Lawrence "The Dreamer" Chen's Blog

...I am now doing the process of removing the old 500GB My DVR Expander from it, which'll surely leave it blank. And, then it'll be the process of bonding it with the new 1TB My DVR AV Expander.

There was some thought on when I was going to do these upgrades....I hadn't worked it all out though, in the beginning. At first it was going to involve me getting the additional 1TB My DVR AV Expanders in separate Amazon Prime transactions. The gist was one to arrive today, and the other to arrive in a couple weeks when I'm taking the whole day off because I have a doctor's appointment in the afternoon.

But, as I was looking at the cart and the timing of things...I decided to just go ahead and get both at the same time. There's a risk that later I might not find a suitable time, though the bulk of the fall season premiere rush isn't starting until later this month.

I considered doing one this morning before heading into work...though its a lengthy process and I not really a good point in the whole thing to leave for work during. So, I deferred to after work. I wasn't sure what evening shows would need to be scheduled around, and what unwatched content I would need to tackle first. Though I considered staying a little late, so that I wouldn't have time this evening before I had to go out again. But, I opted to rush home instead so that I could do one machine (didn't check the ToDo list on TiVo HD 1, just intended to get it done before I had to go out again...which if there were scheduled recordings, it would be done before that. And, because there wasn't anything on the ToDo list for today for TiVo HD 2....I'm doing it now (that I've returned for the night).

I wasn't sure leaving it to Thursday night would work (non-TV things plus there are shows in the ToDo list for Thursday), and fairly certain that Friday night wouldn't work. So, at first I figured if not tonight it might be the weekend before I get to it. Of course, then I remembered that the first Wildcat game is this Saturday....a big thing. And, it would be on TV somewhere...so I'd want to be watching it somewhere (though likely through the TiVo Premiere...but I would be distracted from doing upgrades).

Anyways...it would've gotten done at some point. But, instead it got done tonight.

...there's supposed to be like 100 hours of HD programming on it, but that's what happens when I try to add 500GB of storage to it.

I finally upgraded the external storage from 500GB to 1TB.

I remember thinking about doing this last summer, except there was were a few shows that I hadn't gotten around to watching...and there wasn't time until the start of the fall season to get to them. As it happens a couple of them were still on my TiVo HD....

But, having gotten the new TiVo Premiere and putting a 1TB My DVR Expander AV on it. I found myself thinking about whether I would do this upgrade this summer.

There was tons more shows on both my TiVo HDs, but I had spent almost a week downloading all the older shows, that someday I should get to, using TiVo Desktop...(and some transferred to the TiVo Premiere). Thinking that there then would be a time that I could afford to lose everything on the TiVo HD to have the 500GB external storage exchanged for a 1TB....

And, after the 500GB came off, the TiVo HD was empty. But, now I got the 1TB on to it....so now I have capacity for up to 165 hours of HD (from stock 21). That should help avoid the crunch I ran into last winter...when I did have shows disappear from my TiVo because I had filled it up sufficiently for that.

I peeked at TiVo HD 2, and there's one show that is new since all the transfers....should be quick enough to watch it. Nothing in the ToDo list for today...so I might tackle it later this evening....

Link: http://www.amazon.com/o/asin/B000K3GK4M/00--20/

Soon after owning the Surround Air XJ-3800, I found I didn't like it and had plans to eventually replace it with something else.

That's because it uses a metal grid that require periodic cleaning, and that cleaning requires significant dis-assembly, cleaning, thorough drying and a difficult reassembly process. It is the difficulty in reassembly that reminds me each time that I hate it.

Well, as I blogged here, "I bought another air cleaner", I did.

But, it was still a working air purifier...so I couldn't just toss it (plus there are others sitting around not yet tossed out). So, I moved it to another spot where I someday would like to have an air purifier...but can't yet afford the specific want that I want for that location. Figured I'd at least use it until such time that it needed a consumable replaced.... plus the location is by the entrance.

Well, last month it finally started flashing replace filter. So, it seemed that the end was near for it. Some time later it started flashing the clean metal grid. Seems that the end should be even sooner now.

Though I did recently pick up a few cans of Oreck AirCell cleaner, which is what I use to help clean the metal grid of the Surround Air XJ-3800. And, I think I would miss having an air purifier at this location now...but it is still far off in the future that I would actually get the desired air purifier....especially since new air purifier is >10x more expensive that a new filter for the XJ-3800.

And, I was on amazon.com recently looking to buy a bunch of things...to shoot for what will hopefully be the last time I need to get a shot on Wednesday before work (have an appointment next week, that might decide that there'll be another 3 months or something)... and I felt that there was one more item that I toss into my cart for Prime Delivery. Actually, after I had placed the order, I remembered that there was something else that I had been thinking of getting....and while getting that, I threw in the filter.

That one extra item was a CFL Bug Light. Starting to get dark again...and been wanting to get a bug light for some time, though I'm sure it'll be many years before the CFL that I currently have outside burns out. OTOH, it was part of the first order to replace the CFL in the kitchen. Of course, that CFL has been in service longer than the 4+ years that I've been living here. It was among the ones that I had brought with me from Dublin, OH. Occurs to me that I should've gotten more...there's one bedroom that I still haven't switched from incandescent to CFL. And, the one in my bedroom is starting to show its age. All my inside CFLs are full spectrum.

Anyways...this part of the Amazon.com/Prime shipment arrived one day early....so this morning before going to the doctor's office...I took the Surround Air XJ-3800 apart for cleaning and the replacement of its filter. Now back...I struggled for a while to get the silly grid to go back on to its frame, and then went to install new filter.

It wasn't coming out of the plastic easily for some reason...then I noticed that there's a chunk missing from the gasket and the bag is stuck to the spot of exposed adhesive....hopefully it'll still be sufficient. But, after this...it'll probably be the definite end for this air purifier (whether I have a new one lined up by then or not...)

Wonder how to tell if the UV bulb in it is still working and effective?

Link: http://www.netflix.com/Movie/Avatar/70109892?trkid=226870

I rated this 5 stars.

In the aftermath of the summer storm of August 13th, (hmmm, totally missed that it was a Friday the 13th), I made a tweak to my ddclient config for updating dyndns for my DSL line. Because I found that it wasn't able to update the IP change while Cox was down.

Couldn't find a way to make ddclient to bind to the local IP that routes out by DSL (or use non-default gateway). But, since I have squid proxy on the same box...and depending on what port I come in on, it can use either of my connections.

I set proxy=box.lhaven.homeip.net:3128

Couldn't use localhost, because ddclient does some kind of validation to require an fqdn+port, and localhost isn't an fqdn. And, yes, I use my dyndns domain as my home domain. So I can have bookmarks that'll work whether I'm at home or on the road

But, this change wasn't tested...as it has been less than 28 days for a refresh, and no IP change.

That was until this morning, when my IP did change.

The updates weren't working....seems that ddclient wants to do SSL all the way or not at all. No using an http proxy to connect out on SSL. But, I didn't feel like sending my dyndns password out non-SSL.... So, after some thought, I decided I would figure out how to set up SSL on squid.

I made the necessary configuration change, but no go. Seems that ubuntu doesn't distribute squid with SSL, because squid and openssl have incompatible open source licenses. So, I did a quick search to find the ubuntu way of rebuilding it from source.

apt-get source squid
apt-get build-dep squid
apt-get install devscripts build-essential fakeroot
cd squid-2.7.STABLE7
vi debian/rules
     Add --enable-ssl \ to “# Configure the package” section
debuild -us -uc -b
cd ..
dpkg -i squid??? squid-common???

Change to proxy=box.lhaven.homeip.net:3218, and it worked.

Read more »

So, I purchased the episode that I missed last night due to the storm taking out Cox from Amazon Video On Demand on my TiVo Premiere.

And, later I noticed this big download spike for my router. At first I thought it was a 'bug' (overflow/wraparound/reset), but it was more than just a spike. And, after some thought, it fell within what powerboost could give me.

So here's the picture for prosperity....

Meanwhile, I wonder when 'regular' Video on Demand is coming to my TiVo Premiere, seeing as I'm on Cox.

Pages: 1 · 2

So, yesterday afternoon...there was quite the thunderstorm.

I could see that the power was flickering at home, VNC'd to 'gumby'. After a while...it was steady on battery. I went over to 'tardis', and watched the UPS run down and cause it to hibernate. Didn't stay to watch 'gumby', headed in to the hallway to visit with evacuees and then go up to watch the storm....and then see about going home.

As I was leaving I saw that my connection to home had gone away. I couldn't remember if I was going into my home network via DSL or Cox. Though based on available data, looks like it was DSL. Will confirm on Monday.

Read more »

Pages: 1 · 2 · 3

actually, pretty bad....

So, while I was looking at the items for the 'lhaven' upgrade...I happened to type other things I might want, and came across a PCI PS/2 adapter.

The new 'gumby' is legacy free...which was causing problems working under my KVM setup. Not quite ready to upgrade the KVM to one that does both PS/2 and USB....so I've been using USB to PS/2 adapters. So far I've tried two. Kingwin and Trendnet. The KVM is a Trendnet, so I kind of hoped the Trendnet one would work.

The Kingwin was first....it works pretty good, except that once in a while the mouse to stops moving. I have to let the mouse sit idle for a moment and then I can move it again. If I don't let go of it, the mouse still being active prevents the 'reset'. Annoying....

So, I got the Trendnet adapter....well, things work...pretty much all the time...except the scrollwheel. And, I've gotten quite fond of using it. Whenever it stops working, I have to unplug the adapter and plug it back in. This is inconvenient and even more annoying....

So, I switched back to the Kingwin, until I decide on what I would use. I wondered if there were a more hardware solution...IE: PCI PS/2.

So, I snapped one up on eBay to try out.

Read more »

After having had some time to lick my wounds from trying to upgrade 'lhaven'. I decided to take the plunge and try again.

So, I went back on to eBay....and bought another 1GB stick of memory, from the same seller as before...so that I could take the system fully to 2GB. And, while I was there, I bought another Athlon 3000+

And, then it was wait for another Sunday where I would have time to do upgrades....

...well, the upgrade went well this time. I took 'lhaven' down...opened 'er up. Swapped the 512MB DDR400 stick for the 1GB DDR333 stick, and swapped the Athlon 3000+ in for the Athlon 2000+, moved a couple of jumpers and turned the power back on.

It POST'd, and I checked the bios for a bit...watched the system monitor screen for a while, and shutdown again.

So, I closed up the case and put the computer back in its usual spot and let it boot all the way up.

Once settled, I checked BOINC. It didn't see the CPU change, so I forced it to run CPU benchmarks.

Athlon 2000+ == 997 floating point MIPS (Whetstone) 3376 integer MIPS (Dhrystone)
Athlon 3000+ == 1312 floating point MIPS (Whetstone) 4446 integer MIPS (Dhrystone)

And done.

Link: http://www.narcolepsynetwork.org/2010/08/pepsi-refresh-update/

If doing the same thing over and over again doesn't get you a different result, its time to try something different.

Stanford’s Center for Narcolepsy plans to submit a new grant application for narcolepsy research in the $50,000 category. In order to do so, the current proposal must finish in August with a rank of 103 or below so that it does not roll over to September. Therefore, please do not vote for the Narcolepsy ImmunoChip Project during August.

Last Saturday, I woke to find lots of SMART dialogs on orac's screen. It wasn't happy about a lot of drives, I had expected to see one or two...the usual when it does its monthly mdadm checkarray....except it wasn't Sunday yet.

I then saw that lots of drives were reading in the 80's Celsius. Concluded that the fan in the array had died and shut things down.

I then opened to see what kind of fan it used and see what my options on replacement were. First I tried looking for the exact part no. ARX DC Brushless FD1212-S3133E, DC 12V 0.32A. Lots of results of people complaining about it, etc. Not much in the way of satisfactory places for me to order it. Plus wasn't clear that it was sold in the specific pin configuration that the enclosure was using. It has a 3 pin on it, plus a 2 pin that doesn't quite look standard. Its the 2pin that plugs into the backplane of the array.

I then started looking at 120mm x 25mm 12VDC fans of comparable specs....figured I'd sort out the connector problem when I got it. I know I have a new soldering iron somewhere...that needs to get unsealed and used. I then decided that I would take my search to Amazon.com and wait for it to lineup with getting it Wednesday... I ended up going with a Cooler Master Excalibur 120mm PWM Case Fan - Barometric Ball Bearing R4-EXBB-20PK-R0, it was more powerful than the old fan...but it came with 3pin and molex adapters. And, there's a pair of those feeding the backplane inside the array, so I figured on just tapping one of those to run the new fan.

As a side possibility, I would plan on checking the University computer store to see what they had on hand... I never got around to making that trip, but that's explained in part further on....

Read more »

Pages: 1 · 2

Actually, I set it up last Sunday....and I bought two weeks before that.

I got just a TiVo Premiere, figuring its stock 320GB(?) + 1TB would be sufficient (given that I have two TiVo HD's with their stock 160GB + 500GB each.) What I got immediately this time was Product Lifetime Service, because they had an upgrade offer of $200 off to go that way.

I wasn't going to set it up right at moment, because I had other things I needed to take care of...plus I had ordered a 1TB My DVR Expander AV using Amazon Prime, where I was timing for the 15th when I was going to be home to receive it.

And, then to wait for a spot to clear up for it....

So far nothing earth shattering has happened since I got my 3rd TiVo....though the Discovery Bar is intesting, as are Collections. And, the HD interface is kind of slick, though it not being 100% is kind of strange. And, it is kind of slow in places.

Also, I had an issue with the remote it came with....I had an extra TiVo Glo remote which I had gotten last summer when I thought that I was going to get TiVo HD number 3.... It doesn't have the extra 'A, B, C, D' keys of the Premiere remote...so I kind of wanted the remote that came with it to work.

Read more »