Archive for category Daily Updates
Busy and Thankful
Posted by J.D. in Daily Updates, parenting on February 26th, 2010
Things have been busy around here! Projects left and right, with a trip (thanks Jesse 
) coming up to top things off. But it’s a good busy and good projects too. These are worthwhile things that pay dividends in the long run. Despite the busyness, we are making sure to take time out for the little things that mean a lot to us. This is a very special time for us as we consider the future and treasure the present.
On a personal note: Pregnancy from the husband’s perspective
I’m enjoying being the husband of a pregnant woman. It’s a totally new experience to me and I’m excited, dumbfounded and happy (often all at the same time).
My wife is wonderful and she’s handling pregnancy very well. But I am very thankful for her support group of friends: women that are going through it, have been through it, or are contemplating it at some point in the future. It’s not that Samantha needs or wants help per se, rather she has compatriots that she can just talk to about anything and everything . I do my best, but I’m no substitute for her talking with her gal pals.
Along those lines, we’ve gotten to see a lot of our local friends lately and that has been really nice. Likewise, our family is awesome and it’s great having them be so supportive (even if some of our family we don’t get to see nearly as often as we’d like!)
I really couldn’t ask for anything more 
.
PS Congratulations to the Winona Wildcats Varsity, they played a great game tonight and won against the Couch Indians in overtime. The players from both towns did an excellent job and they all played hard.
Projects this weekend
Posted by J.D. in Computers, Daily Updates, Household, Remodeling on February 22nd, 2010
This was a wonderful weekend at home. I worked on some fun projects and did some “business” work. Samantha played with some new toys (stroller, etc.) and cooked some delicious delights. Also, before the weekend got here, we had a lot of fun going out to eat with my mom and dad to celebrate my dad’s birthday! Even before that, we had a great Valentine’s day (which I still need to post an entry about…)
But now back to the weekend, here’s a sampling of the projects:
Favorite homebrew computers: 1997-2010
Posted by J.D. in Building, Computers, Daily Updates, Work on January 31st, 2010
Some people enjoy building hot rods, or building model airplanes. I enjoy building computers.
The first PC I built was in 1997, I was a sophomore in HS. I can still remember researching all the parts, using a computer in the HS science classroom (I didn’t have internet at home at that time). Tom’s Hardware and Anandtech were my primary sources of motherboard and CPU reviews. Those two sites helped me immensely in choosing the best components for my “first build”.
Since that time I’ve built around 35-40 computers. Some for friends, some for family, a lot for clients and a lot for myself (for business use and personal use). Some of the machines are rather forgettable, but there are others I’ll always remember .
So, here are some of my favorites spanning from 1997 to 2010:
3.1GHz Quad Core System on the Cheap: $200
Posted by J.D. in Building, Computers, Daily Updates on January 31st, 2010
The need for cheap speed!
Yesterday I read a nice little article over at Anandtech about unlocking the extra two cores in AMD Phenom II X2 555 CPUs. This lets you take a dual core CPU and turn it into a quad core CPU*.
*The extra two cores aren’t guaranteed to unlock and be 100% reliable, but it’s easy to stress test and see if your particular CPU can handle it. Reading other people’s experiences it looks like the success rate is 70%+ which is good enough for me to give it a shot. Worst case I’m left with a nice dual core system that could still be overclocked even if it couldn’t be unlocked.
I’ve been wanting to build a nice little system when I return from Hawaii, but I didn’t want to spend much money on it. This build looked perfect so I decided to bite the bullet!
CPU: X2 550 $90.99
I couldn’t find the X2 555 anywhere so I went with the AMD Phenom II X2 550 from NewEgg. That CPU is one step down from the 555, so a 3.1GHz CPU instead of 3.2GHz. The cooling fan was a bundle special on NewEgg, ending up only being $4.99
Memory: DDR2 $0 (already owned this)
I’m using spare DDR2 RAM that I already have at home. I should have at least 4GB and maybe even 8GB.
Motherboard: ASRock for $69.99
This was the toughest choice. I wanted cheap, reliable, and compact. I think I found all three . The ASRock A785GMH/128M. It supports a wide variety of AMD CPUs: AM3/AM2+/AM2 AMD 785G, has HDMI out (with audio passed through I believe), and is a nice small Micro ATX format.
It was a tough choice between integrated graphics or discrete (add on) graphics. I decided to get a board with integrated b/c it would cut costs and I can always disable it if I need more power. The built in HD 4200 graphics are actually decent enough for modern 3D games at lower resolutions: Sims 3, World of Warcraft (WoW) [29.4 FPS at 1280x1024 Source: AMD PDF], Left 4 Dead, etc. You can find some more gaming benchmarks here. I don’t do much hardcore gaming so this should do just fine for now .
Storage: SSD $0 (already owned this)
I’ll be putting a spare 80GB X-25M SSD in this machine, it should scream!
Case: ASUS TM-211 $25 (300 watt power supply included)
ASUS TM-211
I used some spare “eBay bucks” to get a case and power supply for $25. I would have liked to add a nice super-efficient power supply, but for now this one will do (and there’s a chance I already have a spare high efficiency PS at home). Plus I’ll be running it off of solar energy so there won’t be any adverse environmental effects if it sucks a little extra juice.
Total cost: $198.52
The total (including case) should be about $198.53. Of course I’m using RAM and a storage device that I already had. If you didn’t have those on hand then you could probably get RAM & HD for $50-$100 bucks. So you’re looking at $250-$300, still not bad for a pretty darn fast system!
Order Date: 2010.01.29
Order Summary
| Qty | Product Description | Price | |
| 1 |
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| 1 |
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| Shipped from TN, USA | |||
| 1 |
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| Subtotal | $165.97 | ||
| Tax | $0.00 | ||
| UPS Ground | $7.56 | ||
| Order Total | $173.53 | ||
A Few Personal Highlights of 2009
Posted by J.D. in Daily Updates, Travel on December 31st, 2009
As I ponder the year, and how fast it sped by, here is a short sampling (there are a lot of things are left out) of what stood out during the year… You can checkout Samantha’s year end recap as well as Jessica’s. If you have your own year end recap, please post a link in the comments!
These are organized by category, not by chronology… Warning, there are a LOT of photos!
Work update from paradise
Posted by J.D. in Daily Updates, Hawaii, NetRender, Work on December 16th, 2009
I may be in Hawaii, I’m still doing as much or more work as usual. It’s just a lot warmer here .
Today I’ve been working on some simple improvements for NetRender (NR), it’s a site that sells hi-res textures. John is my partner on the site and we try to improve the site anytime we can.
Here’s what I’ve been up to:
+backed up everything (as part of our periodic backup schedule)
+removed the credit card logos from the sidebar of texture sample pages:
http://www.netrender.com/texture-maps/trees/trees-vol-1/trees-texture-pack-i-sample-3/
(previously the credit card icons would get overlayed onto textures when the textures were really big. It looked pretty yucky, and really we only need the credit card icons on the product/ordering pages)
+removed the “subpage” listing on the shopping cart:
http://www.netrender.com/cart/
(this was over at the side and used to list “transaction results” and “checkout” etc. but those links weren’t really supposed to be clicked… I think this will be less confusing for people)
+revised the text at the top of sample pages
http://www.netrender.com/texture-maps/trees/trees-vol-1/trees-texture-pack-i-sample-1/
I think it’s more straightforward and lets people know that the image is only one of many, and that they can buy the image…
+removed the “attachment” text, pages like http://www.netrender.com/texture-maps/trees/trees-vol-1/trees-texture-pack-i-sample-1/
used to say:
NetRender >Â Trees Vol 1 > Attachment: Tree from NetRender
but now it says:
NetRender >Â Trees Vol 1 >Â Tree from NetRender
+Added some new administrative features.
+Implemented keyword tracking and storing (this stores the keywords that people are searching for to find out pages)
-I’d like to finally get coupon (discount) codes enabled soon. (it is just a tricky thing to implement with our site…)
-I need to improve (and enlarge) some of out texture samples
-We’re also planning either a new free texture site, or a NetRender free texture section.
Non-work update
Hawaii is spectacular! This is the first day I’m staying in and not walking/biking around the Island, however, I did do my P90X ab-ripper workout and Samantha did her 30 day shred workout.
I though I might get bored in Hawaii, but I was wrong .
Misc Notes from the Farm
Posted by J.D. in Daily Updates, Uncategorized on October 15th, 2009
The little creek near our house started running again.
We put up four ricks of firewood today.
I’m helping Samantha build a weaving bench out of red oak.
Working on souping up a Dell M4400 to be a killer notebook .
Samantha and I started the P90X workout routine this week, we’re sore.
Outstanding Week
Posted by J.D. in Daily Updates on September 23rd, 2009
Good work and good play
This has been an outstanding week. One of my favorite weeks in a long time. Much of that is due to Samantha. She has been here working and playing alongside me. We’ve been accomplishing a lot and having a grand ol’ time doing it.
Warning, there are a LOT of photos in the rest of this post!
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