Oh, the Irony

With my offsite backup drive in hand, I pushed the power button on my computer, and it didn’t even make it through POST in the boot cycle. Troubleshooting revealed that the drive that I was about to back up was a brick and couldn’t even be read when attached to another computer. I didn’t lose any data, as my local backup was only 2 days old, but restoring the hard drive still proved challenging, as a new SSD didn’t restore from the Microsoft WindowsImageBackup. I eventually grabbed the hard drive that had been retired from the computer a year and a half earlier, cloned it to a new SSD, and restored the data from my local backup. I am in the process of attempting to clone the fully restored drive to a spare SSD, but that is proving difficult, as some cloning software is specific to the destination hard drive, and others doesn’t work when cloning to a smaller drive.

Microsoft – if your BOTs are reading this, it really shouldn’t be this hard!

Microsoft – Making Things Needlessly Difficult Since 1975 / Apple – You will be Assimilated

It is sound practice to have a local disk for daily backups, a second backup disk stored off site, and to swap the disks periodically, but Microsoft Windows Backup still won’t support such a basic task as multiple backup disks. The new MAC OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion supports such a multiple disk backup scheme, so I updated our Mac Mini. However, the feature wasn’t particularly well thought out, as every few days, the computer reminds me that it can’t find one of the drives. Really? I could see a caution if it couldn’t find both drives, but does Apple really expect me to keep two drives backing up at all times? (No, there isn’t an option to turn off the notification.)

We utilize a Mid 2010 Mac Mini for our HTPC media center, as it is small and quiet. However, instead of moving to dominate the HTPC market, Apple released the Mid 2011 Mac Mini with no optical drives whatsoever instead of upgrading to a Blu-ray combo drive. Sure, DVDs are not the future, but there are plenty of them currently in existence, and the drives don’t cost that much, especially when you consider the exorbitant markups Apple charges for things such as SSDs. The release of OS X Lion made it even more clear that Macs should not be used as HTPCs, as Lion eliminated Front Row, which was Apple’s feeble attempt at an HTPC interface, and gave iTunes dedicated use of the Apple remote. Fortunately, Gavin Roy found and published a solution (http://gavinroy.com/disabling-default-itunes-launch-behavior-with) which eliminated the iTunes grab and allowed the remote to be used for other purposes such as EyeTV. The solution doesn’t involve any serious hacking, just pasting the command launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.rcd.plist in a terminal window.

With EyeTV working again, I thought that I was set until we inserted a DVD and found that the remote would no longer control the DVD player. I found a third party driver that enabled the remote to control the DVD player, but then EyeTV no longer worked quite right. I decided that it wasn’t worth the effort, and just reverted to OS X Snow Leopard.

Mrs. Pinky’s New Computer

Mrs. Pinky was justifiably complaining that her heavily updated, but 9 year old computer was slow, so I began the quest for a new one. I wanted to move away from a large, tower computer to something small, quiet and energy efficient. We almost settled on a Mac Mini dual booting to Windows until I saw that Apple wanted $600 to upgrade to a Solid State Drive (SSD). Considering that I can buy the drive retail for $250, I just couldn’t stomach the markup and wasn’t willing to invalidate the warranty of a new Mini by doing the major surgery necessary to upgrade the drive myself.

After extensive research, I opted to build a computer for her:

Assembly was smooth, except for one minor issue; the power supply had a 4-pin ATX connector and a 6-pin PCI-E connector for a video card powered by separate “rails”, but the motherboard was running onboard graphics and had an 8-pin EATX connector. After learning the rails were really more like household circuits from a common feed, I extracted 4 pins from the PCI-E connector and 4 pins from the ATX connector and inserted them into an EATX connector. It was quite a relief to hear the motherboard boot the first time.

Since there isn’t an external graphics card, part of the case exhaust vent was blocked with acoustic material to channel more airflow to the motherboard and power supply.

The machine is small, fast, silent, and cost less than if I had purchased the equivalent performance preassembled.

Parts list for Mrs. Pinky’s Machine:

$108  Silverstone SST-SG05B-USB3.0

$13    Silverstone Suscool 121 fan

$70    Silverstone 12.7 mm SATA Interface Slot Load 8X CD/DVD RW Drive SATA 3.0 Gb-s

$17    AcoustiPack 7mm Acoustic Composite Single Sheet

$200  Asus P8Z77-I DELUXE motherboard

$320  Intel Core i7-3770S CPU

$40    Scythe Kozuti SCKZT-1000 1.5U Low Profile Heatsink (40 mm tall)

$54    Crucial 8GB Kit (4GBx2), 240-pin DIMM, DDR3 PC3-12800 memory module

$250  Samsung 830 Series MZ-7PC256D/AM 256GB 2.5″ MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

$3      8 pin EATX connector

$1,075 Total

While the computer is nice, our next computer case will be built from scratch. It may not be as pretty as the one below, but I have ideas.

Aerodyne Computer – click for more images

Computer Power

One of the reasons that I chose the case for Mrs. Pinky’s machine was that it came with a 300 Watt, 80-Plus efficient power supply (80 percent or greater efficiency from 20% to 100% of rated power), which was the smallest 80-Plus power supply that I could find.

The highest power load at the plug that I have observed so far was a brief spike to 75 W during boot with an external USB drive attached. While simultaneously ripping a CD to an external USB drive and streaming HD video from the internet, the computer only draws 48 Watts at the plug. The third generation Intel Core i7-3770S chip is rated at 65W max, but it clearly does a good job throttling itself. I would be quite comfortable running a 150 W power supply on my next build. It would be nice if power supply manufacturers concentrated their efforts at these lower power levels instead of building 1,000 Watt 80 Plus Platinum power supplies that aren’t likely to run anywhere near their rated power. I haven’t been able to find out the efficiency of the AC-DC external power brick, but a picoPSU should prove adequate.

Qwest Now CenturyLink, or Perhaps Not

I spoke with CenturyLink customer service after I got an invalid account number error while trying to access “My Account” on line, and she confirmed that it was the correct account number.  She then said that there was nothing that she could do to help, directed me to the online chat help, and then spent time trying to sell me additional products.  Of course the online chat help wouldn’t load, but when I called back, I got a representative that could at least give me another number to call.  The next representative was quite helpful and identified the problem: I had selected CenturyLink, which is what all of my paperwork says, not Qwest.  (They must get that problem hundreds of times a day.)  He also readily agreed that their web site was a mess.

Qwest / CenturyLink VDSL2 Modem Configuration with a Separate Router

So, you already have a state of the art router configured for you home network and just want to switch the source of your broadband internet feeding it.  Should be easy – right?  Well, Qwest / CenturyLink really wants you to lease their modem+router unit, so no, they don’t make it easy to configure a used Qwest ZyXEL Q100 modem to feed a D-Link Router.  The only help they offer is “call your router manufacturer”.   The D-Link 655 router has great documentation and support, and a strong user community, so figuring out the router isn’t the problem.  Since Qwest / CenturtyLink won’t post the key bits of information, here you go:

1. ***  The Quest / CenturyLink modem has an IP address of 192.168.0.1, so you have to change the IP address your router (192.168.5.1 worked great for me).

2.  Use an Ethernet cable to connect the Qwest / CenturtyLink modem directly to your computer.

3.  Enter 192.168.0.1 in your browser, and complete the Qwest / CenturtyLink PPPoE Quick Setup.

4.  Reconfigure to your network setup (computer – router – modem).

5.  Ignore what Qwest / CenturyLink tech support says about using the same PPPoE password on your router, enter your router’s new IP address in your browser, and configure the router for DHCP.  Done.

(The advertised speed of the service is 20Mbps download, but the actual speed measured by 2wire is a fairly consistent 6 Mbps.)

Moving into the Modern Era and Dumping XFINITY TV and Landline Telephone

I pulled Cat 5e cable from the office router to the living room Ethernet switch, the alarm panel, and a SiliconDust dual HD tuner where the cable from the rooftop antenna enters the basement, and verified gigabit speeds.  Then we installed a Mac Mini and hooked it digitally to our aging 55” HD TV and AV Receiver for the monitor and speakers respectively.  The first thing that the Mini wanted to do, before I even installed iWorks or any other applications, was download 1.5 GigaBytes of software updates.  (I didn’t know that there was that much software on the machine to begin with.)  I would have thought that the product would have shipped from the Apple online store a bit more current, and I was seriously glad to have high speed internet.  Pandora Radio sounds great, and Elgato EyeTV yields 19 channels of flawless HD TV with DVR functionality.  Next is the addition of NetFlix over the internet and other online content.  If all tests out well, Comcast will no longer extract their exorbitant monthly fees from us for TV and home phone.

A New Low from a Chinese Electronics Manufacturer (OK, perhaps not as bad as melamine in milk)

While working with the Ethernet cables, I bought some keystone jacks at a local electronics store.  I planned to use the 1568B wiring layout, and proper configuration was critical as some of the lines would have RJ45 jacks on the other end.  However, the color coding on the keystone jacks didn’t match the color coding on the packaging, and neither of them matched the literature.  http://www.shaxon.com/pdf/Datasheets/BM603I810.pdf I returned the jacks, and after searching futilely online for an hour for jacks made in the USA, settled for what they had at Lowes.

Education?

Mrs. Pinky is studying for a college math placement exam and purchased a study guide to work sample problems.  There were three problems on one page for which she couldn’t figure out the solutions.  After looking at the problems, I realized why: the solutions in the book were wrong!  Is this why math skills in the US are slipping or merely indicative of their current state?

The Apple iWhatever Marketing Mystique

This is absolutely priceless (but for adult audiences only – R for language):

Note:  The Best Buy employee that made this video also posted a video bashing the EVO http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAOtC9QfXac&feature=channel and two other videos making fun of Best Buy sales practices.  Management didn’t appreciate his art and suspended him.  He pulled down the two videos that mentioned Best Buy, but they still weren’t amused and told him that he probably wouldn’t get his job back.

Windows 7 – I Spoke Too Fast – Call the Exterminator

On my first attempt to use Windows 7 backup, it failed, and I received an error message for which the Microsoft support page offered the following helpful tidbit:

If the reparse point points to a location that contains any compressed file format (multimedia files, .zip files, and so on), you receive an error message that resembles the following:

0x81000037: Windows Backup failed while trying to read from the shadow copy on one of the volumes being backed up

To work around this problem, remove this reparse point from the library, and then run the backup wizard again. To back up content for this reparse point, select the absolute path of this location from the Windows Backup configuration user interface.

Huh?!?!?!?!  What in the world is a reparse point?  (Microsoft wasn’t so helpful in explaining this.)

I eventually found that I could get rid of the error by deleting all of my old system restore points.  (Gee, who would want to keep those?)

My next backup attempt yielded a similarly cryptic error message, and again, the Microsoft Support site had nothing useful to say.  Eventually I identified the problem to be my addition of a folder at the same hierarchy as My Documents and My Videos.

For as much as Microsoft charges for Windows 7, I would expect comprehensible error messages and useful info on their support pages.

Windows 7

With my new laptop, I decided to make the jump to Windows 7, so for those of you considering making the switch, here are the highlights:

Pros:

– Fast and stable!

– Microsoft did great work with drivers.  HP hasn’t bothered to touch the driver for my LaserJet printer since 2001, so I was worried about being able to print.  Windows 7 offered to search for a printer driver, and a minute later, I was printing – amazing.

– The ability to resize a document to half screen by dragging it off the side of the screen is nice.

Cons:

– The user interface!  Just like Office 2007 (with its atrocious Fisher Price interface), Windows 7 forces you to learn new work practices to do things that used to be easy in Windows XP.  Their attempt to automate has only made navigating and filing more difficult.  (Searching is much faster.)

– A bit on the bleeding edge, as many programs still aren’t Windows 7 – 64 bit compatible

Bottom line, if you are buying a new computer and have the time and inclination to figure out the changes, you might as well make the jump to Windows 7.  If your XP machine is still running, then stick with what you have.  (Does anybody actually use Vista?)

New Dell Computer

My 5-year old laptop suddenly began misbehaving, and considering its age, I opted to order a new machine instead of wasting time troubleshooting.  After much research, I ordered a Dell laptop.  However, after already being delayed once, I received another email from Dell stating that my order had been delayed for a second time, and that if I didn’t respond that day, my order would be cancelled.  I responded with a call to customer service that was most unfulfilling and followed up with an email:

“Please continue to process and ship my order.  However, my faith in Dell’s ability to deliver has been deeply eroded.  The is the 3rd delivery date that I have been promised, and both delay notices have been sent the day the computer would have had to ship to make the promised delivery date.  It is clear that Dell’s supply chain management system is unable to forecast actual assembly or anticipate delays…”

Later that same day, I received an email that my order had shipped.  I would like to think that my email had that effect, but I suspect that my initial analysis of Dell’s IT system is more likely accurate.