Lawrence "The Dreamer" Chen's Blog

Well, I got some deliveries last night and this morning.

3 packages from UPS arrived last night just a little after 7pm. I hear this'll be normal with it being the holiday season now.

One of the packages contained the new 250G drive (after RMA of the DOA one) from ZipZoomFly.com, I'll probably do the upgrade tonight after work (hopefully getting it done before ER).

Then I slept in this morning. I decided last night that I would play around with my alarm settings, because I used to listen to 97.1 More Music FM in the morning...because they play lots of music. Except for sometime lately....all I hear in the morning is talk, talk, talk...and maybe a couple of songs thrown in so that the hour isn't just talk.

Plus it's mostly JT (the guy) saying disparaging things about the females on the show, etc. A definite turn off.

So, it is off to see if I can find a station in the morning that actually plays music.

Meanwhile, moments ago...FedEx showed up at my door, and there it is a new Dell 1800FP....have to send back the old one later. I'll probably do that swapout after work as well. This I'll need to do before I upgrade the refurbed 5040 to 250, since I need to move my old monitor back to old computer to be able to see what I'm doing.

Well, actually it isn't new...its a refurbished unit. But as long as it works...and lasts....

Yeah...the 250GB drive I ordered two days ago arrived....

....however it is DOA.

Now I have to wait to get an RMA and get it exchanged.

Full story »

....well actually its my 7th...though the 1st one was a SATA drive for my desktop.

Full story »

Pages: 1· 2

Well, what do you know...one of my ReplayTV's died....the refurb with the retail 250GB Maxtor harddrive.

Full story »

Link: http://www.paessler.com/prtg/?ref=PRTG4

I've always been curious just how much traffic was flowing in and out of my home network, namely the pattern of the IVS usage.

Now I have been monitoring my broadband connection using the monitoring service at Broadband Reports.com. Which gives me graphs that look like this:

Which just shows that my latency goes up when I'm sending lots of shows.

Pages: 1· 2

Link: http://www.lhaven.net/sa8000hd

This morning, while processing Poopli requests, I noticed that my SD STB had been rebooted during the night. Fortunately nothing scheduled to record in the early morning today, so nothing affected.

I don't track versions on the Pioneer STB, so I don't know if it changed or not. But, it made me wonder if the HD DVR had been upgraded. And, sure enough it is now Passport 1.5.159.

Full story »

Saturday night (into early Sunday AM) I upgraded the drive in the 5040 Refurb to 250GB. After all, I'm recording all that HD in Medium...and I'm keeping 4 of each show...that adds up to a lot.

I'm surprised by the number of show requests I get on Poopli for shows I've recording from HD.

When I put the unit back, I put it in at an angle. So that the blue LED would be visible from where I sit....was having trouble telling if it was on or not. So many different reasons why it might not be responding to my remote, etc. Or not getting the expected video output. Need the visual indication to narrow reasons down.

While I was at it, moved the light to the otherside of my rack...and set it inline with the screen (or slightly behind it)....keeps the light from this lamp off of the front. Another improvement....

Meanwhile, the new DVD player is on hold....but I'm still planning a UPS shuffle....

Pages: 1· 2

Another ReplayTV 5040 and Samsung SIR-T351....

Full story »

Somebody may have asked....

Is there any point in using the component outputs to my TV from a ReplayTV, even if I only have just basic cable?

Well, take a look at this...and draw your own conclusions.

The Display is a Samsung HLN4365W1, the show was recorded in Standard from analog cable. The Left image is Component and Right image is S-Video from the same ReplayTV.