Recent Posts

3676

N.A.N.Y. 2012 / Re: NANY 2012 Pledge & Early Beta: Got Space?

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 05, 2011, 03:22 PM »

Okay, I'm having a bit of trouble replicating this one. Which may have something to do with the Conficker Factor (I'll come back to this in a minute).

One thing that stands out about your SSs is that the TimeStamp is the same in all of them...So I'm guessing a single launch/execution with auto-update disabled, yes?

I tried adding a few additional checks and launching GS mid-format to see if I could get it to hang. I even stopped a long format operation for the purpose of intentionally borking the partition to get it to trip. The partition was borked, Windows showed it has having no volume attached/associated ... But GS just called it a Zero and moved on. Which is perhaps both good and bad at the same time... *Shrug*

Now...

F, G, H, I, and N are unused drive letters, in that no physical drive is attached

Which is accomplished by... It's an SD/Flash Card Reader?? I could have zero space drives of type X just report as "Empty" instead of a string of zeros ... But I need to be sure of what I'm dealing with.


So... (Getting back to the "Conficker Factor") Can you reproduce this (App hang) without a secondary (MES - Yes I'm guessing this part) lock on the target drive?

Thank you,

Stoic Joker

3677

N.A.N.Y. 2012 / Re: NANY 2012 Pledge & Early Beta: Got Space?

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 04, 2011, 01:32 PM »

Cool, thanks for the input. I'm guessing from your SS that F - I are some type of card reader, yes? Is there any lag from reading it/them (like the floppies), or does it just zip through? (I gotta ask as I've no way to test it)

I've been thinking about having the height be dynamically set at runtime based on the number on drives installed on the system. (Given your extensive list...) Do you think this would be handy? Or just confusing/annoying/silly?

3678

Living Room / Re: Centurylink is on CracK

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 04, 2011, 09:24 AM »

Our support team was trained on investigating issues around ecommerce, payments, domains, email etc. It didn't prevent customers calling for every internet related problem ever, and blaming us for every email problem ever (like receiving an email too big for their client or computer to cope with. Or having installed Norton which blocked email...). And often being rude about it.... even when it was something that had nothing to do with our services (we host your website, not your email and we arent your ISP...)

-iphigenie (September 04, 2011, 03:18 AM)

LOL, Understood. The thing is that back a few years (and name changes) they had a business support option that allow experienced users to bypass the flowchart monkeys, a talk to a tech that actually could understand/fix the issue. This is what I always used back them and sorely miss now.

3679

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for very light IM (ICQ) client

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 02, 2011, 09:17 PM »

Are the ads foisted on everyone? or just the free version?

-Stoic Joker (September 02, 2011, 07:15 PM)

There is only free version now from what I can see + some sort of paid service that implements the continuous client idea.

-apankrat (September 02, 2011, 08:14 PM)

Paid, Service?!? (eek!) ...So, the paid version of the app I bought years back has (become useless) been...phased out so-to-speak? Zoiks!

Miranda does look interesting.

-Stoic Joker (September 02, 2011, 07:15 PM)

Well... hrm... I don't know. My hopes have sunk after seeing this:
 (see attachment in previous post)
It feels like it was done by a software developer for a software developer.

-apankrat (September 02, 2011, 08:14 PM)

That does look a bit (over engineered) busy doesn't it.

*Shrug* At least it doesn't require an install, so I'll probably play with it a bit over the weekend anyway.

3680

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for very light IM (ICQ) client

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 02, 2011, 07:15 PM »

I've been using Trillian since it was first released... and given its rather abysmal quality I don't really know why I did And now that they started to stuff ads into the IM stream it seems like a good time to part ways with it.

-apankrat (September 02, 2011, 02:30 PM)

I have (or rather had) been using it for years also ... but haven't had need for (interest in) any IM'ing in quite some time. Are the ads foisted on everyone? or just the free version? I just started the thing for the first time in about a year and it wants to update...I'm thinking perhaps not??



Miranda does look interesting.

3681

Living Room / Re: Building a home server. Please help, DC!

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 02, 2011, 06:52 PM »

Scampering back on topic...

Only issue I foresee with the Uber NAS is that without some manner of high speed backbone connecting the NAS to something that can manipulate the files on it. File maintenance could be agonizingly slow. And if you gotta buy something to run it (eek!) cost with no real return.

If you got your heart set on a rack system, that's fine. But best bang-for-the-buck would IMO be one of the 2U 6 slot rack servers. That way you always can go in and manipulate the files locally instead on over the wire.

2U PowerEdge 2950 with 6 hot-swap bays
3 3TB drives
4GB RAM
Dual Xeon  5150 processors
and a legally licensed copy of Win Server 2003 (32 or 64 bit)

Came out to $1,934 from the site configurator.

You get plenty of room for expansion, and the convenience of local file access. Then if the project really gets huge you can easily add the uber NAS to the rack and let the server handle it.

3682

Living Room / Re: Building a home server. Please help, DC!

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 02, 2011, 06:36 PM »

They are mathematically bases guesses, or assumptions if you will.

-Stoic Joker (September 02, 2011, 09:50 AM)

Actually, they're a lot more than that.

-40hz (September 02, 2011, 01:14 PM)

Only to the person that created them. Because only they know the (true) reasoning behind whatever deviation(s) has/have been used to achieve said target number(s). Statistics are projections of what might be if ... All of the other formulaic assertions used fall into place in accordance with the known factual parameters used, and nothing odd happens. To anyone else there simply an educated guess, that leverages their level of trust in whom ever ran-the-numbers.

Much unlike facts, which require empirical evidence/reproducible results, "valid" statistics merely have to avoid being dead wrong.

Discussion that happens frequently at the office (usually on rush jobs):
Brass: So, how's the testing going?
Me: Well, the first test went well.
Brass: So it works then...
Me: No. The first test didn't fail... But a statical sampling of one doesn't prove shit to anyone (or at least it shouldn't...)
Brass: Oh... Okay, I'll come back later.

3683

General Software Discussion / Re: Linux kernel.org hacked

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 02, 2011, 05:51 PM »

But isn't the mac crowd sort of mixed in with the *nix crowd now?

-wraith808 (September 02, 2011, 12:20 PM)

No, the Mac crowd bends to the will of lord jobs ... And therefore fiercely believes his every decreed word in that OSX is indeed a thing unto itself. Because it use some piece/part/portion in some arcane mini-Minge kernel project, and is therefore not just a slapped on GUI desktop masking a copy of FreeBSD.

And then there's the rest of us that think ^^they're^^ full of shit. 

3684

T-Clock / Re: T-Clock 2010 (download)

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 02, 2011, 05:35 PM »

Is there a format to use instead of  hh  which will give me military time when I set the format for the mouse click but I have my basic Time format set to am/pm?

-MKappy (September 02, 2011, 02:21 PM)

Currently no. But it is something that I've been considering looking into.

Is there a page somewhere that lists all the format codes?

-MKappy (September 02, 2011, 02:21 PM)

Yes, that would be the T-Clock Help.rtf file included with the download.

3685

General Software Discussion / Re: Linux kernel.org hacked

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 02, 2011, 11:40 AM »

Now Ren, I thought we agreed to (only burning the Mac types) cut down on torching people ... The *nix crowd is ok.

3686

Living Room / Re: Building a home server. Please help, DC!

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 02, 2011, 09:50 AM »

I have no problem with facts. I like facts. However statistics are not facts ... They are mathematically bases guesses, or assumptions if you will.

It's a side effect of spending a great deal of my life pushing a (two wheeled) vehicle right up to and well beyond the very ragged razor edge ... of what it statistically was not capable of doing.

As Hon Solo said in the original Star Wars, "Never tell me the odds...".

I am a fan of the chaos theory, and I tend to root for the X factor.

3687

Living Room / Re: Building a home server. Please help, DC!

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 02, 2011, 06:43 AM »

Hm... I'll have to mull that over for a bit, as it's early, and statistics tend to annoy me... 

But thanks for taking a crack at it!

3688

Living Room / Re: Centurylink is on CracK

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 02, 2011, 06:29 AM »

If you have the time and resources to be constantly watching the entire web for references to your company name, why can't you make a similar effort to get a responsive support and service department into place?

-40hz (September 02, 2011, 05:25 AM)

Now that, is a damn fine question.

Red Gear Software, who now owns TaxWorks has an excellent support staff. I had to call them twice this week while migrating client data to new hardware (compatability issues). I gave the first person I talked to a clear description of the problem ... And they responded with a clear and correct solution to said problem(s). That is how Tech Support is supposed to work.

3689

Living Room / Re: Building a home server. Please help, DC!

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 01, 2011, 07:43 PM »

The schism/stepping off point is (or seems to be) cost. For the cost of 10TB of BestBuy class NAS boxes one could easily just get a refurbished commercial server that will always have parts available, is designed to take 100+ times the beating you'll ever give it, and it has a proper true hardware RAID controller ... With a year warranty ... For roughly the same price.

-Stoic Joker (September 01, 2011, 06:00 PM)

The running cost, the noise, the heat, the storage space... all for just 10TB in a home storage context? Hardly worth it IMHO.

-lotusrootstarch (September 01, 2011, 07:06 PM)

You can't possibly be serious. Servers went green to ya know?? running cost is dependent on load. no load. no cost. Sure it draws a bit at idle but without a monitor... less that any other desktop I'd wager.

Noise? Total bullshit. Anything from a PowerEdge 1800 or newer has fan speed controls. Sure under peak load they sound like a vacuum cleaner, but at idle - where they'll be spending all their time - they're whisper quiet.

Heat? Fans say there really ain't much to speak of (See above), especially if you spec it with its actual usage in mind. No 2nd Xeon, no extry 20GB of RAM, etc. etc.


Oh, and it up to the individual to decide if their data is worth keeping ... There are whole TV channels dedicated to movies from the friggin 20s. So obviously somebody had to be hanging on to that shit for some time now... Huh??

3690

N.A.N.Y. 2012 / Re: NANY 2012 Pledge & Early Beta: Got Space?

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 01, 2011, 07:20 PM »

Just posted build 14 with finished registry code, more settings, hotkeys, and a status bar.


I've been fighting with the progress bars idea, but so far it's winning. I either have the old style PBs that jump around when the ListView is scrolled ... Or I have to leverage the uxtheme.dll style PBs which ties me to that and may not work if the OS is skinned. I ain't given up yet, but I've got to go on to other things for a bit in the hopes of having this thing done in time for Christmas... 

3691

Living Room / Re: Anyone else using Ramdisk in Windows 7?

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 01, 2011, 06:12 PM »

In my field of business there's a saying: The first 90% of a project consumes 90% of the budget. The last 10% of the project consumes and additional 90% of the original budget.

I found that to be pretty much the case.

-40hz (September 01, 2011, 05:50 PM)

Yepper, that sounds about right to me too.

I just spent the better part of this week doing an SBS2000 to Server 2008 std migration. which included a decades worth of tax & accounting software.

3692

Living Room / Re: Building a home server. Please help, DC!

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 01, 2011, 06:00 PM »

The schism/stepping off point is (or seems to be) cost. For the cost of 10TB of BestBuy class NAS boxes one could easily just get a refurbished commercial server that will always have parts available, is designed to take 100+ times the beating you'll ever give it, and it has a proper true hardware RAID controller ... With a year warranty ... For roughly the same price.

3693

Living Room / Re: Centurylink is on CracK

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 01, 2011, 05:29 PM »

Hi Stoic Joker,

This is Joey with CenturyLink.  I'm sorrry to read about the trouble you've had with your service.  We would certainly be happy to look into this issue for you.  Can you email us at [email protected] with your name, account information and reference your post here on donationcoder.com?  Thanks.

Joey H
Manager, @CenturyLinkHelp Team
[email protected]

-CenturyLinkHelp (August 31, 2011, 02:28 PM)

Greetings,
   I'd wondered if/when you guys would show up ... Nice to know you're paying attention. However, do I want to grind through the entire sad sordid tale with someone picked at random from a general mailing address that's dumped into a distribution list? No. I really don't have time for that.

Now if you wish to contact me directly...being that you appear to understand the situation already... Do please feel free to provide contact info via the boards PM system.

Thank you,

Stoic Joker, A+, MCSA, MCTS

3694

Living Room / Re: Building a home server. Please help, DC!

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 01, 2011, 03:33 PM »

First, hard drives are super cheap: 10 TB of hard drives is like $500, so what?  Is that really that expensive and crazy?

-superboyac (September 01, 2011, 12:02 PM)

Of course. When you can buy a complete computer for that money, most people are going to flip over at the prospect of blowing away $500 in a bunch of hard drives for personal use. Not everyone can afford that luxury.

-Lashiec (September 01, 2011, 02:19 PM)

It ain't luxury, if you really need it.

Wasn't that long (4-ish years) ago I paid close to (if not a bit over) that for the 3 320GB drives that are (still) in my home machine now.

I've never seen a $500 computer that didn't make me wince (no that's a waste of money).

3695

Living Room / Re: Cute jokes' thread

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 01, 2011, 03:25 PM »

Or not 2B?  My favourite deliberately mangled quotation was in the gent's toilet of the waiting room for the Corran Ferry in Scotland, quite a few years ago.  It said

Support graffitti.  Sign a partition.

-rjbull (September 01, 2011, 02:56 PM)

Now that's funny

3696

Living Room / Re: Anyone else using Ramdisk in Windows 7?

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 01, 2011, 03:22 PM »

The minimum system controlled pagefile size is 1.5x physical. So for me having 4GB of RAM in my x64 box at home, it was grabbing 6GB of drive space just for the pagefile. Which I found rather annoying (especially if it set to clear on shutdown). So not wanting to run completely without I just cut it back to a fixed 2GB size ... Which has as of yet to cause any OOM issues.

I really just got tired of trying to follow and formulate an opinion on the 0 PF safety debacle and just - said the hell with it - split the difference.

3697

Living Room / Re: Building a home server. Please help, DC!

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 01, 2011, 11:40 AM »

...what makes something more serious than another thing?

-superboyac (September 01, 2011, 11:09 AM)

The desire to still have it available after something goes wrong.

95% of the businesses that lose their data go out of business within 3 years. <-That was critical information going poof!)


Can you redefine the actual requirements for the project for us? I keep thinking you are wanting to get like 13+TB of data stored in a (long term) stable environment. But I could be off in the weeds a bit.

3698

General Software Discussion / Re: Macrium Reflect Question In Re: To FAT32 drive

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 01, 2011, 11:25 AM »

I've successfully reformatted the 500Gb drive to NTFS, and am creating another image with Macrium Reflect Free.  I anticipate it will be a single file, and should work fine.

-kyrathaba (September 01, 2011, 07:32 AM)

Next time, perhaps check out convert.exe

-f0dder (September 01, 2011, 10:23 AM)

convert.exe is great if you really need to save the data that's on the drive. But it's not going to guarantee an ideal cluster size unless the drive was prepped properly with the oformat utility (also in the support tools folder).

IIRC, it's not exactly fast/faster either (been a while (decade...) since I've had to use it).

3699

Living Room / Re: Building a home server. Please help, DC!

« Last post by Stoic Joker on September 01, 2011, 07:09 AM »

Commercial grade hardware vs. consumer grade hardware ... I hate consumer grade hardware.

Just went through this with a client a week ago:

IO Mega StorCenter 150, power blip wiped the config. Something was corrupt because it couldn't be reconfigured in a fashion that allowed anyone access the the files.

Tech Support says... It can't be fixed without a firmware update, but the firmware update it needs frequently wipes all the data on the box. Can't pull the data off the drive externally, because it's using some type of *nix based software RAID ... Good Times!!!

3700

General Software Discussion / Re: Explorer with Ribbon

« Last post by Stoic Joker on August 30, 2011, 07:34 PM »

Is really worth all this effort to force the user to do things the Microsoft way? Because without more data from them, one gets the impression that the user gets the job done with hotkeys and the context menu, but Microsoft wants everyone to use the toolbar! And if not, is the average user really making such heavy use of Explorer to the point he is going to appreciate the new design? I assume the power user is already using 3rd party alternatives, which are superior.

-Lashiec (August 30, 2011, 06:37 PM)

Dismal first impressions aside ... Perhaps this is to be a tablet friendly design move. Hotkeys and right clicks basically blow on a tablet with an on screen keyboard. But large-ish clearly marked buttons should be easier to hit/work with.

Just thinking out loud - Don't shoot me.