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While traveling around Portland, Oregon and the beautiful northwest, I figured it might be a good time to do a recap of my recent trip to Montreal and the Canadian F1 Grand Prix (GP) before I forget it all. Getting from Austin to Montreal proved to be quite a challenge and it went something like this: Austin to Memphis, Memphis to Detroit, and finally Detroit to Ottawa via plane. This was then followed by a 200km drive from Ottawa to Montreal, all in the course of a single day. After all the flying, the drive was oddly enjoyable and relaxing and felt a little like driving through the great Midwest plains except for the scenery being significantly greener. Finding my hotel, Le 1 René-Lévesque, in Montreal was also not a problem at all, and given the rather affordable room rate for an F1 weekend the hotel proved to be quite a nice surprise. To be frank the hotel was nothing fancy or luxurious, but it was clean, very modern, had friendly staff, and it had an excellent location right between Montreal’s China Town, the entertainment district, the university and the historic district. One final note on the hotel, since it is located in close proximity to all these things, the traffic outside can get a bit crazy especially on weekend nights, so either opt for a room up high or bring some noise cancelling earphones with you – you have been warned.

Getting from the Hotel to the F1 GP at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve was also a breeze using the Metro and only took about 20 minutes or so. You can purchase a 3 day pass for just a few bucks and then ride around all you want. Even though the Metro does get quite crowded especially on race day, the crowd was always moving and the wait was never very long. I spent most of the days at the F1 track which is located on the Île Notre-Dame, an island right across from Montreal’s historic district in the Saint Lawrence River. This island was also the location for the 1967 World Expo and several very cool structures still remain as part of the park and are definitely a sight to be seen.

As the title states, the pictures from my WMC trip earlier this year are finally posted. I’ll quit apologizing for being late, for I seem to be perpetually late, and constant apologies have to become annoying after a while, no? Anyhow, for this first time in what seems like ages I actually commented each and every one of the pictures. Unlike most of my trips, the number of pictures I took on this trip was actually manageable, which it likely what brought on this sudden commenting motivation. Speaking of trips, last weekend I was up in Montreal for the Canadian F1 Grand Prix. The trip was fantastic and McLaren’s dominant performance topped of what was a fantastic weekend. Suffice it to say that Montreal is a very vibrant and enjoyable place, at least during the summer time. I’ve been up there once before during the winter, and all I got to say about that is brrrrrrr. I’ll write up a detailed recap of the trip next, so look for that over the next few weeks. I also took a crazy amount of pictures while up there, especially at the race track, so look for them in the near future as well. In the mean time, login as always and enjoy the Miami pics.

My main home system has always been fast, especially ever since I dropped in an Intel quad-core extreme processors. The only problem that I’ve had is that now and then it was just a bit unstable. Not too often per se, but always at precisely the most inopportune of times. For the longest time I believed my memory to be the culprit.  I tried slowing down the timings and adjusting a few other parameters, but to no avail. Well, eventually I did some more research and found out that the voltage regulators on my motherboard were not up to par. Sure, the motherboard stated that it supported quad-core processors when I bought it way back when, but as it turns out, ASUS only meant non-demanding quad-core processors, for which the extreme series obviously does not qualify. There was really no point in upgrading anything else on my system at this time, so I simply picked up a new motherboard to fix the issue, namely the Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P. After having completed the upgrade, I have to say I’m extremely happy with my new motherboard: The system is stable, runs significantly cooler than before, there is a lot less noise on the audio channels, and I was able to push the chip and memory frequencies significantly more without even trying. Completing the upgrade however proved to be quite an adventure.