years old Intel graphics laptop, but instead, you get what you always expected from a computer: you click for a program to start, and it opens in seconds instead of minutes.

Was it pricey? Yes. Was it worth it? Definitely.

How do you change engine oil? Drain old oil, dump new oil. How do you change transmission fluid? The simple way, is just like engine oil. The same goes to many other fluids that run in your car, like the coolant and power steering fluid, and that, my friend, pretty much handle a majority of the maintenance that’s done on one’s car over the course of the car’s life.

And the benefit of doing it all by yourself? Not only you save money, you also learn more about your vehicle along the ride. Why rely on someone else to do the work when you know you can do it just as good, if not better?

Not being an advertiser for Defcon, but my past experience of Defcon was so much fun that I wish to come back again and again, year after year, to learn about the latest trend in technology and security, while visiting one of the most fun-filled city in America.

I highly recommend this convention.

Did I mention I also want to collect WarHammer & the like mini figurines? Just imagine the amount of money & time I’ll have to invest into this hobby.

It’s endless.

I also want to collect PVC figures…Japanese knows collectors too well.

But flossing is more than just running through threads in between your teeth. Correctly doing it is more important than doing it frequently, so it lead us to some more knowledge about proper flossing. Just like what my Kendo sensei says: don’t train hard, train smart. The same philosophy applies to pretty much anything, but in the instance of flossing, “don’t floss hard, floss smart”.

And being an advocate for the use of vertical space (since I have always lived in a small space that lacks storage space…time to get rid of things!), a vertical planter is just something that is both charming in design and practical for small plants.

Now I just need the capital, time, and space.

But, when taking breaks, I have been trying to get Gears of War to work on my network. Noting that there is a WDS point on the network, it might cause some problem. And it did.

Basically the two PC on hardware to router #1 can connect just fine, but if the connection is between a hardwired PC and a WDS-router-connected PC, the “connection to the host” will be lost. Why? I don’t know. I tried to figure out the problem by looking at wireshark caps, but both ends see the packets just fine. Yes, client PC can see the hosting PC’s game just fine, but it won’t connect.

Weird, isn’t it?

So then I look into the routers’ configurations. Nothing.

Then I turn to Hamachi. This, I should’ve done a long time ago, but it turns out to require very little “hack” to finally get the two PCs work together in GOW. So I am extremely happy that, while I wanted to solve the real problem, I decided that it’s not worth a headache over, and Hamachi works just fine for my cause.

Go, Hamachi!

But it all turned out well.

While there are some quirks I had to work through, it is nevertheless a valuable learning experience. Some problems were encountered, such as security measures and router slow-down due to torrenting, but in the end these problems were all solved, and now I am able to get Internet access through my desktop machine, which does not have a wireless card, but is hardwired to the router, and have it wirelessly communicate with another one to provide the service.

It’s fun. If one has the need or simply wants to cut the wires, WDS sure seems pretty handy.