A fond farewell...

[saphalline]

I'm leaving the forums.

This was a very difficult decision for me, but I just don't have the time anymore. Too many demands on me in life, and I don't see them abating within the next decade. I'm losing sleep, losing gaming time, and I still can't devote enough time to the forums! (I've already been interrupted several times trying to write this... :rolleyes:) I'm tired of being tired all the time, so I need to cut back in certain areas. Unfortunately, that means cutting back in some relatively critical areas (as far as I'm concerned) including the forums.

I've had a wonderful time and made a lot of new friends. But it's time to move on. I hope you'll all forgive my absence. If anyone absolutely needs to contact me, I have a new email addy:

saphalline (|at|) sheaiden (|dot|) com.

Fitting, n'est pas? ;) I can't guarantee I'll be able to reply to all emails, though. Thus the leaving. But I'll try (do contact me on your upcoming build, pop pop!)

Alas, parting is such sweet sorrow...

[George Hallam]

:( cya saph

shame to see such a good member leave

hope your other things go well :D

farewell :( :rolleyes:

[SufferWell1396]

Aww Saph...
You leaving for good is like the forum losing a limb...
I've rationed my time here into smaller amounts also.
I'll drop you an email every now and then, keep in touch.
Hope everything goes well :)

[Sylvander]

"Too many demands on me in life, and I don't see them abating within the next decade. I'm losing sleep, losing gaming time, and I still can't devote enough time to the forums! (I've already been interrupted several times trying to write this... ) I'm tired of being tired all the time"
I remember what that was like; not good.
When your at your best, everyone wants a piece of you.

"So any time you feel the pain, hey, Jude, refrain
Don't carry the world upon your shoulders...
Just let it out and let it in, hey, Jude, begin...
....the movement you need is on your shoulder" [Ahead]

Great loss, sad to see you go. :(

"Haste ye back, we love you dearly, call again you're welcome here. May your days be free from sorrow, and your friends be ever near.
May the paths o'er which you wander, be to you a joy each day. Haste ye back we love you dearly, haste ye back on friendship's way."

[pop pop]

Sorry to see ya go Saph. You'll be missed...a lot. Best of luck and you'll definitely hear from me when I'm back in the US and ready to start the new build...likely sometime in April.

As they say in Japanese...Mata nei (see ya later). Not Sayonara...that's a permanent good bye.

[Ajmukon]

No one will ever be able to fill your shoes...
for those are large shoes to fill...

you will be missed (esp. by me..).. if only for your knowledge and and insight into how the computer works.... (i learned a lot from you!- thanks for the many lessons!)

[123456]

Good bye Saph. You were always highly respected by me. I hope life takes you where you wanna go.

[TopChip7]

Damn! Not Good - Sad to see ya go m8. Thx 4 all ur help in 2006/7 - Learned a lot through you. Take care Saph + Good Luck.

"Happy Gaming" -*LOL

[sassie05]

Saphalline,

Gonna miss ya!

I wish you only the best.

May you indeed, fare well!

[PrntRhd]

You are welcome back for "visits" any time Saphalline.

[Whyzman]

You are welcome back for "visits" any time Saphalline.Indeed, please pop in for a visit now and then to update us on what kind of "mischief" you're up to! :p ;)

[Jiggy]

Go forth and let the pipelines guide you through your map, take care in life saphalline....

[Variable]

Adios, a bit of life advice: It isn't necessary to cut off a finger because you wear too many rings. Grant yourself the permission to say no. It will make you stronger and focus both your mind and efforts.

[Paul Komski]

It isn't necessary to cut off a finger because you wear too many rings.Very droll and on the mark! ;)

[Paleo Pete]

Hate to see you go but I understand it, drop in and say hi now and then. It's been really good having you with us. Thanks a million for all the time you've spent here helping out.

[bassman]

Wow! I hope I am not to late for my goodbye to be heard. Saph, you will definitely be missed. As you know I don't hang around as much as I used to, so I completely understand. I wish you the greatest success with all of your ventures. Stop in and say Hi once in a while.
Take care
Frank

[Stoney]

saph, I am really sorry to see you go. When I joined this site you took your time in helping me as I was trying to straighten out all the information and offerings of the then "new" socket 939 systems as I hadn't built a system in 6 years. I never forgot that; thanks.

[Ghost_Hacker]

Wow how did I miss this?!? *GH slaps himself*

Sorry to see you go Saphalline I really enjoyed your posts and I'm sure I'll refer back to them as I get ready to build another gaming box.

I really understand losing time for gaming :) and having to choose between too many things you love doing. I made the same decision a few years back. hours with forum or hours with Star Wars Galaxies..hmmm had to pick SWG (sorry guys) :p

I hope you do well during the coming years and drop back sometime.
We'll still be here.

[HomeSA]

saph, you will be leaving a big void on PCGuide. I have learned a lot from you, and you have helped me in the past. Life is full of joggling priorities. There is never an easy answer there.

Good luck

[jlreich]

I certainly understand the lack of time. I have been around a lot less in the last 6 months to a year than I used to be. Seems I no longer have time to get into any kind of lengthy thread where I really need to post a lot to help someone. Which means I haven't really helped out in the buying and upgrading forum, and other forums, very much anymore. I want to, but I usually don't because I don't want to leave the poster hanging for several days at a time. And I just don't have the time to do the research. So I just let it go. :(

I still come here most every day, but I have been logging in as invisible and lurk more than anything. After somehow managing to become the 10th top poster :confused: I will sometimes not post for several days at a time.

Saphalline, as others have said I have learned a great deal from you. Your knowledge and passion for hardware has rubbed off on me. When I first came here four years ago I had very little knowledge of computers and worked in the construction industry, now I work for a very large world wide IT corporation and love it. :D This is in no small part because of you. :)

If anyone wants to dive deep into hardware just look in Saph's profile and click on all posts and threads. Just be warned, you may get lost in the abyss of pipelines. :D

Good luck Saphalline. We will miss you.

[stefanus]

I have not been around for a while also.Sorry to see you have gone. As the say in my home country. Tot Siens! And Hamba Kahle!

[Flick]

It's a good thing I'm still here. ;)

[dafink]

I'm just reading this now as I haven't been around much in the last month or so....definitely understand where you're coming from.

I didn't know you nearly as well as any of the previous posters but you were always willing to help me and answer any of my repeated but put differently each way questions (I know I did!) I had.

Wish ya luck and don't be a stranger around here either :)

[saphalline]

First of all, no, I'm not "back" per se. I just happened to find some down time on a Saturday and thought I'd fill everyone in on what I'm doing...

It isn't necessary to cut off a finger because you wear too many rings. Grant yourself the permission to say no. It will make you stronger and focus both your mind and efforts.Hahahaa! :D That's exactly what I've done!

The only problem is that the forums is one of the things to which I had to say "NO". I just don't have the time to devote anymore. The most I get these days is a few minutes a week to lurk and see how you all are doing.


In any case, I've spent the last few months sort of cleaning up my obligations. Getting rid of the ones I don't need, and the ones that are not effective uses of my (scarce) time. Gaming is back now!! :D So is about 20% more sleep. :rolleyes: I tell ya... it's the little things in life... Hehe.

I also picked up another hobby and "refocused my career initiatives"! :p The new hobby is financing/investments, my big new year's resolution, which I'm just now getting time for so it's a bit slow right now (but I'm learning quickly!). The new career thing really is a refocus - delving into virtualization from a server management point of view. Quite impressive stuff, I must say! In this age of 8+ core server designs, any "overhead" of mature virtualization methods is wholly unfelt! If any of you are looking for a new direction in your IT careers, I would suggest fiddling around with this! Especially if you have a dual-core or better system. $90 on a new 500 GB SATA 300 HDD is all it really takes to virtualize in full glory! RHEL/CentOS and some Xen goodness, or VMWare Server on just about any platform you could want.

VMWare Server is by far the easiest - you can even install it as a standard program on your Windows system with a virtual machine that is little more than a file on your hard drive. Xen is killer in terms of efficiency, but it does have some rather stringent requirements - making it useful only for niche markets. But either way, this stuff is the future, mark my words...

I've already been involved in a project that greatly reduced the quantity of individual systems, allowing the IT department to brag about being "green". ;) Moreover, a modern VM is actually stable enough (and portable enough) to serve as a development platform and then move on to production deployment. In clustered topologies, virtualizing actually increases availability while simultaneously making backups easier and having no impact at all on security. Properly done, security can also increase, too! I know I sort of sound like a commercial or marketing campaign right now, but let me tell you: after spending the last 4-5 months "messing around" with this stuff, I'm insanely impressed! And it takes a lot to impress me! :eek:

Anyway, I'll stop talking about that now. If you want to hear more, just let me know. Speaking of which...

No one has email'ed me yet! Not that I have the time to answer everyone's questions about their next vid card upgrade, but I thought for certain that I would have received at least one email by now, if only from pop pop. Ah well, no one loves me! *cry* *sob*

I'll be around for a bit longer today, then it's off to my destiny once again!!

[George Hallam]

WoW nice to see you back for a while :D

If you gave up the PCguide does that mean you gave up gaming aswell?? :eek:

If so how can you do that, im addicted :p

[Ajmukon]

yeah_ come back often!
you are always welcome here!

[saphalline]

If you gave up the PCguide does that mean you gave up gaming aswell?? :eek:
Gaming is back now!!Geez, you need to learn to read even more than you need to learn to type! :p

No no, can't give up gaming. I game less than I used to, but "less" is still a relative term! :D And it's certainly more than what I was getting a few months ago, before I reorganized my life with a proverbial SpaceSaver! Sleep is good, too. I like having sleep...

[George Hallam]

Geez, you need to learn to read even more than you need to learn to type!

oops how did i miss that :rolleyes:

what games you playing now?

Sleep is good, too. I like having sleep...

i dont have much of that when on my PC. i love my PC more than sleep :p

[saphalline]

what games you playing now?World of Warcraft and Fallout Tactics. That's about it right now. I'm in training for StarCraft II and Fallout 3! :D Sadly, these are the only 2 games on the horizon that hold any potential for me. Since I'm not really into multiplayer shooters or action games, the current line-up of games is boring me. CoD4 looks like a ton of fun! But I don't have anyone to play with, and online matches have typically given me very poor enjoyment.

i dont have much of that when on my PC. i love my PC more than sleep :pWait 'till you get older! :p I can't do those all-night sessions anymore... It sucks!

[George Hallam]

CoD4 looks like a ton of fun!

Mate thats my game at the moment and it is a ton of fun online

But I don't have anyone to play with

play with me, get Xfire and get a copy of the game, pay or download (if you want to try it) it will be a blast.

The game i cant wait for is Battlefield 3 :D

[saphalline]

Shutting down for now... Send me an email if y'all wanna talk!

[pop pop]

Saph,

Been back in the US for about a month. Way too busy adjusting from Asian culture back to US along with too much work and setting the house back up. My "stuff", including computers, furniture, and clothes had not arrived from Japan. I took a plunge and went and bought an HP Pavilion Special Edition multimedia laptop to get the feel of Vista. It's Core 2 Duo, 3 gigs of RAM, 200+gig HDD, dedicated Nvidea 8400 video, LightScribe DVRW blah, blah, blah. Not bad for the price...about 1500USD.

Other than the fact that Vista BSODs once a week and UAC is a pain along with permissions mysteriously changing unilaterally, it's better than a sharp stick in the eye. The only third party firewall I've found is Comodo and it defaults to "Defense +", which is a royal pain...turned that off and it's better. Things that are on a timer...Kaspersky AV, Windows Defender, etc have issues because the laptop shuts down completely if left unattended so the stuff can't run on the timer. I got Kaspersky to recover and run if skipped, Defender loses it's mind and history. Amazing that MS stuff has issues with an MS OS.

I should be starting the build this summer. The 45nm cores look like they're priced well...the question is are they worth it? Is the 8800GT still best bang for the buck? I like Asus Mobos, but they've had some bad press lately. What's a good 45nm CPU and Mobo match? I have a 22" Viewsonic Widescreen now...not as good as I originally thought. Might have to go with a 22 - 24" Samsung.

More later via email

[Cavalier90]

I'm even later than others in wishing you well. I've been lurking unless I had a specific question, but did not spot the entry on this part of the forum.

Good luck and you will be missed.

[stefanus]

Welcome back, even for a while. ;)

[pop pop]

In the words of the Eagles, "You can check out any time you like, but you may never leave."