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October 29, 2007

The problem with 3 Monitors

I just love my current monitor setup - with three killer Dell Ultra displays (2x Ultra 20" with 1680x1050, and 1x Ultra 17" with 1280x1024).

3mons

And I'd easily slap down a few more pesos for a fourth monitor because:
1) I can. 2x EVGA 8800 GTS video cards makes me feel like it's Christmas all the time ;) and handles 4x DVI monitors out of the chute.
2) I'd have an obscene amount of real-estate (as I'd spring for another 20" and have 3x 1680x1050 + 1280x1024 for a whopping 6 megapixel desktop)
3) It would just look killer on my desk
4) There would actually be a few times every month where I would actually be able to use all 4 monitors at once ;) 

But I'm NOT going to pony up for that 4th monitor just yet because: while 4 monitors would be melt-your-face-off cool, it would also be melt-your-face-off HOT. Yes gang, that's right: 3 sets of 'ultra bright' cathode ray tubes and millions and millions of happy little transistors cook the crap out of my office. In fact, I frequently have to turn on a small fan on my desktop to get a gentle/quiet breeze flowing between me and my monitors. Without that I sometimes feel like I'm out getting too much sun on the beach. In fact, it's about 45 degrees outside. I've got the heat in my office turned off, and the window open. But it's 80 degrees in my office right now.

I know... horrible problem to have, but it does bug. Cuz I'd really like that 4th monitor ;)

Posted on October 29, 2007 | | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

October 16, 2007

What were they thinking?

Sometimes I think that I would like to know what product teams at MS were thinking when they 'came up' with some functionality that I run into on a regular basis.

Then, other times, I think that it's probably BEST if I didn't know.

Case in point: suppose you've got a multi-page email - and just want to print a part of it out. Every OTHER program on the planet lets you specify which pages you'd like to print. Outlook 2007 just HAD to be different. But did they honestly think that this could EVER meet someone's needs in the real world?

Here's a screen-cap that helps capture my frustration (given that I only want print the first page of a roughly 7 page email):

print_pages

That's right boys and girls: I can't specify which pages I'd like to print. Instead I can print them All. Just the even numbered pages. Or just the Odd numbered pages.

What floors me about it is that I'm sure a bunch of people signed off on this 'feature'. And subsequent service packs haven't fixed it?

Posted on October 16, 2007 | | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

October 12, 2007

An Open Letter to teh Internets

Dear Internets (or more specifically: people making teh internets),

Please stop adding idiotic 'Beta' turdlets to your logos and sites. It might have been cool once. Now it's just lame. Especially when it stays there for years. Or when you're managing people's money (sign up to see the Beta turdlet on the logo - and to feel extra special about the security of your financial info on a 'beta' site).

Honestly, it's time to grow up. Take responsibility for your shoddy work and any bugs you may have. Just fix them if they exist, and move on. Stop pretending that any bugs that people might run into are a result of how incredibly hip your site is.

And besides, wasn't this whole web 2.0 'revolution' about getting away from monolithic development? Wasn't it a new expression and 'consciousness' of agility?

Nothing screams monolithic like a friggin' Beta moniker/turdlet.

So knock it off. You're making me cranky.

Love,

--Mikeey

Posted on October 12, 2007 | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

More Vista Spoutage

Nah. I won't bore you with more of my anti-Vista ranting.

Suffice it to say, that if you read news/blogs of any sort, you've seen that there's really starting to be a mounting backlash towards Vista. More and more people are announcing that they're not impressed with it, and there's more and more talk of downgrading back to Vista. And not just geeks and IT folks either. But non-geeks as well.

Okay, one small-ish, but valid, rant:
Strangely enough though, I just can't seem to leave it alone. The other day I applied Vista SP1 - hoping that it would somehow let me use my network attached scanner. No love. (Honestly Vista/MS, the earth is no longer flat. There are thousands of all-in-one printers out there that are 'network' attached instead of bound to a USB cable somewhere. Yet there's no friggin support for these scanners in Vista???)

But enough of that.

How about an interesting insight instead?
I've been reading Mário Romano's blog for a while now. It's a great mix of stuff that I frequently find worthwhile to read. (Most blogs I subscribe to I just glance over.) He had a very interesting post recently. So, even when you don't hate Vista, there's really not all that much to love.

Posted on October 12, 2007 | | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

October 11, 2007

Hosed by UPS

UPDATE: After calling UPS to raise hell about my 3 day shipping turning into 7 day shipping, they told me to get my panties out of a wad: a computer glitch caused the tracking mechanism to erroneously report a reschedule. My package will be here today.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

UPS is teh Sux0r today.

upsMost days they're not. In fact it's kind of sad that I'm on a first-name basis with the 'UPS Guy' here at the house and that he recognizes me when he sees me driving around town on those few times that I actually leave the house.
Maybe I need to quit ordering so much crap - especially since my 2.5 year old daughter gets so excited every time she sees a UPS truck (as if it were Christmas or something).

But today, today UPS needs their eyes gouged out with a spoon. And a plastic one at that.

My NewEgg bundle of goodies (ordered on Monday, and shipped on Tuesday) was slated to arrive Friday (tomorrow). As in 3 days of shipping.

I checked the UPS tracking site today however, and was overjoyed to learn that my shipment has been rescheduled to next Tuesday. As in 1 week of shipping. Lame.

Happily NewEgg is cool and will refund my shipping (I sure hope they stick that to UPS). But at this point I'd rather have my piles and piles of hardware.

Luckily my buddy Carson knew exactly how to cheer me up.

But I think I'll still have to observe a moment of silence tomorrow when the UPS truck drives by my house. *sniff*

Posted on October 11, 2007 | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

October 09, 2007

Mikey's other new Rig

Gaming Rig Recap
A while back I posted about my new gaming rig.

Quite a few people have actually asked me how that turned out and I'm happy to say that it has been the single best computer purchase that I've ever made. I've never, ever, been happier with a box.

Other boxes/systems have been great - but nothing has been as fun as it was to research, buy, build, and then use my gaming rig. That, and the thing is an absolute beast. I used to spend a lot of time looking at task manager to see what was chewing up CPU and disk. With my new box I barely know how to use task manager anymore.

But the best thing is that it gives me much better flexibility in terms of upgrades and such than I ever could have swung from the likes of Dell or HP - at a fraction of the price.

Mikey needs a new box
Another box that I've been VERY happy with for the past year and a half (or so) has been my Dell PowerEdge SC1420. I got it as a refurb from Dell and got a killer deal on it. (A few weeks after I bought it I could have easily sold 2 GB of the RAM that came with it to cover the entire cost of the box - and still had 2 GB of RAM left.)

But I'm going to be doing a couple of projects with Microsoft's new Viridian Hypervisor shortly - and will need some serious power for virtualization. My PowerEdge could have handled the load pretty easily - with both of its hyper-threaded Xeon 3.0s. But those Xeon's didn't support Intel Virtualization Technology (or Intel VT), so I decided to swing for a new server.

Given my past success with NewEgg (I just can't describe how much I love them - they consistently have the cheapest prices and actually ship my stuff within a day or so every time), I decided that I'd build my own box again. (Though I'm cannibalizing the upgraded video-card from my PowerEdge.)

The new box
My new 'server' should be here on Friday (the case will be here Thursday), and will give me:
- An Intel Core 2 Quad. At 2.4 GHz it's literally 2 of the cores I have in my gaming rig glued together. But I'll get Intel VT, and the price is hardly much more than what I paid for my Core 2 Duo just a few months ago. (When the 1333Mhz bus processors come down in price in a while I can upgrade - and since both of my machines use the same 775 LGA socket I'll be able to share the love each time I buy nicer procs.)
- 8 GB of RAM. That's right baby: 8 GB. Which means that I'll need to spring for a 64-bit OS - though I'm just going to use Windows Server 2008 for now since it's _so_much better than Windows Server 2003.
- A slightly wimpier MoBo. Unpacking all of my EVGA stuff with my last box really did my inner geek some insane good. (2x vid cards, and a big honkin' mobo... I was in heaven.) But with this box I hardly need any video capability at all (I'll just be cannibalizing the 64MB PCI card that I slapped into my PowerEdge), but I did need a fast/dependable Mobo with some decent SATA and upgrade support. The 650i chipset fit that bill nicely.
- Disk. 1 TB spread over 4 spindles. Yippee.
- The same spiffy power-supply-unit (PSU) that I got with my last box. I really don't need as much power/wattage as this piglet supplies, but just LOVE how efficient it is, how clean the power is, and how insanely cool the modular cabling is. So I spent a bit more than I really needed.
- A fairly spiffy case. I really didn't want to spend too much on this piglet, but needed some decent fans and some *cough*  eye-candy and blue lights. I'll probably add some more blue LEDs as well as a Cold Cathode Black Light like I've *cough* done for my gaming rig. (And I'll likely skin the cables for both boxes with UV reflective goodness as I've purchased the skinning and molex tools - but just haven't had the time to do yet.)
A406-1069-maina

If you're interested, I've made the wishlist available over on newegg. As with my last system though, the contents of the wishlist don't represent a complete machine - as you'd need a video card with this box if you were interested in a similar configuration. It also doesn't have an OS, though you can usually swing Windows Server Standard for less than $700 if you do some shopping.

Love 'em and Leave 'em
That, and anyone know anybody that wants a well-loved PowerEdge that's in great condition? It's got 2x Intel Xeon 3.0 GHz (at 800 Mhz FSB), an IDE SATA RAID controller, 4 GB of RAM, and around .5 TB of disk. It's in awesome condition.

I'll likely put it up for sale on Ebay here in a while to help recoup some of my upgrade costs.

Posted on October 09, 2007 | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

October 02, 2007

Video Fears FUD

There's a great 'news' article that I've been seeing during news 'snacking' during the day. It's a spiffy little article that warns that "Online Videos May Be Conduits for Viruses".

Only it doesn't really list actual vulnerabilities - just that those naughty hackers would sure love to find a way to bundle their evil with people's insatiable appetite for YouTube videos.

Wow Captain Obvious, you don't say?!

Here are a couple of other 'news' stories that I'd like to see Captain Obvious (the Associated Press) and his side-kick Fud-Factor Boy work on:

- "College Students May Eyeball Armored Trucks and Wish They Could Get Hands on Some of That Money Without Going To Jail or Committing a Crime"
- "10 Mile-Wide Meteor May Hit Earth This October"  (hey, it COULD happen)
- "Journalists May Have to Get Real Jobs During Coming Depression"

Posted on October 02, 2007 | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)