TechUnplugged

September 13, 2007

Finally

It took some time for me to get this long overdue post out. The move went smooth and the servers are now sitting in their new home and new cabinets. There were a million little things that needed to get worked out and that chewed up a lot of my time over the next couple of weeks. I wore my body out over those two weeks, so much so that I came down with a cold and then finally a sinus infection from it. I am taking some antibiotics now for it as well as some other medications to keep it under control and keep me functional. Below are some pics from the job, both of which will take you to the Flickr gallery for the job.

August 4, 2007

Three Weeks Out

Things are finally coming together at the new location for my client. The server room is already at the point where I could bring in three of the four racks being installed. The fourth rack is in production and cannot be moved until the day of the move. The racks are attached with special bars that lock the units together. The racks had to be brought in so the electricians could drop down the power drops to the units and also ground the racks. The wiring and telecom guys should be dropping their lines into the racks starting next week.

May 1, 2007

New Office Shaping Up

I visited my client’s new office today to look over the progress. I met with the contractor, electrician and AC guy to discuss the server room needs. Here is a picture of the main entrance and soon to be conference room.

April 6, 2007

Hip Hip Hooray!!

It looks like my rank glitch is gone. My percentage between ranks in G.R.A.W 2 had been frozen (stuck) for nearly two weeks. Microsoft gave me no solution to my problem, however one of their community members made a suggestion that seems to have done the trick. He told me to host an unranked player match and the go into a ranked match thereafter. That starts another glitch, when you do that no matter what rank you are you show up as a rank 1 to others. After two straight wins my rank now shows 5% towards next rank. YEAH!!!!!!

April 3, 2007

Xbox Live: "You Want What? That's funny!"

I purchased G.R.A.W 2 (Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2) for the Xbox 360 the day it was released. I have played it just about daily since buying it. This time around I decided I would only play ranked multiplayer matches. I never really did on the first version that came out for the 360. When you play ranked it keeps tracks of your wins and losses and your percentage between ranks goes up and down until you get to 100% percent and move up to the next rank.
The problem that I encountered is that two weeks ago I hit rank 5, however my percentage has remained at 0% towards the next level. No matter how many straight wins I get it doesn’t move past 0%. I posted my problem on Ubi’s forums, the maker of the game. I have not received a reply how to get around this problem. I did however get replies from individuals telling me they had the same problem. So I thought this might be more than a glitch I was having. I went to the Xbox Community Forums hosted by Microsoft and found there were more individuals having the same problem. I can only imagine there are a lot more people having the problem but not taking the time to post about it.
Continue reading “Xbox Live: "You Want What? That's funny!"”

March 31, 2007

Keeping Busy

One of my clients is about to move to a new location in the city. They just ordered some new Dell equipment to augment their existing IT infrastructure. The new equipment arrived on Saturday and I was able to get them up and running in a temporary location. I was able to get them to the point where I could remotely finish the work needed. I’m working on moving a large number of user directories to their new 3 Terabyte array. The array is attached to two servers and backed up by a LTO-3 tape library. Their existing server room has one rack in it and cannot accommodate the new equipment. Three new racks are going to be added to the new location at which point the new equipment will be placed in their permanent home. Working on the servers should keep me occupied all weekend with the occasional break to play some Ghost Recon 2.

March 31, 2007

Sick, Sick, Sick

Sorry that I haven’t posted anything in while, I was pretty sick. I had a sinus infection which had me laid out for several weeks. I usually get them at least once a year. The one I had this time was a real bad one. They gave me Cipro to knock it out, which is a pretty heavy Antibiotic. I felt a little better after a week but then my chest started acting up. This time I went back to the specialist that I usually see. He scoped my sinus cavity and saw the infection was still there. So he gave me some antibiotics which were stronger and a syrup with narcotics in it to suppress my coughing. I am starting to feel better now and hope this is the end of it all.

Crossing my fingers!

March 15, 2007

What Is This Thing Called Twitter?

After hearing so much about this website and its service, I decided to give it a try. When I first thought of the premise ‘What are you doing?’, I said who really cares. Well it seems like a lot do. So I will give it a try and let you know what my friends and I think of it. Hopefully I will have something put together in the next week or so.

March 13, 2007

BFG: Shameful Support

Ever since PCI express slots were available on motherboards, I have been running dual NVIDIA graphics cards for quad displays under Windows XP. When Vista arrived I decided to design a new rig with dual 8800GTXs at it’s core. The quad displays worked fine as they did before, however now under Vista Ultimate x64 albeit with questionable drivers. The system was shaky with blue screens left and right with no logical reasoning. The driver support from NVIDIA was abysmal for both their 8800 video chipset as well as their 680i motherboard chipset. In an earlier post you saw how I couldn’t stand it anymore and I dropped Vista for the time being and went back to XP.
Well after reinstalling XP Pro I could only get two monitors operational. I decided to give BFG tech support a call for some assistance. When I described the problem I was having they quick answer was “We don’t support more than two displays on a system”. I said the unit has 4 available ports with two cards why is there no support for this configuration. He was steadfast in his answer. I informed him I have been running quad configurations in this manner with both the 6800 and 7900 series of cards. I asked what was different about the 8800 series that it cannot support quad monitors. He couldn’t give me answer a straight answer. I then stated if it is not supported why it is not displayed on a FAQ on their site or on the box. I then asked him what I should do with $1200 worth of video cards. His answer was returning them. At that point there was a long pause on my end, as I tried to keep myself from blowing up on the technician. I guess he figured I was at that stage and asked if I would like to speak to a supervisor, which I agreed too.
Continue reading “BFG: Shameful Support”

March 7, 2007

Don't Count The PS3 Out Yet!

We’ll today I picked up my second game I felt worthy enough to play on a PS3, MotorStorm. I have always had a problem with the titles available for the PS3 and my biggest gripe was with the online playability of their titles. What I mean by that is that it is impossible to follow your friends around by what they are currently playing, unless you are playing the same title and have your friend listed in your buddy list for that particular game. Sony’s lack of a global friends list, as is available in Microsoft’s Xbox live is what has crippled the unit. I also thought this is what would put the final nail in Sony’s PS3s coffin.
A couple of days ago Kotaku broke a story regarding a rumor about Sony’s soon to be announced ‘Home’ service. The story soon had them him hot water with Sony, who eventuality blackballed the site. Sony reversed its stance shortly after the quite public and loud outcry for its strong arming of a news outlet. At today’s Game Developer Conference, Sony announced the ‘Home’ service. Below is the demo video of the service as well as a link to the Joystiq article describing the service and it’s availability. Continue reading “Don't Count The PS3 Out Yet!”