So we got in last night, and man what an amazing trip.  We visited San Luis Obispo, Avila, Santa Barbara, San Pedro, and Pismo Beach.  We walked around the campuses at Cal Poly SLO and UCSB, which was awesome.  I got to see the buildings my mom worked at while working towards her masters degree at UCSB.  Kat’s dad drove us up the coast from San Pedro and we spent some time at Venice Beach.  I’m extremely happy with the way the trip went, and I had a lot of fun.

Now that I’m back, I’m just trying to catch up in Formula Hybrid, and plan for the weekend.  Funny thing is, I got a call from my boss at the Jewish Film Festival, and he wants me to work while I’m at the cabin.  It’s too bad I can’t accept, I could use the money.  But I think we’re gonna try to work it out so I can at least set up and they can have some guy just press play on the machine.  It’s not like my job is very hard anyway.

I’m thinking about that computer, and I’m torn on whether or not to update the motherboard/CPU/memory right away to something half way decent and cheap, or if I should wait until I have the money for something much better.

If I upgrade now:

• AMD 770 Series mobo, Gigabyte, $80
• AMD Athlon II X2 2.8GHz, $58
• G.SKILL 2x1GB DDR3 1600, $65

For a grand total of about $230 shipped.  I can afford this now, and it would certainly be an upgrade, but I’d still be stuck with the HD 4350 that needs to be replaced soon, so I’d be looking at spending another $100 or so on a semi-decent graphics card.  This would really be just to hold me over until I can get a job and build an excellent computer.  That excellent computer might look something like this:

• AMD Phenom II X4 955 3.2GHz quad-core processor, $165
• MSI 790FX, $168
• Cooler Master Storm Scout, $90
• 1000W Antec 80+ power supply, $180
• OCZ Gold DDR3 1600 RAM, 3x 2GB, $150
• Sapphire Radeon 5770, 1GB (two way crossfire), $350
• 1TB Western Digital Caviar Black, $100

For a grand total of about $1320 shipped.  Not bad at all, especially considering my laptop (which is less than half as powerful as that machine) was $2200. Of course by the time I have that sort of money, bigger and better components will be out so it’ll all change around a little.  I’m hoping for end of summer… but maybe I should just spend the $300 on a new mobo, ram, cpu and video card.