Category: Life News

Not A Power Problem

It seems that the power supply was not the sole problem for the server. Having done all they asked, I have now gotten an RMA and will be recieving a new motherboard soon to replace the one I have. Maybe then the crashes will stop. I am glad I have the new power supply, though. It was good to have exact guidelines on how much power should be necessary to run the system I have.

Back To The Cold

And I thought we were done with Winter!

Anyhow: our flight back from Tampa [where we stayed with a friend after our Naples trip – and went to a hockey game] took a very long time. In fact, we were over six hours delayed due to bad weather. Funny thing, though: we were fine with it. We just hung out and had fun with each other. I love my wife.

And now, from the 70s/80s of sunny Florida, we’re back to the 30s of Northern Virginia.

Live From Naples

Today was a great day. We arrived in Naples, FL last night and discovered that we were fairly tired. All that planning Laura did seemed not too important today when we just sat on the beach. We did a little swimming in the Winter water, though. That was… uh… refreshing? I just about froze my butt off. I got used to it after a while, though, and the guys went out swimming with me, while Laura and the girls hung out on the beach in lounge chairs. We found a few live sand dollars [and set the free again, of course], but mostly we sat in our chairs chatted and read our various and sundry books and magazines. There’s nothing like some good relaxation among friends.

Tonight is the first of the evening events and we will be briefly attending [since they dont’ allow spouses] and then heading to a restaurant. This is much better so far than working!

More Power

I’ve just installed the new power supply for the server. It had crashed 3 times in the time it took the package to arrive. So – I’m going to let it run for a while and see what happens. I’m confident that this will solve the problem – after all: my server has more than a few power-hungry parts in it. If it lasts over a week [I think 5 days is the record], then I’m going to claim victory over the reboot issue.

Junkets Are Fun

In other news, my group at work is going “down south” to Florida next week for a Summit meeting – meaning our enitre practice gets pulled out of our projects and sent down to sunny Florida to spend two days inside a hotel and not out on the beach. We get to stare at the walls and PowerPoint presentations while our wives get to frolic in the ocean. Sounds like fun, eh? Luckilly, we get to go a day early to enjoy ourselves a little.

So, this Saturday at Oh-Dark-30, we get to board a plane. It’s been a while, but I think I remember how…

How’s that for non-computer news?

Computer Configuration-fest

While waiting for my new power supply for the server, I’m working on Laura’s computer to get it up to spec. Now: when we took it out of the box, it had Windows Vista Home Premium, which lacked certain key features that we want. So we upgraded to Vista Ultimate. After a couple of days, we noticed that Laura couldn’t run the Roxio Creater Premier that we paid for, so I called tech support. Needless to say after much convolutions, confusions, and calls, we have had to revert the system to its original state. I’ve now done so and gotten the programs to run as expected.

The big test will be after the upgrade to Ultimate is complete – we’ll see if it changes the registration of the Roxio software somehow. Other than that difficulty, this machine is rather nice. Very quick, in fact. It’s now the fastest machine in the house [not the most powerful – that’s the flaky server, but the fastest].

My poor, little desktop is not likely to be upgraded for some time, but all I use it for is email and Quicken these days. I do my major photo editing on my laptop – which is very fast, too!

Could It Be So Simple?

I contacted the support people at ASUS [the manufacturer of the motherboard I’m using for the server] and they responded with a few tips. One of those was that my powersupply might be insufficient for the task at hand – and they even provided detailed product specs to make sure I found one that would be fine. Wow. I hope it works, because I’m about to order a new one – to replace my “new” one that I bought for this server especially. Ah, well, maybe I can reuse it for something…