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Josh Pollard of glmotorsports.net has set the official time and location for the next Toledo Nerd Dinner.  It will be on Thursday, April 7th at 6:00PM at Easystreet Café in downtown Toledo.

The address is 822 Washington Street, Toledo, Ohio.

Thanks to Josh Baltzell of A Short Domain Name for sharing the link to google maps to the place.  Hey! When did google maps start working with Opera?

As Josh, Pollad that is, pointed out the parking lot for Easystreet is actually on Michigan which is a one way street.  If you’re coming from I75 or the Trail you have to drive past Washington Street and take a side road to get onto Michigan.

For me I come from northbound I75 and get off the Erie Street exit.  Turn left onto Erie (north) and go two blocks to Monroe.  You’ll cross Washington Street, that’s ok!  Turn left (west) onto Monroe and go two blocks again till you reach Michigan.  Turn left again (south) and you’re on Michigan.  Stay in the far left lane and you’ll see two parking lots near Easystreet.  Either one works although try to get into the second lot.  Take the smoking entrance in and look for the big crowd of Nerds!

Anyhoo, it’ll be a fun time so stop on by!  Order some good food and don’t be afraid to talk.  The more people are willing to open up the more fun it is.  Don’t be shy!

Oh yeah one more thing, bring a few copies of your resume just in case.  Never hurts to be prepared!

I hope you all had a nice Easter.  Filled up on plenty of eggs and chocolate!

We had a little party at our place with the family.  Had some good food and just hung around talking.  I always like holidays like this becuase I get to spend time with both my family and the love of my life, my girlfriend.  I don’t know what it is but there’s something about it that just makes me very happy.

Well don’t eat all your candy today and get sick.  Don’t want to miss work or school becuase of that! HE HE HE!

Hope you all have a fun and safe St. Pattie’s Day!  I’ll be having a few Guinnesses tonight and watching something Irish on tv.  No going out tonight since I have to go to work tomorrow.

Well I’m sick as a dog with a nasty head cold but I’m all geeked up tonight.  I just ordered the first few parts of what will be the first of hopefully many computers that I get to build for my girlfriend.

It’s not going to be a barnstormer by any imagination but it should end up being much better than the hunk of junk doorstop she’s using now.  I’m not sure on the exact model she has but I believe it’s one of the original iMacs Apple released.  It’s been running like trash lately and so outdated it’s just causing her more grief than she should have to deal with.

Well I have 3 socket 370 Intel Celerons running at 700Mhz laying around so I figured why not use one of them.  I just went to Newegg.com and bought a motherboard and case.

The motherboard is a PC Chips M791G.  It uses the VIA CLE266 chipset and includes onboard video, sound and 10/100 network.  It only costs $40 so it’s a pretty good deal.

The case is a Linkworld ATX Mini-Tower Case (model 617-C.88-P4) with 250W power supply.  The reason I bought this case was because it’s very small.  The dimensions are only 15"x14"x5.25”.  Compared to my full tower case this thing is pint-size.  In fact it only has room for one floppy drive and a single cd-rom turned sideways!  Price is only $28.50.

Here’s the parts list:
[X] - Case (ordered)
[X] - Motherboard (ordered)
[ ] - Ram (might have some useable ram coming, if not pick up a stick from crucial.com)
[X] - Hard Drive (I have a 27.2Gigabyte Maxtor I can use)
[ ] - Floppy Drive (have to get)
[ ] - CD-Rom Drive (have to get)
[ ] - Modem (have to get)
[X] - Keyboard (I have an extra)
[X] - Mouse (I have an extra)
[ ] - Speakers (I have some really old computer speakers or I can buy a new set)
[ ] - Monitor (have to get)
[ ] - Windows XP (have to get)

It’ll be perfect for my girlfriend.  Small size, easy to use and the best tech support personnel around, ME!

Whoo boy I’m excited!

A little heads up for nerds, geeks and tech heads in the Toledo, Ohio and surrounding areas.

Josh Pollard has made a post on his blog suggesting it’s time we have another Nerd Dinner.  It’s been a looong time since the last one so I agree.  The first one was pretty good but the last one was a bit on the small side.  I’ve suggested a weekend dinner instead of middle of the week like the last ones were.

So, if you’re in the area and would like to meet up then please stop by Josh’s site and give your support

http://josh.glmotorsports.net/blog/archive/2005/03/14/571.aspx