Archived News starting from 01-01-2005 and earlier
BlogA visit from my
floridian friends created a change in my new years plans. Originally slated to occur at the
haus o' Downey, the last minute change turned out
better than expected. We drank, we danced, we played foozball/air hockey and best of all, we violated the light-up deer in my front yard. I hope all who participated enjoyed themselves or used alcohol to forgot. The downside of the floridians leaving is the temperature is sure to drop down from the fabulous 63 degrees we had today. Anytime you come to my house make sure you demand that Missy wear her sailor mercury costume, for my benefit (and yours).
Among the things Santa delivered to me for Christmas was a quiet power supply and a
K7N2 Delta2 Motherboard. Both vital components for the new, faster
ELECTRON media machine. My old
Asus A7V board was maxed out and could only run at 4x AGP, 133Mhz FSB and limited my Athlon XP2500+ processor to 1666Mhz. Despite the choice Mhz number, it wasn't fast enough. Especially after seeing
Steve's MCE machine equipped with an XP2500+ at full speed. The
new configuration is definately much faster and quieter. I have a few more silencing upgrades left before I'm done. One neat thing about this motherboard is when it goes into suspend the whole computer shuts down. Fans, hard drive, everything. Once MCE signals a wakeup it all starts up again and records whatever show is scheduled. Definately a good feature when you're cheap on electricity like myself.
Today was a major snow day as you can see from the
webcam. Last year I had a 4x
2 pickup truck which was
a lot of fun. This year I have a new
4x4 pickup which is mathematically
twice as much fun. I was able to prove this hypothesis today when instead of doing small circles in the snow I was able to perform four wheel drifts in ever increasing larger circles. Unfortunately my fun was short-lived as the parking lot began to fill up, but I can now confidently recommend 4x4 vehicles to anyone who wants to drive like a maniac in the snow. As is tradition,
Stavos and I will be out making videos again at some point this year.
After my server alert network called and left me messages I realized this server was down, and had been down for over an hour. I left work and came home for lunch to find the cable modem flashing and laughing at me (integrated taunting voice chip). After contacting
Road Runner I learned the outage was area wide with no estimated down time. With more than 45 minutes left in my lunch, I decided to try
using my phone as a modem for a short while to see if it would work. Surprisingly Verizon doesn't block any incoming port request and between 11:45 and 12:15 the server again had connectivity. Once I realized I only have 200 peak hour minutes the excitement faded and connectivity was again dropped.
Initial Outage: 10:00am - 11:15am
Second Outage: 12:15am - 3:56pm
Also: Happy Birthday Missy!
After
many problems with my
attempt to go wireless, I finally admitted defeat tonight. While the 11Mbps and 54Mbps speed networks may be stable enough to use, they just aren't fast enough. The 108Mbps version I tried is definately not stable enough for me, and the advertised speed only occurs when you are right next to the router. I typically saw 54-75Mbps max, for unsustained periods. The good news is how easy it actually was to run cable through my house. I took the cheaters route and ran it through the
return vents in my house. I
had some help patching the panels which shortened the time to less than an hour. I also
found some interesting things in my return vent system. Now I'm back to good old 10/100 Ethernet and it's giving me my old familiar feeling of
stability and speed.
Watch
this flash video and you'll be hooked too.
The recent
death of my
NEUTRON machine prompted the purchase of a new case and motherboard. Today I got the new system installed and running great. No problem whatsoever until I installed my
Netgear WG311T Adapter EXACTLY as prescribed in the
driver download section. Just like my old system, any network activity above 2Mbps caused a blue screen and system reboot. Fortunately this new system had a slightly more robust BIOS and didn't die completely. Still unsure, I searched google and found
this post which confirmed the problem. Apparently Netgear denies the problem exists despite over 50 people having the same issue in this post alone. Even though there is no problem with the card they decided to change to an entirely new hardware design for the adapter that does not cause the blue screens. I plan to head to Best Buy today and try my luck at getting this new version. In case you find yourself with this problem, look for the number on the card near the antenna:
- FAULTY Netgear WG311T Adapter: U12H009.0 Rev4
- REVISED Netgear WG311T Adapter: U12H019.1 Rev1
An obvious identifier is the large metal box on the faulty adapter. The revised one has the chip flush with the circuit board. I can confirm the revised one has no issues because it's currently in my
ELECTRON media machine which runs constantly with moderate network traffic and has yet to blue screen. Oh yeah, happy birthday to me.
Driving home from work today I was suddenly surrounded by a brilliant white light with a matching "wooomf" noise from my MP3 player. It was brighter than any lightning I had ever seen, and I was certain armageddon had begun. Before I could figure out what had caused it the same thing happened again. This time I saw sparks fly near an overpass I was about to drive under and suddenly it all made sense. A high power transformer had blown either from the wind or an accident (paramedic lights surrounded it). I was still pumped with adrenaline and realized if I had a pacemaker I would probably be dead. The high level EMP resulting from the explosion would have most likely killed it. It was more than enough to interfere with my highly shielded automotive MP3 player. It's amazing how much EMP we encounter on a daily basis. Maybe the climbing cancer rates are related? I'll leave that rant for later. If you need me I'll be in my grounded metal mesh cage.
The
BlackNova Traders game has been reset. I'll be following a 6 month reset schedule from now on, so this game will last till June, 2005. The game was reset as requested by the
overwhelming response to the survey. Settings also adjusted accordingly.
My old house (
Beta) recently suffered a leaky valve at the incoming line past the meter. A call around to some local plumbers revealed a charge of $200 to repair it. Fortunately I was involved in deep conversation with
Brian who had experience working with other peoples pipes. He offered to fix the problem for the low price of zero, which was better than the professional plumbers guild had to offer. Having never done plumbing before, I was fascinated with his expert handling of the pipes, the pipe fittings, and the blow torch that heated up the pipe connections before he smeared a load of solder all over them. Exhausted, we left the job in anticipation of the water being turned back on. Unfortunately, the first attempt proved leaky, but Dr. Plumber never leaves a job undone and was quickly back smearing another load of solder all over my leaky pipes. This time there were no leaks and my pipes were stronger than ever. Dr. Plumber: you can blow torch a load of solder on my pipes anytime.
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