Weekend Update

Ah, the beautiful time period we get every week, the great weekend. How short thy is. Two days is just not enough time for us to really have off. Basically, the old work way is 5 8-hour work days, Monday through Friday. Well, a lot of people I’ve met do the 4-on 3-off work week. Instead, they’ll do 4 10-hour workdays. Yes, each day is a bit longer, but then you get a whole extra day added to your weekend. I’m for it, wish I’m able to find a job like that in the future. Anyway, a few stories of note to me:

Oh yeah, I was just able to watch a video that made me just tingle a bit. Warning, everyone, extremely geeky moment to come. So, AMD pulled together a team and attempted to overclock Phenom II chip. Their goal was to get a high overclock using liquid nitrogen and liquid helium. They were to cool the chip with liquid nitrogen and then blast it with liquid helium to maintain a lower temp. After a few runs, they were able to hit 6.5GHZ. Awesome. But their 3DMark score was just shy of 45,000. So, a coldboot was done and reoverclock. This time they overclocked to 6.3GHZ and their 3DMark score was 45,474. Insane!!! I’ve always been a secret AMD supporter, so I’m impressed and proud of them. C’mon, Intel, show them what you got!!!

The economy is taking a hit as we all know and it’s hit Microsoft lately as they announced that they’ll be cutting 5,000 jobs. Holy. That’s a lot of jobs!!! Now, here’s one of the first results from the layoffs, the entire team that worked on Flight Simulator has been let go. If you’re old enough to remember, it’s a game that’s dear to our hearts. I remember as a kid hoping for a computer setup that could play Flight Simulator and have the joystick and toggle switches. Ahh, the times have changed.

A little personal bit, I attended a birthday dinner for a friend of mine Saturday night. It was fun because I got to hang out with friends from Mervyn’s. None of us had seen each other since Mervyn’s closed down. We got to talk about old times, which if you know me, I love talking about old times. I also got to meet some of his other friends who are all awesome people and I want to steal them from him, haha. I also hung out with Arthur a bit when he came back this weekend.

It’s Chinese New Years!! Also known as Lunar New Years, it’s probably the single largest celebration in Asian culture aside from the Moon Festival (Mid-Summer Festival). Red envelopes and loud fire crackers galore, it’s one of my favorite times of the year. It brings families together and everyone wishing for a great new year. I love it, being able to celebrate New Years, twice.

Oh, quick randomness. I was able to escape jury duty last week. Yes!! I know, it’s our civil duty as citizens. But it totally sucks when things just drag on or it’s at a bad time. My jury duty was scheduled the day before my semester started. Ugh. Luckily, my group was not selected to appear.

I posted this from the awesome WordPress app for the iPhone. I’m looking for a version for Blackberry or Arthur.

Add to the blood watch of losing jobs, CNNMoney has a running tally of lost jobs for 2009 so far. We’re at 201,120 jobs that were cut, with 71,400 announced today alone. How depressing.