Friday… the wrap-up.

It's Friday morning, and I'm almost done with a short week of work, but a long week nonetheless.

Cell Phone Drama

Sprint… I finally kicked those RAZRs back to my buddy Brandon. Instead, I got a Hauppauge PVR-500 dual-tuner analog PCI card and a Dell Latitude laptop without a hard drive or RAM. (He thought he had a gigabit router for me, but I guess I'll have to stick it out with the SmoothWall.) I returned my D-Link Xtreme N router in hopes that I could get away with spending less, and equivalent functionality. Oh well.

Sprint is garbage. They do their best to lock you in and give you no options, even with their unlimited everything nonsense. I'm not paying $200/month… *and* taxes and fees, and bringing my own phones, to sign a two year contract.

My wife ran out of minutes on her T-Mobile pre-paid line. (Now that it's payday, I guess I'll add some.) Adding another $50 should get her into the “Gold Rewards” so that it's $0.10/min. Roughly similar to what we pay on “regular” contracts, since we sleep at night, and don't call anyone on weekends. I'll probably port my mom and myself over to pre-paid accounts soon. (I berated my wife over getting the unlocked RAZR stolen, I imagine she feels bad enough and has to suffer with the crappy Samsung R225, so I should be nicer about it.) There, done… At least online sales tax is cheaper $3.00 on $50 is 6%, while sales tax here in Indiana is 7%. Sigh…

The Monitor Saga

So, I talk to Goat on IndyGamers who is selling his LCD monitor (and system) and I planned on grabbing the LCD with the return funds from my D-Link router. The return was slow, and then we took that trip to Ohio. So, I held off until Friday (today). The CRT is okay, and I'm actually supposed to give it to Goat, but I hate adjusting that thing. And, it's too heavy… and it isn't widescreen… a Dell P1110 that I got from GallowGlass, because he didn't want to move it to Kansas City. Oh well. Log into PayPal… send money to Goat… arrange for an exchange time…

I think Mike Weldy was wanting to get an LCD… maybe I should hit him up on that exchange he was asking about. Iv'e still got 4 CRTs sitting around. Maybe he's got some PC133 SODIMMs for that laptop I got from Brandon.

Media Center Madness

Oh, and last night, I went through a stack of paperwork (bills and receipts) to retrieve some paycheck stubs for Scott's First Steps evaluation and grabbed the coupons for our OTA Digital Tuner boxes… I guess I could hook those up to the dual-tuner analog card. Maybe I can find a OTA tuner with a serial interface… probably won't be in that $40 range… I doubt that I can combine the coupons on one awesome converter box either. I'll probably end up getting the $50 Magnavox from Wal-Mart, unless I get a chance to do some real research.

So, I've got a dual-core BE-2300 mounted in a full-ATX motherboard with a stock heatsink and I put that in the beige enlight special, with a Sony DVD+/-RW drive and a 3.5-inch-bay USB card reader. It has one fan, and a 400 watt power supply that I was surprised to find out had a 24-pin connector. The Antec PSU I used was only 350, and had a 20-pin power connector, but the board didn't complain in the trial run.

I'd like to dump the beige box, and finally move on to a real case, but I can't spare $200 on something like that. However, Directron has the crappy “this'll do” box, for $69.99:

Ark Technology ATX Home Theater PC Case, w/ 80mm Fans, Model: HTPC-3701
http://www.directron.com/htpc3701.html
http://www.arktechinc.com/htpc/htpc3701.htm

It's a full-size case, and my board will be able to use the two PCI-express x1 tuners and the PCI dual-tuner I've got. I'm thinking this'll be the best I can do, until I get some extra cash, which'll be never. So, If after a day of calculations and paying bills, I have any left over, I may put the order in. Time to sell something else.

Linux

I haven't totally given up on Fedora, but I've started a pretty good clip of nightly gaming on Age of Conan. An hour or so each night hasn't really made me feel bad, but I am losing sleep… Anyway, I'm pretty sure that's not going to run in Wine, so it might be time for me to seriously equip my main computer for full-time Vista usage and games. A reformat of 64-bit Vista, on a RAID 0 array of two 200 GB SATA hard drives will be the likely configuration. The game doesn't run too bad, considering what I've got under the hood now. I'll enjoy that LCD though… the CRT experience doesn't really suit me anymore.

Why? because I'm changing resolutions all the time, and I want multiple monitors back, but I have a bunch of heavy CRTs that take up space. What's that got to do with Linux? Well, Fedora 9 is great, but I really really want to give KDE4 and openSUSE 11 a try. I actually did install 10.3 a few days ago, and then I couldn't boot Windows, so I fixed that and wiped openSUSE. Last night, I tried Beta 3 on a 700 MHz Celeron with 256 MB of RAM, a 3 and 8 GB hard drive. It failed installation as I slept… choking on the video card setting. I think it's like a 1 MB intel 810 onboard graphics chip. Probably fixable, but I didn't have time to mess with it. Too bad I sold that PCI FX5200 card. I should make this box my smoothwall, or maybe a server for files/printers/and a router… I'd need more RAM for ClarkConnect… it might be an upgrade in CPU from my 450 MHz Pentium III I'm using, but that machine has more drive bays, and more RAM slots than this 2-slotted, generally incompatible machine I've cobbled together. Maybe I can sell it… I'll work on that in my night-time session tonight. Maybe someone needs a server on IndyGamers. More likely a Torrent slave box, heh.

Well, I've been constructing this post off and on during the AM at work, and now it it time to meet a few colleagues for lunch.

Crazy Weekend

Well, this weekend, I finally got around to doing a few things, and started back up a few old projects.

My mom lives in Canton, OH. and I live in Indianapolis, IN. We don't get out to see her often enough, so, we took a trip out to see her on kind of a whim. That's never good when you have two kids in diapers, and not much cash in reserve, on a holiday weekend, with gas prices incredibly high, and no real place to stay. Fortunately, we got things sorted enough while we were there.

We left at 1:30, after dropping the cats off at the Humane Society, and Holly suggested the trip. I really think she just wanted to take her mind off of giving up the cats, because the trip was unplanned, and not budgeted. We got there that evening, and showed my mom her new and improved grandchildren. She was impressed. Ate some cookout food my brother had prepared while we visited, and then used my mom's computer and our credit card to reserve a room at the Canton McKinley Grand hotel… for $50. Sweetness.

The next morning, we got up, found some food, headed back over and visited with my Mom. I couldn't get her Mac to read the DVD+/-RW discs I had sent with pictures. However, I do think I got her computer set up to read the e-mail account that I set up for her on our AT&T Yahoo! DSL package. It was working before, but it wasn't using SSL settings, and it complained to her with messages nearly daily. She has Time Warner Road Runner… not set up for e-mail, unfortunately, and she probably won't even keep it. I think she was glad just to see the kids in person. They did warm up after a bit. Auntie Ann came by for a short visit too.

We went over to see my Mom's sister, Aunt Jo and Uncle Ed. The kids performed admirably, but indicated that it was time to go around 1:30. We didn't get a chance to see my cousin Angie and her son this time around… The kids passed out in the car seats, and we had a long drive home. The last hour was very rough, but we made it.

So, these old projects? Heh… I bought a set of faux wood blinds to put up in our bedroom. The vinyl ones were just completely torn up from Scott and the cats. Scott tried to tear them up last night, but a threat and a whooping put a stop to that. I'm thinking I'll have to do something to keep him off of those. They cost too much money for him to be tearing up.

Oh, and Scott can manipulate the gate we use at the bottom of the stairs now too. So, I bought a replacement for the gate we use at the top of the stairs… I'd have put it up… but… we ended up taking a trip to Ohio. I didn't get a chance. I don't' think he will be able to open the gate, even if he learns how… he just won't be strong enough… I'm super happy with the one we use at the top, but it was $60 that we really didn't want to spend until we had to at the bottom.

I got the garage of doom cleaned up a little after doing the usual weekend yardwork. Found a few new places for things, and stacked a few things that need to “go away”. Paul and Amy are expecting, and we've got a high-chair, car seats, strollers, etc for them taking up space. I don't think they have space for them either. But hey, They gotta take them… I won't hold on to them much longer… because I'm mean. I should just go put them in their house while they're on their honeymoon. LOL.

I spent a little of my “personal time” thinking about trying out OpenSUSE. I really like Fedora, but it's too bleeding edge for me. I know I could just stay on the previous release longer, but I might just be ready to try a few new things. KDE hasn't ever been a necessity for me, but there were so many reports of it being completely unusable in Fedora 9, pending the 4.1 release, that I want to try out a Distro that really has it at its forefront. I started a download of the 11.0 beta 3 release before I went to work. Maybe I'll get some time to spin up the KDE4 live CD tonight. We'll see.

Oh, and my wife's grandfather… “Grandpa”… sent these e-mail pictures of Amy and Paul's wedding… freaking monsterous attachments. So, Holly's mom says, “hey were those just un-look-at-able for you too?” Here's the sweet sauce… I just used my FastMail account, dropped the attachments to a folder and put it up on the web. Easy peasy… rice and cheesy. I might be able to get someone else to use FastMail just off of that… unlikely… Mom-in-law is convinced that Kodak EasyShare is the way to go… and I pretty much set her up on that… my bad. I didn't know. She doesn't even like the dock though… so, whatever.

Flash Dance

I had a pretty scary BIOS flash once. I picked up a used Dual-Opteron board/RAM/CPUs. They worked great, but I got this message basically saying that it couldn't detect the CPUs properly. I'd have ignored it, except it stopped the boot process every time.

I flashed, with a DOS booting USB stick, and it didn't make it back. A quick e-mail to BadFlash.com got me a new chip to put in, with the updated BIOS and all was well. That was a $30 tribulation, and a trial of my patience.

Recently, Fedora gives me some kind of message on boot up about IOMM32 and costing 64 MB of RAM. Apparently Vista didn't care, or just didn't tell me. Annoying, but I don't know what it means. I couldn't find the setting it told me to adjust, so I just let it go, since it didn't stop the boot sequence.

I decided last night to flash again, this time using an updated Asus Update Utility. I had to findsome 4.xx something version – newer than what was on the CD that I didn't get, and can't download, because Asus didn't even have an updated version on their support site for the board. I downloaded it from Softpedia. Yes, I know flashing from a DOS floppy is the best way to go, but dammit, I'm not getting out a floppy drive for anything anymore!

I was successful… sigh. Flashing BIOS used to not be scary for me. I used to recommend to people always flash… it can't hurt. That week without my computer, waiting for a updated chip sucked bad. I can't believe how my attitude toward something that seems like routine maintenance now makes my heart stop for a minute while I flash and reboot. Well, now I can put those udpated quad-core Barcelona chips in my board… Heh, like I really need 8 cores…

Birds… I got a stone for ya

Okay, on my way home, I decided that I'd just go to GameStop and trade in my PSP for the Age of Conan game that my friends are raving about. I figure it's got to be easier than trying to sell my PSP, or returning something to Fry's Electronics beyond the 30-day limit.

I got enough credit for the base unit and carrying case to buy the game, but I decided not to trade in the one game I had. They don't take the headphones, and they wouldn't take a memory card as small as mine (128 MB). Cool.

In addition, I grabbed my sister's Dell Inspiron 1100 laptop and took it to work today… I couldn't get it to charge or start. Maybe the power cord had finally bitten the dust. I also grabbed a bunch of SDRAM that I had so I could check if my buddy Michelle from work knew anyone that could use it. Needless to say, 50+ sticks of RAM loosely collected in a few static bags is impressive. She might have someone in mind that could use them, and wanted to know how much I wanted for them. Heh, she must have thought I didn't want to trade them or something… I explained that I needed some DDR SODIMMs for this latop, and would be happy to exchange.

Then, also, on my way home from work, I stopped at the computer store formerly known as “Marks PC”. It's a bit out of the way, but they often have old stuff, or might take old stuff in trade. Turns out there's an Insipiron 1100 sitting there, with no power adapter, just like the one I've got with me.

Oh, and Mark has about 1000 sticks of SDRAM, no real value to him, but he'd trade a load of them for a discount on repairing that power cable…. $45 to repair if possible, about $80 to replace. No thanks… Laptops are too cheap now, and it's not even mine. I don't think I even about asking how much an SODIMM might cost, since I have no trade leverage.

So, I took a look around, thinking I might find something interesting or useful. And I ask if they have any Socket 478 retention brackets. “No”. So I look in the $1.00 parts bin and find two. I don't have any cash, and offer to pay with my PayPal debit card, but Mark figures it isn't worth spending $4 to get my $2, and tells me to bring it in cash the next time I come around. So, I walk out with two “free” retention brackets. I need to call my new brother-in-law and let him know I got the hook up for him. He had an old Dell that had a Socket 478 CPU, but the heatsink was fanless, and the fan was integrated into the case. The retention bracket was broken, and the case fan was gone. I figure the board is salvageable, as long as we find a way to cool the CPU appropriately. Boom. Best wedding present ever. LOL.

Free Cats — bye bye Sonny and Vinny

So, we've had cats for the entire time we've been married… after 5 years, we had kids, and I'm probably more allergic to them than the cats (heh, just kidding).

However, my wife is severely allergic. She knew this before we got cats, but basically begged to have a cat because she was lonely as we started our life toegether. She had six months between moving to our first apartment and starting grad school, and I worked full-time. She took an allergy pill to relieve the symptoms. I never wanted the cats, but I tolerate them, for my wife.

She had an allergy test done recently, and basically had the worst results our doctor had seen. The cats have to go. I feel bad, not because I want to keep them, but because we took them in. We're responsible for them. Now, we're trying to find someone else to dump them on. I bought their last bag of cat food this week. We'll probably have to surrender them to the Humane society, which is where we picked them up.

They're well behaved, use the litter and are front-declawed. They've always been indoor cats. I'd like to find them a good home if I can. If you want them, or know someone who does, let me know.

Dell Inspiron 1100 Laptop

I have a Dell Inpsiron 1100 Laptop. It's actually my sister's laptop. We bought it for her as a Christmas gift a few years ago. It has a 2.30 GHz Celeron and 256 MB of RAM. Basically, good enough to surf the web an do e-mail, and could really use some more RAM.

It worked the last time I used it, but it has had a rough life. She spilled something in it, and I replaced the keyboard. The power cord has been all chewed up and I think a replacement will be necessary to get it to start up again. I took it with me to work, thinking I'd just plug it up and try something with it during lunch, but I haven't been able to make it “go”.

Since DDR2 is so cheap now, (making DDR1 relatively expensive) it's hardly worth investing $50 to $100 in a stick of memory for it… since new, better laptops are cheaper. It isn't even really mine. My wife asked her sister to let her borrow it, but she found it too slow. I think I'm just caught up in the idea that if I can make something old work, then that's better than just throwing it away. Not too long ago, I threw away some Slot-1 Penitum IIs and motherboards, but I can't bring myself to junk a few other things taking up space, and waiting for my kids to grab and hurt themselves on. We'll see.

So, anyone have a DDR SO-DIMM they want to trade for, or a power adapter that will work for a Dell Inspiron 1100 laptop? I've got lots of SDRAM I can trade.

PlayStation Portable for Sale

Okay… I think I'm really done with this Playstation Portable. The memory sticks are too expensive. The games are cool and all, but I don't really have time for that. Watching movies on it sounds cool, but when the heck am I going to be watching a movie instead of watching my kids, or doing work, or cleaning my house, or trying to figure out how to get more money so I can play computer games?

http://www.indygamers.com/vB/showthread.php?p=129936#post129936

Let's see how this goes. I'm guessing nobody will bite, or I'll get a trade offer. Worse case scenario… back to eBay. Sigh.

Fedora Persistence

I posted earlier today about my bad experience with the FM adapter and the Playstation Portable I have. I took it back to K-Mart after work, and found a 4 GB PNY flash drive for the same $24.99 price. For some reason, I couldn't resist.

So, I have two 1 GB Sandisk Cruser flash drives that I normally use as live media for Fedora. I haven't tried persistence yet, but I think I might, now that there's enough room on the media to store a little somethin' somethin'. What I really want to know, is how can I make an installation-ready flash drive from the DVD-image, and if there's a tool for that.

I'm already pissed that Windows got a GUI live USB creator before Fedora did. Hopefully, I don't get so angry about it that I decide not to use Fedora anymore…. Heh, the live media options are too awesome to consider not using it anymore, but damn, now I might not be as interested in trying to find out how to make better print-outs for my CD/DVD media.

Fedora 9… um… maybe not?

This past weekend, I had the pleasure of taking part in my sister-in-law's wedding. A long time friend of hers was doing the music, and was just using his laptop, which had a cumbersome installation of Windows Vista. He's a network server admin-type guy as his day-job, and he just grumbled that the machine he had wasn't quite “Vista Ready”.

So, strangely enough, he says, I might just use Knoppix. Perfect opportunity for me to suggest Fedora… except I'm sure that he'd want it to play the mp3 files he had… I wasn't really keen on suggesting it, and having him have to go through the whole “freedom is not free” baptism.

I just kind of let it go, an agreed that a Linux LiveCD might be a good alternative for the immediate situation.

So, that was the rehearsal night… and then the next day, he mentions that he heard about Ubuntu, and some co-workers said it was cool. So, I make the obligatory, “Fedora is cool too” comment, and wonder if I'm ready to officially promote Fedora to others as an option.

Strangely enough, I spent a lot of my spare time the previous week working with the recently launched Fedora 9. I'm certainly not going to review it here, but I have some harsh, reserved criticism of the release. Not the community that produces the release, not the process that creates the release, and really not negative, but enough that I probably wouldn't recommend it to anyone in casual conversation.

What the heck is with shipping a version of X that won't be supported by one of the best-supported (even if only by proprietary drivers) cards on Linux? I need nvidia's proprietary driver to do the cool stuff that makes Linux worth using for me. I realize not everyone needs the whiz-bang stuff. I realize that I could just stick with Fedora 8 until stuff “syncs up”.

I understand that open-source drivers might have allowed this to not happen. I don't think the Fedora Project is presenting this as a “they should open up their drivers” or a “free or else” kind of thing. It's just a bad schedule conflict. However, since the next release of fedora will be out in half a year… and Fedora is always on the bleeding edge, I'm inclined to roll back to the release of 8.

Does that make me a hater? I know what does make me a hater. I responded to Ms. Duffy's blog post asking “what are you waiting for” with a rather snide remark about how the media art wasn't as easy to use as the last release. In short, I got brief instructions on how to modify the source to meet my needs, and an invite to participate if I felt that they were inadequate. Mo said it was a lot of work to produce what they did last release. What I wanted to convey, but probably didn't was that they should have done it again, as I appreciated it last time.

I might just have to join up and contribute. I've slept on it a couple of nights, and I'm over my initial funk about the last time I tried.

D-Link DIR-655

So, as I wrote earlier, I had a SmoothWall setup that worked great, but was too big, and too loud. I sold my Motorola Q9 phone on eBay, and decided to pick up the D-Link Extreme N router I had been thinking about.

It's much quieter.. It only has 4 ports, but they're 10/100/1000 speed. I don't have a separate power plug being used for a wireless access point, and a computer, and a hub, so that's good.

Peculiarly, it has a USB port. I don't think it's for storage, or a print server… because that would be too bad-ass, and that kind of stuff never happens to me. I did keep my print server hooked up to it. I know D-Link makes one, and it looks good, and has a print server built in.

I'll probably build some sort of network backup storage device instead, and then go through the exercise I just went through, where I decide that “rolling my own” device isn't worth the hassle and just buy a device that holds a couple of drives. I have two 200 GB SATA hard drives that would work great in something like what D-Link makes. And of course, then I'd satisfy my brand matching requirement, because I'm anal-retentive that way.

So, anyone need a wireless-b access point/reepater/adapter? I've got a *matching* wireless-b PCI card too. Might be time to eBay them. I could use some extra cash to pay the horrendous fees from selling my stuff.