On a happier note, I finally upgraded my graphics card to a brand spanking new MSI Ti4400-VTD! Although the video-in/video-out and DVI functions are completely useless to me for now, it's nice to know they're there once I get a new PC (fat chance) and a TV with Astro in my room (fatter chance).

Am pleased to be able to overclock it up to 300/620 speeds, with stock cooling! (granted, blowing a table fan straight at the CPU may help a little). That practically means I have a Ti4600 for all intents and purposes! So far have stress tested it for 48 hours straight with nary a crash (running various 3d benchmarks over and over again).

Unfortunately, my piss-slow P3-1Ghz is barely capable of keeping up with the raw power of my graphics card, so I still get jerky frame rates when playing No One Lives Forever 2. Rargh. Nonetheless, the first, iterative step has begun - on the long process to making my computer.. compleat (not a misspellng; I'm simply in MTG mood)

Back to work. Just returned from Disaster Recovery site. Managed to progress reasonably smoothly for a change; this month's Business Continuity Exercise involved the following scenario - we show up to work one day, and the building is no longer there..... Although, in all honesty, if some disaster large enough to take out the entire office complex in which I work occurs, business continuity is a fairly moot point. Was highly pissed off when one of the managers insisted that everyone show up to work at 8am, simulate gaping at the hollowed crater where the office building used to be, take attendance according to department, and THEN drive over to the disaster recovery site. Fortunately for me, my supervisor took the more rational view, gave me permission to drive straight to the DR site, and simply forged an attendance sheet for the two of us that depicted our shock and horror at picking through the charred bodies and twisted steel pylons where our place of work once stood.

(In the scenario stated above, my department only requires two people as an absolute minimum to handle all our critical functions in a crisis. That means 90% of us are expendable in any explosion.)

Also, was disappointed to notice that the DR site was not a hardened bunker under tonnes of reinforced concrete and natural bedrock, equipped with ominous banks of servers, nuclear-proof six-foot-thick titanium vault doors, banks of security card scanners, ancient lifts descending creakily into chthonian depths, and heavily armed guards. Simply another office with cubicles, but thankfully located quite near my house.

Work is killing many of my most cherished illusions.

It was also next to a golf club with a pretty good fusion restaurant, so was able to have a decent working lunch. Ah, the slow metastasis into yuppiedom proceeds apace.

Thankfully, this exercise went quite smoothly, despite a few hiccups, in contrast to the horror stories I heard about the last time such an exercise was held. This time, we actually *had* PCs to work on, and my supervisor had stocked out our on-site locker with paper cups and candy bars (to fortify us against the impending nuclear onslaught?). Paper cups were a godsend because the few non-bio-degradable cups there were either encrusted with layers of filth or rapidly filched by the horde of refugees streaming into the bunker at 9:20am (many of them were terribly late thanks to the "drive-to-work-stare-at-ruins-drive-to-backup-site" practice)..