ET's Info-Stew

I exchanged the motherboard earlier today and have just tested it out. This time (YAY!) it actually does stuff, including beep at me. As it cycles through the numerous post codes it gets to 2b and then does a series of weird beeps, then lands on 7F, which means the board is waiting for me to respond (with the keyboard) to proceed. The 2b post code is related to video initialization. Well the video card I had in there was a spare old PCI-e card that I wasn't even sure would work. I still don't know if the rest of my hardware is okay, because I can't see any video.

I've been on somewhat of a spending spree lately. However, unlike before when I needed to buy the latest and greatest technology, I've come down to earth and decided to purchase darn good technology instead. For computer components there is a price "bump". The latest technology is the most expensive, the next older generation is pretty expensive, but after that the price starts to go down rapidly. So if you know where that bump is, you can buy great components for relatively cheap. That's what I've been doing.

Today is 1234567890 day! At 23:31:30 UTC (3:31:30 pm Mountain time) time-synced UNIX systems will have their clock read this number. This number is a unit of time called "epoch time", the number of seconds since midnight 1/1/1970 (not counting leap seconds). It's a big day for UNIX geeks like me.

Finally, after over eight months, I climbed back into the left seat of a Cessna 172. Tom from Centennial Flyers checked me out in N6346D, a Cessna 172M. We did three circuits in the pattern, the first a touch-and-go, the second a go-around, and the third a power-off emergency simulation to a full stop. Both landings were pretty darn good. But I was a little rusty in some procedures. The go-around took me off guard and I neglected to apply full power, the #1 thing you need to do. The soft-field approach (which preceeded the go-around) wasn't really soft-field technique.

Okay, so a gaming accessory is not necessarily a required component of my new system. But, it is something that I can use now, so I went out and bought a Belkin n52te Gaming Keypad. I've tried it out only briefly, but I can already tell that it is going to be a lot easier to use and more comfortable than my laptop keyboard.

Yep, it gets pretty cold here, apparently. When we open the back door to let Champ go to the bathroom, he looks up at us like "Are you kidding me?" Just a little treat for friends in family in CA.

There is one bad thing about Colorado: the closest Fry's Electronics is in Texas. Luckily I recently found something similar to it, Micro Center. There is one that is about 20 minutes away. It is smaller than your typical electronics store, but it is more like a Radio Shack for computers with lots of component parts. They have decent deals probably comparable to Fry's, though you can always find the best deals online. And just walking around the store and listening to how they were helping customers I could tell the staff was very knowledgeable (i.e. geeks). I have a feeling I'll be visiting that store a lot.

Today I started off my Noob Fragger by buying a computer case. I didn't want just any case, I wanted one that would work well for high performance computing. Heat is a big problem with high performance computers, which is why computers have fans. Some may think that fans serve to blow cool air on components to cool them down. Actually the fans in a computer serve to draw warm air away from the components. That's why, for example, you feel air coming out of laptop fans.

Micro Center has some December deals going on, so I was able to purchase the Antec Nine Hundred for $80, which is about $30 cheaper than from Newegg.com. It has pretty good reviews.

It comes with three 120mm fans (two in front, one in back) and one huge 200mm exhaust fan. Two more 120mm fans can be put in if more airflow is needed. In general, all those fans are supposed to really keep the temperature manageable. There are two things I'll have to look out for. One, there isn't a great deal of length (front to back) so the long video cards are going to be snug. Two, the power supply will be mounted on the bottom, which means that the power cords to the motherboard will probably need to reach farther, so that is something to keep in mind when purchasing a power supply.

Here are some of the pictures. Click to see bigger pictures and from there you can click to see all the pictures of the case.

Over the next several weeks to several months I'm going to be building a computer from scratch. The good old laptop (Gateway NX860XL) is great for mobile computer and work, but lately I've found it lacking in the online gaming department. So this new computer will be my next big toy. I want to chronicle my progress as I put it together because it might be interesting or useful to others.

It's been late in coming, but we're finally getting some good snow here. Champ just loves it! If it is actually snowing, he'll try to catch snowflakes out of the air. Or he'll be running and kick up snow, and he'll chase after the snow he kicked up, making him go faster and kick up even more snow. He also likes to eat the ice under the snow. He got freaked out by a snowman we made.

Driving in snow is certainly interesting. Neither of us have had much experience with it so we go slow. Yet, it's good to see other drivers going slow too. Everyone is driving extra carefully. I'm not taking my Sentra out of the garage while there is snow on the ground. It's been sitting for a month. I don't really need to go anywhere, so that works just fine for me.

Here are some pictures. Click on one to see it bigger, and from there you can browse to the other pictures in the gallery.

I haven't posted anything new in a while, so here is what's going on.