Up and Running
I have gotten a lot of things done today, some good, some bad.
Actually, I guess getting them done is all good, but the act of getting them done wasn't always wonderful. I still have that damn logic homework to finish, and I have no clue about how to do it.
As some of you might know, I got some computer hardware the other day, and when I went to install it, it all went wrong. My monitor was ok, but running it at max resolution isn't possible at a higher refresh rate than 60Hz (Which is like stabbing your eyes. It's rated for 80 at that resolution). Atleast I'm off my laptop which, though it works, isn't the best computing device I have ever seen. Also, when I went to install my brand new 500GB SATA harddrive, I came to the terrible discovery that I only had 2 SATA ports on my motherboard, and 2 disks already in use.
A quick search of the store where I bought the monitor showed a PCI->SATA card though, so that problem solved it self quickly.
Speaking of hard drives, what's the deal with hard drives never having the advertised size? I mean I purchase a 500GB hard drive, and windows tells me it's 465GB (479000 or so MB). I mean sure, depending on how you could your prefixes (kilo, mega, giga), then you might loose 2.4% - 7.4% (depending on if you loose 2.4% at each new "name" or not). I guess that accounts for my lost data, but it still pisses me off. Why the hell can't manufacturers rate them at the larger size? I mean, the amount of data I loose due to these types of conversions is the size of all my gathered hard drives during the first 10 years of my computer "career". It's ridiculous.
Also, the fact that copying from one IDE-controller to another (SATA technically, but you get the idea) takes up 100% CPU time on my box is ridiculous. You'd think that DMA would handle something like that. I mean, when people test controllers, they give verdicts with single-digit cpu utilization when accessing the controller, and then we have me. Things like this just piss me off. It's not like I have a slow computer either, a 2.5Ghz box with 2GB of RAM should be able to handle this without exerting itself like this. Especially the 85 degrees CPU temp isn't looking too hot (no pun intended)...
shutdown...
Hmm, I guess I should get suspicious when the temperature and CPU usage goes up like that.
I look down at my, currently, open computer, and what do I find? The fan has stopped. Completely, it has not moved since I turned on the computer about 30 minutes ago. My trusty Intel P4 has been working at full speed with only passive cooling for 30 minutes and not shut itself down! Now that's performance engineering if I ever saw it. Had this been an AMD Athlon, and had this been a couple of years ago, I would be crying over my piece of melted silicon...
A quick shutdown and locating the faulty wire, and the copying now occupies a leisurely 25% (still too much, but hey, it's an improvement), and the temperature is at a steady 50 degrees. Much better...
So, lets see, what else...
Ohh, that's right, two mysterious men with keys to our garage came and rang the doorbell this morning, asking me if I was the owner of the car in the garage, which of course I was. They had come for the orange:y-red Daf POS in the garage that's stuck squarely behind my car. As I go to unlock my car to move it, I see what look like oil stains on the leather. That could well be, I was doing stuff to it just prior to putting it away last year, but not like this. Turns out it's surface mold.
I had forgotten to roll my windows down, so the air has stagnated or some such, and maybe some condensation has formed, god knows, the result, anyway, was spots of mold all over the interior.
Luckily, the interior is made from leather and plastic, so wiping it down with an old t-shirt made it just like new. Maybe I'll even stop by the store for some of that new car scent...
Also, not having the car start for me when we wanted to move it sucked, so we ended up pushing it out on to the patio. Later, as I went down to get the controller for my computer, I stopped by a store and got a charger for my battery that I've wanted for so long, so now it's juicing up just outside my window. I plan to drive it back in to the garage when the battery is topped up, and this time leave the windows down.
After this comes some more backuping of data, a re-install of windows (MDSNAA FTW), and then dinner. It smells like someone is cooking up something heavenly downstairs, so I might do dinner first, actually.
Until next time!
Actually, I guess getting them done is all good, but the act of getting them done wasn't always wonderful. I still have that damn logic homework to finish, and I have no clue about how to do it.
As some of you might know, I got some computer hardware the other day, and when I went to install it, it all went wrong. My monitor was ok, but running it at max resolution isn't possible at a higher refresh rate than 60Hz (Which is like stabbing your eyes. It's rated for 80 at that resolution). Atleast I'm off my laptop which, though it works, isn't the best computing device I have ever seen. Also, when I went to install my brand new 500GB SATA harddrive, I came to the terrible discovery that I only had 2 SATA ports on my motherboard, and 2 disks already in use.
A quick search of the store where I bought the monitor showed a PCI->SATA card though, so that problem solved it self quickly.
Speaking of hard drives, what's the deal with hard drives never having the advertised size? I mean I purchase a 500GB hard drive, and windows tells me it's 465GB (479000 or so MB). I mean sure, depending on how you could your prefixes (kilo, mega, giga), then you might loose 2.4% - 7.4% (depending on if you loose 2.4% at each new "name" or not). I guess that accounts for my lost data, but it still pisses me off. Why the hell can't manufacturers rate them at the larger size? I mean, the amount of data I loose due to these types of conversions is the size of all my gathered hard drives during the first 10 years of my computer "career". It's ridiculous.
Also, the fact that copying from one IDE-controller to another (SATA technically, but you get the idea) takes up 100% CPU time on my box is ridiculous. You'd think that DMA would handle something like that. I mean, when people test controllers, they give verdicts with single-digit cpu utilization when accessing the controller, and then we have me. Things like this just piss me off. It's not like I have a slow computer either, a 2.5Ghz box with 2GB of RAM should be able to handle this without exerting itself like this. Especially the 85 degrees CPU temp isn't looking too hot (no pun intended)...
shutdown...
Hmm, I guess I should get suspicious when the temperature and CPU usage goes up like that.
I look down at my, currently, open computer, and what do I find? The fan has stopped. Completely, it has not moved since I turned on the computer about 30 minutes ago. My trusty Intel P4 has been working at full speed with only passive cooling for 30 minutes and not shut itself down! Now that's performance engineering if I ever saw it. Had this been an AMD Athlon, and had this been a couple of years ago, I would be crying over my piece of melted silicon...
A quick shutdown and locating the faulty wire, and the copying now occupies a leisurely 25% (still too much, but hey, it's an improvement), and the temperature is at a steady 50 degrees. Much better...
So, lets see, what else...
Ohh, that's right, two mysterious men with keys to our garage came and rang the doorbell this morning, asking me if I was the owner of the car in the garage, which of course I was. They had come for the orange:y-red Daf POS in the garage that's stuck squarely behind my car. As I go to unlock my car to move it, I see what look like oil stains on the leather. That could well be, I was doing stuff to it just prior to putting it away last year, but not like this. Turns out it's surface mold.
I had forgotten to roll my windows down, so the air has stagnated or some such, and maybe some condensation has formed, god knows, the result, anyway, was spots of mold all over the interior.
Luckily, the interior is made from leather and plastic, so wiping it down with an old t-shirt made it just like new. Maybe I'll even stop by the store for some of that new car scent...
Also, not having the car start for me when we wanted to move it sucked, so we ended up pushing it out on to the patio. Later, as I went down to get the controller for my computer, I stopped by a store and got a charger for my battery that I've wanted for so long, so now it's juicing up just outside my window. I plan to drive it back in to the garage when the battery is topped up, and this time leave the windows down.
After this comes some more backuping of data, a re-install of windows (MDSNAA FTW), and then dinner. It smells like someone is cooking up something heavenly downstairs, so I might do dinner first, actually.
Until next time!
posted by Markus at
3/07/2007 05:58:00 PM
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