Chasing The Unicorn

I need a TV. My project from about 6 months ago has gone belly up and I've waited for as long as I can. We need for the living room TV to work so we can get the kids out of our bedroom!

After tinkering with it 3, 4 times, it doesn't appear that I'm going to be able to get it going either, so it's time to buy a new one. The good part is that the price of "big screen" TVs have come way down in the last 10-15 years. Back in the 80's, my 27" model was considered to be decent sized. Then a decade later, when I bought the 40" projection TV, it was already the smallest set that Sony sold of the type. When we bought the LCD projection TV 10 years later, 40" was still the smallest, but pretty common. And the projection units were considered high-end, so they still had high-end features.

What do I mean by high-end features? It starts with LOTS of inputs. It was assumed that if you bought a nice TV, you had lots of components to connect to it. Back in the 90's, some of us (me) had 2 different VCRs (in my case, VHS and SuperBeta), a Laserdisc player, and at that time, a DVD player as well as a game system (TurboGrafx-16 for me). Holy Cats....that 5 inputs! I knew guys who had more.

That was then; this is now. I haven't made the next leap with the progression. I haven't made the leap from 40" to the bigger sizes; 46", 55", 60" and even bigger. Part of the issue is that I'm older and don't have to have the newest and biggest. Part of the problem is that my friend Pat and I built a "furniture grade" cabinet to house my stuff, and it fits a 42" TV at the largest! It's modular so I could replace the center section and build a bigger replacement, but it's the right size for our house. We have a relatively small living/family room. There just isn't space to go much bigger.

Have I ever told you guys that I'm a "stubborn cuss"? What do I mean? First of all; I like the brands I like, and in this case, I've been a Sony TV user for the better part of 30 years. Secondly; I like having my various inputs. I'm not ready to cut them down OR buy a new receiver so I can have it do the switching for me. So, what's the problem? Go out and buy a 42" Sony with lots of inputs and be done with it?

That's where things have gotten out of whack? Have you noticed that Sony has had a smaller and smaller "footprint" in the TV market the last few years? It's increasing being dominated by the Koreans (Samsung, LG) in the high end and now, the Chinese (Hisense, random house brand) in the low end. The Japanese are pretty much done....just like the old American manufactures 25 years ago.

So the upshot is that I was chasing a TV that just doesn't exist any more. A 42" "high-end" TV made by Sony. They had one up until recently when they started cutting SKUs, but they are long gone, and even that one didn't have all the inputs that I wanted anyway. I actually found a refurbished one up in New Hampshire last week, but I didn't have the money in the account at the time and when I went back to look, it was gone.

Yup, I gave in. I made one last swing through the various electronics stores in the adjoining suburbs the other night. The closest I found was an uninspiring, but functional 42" Sharp at Best Buy. I also ducked into Costco and found that they only had 40" sets and then jumped up to 46"-47". The only thing I was really impressed with were two that were out of my price range. A Samsung 46" and a Vizio 47". Both were slightly bigger than my space too. On my way home, I decided it wouldn't hurt to check the Walmart. On my way to the bathroom, I walked by their "display" and "clearance" TVs. There behind several others was the Visio 47" set, marked for $578. That was $10 more than the set new at Costco, so I asked about it. The employee said; "no" those are 20% off of the lowest marked price, making it $468 before taxes. That made it fit in my budget if not my cabinet (42" TV, 40" cabinet)! So I decided to take it.....as long as they could find the remote (no sure thing on a Walmart clearance item). After 10 minutes to find the remote, and another 15 minute wait at the register for the manager to OK it, the computer came up with a final price $474.xx after taxes! Turned out that it had been marked down again in their computing system. Woohoo! I may not have chased down the unicorn, but I did get a 7" upgrade on a new set! Now.....about that 2" in the cabinet......

We Are Here To Serve

I've gotta say; I'm a little obsessed with servers. It probably has something to do with age as well, as actual functionality. I've talked a few times about growing up during the time of mainframes and mini-computers before PCs came to rule the land. When, "getting on" a computer, meant logging on to a "terminal". 

For us old fogies, the concept of a server was these mysterious inner sanctums filled with racks, wires and blinking lights. If I lived in another part of the country where basements were a reality vs. a pipe-dream, I'd have done it myself. So instead, I routinely watch videos made by these guys who have created a little underground domain where they take cast-off corporate gear and turn it into their dreams. 

 

As for me, my dreams have to be small and smaller. Our primary server is built in a Silverstone Precision PS-07 case. It's really a micro-ATX case for the motherboard of the same form-factor. It really isn't just the lack of space that has forced these decisions, but as much or more the low draw of the equipment that I've picked. For me it's been a very fine line. The desire to keep everything "low draw" is balanced by performance and flexibility. Of course the low-draw side always keeps me looking at the simple NAS (network attached storage) boxes out there on the market. In fact, that very attraction has kept me in an ongoing flirtation with an eBay auction for a Buffalo LinkStation Mini for the last three plus weeks. Somebody out in California has had one of them listed three times. They started at a BIN of $110 which was a good price for these things with an original list price over $200, but it failed to sell, then they dropped it to $95, then to $85 at which it finally sold today. If it had dropped to $75, that was going to be the "breakpoint" for me! What it is is a very small (as you can see) NAS designed around space for 2, 2.5" laptop drives. In addition to that, there was even an additional USB port to allow for expansion. I don't know what I was going to do with it, but the idea is just too cool for me not to contemplate.

What I really need though, was some way to implement cloud computing for my wife's and my own classroom needs. It would also be useful for the kids to stream to, on their tablets vs. setting up FTP. I've looked into this in two different directions. 

One is the commercially available Corsair Voyager Air. It's a really interesting concept that marries a portable hard drive of either 500Gb or 1Tb to a WiFi access point, inside a case with a battery. The result is a portable cloud that allows use anywhere from conference room to vehicle. It's also $200 and brand new.... meaning that there's virtually none on the used market. End of discussion for a frugal propellerhead.

Another is the PogoPlug, which is also commercially available, but a little less mainstream. If you haven't heard of it, that not surprising. They haven't exactly been overwhelming the media with advertising, but it's never-the-less a very interesting concept as well. Basically, this is how it works: instead of having your files hosted in "the cloud" on someone else's random server and paying for that priviledge on a monthly or yearly basis, you buy this box from PogoPlug, attach your storage to it, then it is funneled through PogoPlug's servers where you (or whoever you give permission to) access it, but the files themselves stay on your drive. This is very attractive to most people since, you have far greater control. However there is clearly puts you into a situation of having to deal with upload bandwidth and speed as related to your individual ISP. Still, it's an interesting idea and worth looking into, especially considering the current Series 4 device as depicted above has not only a SATA connector, an SD card reader, but the ability to connect 1 USB 2.0, and 2 USB 3.0 devices ranging from flash drives to external hard drives. 

All this navel examination happened due to my freeing up one of my boxes and moving some of the old Blackbird parts over there. The situation is that I have an unused computer with my choice of 2 socket 775; one a relatively high-end Gigabyte GA-EP45, and the other a decidedly low-end GA-G41M board. It's not a particularly relevant issue since they both take the same processors and have the basic features I need, such a several SATA connectors, PCI and PCIe slots. My original though was to take my stack of old PATA drives, load FreeNAS onto a USB flash drive and "play". This was right around the time that my wife's and my brain synchronized onto the concept of "Cloud Computing". If you've spent much time looking at what it takes to get FreeNAS out there on the internet as a cloud server, you have probably realized that it's not really for novices playing around with it for the first time. 

  .....Which brings me back to......PogoPlug! While I was reading about it and thinking; "hey, that's cool and not really relevant to me", since I couldn't figure out a way to connect my big box to their device, I came across a reference to their some software that they sell for $29.95...... which, when loaded, allows that computer to behave like their device! TaDa! I don't even need to do anything special, just load up Windows 7 on the box, download the PopoPlug applications and hello Cloud Computing! I'm sure it won't be as simple as that, but I'll keep you updated as I progress into this new world servers.

Spring Break 2014 with the Propellerhead Family

The "Family Truckster", well, actually....the family Civic Hybrid got to take a little trip this past week..... to the tune of 3 states in 3 days! We had already planned on making a little Texas triangle during out Spring Break, which was going to entail driving from DFW to Amarillo (about 7 hours) to see my wife's grandfather, then down to Carlsbad, New Mexico (about 5 hours down to Artesia where we planned to stay the night), through Carlsbad, New Mexico, on to Lubbock, Texas (about 4 hours) to see friends and attend a wedding, then home (about 7 more hours). As you can see, travel in this part of the country is calculated in hours instead of miles (or kilometers), so you can see how much of a day it's going to chew up. If you do this type of driving, even occasionally, you might want to consider a Hybrid. With the exception of driving through the "haboob" (33 mpg), I routinely got between 42 and 44 miles per gallon in the fully loaded car driving typically at 77 or 73 miles per hour (depending on the speed limit). That should fully explain why we drove that vehicle vs. our Chevy Trailblazer SUV!

However, the hand of God intervened and we received word of a death in the family which required our presence up in Cherokee country, in eastern Oklahoma (almost to the Arkansas border). So, instead of leaving on Tuesday, we left on Sunday. DFW to Stilwell, OK (about 6 hours) for the family needs, then, from there to Amarillo (about 8 hours), since it didn't make sense to go back to Dallas first. 

Yup, that's right; just west of Oklahoma City where the land flattens out significantly, the wind started to really pick up.......and all that, that implies out in this part of the country. In fact, we would find out later that, gusts were up to 60mph! So, inside of your head, imagine, driving a fairly lightweight car, with a constant crosswind (almost completely 90 degrees most of the time) of about 40mph, with those gusts, plus the road looking like this most of the way. Let's just say it wasn't much fun. 

The 5 plus hours, the following day, plus the 3 plus hours of the day after that mostly looked like this.....when we were lucky. You might want to ask why would I subject myself and the family to this.

You might have heard of Carlsbad Caverns, some of the most extensive naturally occurring cavern complexes in the world and a National Park. Over the last 40 years, I've probably been there at least 15 times, but for my kids, it was just the right age to go. Just one instance of seeing my 10 year-old son with his mouth open and no words coming out would have been enough, but it rendered him pretty-much speechless for several hours! If you haven't taken your young kids to Carlsbad, it's well worth the hours of desert driving. I do have a couple of recommendations, especially if your family is as nerdy as mine. Stop in Roswell and tool around the curio shops specializing in "the Incident" surround the alleged 1947 UFO incident and ensuing "cover-up". We then drove down the road and stayed at the particularly clean and efficient Legacy Inn, in Artesia. Very nice for a microtel style hotel. How does one keep himself/herself sane during all those hours of driving?

The most important daddy device known to man! Given that it's an Apple device, you long time readers know that it takes a lot for me to make that pronouncement! Our original 30Gb iPod video that I bought my wife years ago was literally bursting at the seams. So, when I upgraded her laptop to the T500, I also cleared off my 80Gb Classic and moved her account to it. Basically, our entire library of music is on this device and we can just grab it when we head out the door. The battery easily goes 7-8 hours on the more extended drives and so generally doesn't require charging.

For anyone who has traveled with a 10 year old, OR a 7 year old, much less a 10 AND a 7 year old, then you know that long hours in a car are challenging. We handle this with a twin attack. Our kids have been trained from a young age to read..... a lot, so they each carried 3 books, we also had their tablets along for the ride. One had her iPad2 and the other had the Android version ThinkPad tablet like the one I use. We also have a little 7" screen'd DVD player for some of the longer stretches (more than 3 hours). The wife was similarly equipped except that along with her Hi-Tech iPad Air, the decidedly Low-Tech crocheting needels and yarn as well. 

As for me, I rarely go anywhere for more than a day without my travel computer; the ThinkPad X301. Then of course, since we were going as a family to interesting places; that required the serious camera; the Nikon D300. 

Some of you might think it's excessive, but I also carried my ThinkPad Tablet, identical to the one my son uses, except mine has more storage capacity. This is my reading device, as well as quick "look-ups". It might sound crazy, but we used virtually all of these devices every place we went and most every day. The camera being the only one that didn't get consistent use, but when I did use it; I used it A LOT, such as in the Caverns. 

The technological surprise of this trip? My wife's new iPad Air has completely eliminated the secondary small "pocket camera" that people used to always carry. She didn't even take her Nikon S8100 along. I strongly suspect that it will continue to gather dust in the coming years. 

Coming from the "no surprise at all" category? It's of course, the increasing reliance on the integrated GPS system. Even when I didn't need it, it was reassuring to watch yourself making progress across the plains or deserts. Such is the state of the modern vacation. Same places. Different equipment.

Propellerhead Gear: Winter 2014

It's done...... that which will become known as the Great Rebuild of Winter 2013-14 is finally finished! Here I sit drinking coffee when I should be at work and contemplating my existence, while listening to the sounds of a happy hard drive working to back up a computer. It's the completed "Spectre" backing up the rebuilt "Blackbird". Last night, I finally figured out what was wrong with the HighPoint Caching RAID controller, and got it up and running. Let me just say this about HighPoint: great concepts, good hardware..... terrible instructions and support!

If you are "of a certain age", you'll remember the Japanese models of the 1970s. Superb quality, enough to put AMT, Revell, and Monogram to shame, but they were not for the faint of heart. Not very good instructions to say the least! This is what it's like to work with HighPoint products. You're going to have to figure it out yourself.

...But hey, I could be out there in this instead. I almost forgot; I'm home this fine Monday morning instead of at work, because we had yet another ice storm. Yup, high ground temperature, rapidly plunging temps and precip, makes great ice around these parts. Combine that with the modern inability to drive in inclement weather makes for an extra holiday. Well, not really. We'll have to make the day up later, but that'll be in June, so I worry about that later.

In the meantime, that which rarely happens, has come to pass. All of our "frontline" computers are "up-to-date". My son and daughter are on freshly loaded (within 3 months) machines. The son on his mother's hand-me-down 15.4" widescreen T61 and daughter on a Z61t which replaced the dead X61. Both of them have 64Gb SSDs in them, running Windows 7 SP1 and will be for the foreseeable future since they don't need much storage (especially now that the server is up). AND Windows 8 is the Vista of this age, so no OS upgrade anytime soon.

Can I just say that I'm reveling in the current state of my wife's bliss? You know.....Happy Wife, Happy Life!?! After her recent upgrade to the ThinkPad T500 which is the F35 "Lightning II" on our network, and last week's tablet upgrade from iPad2 to iPad Air. 

The whole thing went very well and is an excellent example of Craigslist at work. As soon as I was given a clearly defined edict to get an iPad Air, I had the parameters necessary to do my job. Although, it being an current Apple product, which meant that there wouldn't be any sort of "great deal" to be found, I could maximize my resources. I knew the 32Gb iPad Air (henceforth to be called the IPA), retails for $599 and even the most aggressive discounts would only bring it down to $560. Don't ya just love Apple? Early adopters/buyer's remorse folks, selling on CL typically price the 16Gb for somewhere over $400, usually around $450. However, after reading several reviews, it was apparent that the current prevailing wisdom is to bypass the 16Gb model since the newer apps have all blown-up due to graphics optimized for the Retina display. ....And since this was Momma's vs. a kid device, prudence would dictate buying the higher spec unit. While looking for the "new" unit for her, I went ahead and listed the old generation 1 iPad that the daughter had been using, on CL as well (Cascade works on tablets too) at the $150 that we paid for it. On Thursday, I found a new, still in plastic 32Gb, IPA for $530. When you factor in the $45 or so tax savings, plus the $30 savings from the lowest retail price; it's a rather substantial $75 off of store price and $115 off of "retail". Yeah, I jumped all over it! The following day, the 1G sold at $150 making the cost of upgrade $380!  

On my end of things (now that my wife is squared away), the Raptor, otherwise known as ThinkPad X301 is running great! The switch over to the Intel 320 (X18) hasn't just been seamless, it's been an upgrade with a the few glitches that I'd occasionally experience completely gone, and it running very smoothly. The Blackbird, of course you know about due to ealier posts. Plus, both HTPCs (Viking and Hawkeye) also got SSD upgrades and fresh OS reloads.

What brought on this bout of introspection? This. I ran across an ad for 2 HP "Blackbird" 002 cases. This machine came on the market around the time that I built my first version of the Blackbird. It was one of those thing that major manufacturers go through periodically just to show everyone that they didn't just build office machines and junk sold at Wal-Buy. It was pretty amazing, with high-end everything and even water-cooling to boot. Dell did something similar are that time in their XPS line. Of course, neither went anywhere in the market and therefore became "one-offs", but hey, that doesn't mean they weren't cool. I've occasionally thought I'd like to build in one of these cases, but at the $300 that the guy was wanting, it only reinforced that the frugal-way is the best way for me. As I sit here with my file server doing it's first full backup on the workstation; both machines together don't break the $1000 barrier!