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  1. Mercutio

    Something Random

    I don't know. My boss finally did come in to the office, so at least I don't have to be the one who has to deal with the sheriff.
  2. Mercutio

    Paperless office stuff

    I got a lot of mileage out of NitroPDF for a lot of simple stuff like adding signatures to electronic documents. Good, descriptive file names and some kind of network storage that supports Windows 7 libraries and integrated search could go a long, long way.
  3. Mercutio

    Something Random

    Not sure. My building was sold to a magnet school at about this time last year. The school didn't do due diligence to find out that some of the space in the building was already occupied and leased. The school believes they have full use of the building. We've been paying rent to the school...
  4. Mercutio

    How would one best go about tuning storage for Maximized Read \ Write rates?

    What kinds of data are being stored on the arrays? Video? .jpgs? Database stuff that's mostly held in RAM? The answer to your question is probably a solid "it depends" because your SAN performance in the end isn't going to be about bullshit synthetic benchmarks but live performance with real...
  5. Mercutio

    Something Random

    So my employer is getting eviction papers for my office today. I'm the only person here. How awesome is that?
  6. Mercutio

    8x 1.5tb on LSI MegaRAID = very slow

    That's an "entry level" RAID controller according to LSI's marketing materials. It's entirely possible that with eight drives in a RAID5 configuration, you're just swamping whatever onboard CPU that thing has. I'd suggest trying a softraid5, but it doesn't sound like you're on a platform that...
  7. Mercutio

    question Junking traditional TV for streaming only

    I think there are good arguments to be made for using USENET, but I've found that it's easier to get obscure things through torrents, at least with a couple of the private trackers I'm using. It's kind of amusing me right now that the two largest adult-material torrent sites ceased operations a...
  8. Mercutio

    Online backup

    I will also say that I spent about seven months looking at Craigslist and Ebay before I found my tape library. I got it through Craigslist. I think it came from a failed business. I hope it did. I'm not asking that many questions.
  9. Mercutio

    problem Computer crash when processing large amounts of data

    Exactly. Everything I buy needs to be Crucial, Mushkin or Corsair and it all needs to conform to JEDEC spec before I'll buy it. I've been bitten a few times by RAM that wouldn't even work unless it was overvolted. I'm not touching that stuff again.
  10. Mercutio

    Keyboards

    I have a ProMini. It's just OK. Range is good to maybe 12 feet, but if it disconnects, reconnection is as simple as bringing it in to range of its receiver and switching it off and on. The battery seems to last forever, but I'm in the habit of switching it off when I'm not using it. I've been...
  11. Mercutio

    Online backup

    3.5" drives and enclosures aren't designed to be moved around. In my experience they're a lot more delicate, no matter how much they're babied. I toss my bag full of 2.5" drives around and don't have any issues with those. I'd never try that with 3.5" drives. Also: USB is slow. Modern hard...
  12. Mercutio

    problem Computer crash when processing large amounts of data

    For what it's worth, I've never found memory testing to be all that helpful. Most of the time bad RAM just doesn't reveal itself until it's in a system. Even hardware testers are inadequate to that task.
  13. Mercutio

    Keyboards

    I almost always buy a $15 keyboard and mouse kit from Logitech. I use them in classrooms and on builds I do for other people when they ask for a keyboard. They're just fine for the intended purpose. People who actually want wireless stuff are usually directed to Microsoft's least expensive...
  14. Mercutio

    Online backup

    $1800 for a 14 tape library. I'm the second owner but the drive itself was made in July so it clearly wasn't used THAT much. They gave me a half dozen blank tapes too. Tapes are around $20 for 800GB. I haven't completely figured out how to work Backup Exec with it, but since I have well over...
  15. Mercutio

    Online backup

    Personally, I just invested in an LTO4 library. My backups can sit in a fireproof safe in my parents' house.
  16. Mercutio

    Sil3132: Can Silicon Image do anything right?

    So to answer my own question, "can Silicon Image do anything right?", the answer is no, it can't. I switched to a Marvell 6Gbps controller and magically everything worked the first time I plugged it all in. Backup time dropped to a third of what it was on USB2.
  17. Mercutio

    Something Random

    That's what Chicago looks like at dawn and twilight. Is there EXIF data that says when the picture was taken?
  18. Mercutio

    Something Random

    I don't work whenever the schools are closed, so that's nothing new. I did, however, get a 4:15AM "We had a blackout and the UPS ran out of juice and now our server isn't working"-call. So that was fun. There's about three feet of snow on my deck right now and I'm glad I don't have to shovel any...
  19. Mercutio

    Windows Home Server / Home Server OS

    One of the reasons I might not be seeing issues is my practice of using softRAID rather than relying on the specific features of a given controller. I suspect that the tolerances you're describing are different when there's fewer specific assumptions about a given drive's behavior while in an array.
  20. Mercutio

    Windows Home Server / Home Server OS

    I have four systems with 14 operating Samsung HD103UJs (1TB, 7200rpm) in RAID6 + 2 hot spares each and they've run without issue, Buck. I'm specifically thinking that the low-rpm drives are the bad guys in all this. I believe the largest array of Seagate drives I have is seven of the 1.5TB...
  21. Mercutio

    Easy Video Camera System

    I don't really know or care enough about that stuff. I work with whatever people bring me. One of the consistent things that seems to come up is that low-cost HD cameras are missing basic features like mic inputs that used to be standard.
  22. Mercutio

    Companies that have burnt...

    IBM/Hitachi drives have always been fine for me. Even my 75GB 75GXP had a long and healthy life.
  23. Mercutio

    Something Random

    The first guy who came to my apartment to do my business cable install had at that time never worked with any data equipment, only TV. Which might be why my cable modem was still on a residential IP block for a year and a half. I'm not sure where ISPs get these guys but they kind of scare me.
  24. Mercutio

    question Basic Batteries

    Out of the last two dozen or so orders for small numbers of drives I've placed with Amazon, the normal standard for packing is in a custom box that contains two plastic inserts that hold the drive suspended and cushioned on all sides, just like every drive you've ever gotten in a retail box...
  25. Mercutio

    Windows Home Server / Home Server OS

    When I started looking at replacement drives for my arrays, I kept reading that people had issues with 5900rpm drives in RAID5 arrays. Lots of problems with the drives not responding quickly enough to controller commands and dropped from the array. Seagate drives were specifically fingered as...
  26. Mercutio

    iPad: any experience?

    Does ios have Skyfire? Skyfire is what my Windows Mobile phone used to get Flash support.
  27. Mercutio

    Tech resume examples?

    Why not pay $75 or $100 to have someone put one together for you? One thing I've heard recently that kind of surprised me is that hiring manager get annoyed looking at the same MS Word resume templates over and over.
  28. Mercutio

    Easy Video Camera System

    My generic recommendation for straightforward movie making is Ulead Moviefactory. The bigger problem I'm running in to these days is that a lot of simple DVD making programs don't support .MTS files from an HD camera. At that point, you need something like Xilisoft's Video Converter to turn the...
  29. Mercutio

    WTB: 256MB or 512MB PC133 SO-DIMM

    So far I've found 8 PC100 or PC133 128MB modules. I'm testing them in a Thinkpad T20 that does have a 512MB module, but you can't have that one .
  30. Mercutio

    Cable Management

    Both Lifehacker and Apartment Therapy (part of Unplugd) have suggestions for cable management all the damned time. Personally, I use binder clips to keep my stuff looking tidy.
  31. Mercutio

    iPad: any experience?

    A couple of my customers have them, and so does my ex. My ex doesn't like hers because she thought it was going to be a functional tablet with a functional web browser, just something that would be less hassle for security stuff. It doesn't have Flash, which restricts some of her web browsing...
  32. Mercutio

    question Basic Batteries

    At this point my rule of thumb is that if Amazon sells it, I'm buying it from Amazon.
  33. Mercutio

    WTB: 256MB or 512MB PC133 SO-DIMM

    I haven't found any 256s yet but I'm still looking.
  34. Mercutio

    Something Random

    Kitty Midnight Madness! Because I think we all know that there can never be too many cat videos on the internet.
  35. Mercutio

    question Basic Batteries

    Is your Amazon.com broken?
  36. Mercutio

    Sandy Bridge problems

    The interesting issue here is who Intel's customers are in this case. Just as with the nVidia GPU recall, Intel didn't sell those chips to us directly (well, unless you have an Intel board), but rather to Gigabyte, Asus, MSI, Foxconn and any other members of the usual gang of idiots.
  37. Mercutio

    Sandy Bridge

    Well that's a kick in the nuts.
  38. Mercutio

    Windows Home Server / Home Server OS

    Software RAID5/6 in my experience is fast enough for what I want to do with it, which is store gargantuan amounts of data in a fault tolerant fashion. If you'd like, I can run some tests to see what write speeds look like on a four or five drive Windows softRAID5.
  39. Mercutio

    WTB: 256MB or 512MB PC133 SO-DIMM

    Probably.
  40. Mercutio

    WHY would anyone pay 400-600 for a 3g phone?

    You can get calls if you're connected to the 4G network.
  41. Mercutio

    problem Attempting to rebuild Snap Server Raid

    Did you have a drive failure or just some random crap where one or more of the drives disconnected?
  42. Mercutio

    Kindle

    He says he's saving it for the next time he takes a trip.
  43. Mercutio

    WHY would anyone pay 400-600 for a 3g phone?

    There's a setting buried in the menu options on the Android browser.
  44. Mercutio

    WHY would anyone pay 400-600 for a 3g phone?

    I'm not doing basic Email. It's completely fine for that. I needed to log in to delete a few thousand messages on a Google Apps account that was at quota. Turns out that neither Gmail Mobile nor the Basic HTML version of Gmail show the "select all" button or "select all messages in folder" for...
  45. Mercutio

    WHY would anyone pay 400-600 for a 3g phone?

    Gmail is ironically not very good through an Android phone. Email is fine, but if I navigate to the site because I need to do folder management or look at an old message, none of the available views show me things I need to see, at least not with the builtin browser or Firefox for Android.
  46. Mercutio

    WHY would anyone pay 400-600 for a 3g phone?

    I suspect I'm going to want to purchase something to do Remote Desktop/VNC stuff for my Evo, and possibly an 802.11 site survey application. Those are things that are missing from my phone that I'm going to need.
  47. Mercutio

    WHY would anyone pay 400-600 for a 3g phone?

    You know you're talking to an AT&T user in Chicago when they say things like "Sorry about that. I got too close to a building." when they resume their conversation. True story.
  48. Mercutio

    WHY would anyone pay 400-600 for a 3g phone?

    Enough of my customers are that I get to deal with the dropped call network on a regular basis.
  49. Mercutio

    WHY would anyone pay 400-600 for a 3g phone?

    I don't think you're in a position to judge that, iphone-boy.
  50. Mercutio

    Office 2010 licensing

    I just found out that the version of Office 2010 that is installed through Ninite.com can be upgraded to any version for which you have a product key. I did not realize that.
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