April's Almost Gone!

This week has been one of reflection. Jacob's birthday has passed, school is winding down, and thoughts of a busy summer come to mind. Kris has been getting over a nasty bug, Andrea has had her TV privileges taken away due to poor grades at school, Jacob got a trip to BWW, and I have completed Stage Two of Rebuilding the "Infernal Gateway."

The Nasty Bug
Last week, Andrea came home with a nasty little 48-hour bug that had her throwing everything up. Naturally, it passed straight on to Kristen, mostly because when the kids are sick, they hang all over her, drink out of whatever she is drinking from, and do their best to make her life a living hell - something they do regardless of their health condition. Kris was also recovering from a foot injury, so she's extra-cheerful.

Andrea's Not Watchin' TV
Andrea came home with her report card, last weekend with mostly C's, D's, and F's. She blamed all of it on her teacher's refusal to give her better grades, as usual. She gives them very little, if any effort and expects them to want to give her higher grades. This was coupled with the fact Andrea has not moved off her couch for the last two weeks. She never studies, never brings homework home, and spends most of her time watching TV.

Monday, she had attempted to continue this. I asked her if she had any homework and she replied "no." I looked at her assignment notebook and she had two assignments, one listed as being due the next day and another due by the end of the week. When I asked her about it, she said she'd forgotten one and was gonna start working on the other later in the week - the exact same thing she had fed us all year long and what is largely responsible for her poor grades.

I'd had enough of it. I went into the basement and disconnected the cable. Andrea was also sent into her room to read with the standing order being no more TV for her until her grades improved. I also promised that if her grades didn't improve before the summer, the cable would be disconnected. Kris is still angry with me because she sees this as punishing her, as well. If she wants to be part of the solution, she can find ways to motivate her kids to do better in school.

Jake's Birthday trip to BWW
After several cancelled plans with his father, I promised to take Jacob to BWW Thursday after I got back from work. When I got home, Jacob was off playing, so I decided to finish up a personal project - assembling the "Infernal Gateway" in the new case I had bought. My new case has the bigger power supply and more expansion room. It is also a very stylish black and silver to match our monitor and the Black FDD and CDROM I had bought.

Well, as soon as I had finished work on the Gateway - 2 1/2 hours, and Jake had come in, I saw that it was now 8 pm. It was a school night, so I'd decide something a little closer would be in order. We went to El Patio - a new Mexican Food place a few blocks away. Jake and I munched on chips and salsa and discussed the finer points of Star Wars Lore with the waitress. Jake ordered a softshell taco kid's plate and munched down everything. He was hungry.

On Friday, Andrea had gone to spend the weekend at her grandparents' house and we had stopped at Arby's to get her supper. On the way back, Kris commented on the fact we didn't have a working toaster. We had planned to get something to eat, but weren't sure what. We went to Wal-Mart to pick up a few groceries and I had promised to get Jake some more darts for his Nerf guns.

After shopping, we went to BWW. Jacob munched down about half of a 24-piece Honey BBQ wing while Kris had a Garden Salad, and I'd decided to try the shrimp and chicken strips plate - not bad, but the Buffalo Wings are much better and cheaper. Jacob's face was covered in BBQ sauce - which means he enjoyed himself. And he even got to play the Trivia game for awhile.

Stage Two: Completed.
As I had said earlier, I was able to move the Gateway internals into a new case with better power supply options. I Bought en Edge ATX-Mini Tower. It's a little larger than the old Gateway tower, but has 5x internal 3 1/2" bays, meaning, I can plug a total of 5 HDs in and expand this to File Serving purposes.

The motherboard went in fine, but I did have to tweak the BIOS a bit to get it to start up correctly. It was probably confused that it now had plenty of power to use on all of my cards. I did the easy thing and yanked the BIOS battery and then reset everything so that it would use the nVidia PCI GFX instead of the Integrated ATI 8 meg card. Not that there's anything wrong with the old card - it just seems, like most other ATI cards I've used, to overheat rapidly.

Here's the next few steps for the Infernal Gateway.

• Stage One: Find Laptop - Completed
  
• Purchased IBM Thinkpad T20
• Upgrade RAM to minimum of 256 RAM
  
• Stage Two: New Case - Completed
  
• Purchase New Case
• Install old components
• Install new CD and FDD
  
• Stage Three: Wireless Networking
  
• Purchase Wireless Router (802.11b/g) to set up access
• Purchase various wireless cards
• Install and Setup networking
• Stage Four: Desktop Replacement
• Purchase Desktop to replace "Infernal Gateway"
• Purchase 2-port KVM switch
  
• Integrate into network
• Upgrade
• Step Five: Performance Upgrades
• Infernal Gateway
• Upgrade to 512MB of RAM
• Install 2x additional HDs 20-80 GB
• Install Win2k Pro
• IBM Thinkpad
• Upgrade to 512MB of RAM
• Install 20-40GB HD
• Install Win2k Pro
• Desktop Replacement
• Upgrade to 1GB of RAM
• Install 40-80GB HD
• Install WinXP Pro
• Step Six: Additional Machines Wanted
• New Laptop
• IBM or Sony Preferred
  
• 1.4Ghz or better
• 1GB of RAM or better
• 64MB GFX or better
• WinXP
• WinCE/PocketPC Machine(s)
• NEC MobilePro 7xx or 8xx series
• 2-3 wanted
  
• Sony Picturebook
• 400-66x MHz model preferred
• Windows 98SE or Win2K
  
• 256MB of RAM or better
• 10-20GB HD preferred

Work
This week at work, I was able to finish a few projects. I finished the Network IP mapping which took roughly a week and a half of work. I probably would have finished sooner, but between tech calls, and the repair work I did this week, I was only able to work about 1-2 hours a day on it. Friday was dead, so I worked about 5-6 hours straight until it was done.

Kris has been in and out of work this week with headaches and stuff related to the bug Annie gave her. She has been making up lost time by working until 3:30. Her boss has also been riding her butt about these illness-related absences which is a total crock of shit. Kris can't help being sick or injured and having to take time off to go to the hospital or come home before she passes out.

Mid April - May's a-comin'

This week had two great destinctions - Easter Weekend and my birthday. Both have turned out to be somewhat of a bust. This week ends with both kids being gone to their dad's house, where they will stuff gobs of easter crap down each other's throat, whine and bitch about who gets to play ont he Gamecube, and then stuff hot bits of Ham down their gullets. Kris and I will have a nice quiet Easter Day lunch with the dogs.

Computer Woes - the beginning of the end.
The Infrenal Gateway gave us a nasty right-left combo this week - last Sunday morning, Kris booted the computer to find there was no screen. Hmmm. I did the usual flat panel diagnostics, but for some reason, the screen was not showing up. Then I thought about the recent installation of my USB card, and the hub I had plugged in. Bingo.

USB, through its advanced silicon chips and such, draws power from the bus to power your various devices. In some cases, your hub may be self-powered - meaning that it has an adapter you plug into the wal to draw the power your devices need. In other cases, your hub may be bus-powered - meaning it draws your power directly from your computer.

My hub was set to "Bus" because I seem to have misplaced my Adapter - SONOFABITCH! That means all of my USB-crap was drawing power directly from my system. Now on a computer that has a 300-watt (or more) power supply, plugging a few PCI cards in, and using bus-powere USB devices may not put much of dent in your system. A system with plenty of power should handle the additional load of USB bus-powered devices fine.

BUT NO! My antiquated system had a whopping 90-watts of power available to it. That means I have 90watts to power 1 HD, 1x FDD, 1x CDROM, 1 CDRW, a PCI GFX card, a PCI slot fan, and my USB card. 90 watts, people. My power supply was stretched to the limits. We'll say that the 90-watts is finite, meaning that's all there is, there ain't no more.

The Motherboard and graphics card need set amount of power to operate, whatever else is attached gets to share whats left. When those other devices begin to draw more power from the supply, such as my 5-port USB card with Hub, Cable Modem, and Printer attached, it begins to draw power away from the Motherboard and graphics card. This results in reduced performance - short-term, fried components - long term.

Well, in most cases, one would simply purchase a bigger power supply. Unfortunately, that cannot happen if the case uses a proprietary power supply, which is the case in point with the "Infernal Gateway." The only "upgrade" I could get for my case would be 150-watt. That is a jump of 60-watts, but I don't consider that to be a sufficient upgrade that is cost effective.

Now, I have gotten my money's worth out of this system. But I had planned to build a new system and would need to stretch this one a little longer until I could get the new motherboard, processor, and RAM. So, buying a new case for this new computer would seem to be the most cost effective choice at this time. I get a new case, that I would need for my new system, and I get a bigger power supply.

Once I have the new power supply, I should see a performance increase on the system as all device will have more than enough power to operate at their full capacity. I will also be able to gut the "Infernal Gateway" and rid myself of the nasty white case once and for all.

And Kris's take on all of this: Ehhh, whatever.

Perfect.

April's Hours

April has broke out all across Wisconsin. And with the cheerful atmosphere of forgotten snow and warmer weather, another menace has arisen from hybernation - the Wisconsin Asshole Driver.

The WAD is a person who spend their entire time talking on the phone, driving too slow or too fast, and who will honk at you the second you sit at any stop longer than necessary. The WAD also honks at people walking across the steet and is generally charaterized as being impatient mindless minon of stupidity.

Unfortunately, the WAD is not characterized as being an actual Wisconsin resident. No, the WAD is normally from Illionios or Minnesota. For whatever reason, they have chosen a temporary exile from their homes in order to act like total assholes in ours.

Fortunately, there is a solution to this problem. When you encounter a WAD, you should display the same level of courteousness as they have shown to you. This may be accomplished through heavy use of adjective phrases and humorous qand gestures. The most popular being the temporary display of the middle finger, followed by the exclamation - "go back to Illinois you drunken bastard." In cases where the person is not native to Minnesota or Illinois, the display of the middle finger will suffice.

You may also choose to get out of your car, in traffic cases. The WAD is a coward by nature, so any hint of violence over his discourteous nature will result in an apology or hasty leave from the scene.

Finally, a few local residents have found other ways with dealing with WADs. Usually, this involves a high-powered rifle or bludgeoning device and deliberate applied applications to said person. In these case, extreme as they may be, the WAD usually becomes an ex-WAD, and the involved applier of brute force, a convict. But in the end, he is providing a service to the rest of the state. And one less Wisconsin Asshole Driver can only act to improve this great cheese, eating, beer-drinking, sasuage eating, tractor driving farmer state...

The ThinkPad
I was able to upgrade the RAM on my laptop to 256MB. Unfortunately, I had to special order the RAM as the local computer store did not have the correct item and refused to order it. This is the second case where a RAM Technoogies employee has refused to special order a product for me.

Not that I need them to order anything for me. I probably have better sources for computer parts than the next guy, working through Discover, eBay, and a few other sources, I can buy almost anything I need faster and cheaper than taking my business to any retailer. Still, it is an inconvenience not being able to go to a local retailer and order parts. If they don't want my business, then I won't give it to them.

Useless Serial Bus
I also have bought several additional goodies - a PCMCIA wireless network card, a PCMCIA 10/100 NIC card, an additional USB 10/100 NIC, and a USB-PS2 splitter. This brings my USB kit up to the following:

• 1x PCMCIA 2-port USB 2.0 Card
• 1x GE 4-port USB Mini-hub
• 1x 128MB USB Thumbdrive
• 2x USB NIC
• 1x 4ft Cat5 Cable
• 1x USB snake flex lamp
• 1x USB Direct Connect Cable
  
• 1x 3ft USB Cord
• 1x 14ft USB Cord
• 1x 1.4MB Floppy basic drivers
  
• 1x CD w/ Cleaning Utilites
• 1x CD w/Driver Software

What I need to finish up the kit is:

• 1x USB snake flex personal fan
• 1x 1GB USB Thumbdrive
• 1x USB 1.4MB Floppy Drive
• a case to carry everything

While I'm at it, I would like to find a used Sony Picturebook, either 400MHz or the 600 MHz model as the laptop has 4 USB ports on it. This is mostly because my "work desk" is now covered with no less than 3-4 computers:

• 1x Dell running WinXPPro
• 1x Dell running Win2KPro
• 1x eMac running MacOS X.3x
• 1x enPower Laptop running Win98SE

Couple with that, the fact my "work desk" is actually a series of desks and a workbench, and you may get the impression I have an entire room filled with computers I can work on. I also have been taking my Thinkpad to work as I don't quite trust the house enough to leave it at home. I use it to have Gaim up and running, and occasionally watch WinAMP TV on it on the slower days.

A Picturebook is a small subnotebook that is smaller than the older Toshiba Libretto series. I use the laptops at work to run experiments with different AV packages. A smaller faster laptop would be a welcomed addition. Finding a working one on eBay is another matter.

Spring Weather brings out the wildlife
Jacob has been playing outside with his new group of friends. They play army, baseball, or just ride their bikes all over. Its good to see that he has something to do, but we still have to fight him on the homework issue.

Andrea has flunked two subjects this time around and will be forced to go to summer school. She failed English and Science. Most of this is due to her not doing her work or refusing to hand it in on time. She also never studies and refuses to do so because "it isn't fun." Since neither of the kids understand the concept of working hard to play hard, any explanation of it is completely wasted on her.

Kris hurt her foot a few nights ago and has been in quite a bit of pain. She had been trying to put Jada out, one morning, and stood ont he step wrong. Its not much of a surprise as she is not a very graceful person. She went to a doctor and found she had two hairline fractures. She's going to have to take it easy for the next few months so they will heal.

Jada and Lily have been enjoying the warmer weather by spending more time outside. It apperars that spring marks the move of a few of our neighbors, so Jada has had lots of new people to "Roooo" at. Lily has had fun barking at a few of them, herself. But Lily's time outside is somewhat limited. She spends much of her time snuggled up in her blankets on the chair. Jada will sometimes snuggle up there with her, but she also likes to sprawl out on the couch.

Getting the Bills Paid
After being in and out of work during 2005, its no small surprise that I have been jugling overdue bills with each paycheck. I hope to have everything caught up by June so that I may begin saving up money for a few odds and ends items I would like to buy.

I have the Desktop to replace, which will likely set me back about $200. I'm building it from sratch or using a barebones kit. I also have the Infernal Gateway to upgrade and fix up. And we will probably have a decision to make regarding our car/truck in the next year. Jacob and Annie have birthdays and a few other items to get taken care of. And I have a whole year to save up some money to send my son for Christmas and his next birthday.

We will probably have to buy a few items for the house and yard and decide about the summer arrangements. I would like to go through and get rid of a lot of junk. And I have an eBay seller's account to set up to get rid of my old tech gadgets.

Final Thoughts:
Jacob's birthday is coming up in the next two weeks. I am trying to decide what to get him.

Andrea is trying to con us into another sleepover. She was told that she couldn't have another until her grades improved. They haven't.

Kris has a trip to "the cities" to make this with her boss. She's not too excited about it.

Spring has finally arrived! - April!!!

The last of the Winter's snow has just about melted away, the spring rains have come, and the birds have come back - yeah, damned birds.

Bye to Snow, again.
The first hint of spring came with warmer weather at the beginning of March. The days grew warmer, the snow melted away, and everything seemed as if we would get some nice weather to go outside and glean up the crap that was buried by the last four months of snowfall. But then - BAM, another damned blizzard - 12 inches! Then we struggled through another three weeks of random flurries, and miserable blueballin' cold.

In the last week of March, the snow has melted away, we have gotten a few ice storms, and two nice little showers. But then a Seagull came and it was "this is this and that is that..." With one week until April, the two foot snow drifts are gone, replaced by soggy marsh-like bog. For some of my co-workers, their yards are mud pits, from which nothing can escape.

This last week, we got several storms, and a few ice storms, as if God, himself were taunting us, saying "All right, I'll let you have warm Spring weather, but if you piss me off, again, I'll bury your fat ass in another foot of snow, ya beer-drinkin', sausage eatin' farmin' bastards..." And so it came to pass there was a great muddiness across the land. And the people, drunken and stupid as they were, were grateful... AMEN.

April Fools, bitch!
This week was horrible at home. Jacob was the only kid on the block who has three bikes, but couldn't ride any of them. And for our hand in this villainy, Jacob punished Kris and I on an almost daily basis for this fact. He made his demands and insisted he would not even remotely cooperate until he could ride his bike.

Kris bore the brunt of his tantraums - screaming and yelling, slamming doors, and beating on the walls. I laughed at him, because he was acting like a two year old, I admitted I would never cooperate with a person who was being irrational as he was, and ignored most of it. Until he called me a loser.

Then, I sat his butt down on the couch and shut him up. I told him his ability to ride his bike was entirely dependent on our good graces. If he wished to be allowed the privelege of riding his bike, he would behave in such a way that the privelege were deserved.

Ya know, reasonable, rational, and cooperative behavior would be rewarded with resonable, rational, and cooperative priveleges. AS usual, neither of the kids understand the Golden Rule - treat people the way you wish to be treated. And because neither of them understand that concept, they usually get very little in way of cooperation from me.

I understand that parents have to meet kidshalf way, but it also their responsibility to learn to cooperate and work within the system. They still have the attitude that cooperation means, they demand, and we cooperate with them by giving it to them immediately when they demand it.

Nope. I refuse to kowtow to their irrational behavior. So, to hell with their demands and to hell with them. When they want to behave rationally, I will address their terms. Until then, shut up! No negotiator would ever bend to demands without getting some kind of compensation. If the kids want their compensation, they will negotiate terms that are rational and reasonable. And if they want to negotiate, they have to have something to bring to the table. Screaming, yelling, and banging on the walls is not rational or reasonable bargaining materials!


Unfortunately, Kris does not always share this opinion and is much easier to sway by their tantraums. Their behavior hurts here feelings and usually is the source of her stress headaches. She usually does not have the patience to deal with them and will simply give in to shut them up. They, in turn, take that as proof they can use that behavior to get what they want. SO when they want something, they know they can get it by acting that way. Not that Kris always gives in, but they have a reasonable success rate and are roughly 80% successful.

They know that they are wasting their time with me, so they usually won't even bother with me. I don't accept that kind of behavior and will usually send them to their rooms immediately. If they want my attention or wish to discuss something with me, they will do it in a reasonable and rational manner. Until then, I'm just gonna ignore them. If they want to scream and yell and make themselves feel even more miserable about not getting something they want, they're welcomed to do it in their own room - as long as it doesn't destroy something in the process.

IBM Thinkpad T20 Model 2647
Friday, after a long day at work, I returned home to two things - an empty, quiet house and my new laptop sitting on the livingroom floor. I hastily opened the box and began setting it up.

THis laptop was in amazing shape! The outer shell is a metallic plastic that is a gunmetal gray. There were almost no scratches or scuffs anywhere on the unit. And the unit is all of 1 inch thick. My previous laptop was two and half inches thick. This unit was smaller and lighter, yet has a 14-inch screen. Here are it's actual specs:

• Pentium III 650MHz processor
• 128 MB of RAM (expandable to 512MB)
• 6GB Harddrive
• 24x CDROM
• Internal 56k Modem
• Internal NIC RJ45
• 8MB S3 Graphics Card
• Windows 98SE (installed the right way)
• 64-bit Sound Card
  

Here's what I like about it:

• Very fast - zips in and out of Win98, shuts down in 2 seconds!
• Excellent Condition - the laptop looks brand new, and is probably one of the best eBay buys I have ever made.
• Connectivity - I can use the NIC or Modem card to connect! This frees up the USB and PCMCIA slots for other uses.
• Graphics - the 8MB card will allow me to run - KKND, AOE, UT, and R6 games I play on the "Infernal Gateway."
• Sound - the last year ont he current install of Win98 on the "Infernal Gateway" has left me without the full use of my systems 128-bit sound card. That means I can't and haven't been able to use Music Passport. This system has decent sound that I can work with. Even better, I can buy a PCMCIA sound card and have even better sound.
• UltraBay - I can swap any number of drives with this bay - CDRW, DVD-Rom, Zip, a second HD, a Floppy, or even an additional battery.
  

What I don't much like about it:

• Windows98 - while the previous owner did an excellent job getting this computer ready for me, I still would have preferred to have a Win2K Pro. Still, I had planned to move up to Win2K Pro as soon as I can get my hands on a new copy.
• Harddrive - 6GB is small. Once you get past the fact that you have roughly 5.5GB to work with after Windows, you can very easily fill the harddrive with just a few apps. This is definitely something I plan to upgrade either 10 or 20GB - that would solve this issue immediately. I don't want to get too large because I want this to remain a fast system and 40GB just seems a little extreme at this point. Besides, I am buying a 40GB external drive and will have that additional storage available.
  
• RAM - 128 MB is a little low for Win98SE. I do plan to purchase an additional 128 or 256MB, depending on how this memory is configured on the system. Eventually, I will max the RAM out. So this is just a temporary annoyance as most of the other issues.
• 650MHz Pentium III - don't get me wrong, this system is fast and is faster than the initial IBMs I had been considering (P2 400MHz Thinkpad 390 and 600E). THis isn't really a complaint, and I can upgrade the Processor to a PIII 1GHz.
• S3 8MB Gfx Card - I'm not sure if I can upgrade this feature, but I won't be able to play Infiltration on this machine. So, I will have to wait until the new desktop or a newer laptop.
  
• USB - this is a major problem with this machine. 1 USB port is far too minimalistic for a laptop. Currently, I have the one port occupied with my Cable Modem. IF I want to plug in more, I will have to get a USB Hub. I do have a PCMCIA USB card but that brings up another issue. The card is powered from the PCMCIA slot and draws additional power from USB. (I'm sorry, but whomever designed this card was a moron. Obviously, tying up the system's USB port was what led me to purchase the card. But having to tie up the systems main USB to power a card which should be powered by the PCMCIA slot. ) This is mostly a gripe about the card I had bought, but it ends up also pointing out the fact IBM should have put an additonal USB port on this system. This was a PIII system, they should have at least put 2 USB ports on the system.
• No FDD - I'm not sure if this was just an issue with the seller or what, but my system has no FDD, meaning I will have to buy a USB FDD or find a used IBM FDD. USB route, I have already addressed. The T20 is supposed to come with an Ultrabay FDD that has an external link. I didn't recieve that with the laptop. Nothing against the seller, but I am going to need a FDD. This will be addressed shortly with another few purchases from eBay.

Still, the system is amazing! It's not a complete replacement, but it will more than cover our daily apps and all of Kris's games. And I can play AOE, UT, and Rainbow Six games, so it's got my vote. It runs Win98 very well, and I'm sure Win2K would be perfect for this system. I can wait on the other games for now. Once we have the new desktop - possibly another eBay purchase in a month or two, the laptop will move into "2nd comp" - status. And once we get the newer laptop, I may decide to move this puppy to work. I do know the kids aren't getting their hands on it.