Snow Leopard

Posted Thu May 13, 2010 in

Snow LeopardOK, so things have been a little quiet here. Between travel, work, and my off-line (dead-tree) journal, I run out of words before I run out of places to put them. So bite me.

I started doing a lot of thinking about my computer layout, after looking at the Apple iPad a week or so ago. In fact, after we returned home, I decided it was time to retire the PowerMac Dual G5. It is just getting long in the tooth and is noticeably slow at certain things, like dealing with awful flash movies — and web-type stuff similar to that. It was fine for doing the light computational things I typically do. But, when dealing with images and other graphics, the MacBook Pro was better.

So, last weekend I backed up the internal drive of the PowerMac, made sure all of the files I want were extracted and housed securely on my MBP, checked everything one last time, and then I did a bare-metal install of Leopard. I downloaded the 10.5.8 combination updater and patched the OS before shutting down the system and pulling all the cables. The machine is now staged in the foyer until I can retrieve its box from storage. Then I’ll decide whether to send it to a friend or sell it on eBay.

We spent part of Saturday in Reno. One mission was to visit the Apple store there at the Sierra Summit Mall so I could buy a copy of Snow Leopard. I also picked up a copy of the most recent iLife package (think that iPhoto is again in my future). Saturday night I popped the shrink wrap on Snow Leopard and installed it on the MBP.

The install went simply and the bit of patching required was minimal. I now have a working copy of Snow Leopard installed on the MBP and am running it daily. There are a few new features that I’m learning, but mostly I bought a lot smaller footprint for the operating system and that’s a good thing.

The retirement of the desktop really simplified my computer life in that there’s one less machine to deal with. My workroom is much quieter as well, because the fan on the NVidia I installed was quite noisy. The fans occasionally run on the MBP, but that’s just normal for a notebook.

So, we’ll see how this goes. I’m expecting good things as I learn my way around the new OS.

Now I need to write about crashing my iPhone and that experience. Maybe that’s something I’ll do for tomorrow.

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Exploded Battery

Posted Sat Feb 13, 2010 in

Exploded BatteryThis morning I was helping Wife install the calibre software she needs to manage downloaded content for her nook. Calibre is highly recommended for working with electronic books (and other content).

After the software install, it was time to plug in her nook (ereader). When she picked up her MacBook Pro to plug in the USB cable, the battery fell out — yes, the thing just fell out of the case! Well, part of the battery fell out. It was just hanging there in two parts.

This is the first instance of a catastrophic battery failure I’ve seen. I don’t know if it popped or just swelled until the case split. But, it’s clear a new battery is required. I guess that means I need to make a trip to Reno this weekend to purchase a new battery.

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15GB of Email?

Posted Fri Jan 29, 2010 in

A few years ago I ruminated on 100MB of Email. I haven’t checked lately, but a couple of months ago I looked at the size of my office email database (sucky Outlook) and it was about 15GB (of email and attachments).

Over a period of about six years, my email storage rose a couple of orders of magnitude. That includes the attachments, which have grown substantially over the last few years.

I archive the email associated with each project when I close out the project. The email archive (and I’m using an Outlook PST for the moment) goes into the project directory, which is stowed in the “completed projects” directory on my external hard drive. A copy of that directory is made each week during my regularly-scheduled maintenance. When I add new projects to the completed-projects directory, I flag them (color the directory listing). Every three months or so I burn all the newly archived projects to a DVD and store it. Then I reset the colored directory listings to “normal.”

I think there is little reason to archive all this material. Once the project is finished, it is unlikely I’ll have to return to it for reference. But, sometimes I need something I did for a previous piece of work. Sometimes litigation happens and I need to recover the email archive. It’s worth the small effort to trap that material and keep it for later reference.

I’m still ruminating on the amount of email I have archived. I have a lot of personal email as well. I’m seriously considering trashing the lot of it and only keeping those things that are required for the business portion of my life. The other material is transient in nature and I think I’ll never go back to re-read a bunch of old emails. That’s particularly true given the nature of some of the “stuff” in them.

It’s a thought…

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Apple iPad

Posted Thu Jan 28, 2010 in

If Steve Jobs is good at anything, it’s creating a great deal of buzz about something that Apple is doing. So enters the new Apple iPad.

I haven’t had the chance to handle one, yet. I will have sometime soon, I’m sure. I will go to the Apple store in Reno and handle the iPad.

However, I don’t think that will make me want one. And, as I always do, I’ll explain what I’m thinking.

The iPad looks like a steriod-infused iPhone or iPod Touch. It’s bigger. I’m sure it’s faster and more responsive. But it doesn’t have very much storage — the largest model advertised on Apple’s site is 64GB. That’s the same amount of storage as their largest iPod Touch.

This is not the device I’m looking for. What I want Apple to build (and I will buy) is a tablet-Mac with equivalent power to my MacBook Pro, a reasonably-sized screen (say about 12–13 inches), touch or stylus (or both) operation, and the capability of adding external devices, to include keyboard and mouse, external drives, and such.

The tablet-Mac would not have to do video processing; desktop machines are for that. But I would like to be able to download images from my camera and process them.

I want to be able to do 90 percent of my work on my tablet-Mac (to be). That would include using the machine as a note-taking device in meetings (with handwriting recognition that works).

We didn’t get that. My response to the introduction of the iPad is somewhere between mild interest and “yawn.” Sorry, Apple, you failed to generate an extreme degree of want in me. Try again.

My opinion might change when I handle one. But, I think not. I read the features list and what I’m really looking for is not there.

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He's Dead, Jim

Posted Wed Jan 27, 2010 in

I’ve been quiet the last couple of days. Computer problems will do that for you.

It started in December. I have an old linux server that was sitting under my desk. I play a little World of Warcraft because I’ve fallen in with a group of folks that I like to hang out with. My PowerMac dual-G5 doesn’t quite have enough power to do the game justice. So, I decided to make the linux server into a Winder$ box and use that for some light modeling work, logging into the company network, and playing a few games.

I bought a PNY version of the nVidia 9800 GTX+ display adapter. That unit has a decent reputation and is at a good price point. I don’t need bleeding-edge performance for what I want to do.

I bought a copy of Winder$ 7 Home Premium, then found I had to buy the Ultimate upgrade to get dual-processor support. I hate giving that much money to M$, but that’s just part of the price. I haven’t bought a copy of Winder$ in years, so I guess it’s just the PC-tax.

Initially I installed the 32-bit version. I had everything up and running in a few hours. But, 2GB isn’t quite enough for current operating systems and I was short on drive space. So, the thoughts of upgrades began.

In thinking through the process, I decided I could probably upgrade the CPUs to Opteron 290s, find some additional RAM (I thought something in the range of 4GB–8GB would be about right), and then pick up a 250GB drive. That would provide enough power, memory, and storage to do the things I want to do. It wouldn’t be a really powerful system, but it would be more than I needed to do the things I want to do. I like having a little headroom.

A pair of Opteron 290s can be purchased on eBay for about $150 if you watch and are patient. I snagged a pair of them. The drive sells for about $60 at Best Buy. The memory, though, that was more challenging.

The Tyan motherboard I have is a server board. The system was designed to use ECC-registered RAM. (Most servers use ECC-registered RAM.) I bought 4×2GB sticks of PNY RAM because the Tyan manual indicates the system supports 2GB sticks, but at the time the manual was issued they were untested. (There weren’t any 2GB sticks when I bought the system. Yep, it was that long ago.)

Everything arrived and I was prepared to upgrade. I installed the CPUs, RAM, and drive and reinstalled Winder$. Well, I tried to reinstall Winder$. I could not get a successful install.

So the troubleshooting process began. It was a classic too-many-changes case. What should have been straightforward was not. Eventually I worked out that the RAM was the issue. When I replaced the new sticks with the original 512MB sticks, the install ran fine and the system was stable. If I installed the 2GB sticks, the system would BSOD.

“OK,” I thought. “I’ll check the Tyan website for compatibility.” The PNY RAM was not listed, but some Kingston RAM was (in 1GB sticks). So, I found a set of them from a server upgrade on eBay and bought them. I had them in a few days. So, Monday night I installed them. When I reconnected all the cables and flipped the main power switch (to energize the PSU), the PSU failed catastrophically (as in blue-flash fail).

After thinking about it for a few minutes, I researched what is required from the PSU and drove to Best Buy to pick up a replacement. I installed that, but the system would not power up. Crap. I was reminded of so many episodes of the original Star Trek when McCoy looks at Kirk and says, with the most serious of expressions, “He’s dead, Jim.”

I set it aside and waited until I returned home from work Tuesday evening. Then I went through another set of troubleshooting steps. The new PSU was operational, but the system would not power up when connected. I tested the power switch in the case and it was good.

So, I have a dead motherboard. I’m hoping that the CPUs, RAM, and display adapter are all good. But, I won’t know until I find a replacement motherboard. I don’t really want a big upgrade because I don’t want to spend a lot of money on this computer. If I was going to spend very much, I would take the funds, add to them, and purchase a Mac Pro and have just one desktop computer at home.

I contacted a long-time business associate who originally assembled the machine. He’s still in business. We’ll see if Tyan will replace the motherboard. If not, then I’ll decide what to do next. I might just purchase a replacement and test my components. If they test good and the resulting system is stable, I’m good to go. If not, then I have another decision to make.

Sometimes, I hate computers.

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Baby Computer Steps

Posted Thu Jan 21, 2010 in

Tuesday night the Winder$ box popped a BSOD as I was sitting in WoW chatting with a couple of my guildmates. I decided to shut down the machine and pull the new RAM from the bus. It only took about five minutes.

While at the task, I pulled one of the original sticks from the bus and wrote down the manufacturer and model number. I know those 512MB sticks work in the machine. As a worst-case scenario, I could purchase four additional sticks of 512MB (of the same model) and install them. That would provide 4GB of RAM.

The 4GB of RAM is not a lot anymore, depending on the application. Right now the machine splits its time as a modeling machine and a playing machine. But, if things were to change very much, I could certainly press it into service as a workstation and it could run GIS as well as other modeling software.

I’d like to keep my options open. If I could find four 1GB sticks that work and are stable, then I would have 6GB in the system — plenty for now, with the option of replacing the 512MB sticks with 1GB sticks at a later date. This would open up the system for a total of 8GB, which seems adequate to me.

For now I’m just watching the system burn-in. It needs time to prove it is reliable. When I get to that point, then I’ll think about next options.

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Digital Readers

Posted Thu Dec 31, 2009 in

Sony Reader TouchI cannot remember how many times over the last few months I wrote something about a digital book. In my search of digital book Nirvana, I think I read just about everything that was available — many reviews, opinions, hands-on descriptions — I read it all.

Ultimately, however, it is getting a device in my hands, manipulating it, and using it that is how I learn. At the beginning of the month, the local Best Buy had a shelf full of Sony Readers. They end-cap had both the Pocket Edition and the Touch. They offered a bonus of sorts — a discount on a case and an A/C charger (about a $30 discount, which is nothing to sneeze at). But, I was unconvinced that the time was right and passed.

They frickin’ sold out of Readers over the next two weeks. I read that Amazon sold a buttload of Kindles and content over the last few weeks. There is definitely something going on here.

I went to Best Buy a few days ago to check out the computer games (I guess I was a little bored) and look at a set of flight controllers. As I walked past the end-cap where the Readers had been displayed, a lonely open-box Reader Touch unit sat on the shelf with a $30 discount. I was tempted, but restrained myself.

A few days later I was at the local Best Buy to purchase a new mouse (I wore out my Logitech G5 gaming mouse — go figure) and decided to purchase a lighter headset as well. I like the Clear Chat headset for Skype, but it’s too heavy for gaming use. Moreover, the G5 gaming mouse is discontinued and had none (except the display unit) on the shelf. So, I picked up the G9x gaming mouse and a light headset. The lonely Reader Touch was still on the shelf. I was tempted, but resisted.

I left the store with my purchase and drove to Borders to retrieve Wife, who was shopping there. Yes, we have a weakness of books. I found Wife chatting with Daughter on the phone, made a few snide remarks, and wandered off. Borders has a Reader display and I puttered with the display units. I really like the size of the Pocket Edition (and the price), but it is not expandable. The Reader Touch will accept Memory Stick or SD media.

Wife finished her talk with Daughter, picked up her things, and made her purchases. We left the store. On the way past the Best Buy, perhaps as an impulse buy (but not really), I decided to pick up the remaining Reader and play with it. I didn’t know if it was the machine for me or not. But, I’m not going to learn anything about them if I don’t spend some time with one. So, the open-box return followed me home.

I will relate my experience with the device in another essay. I figured out how to create content and move my content to the device.

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