It was something of a relief that we finally launched GeForce FX this week. I say “relief” because for the weeks following the the chip samples, up until Comdex launch on Monday, NV30 (as we engineers prefer to call it) was basically all that many of us worked on, night and day, almost every waking hour. While it’s certainly cool to be working on the latest-greatest chip months before most people will even see it, it’s good to be working on a variety of different tasks and projects again. And I’m feeling the pressure ease off a bit now that I no longer have to send out daily status reports to (amongst others) the CEO.

On a totally unrelated note, I bought a nice, fancy Aurora fountain pen last weekend, in preparation for another round of holiday card-writing. Since then I’ve been practicing my cursive handwriting, which I’ve rarely used since grade school. What’s mainly wrong with my cursive hand is that it’s unevolved; i.e. it doesn’t display much personality, since its evolution has stagnated with disuse. Otherwise it looks fine (if I dare say so myself)—but very much the same as it did some fifteen years ago. Anyway, whenever I have a few spare minutes (and usually, minutes are all that I have) I’ll pick up a decent sheet of paper and write—usually random words and passages, typically song lyrics…

I’ve also been spending some time trying to revive my main workstation computer. So far I’ve figured out that the problem does not lie in the hard disk, nor the SCSI controller, nor any one of a number of peripherals. If it turns out to be the mainboard or one of the CPUs, I’ll probably build a new computer, re-using what parts I can… This business is proving to be something of a lengthy ordeal, though, leading me a new philosophy for building future computers: simpler is better. Fewer parts, less bleeding-edge technology, and simpler configuration should translate to fewer things that can go wrong. I do still enjoy building and working with my own computers but I think I’ve now seen how it can become as much of a chore as anything else.

My office aquarium’s ghost shrimp population is now down to two, but there have been no new casualties in the past couple weeks so I’m hoping that means that either the two survivors have somehow adapted to whatever threat that killed the others, or that population has dropped down to a sustainable level (depending on what theory you believe with regards to what was killing them in the first place). Actually, “two” is not an accurate count because it appears that there are a number of tiny baby shrimp hiding and swimming around in the java moss. I’m not sure how long they’ve been there but I first noticed them today, when I saw a tiny speck move around in a manner contrary to any possible water currents. I’m not sure how they will grow to adulthood, however, as any that venture outside the java moss will almost certainly be gobbled up by my ever-hungry fish. In that matter I will elect to let nature take its course—not that I have much of a choice since the baby ghost shrimp are too impossibly tiny to see, much less catch.