Marc's Musings Reality from Marc's point of view!

** Updated June 17, 2010 **

I wanted to note here that I actually returned this computer back in March and *did* eventually get my money back after suffering a catastrophic raid array failure.

The refund took a bit of effort to realize and I ended up paying way too much for shipping for a system that ultimately failed.

** End June 17, 2010 update **

OK, let’s try this again. My last computer purchase attempt fell through when, after I had waited a couple of weeks already, they let me know that there was going to be further delay on the box. I took a look around and checked with my boss who was very pleased with his custom built machine and, after checking them out online (in spite of the B+ rating at the BBB), I decided to go ahead with Cyberpower.

This system will be about $500 cheaper and one gpu shorter than my last attempt. But I think I’ve got a stronger system overall. I did a *lot* of research on the motherboard, power supply, memory and overclocking aspects and feel comfortable that I’ve put together a machine that not only kicks butt now, but will be solidly satisfying 3-5 years into the future.

CyberPower X58 Same Day (NO MONITOR) SAMEDAYI7Z, http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/system/CyberPower_X58_Same_Day/

• *BASE_PRICE: [+1155]
• BUNDLE: None
• BLUETOOTH: None
• CD: LG 22X DVD±/±RW + CD-R/RW Dual Layer Drive (BLACK COLOR)
• CD2: None
• CAS: * AZZA Solano 1000 Full-Tower Advance Cooling Case w/ Dual 230mm Fan + Extra 3 Fans [+60]
• CASUPGRADE: None
• CS_FAN: Default case fans
• CPU: Intel® Core™ i7-920 2.66 GHz 8M L3 Cache LGA1366
• FAN: Asetek LCLC 240 Liquid Cooling system w/ 240MM Radiator and Dual Fans (Extreme Overclocking Performance + Extreme Silent at 20dBA) [+79]
• FREEBIE_RM: None
• FA_HDD: None
• FLASHMEDIA: INTERNAL 12in1 Flash Media Reader/Writer [+10] (BLACK COLOR)
• FLOPPY: None
• HDD: Extreme Performance with Data Security (RAID-0+1) with 4 Identical Hard Drives [+119] (1TB (500GBx4) SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 16MB Cache 7200RPM HDD [+52])
• HDD2: None
• IEEE_CARD: None
• KEYBOARD: Xtreme Gear (Black Color) Multimedia/Internet USB Keyboard
• MOUSE: XtremeGear Optical USB 3 Buttons Gaming Mouse
• MODEM: None
• MULTIVIEW: Non-SLI/Non-CrossFireX Mode Supports Multiple Monitors
• MONITOR: None
• MONITOR2: None
• MOTHERBOARD: * (3-Way SLI Support) GigaByte GA-X58A-UD7 Intel X58 Chipset SLI/CrossFireX Ultra Durable™3 Triple-Channel DDR3/1600 24 Phase Power ATX Mainboard w/ 7.1 HD Dobly Audio, Dual GbLAN, USB3.0, 2 x SATA-III RAID, 4 Gen2 PCIe, 2 PCIe X1 & 1 PCI [+215]
• MEMORY: 12GB (2GBx6) DDR3/1600MHz Triple Channel Memory Module [+209] (Corsair Dominator [+143])
• NETWORK: Onboard Gigabit LAN Network
• OVERCLOCK: Extreme OC (Extreme Overclock 20% or more) [+49]
• OS: Microsoft® Windows® 7 Professional [+31] (64-bit Edition)
• POWERSUPPLY: 750 Watts Power Supplies [+143] (Thermaltake ToughPower 750W – Quad SLI Ready)
• PRINTER: None
• PRINTER_CABLE: None
• RUSH: RUSH!!! READY TO SHIP IN NEXT BUSINESS DAY
• SERVICE: STANDARD WARRANTY: 3-YEAR LIMITED WARRANTY PLUS LIFE-TIME TECHNICAL SUPPORT
• SOUND: HIGH DEFINITION ON-BOARD 7.1 AUDIO
• SPEAKERS: None
• TEMP: None
• TVRC: None
• USB: Built-in USB 2.0 Ports
• USBHD: None
• USBX: None
• VIDEO: ATI Radeon HD 5870 PCI-E 16X 1GB DDR5 Video Card [DirectX 11 Support] [+330] (Major Brand Powered by ATI)
• VIDEO2: None
• VIDEO3: None
• VC_PHYSX: None

I just got an email (and phone call!) today that the Corsair memory that I spec’ed is on backorder and they suggested that I could go with the Kingston X memory for $10 less. But I’m going to have this for a while and the Corsair seems to be more highly regarded for overclocked applications so I need to follow up with them to see what kind of delay this will introduce.

Posted under Tech Stuff

Full Text Search indexes all documents in a database.

Because this includes all mail messages as well as calendar and to do items, folks who are restricted to reading or managing calendar and to do items do not have access to this index.

You can make use of one of the other two remaining search methods .

This is a flaw in my opinion and one that I know that the developers have been asked to rectify. I have not found any information about whether it has been addressed for the upcoming 8.5 release.

Posted under General

I just got in after changing out my freshly blown tire for my spare. Thankfully that was still fully inflated.

The bad tire (A Michelin Energy MXV4, one of their XSE offerings) which I purchased new in October 2008 from Ed Voyles Honda, blew a nice 2 inch gash in the sidewall while I was driving home from work today along Highway 9 near Old Milton. Nothing special on the road, not even potholes around there.

Before you ask, I did check the manufactured date a few weeks ago and saw that it was 2807 (28th week of 2007) so one should think that dry rot is not a factor.

I suppose I should be happy, back in March of 2004 I put 4 new Michelin Harmony tires on my car. That lasted only until that November before one of my front tire sidewalls blew (while I was traveling at highway speeds next to a tractor trailer). So this tire lasted me a good 100% longer than that crappy one did. I managed to put a whole 19,000 miles on my current tires.

No more Michelins for me. I might understand this if I bought the cheapest and crappiest tires I could find, but I buy middle range tires from established outlets. This time I think I’ll just head to Sam’s club and buy whatever’s cheapest and have them slap them on. I don’t think I can do any worse than what I’ve been doing.

Posted under Opinions, Retail Experiences

Is it a side-effect of the new Google “Buzz” that messages that I review and delete on my BlackBerry in my gmail account are now remaining in my inbox and, when I open them, have only:

1 deleted message in this conversation. View message or delete forever.

in them?

Definitely puts a cramp in my ability to work my inbox, especially since you can’t tell from the inbox (i.e. before you open the message) that this is the situation.

I haven’t tried this with the gmail for BlackBerry app, but rather my IMAP connectivity to my gmail inbox.

Anybody else notice this this morning?

Posted under Tech Stuff

There are 3 ways you can search for items in Lotus Notes:

• Make sure that the view you are in is sorted by the column you wish to search by (usually the leftmost column, otherwise the one with the highlighted arrow at the top)
  • Begin typing – i.e. if you are in your inbox and you click on the “Who” column, then start typing the name of someone in that view. A box will appear to capture the letters and when you hit enter you will jump to the first line beginning with those letters.
• Hit Ctrl-F or press the binocular icon a the top of the screen (). This will bring up a dialog that lets you search anything you can SEE IN THAT VIEW. It will search on subjects, names, whatever you can see it can search.
• Finally, clicking the Magnifying glass icon or clicking View > Search This View depending on your version of Lotus Notes, will allow you to search by any criteria within the documents (body of email, attachments, to, from, subject, etc.) This is called a “Full text search”.

Posted under Lotus Domino

When you send a meeting invitation you will see it in your “Sent” folder.

If you make subsequent updates to the invitation, you do NOT see them as separate notes in the sent folder, however if you find the original note you will see that it is updated with your latest changes.

The Gory Details:

This is because the original sent message, your calendar entry and the update you just made are all one and the same document. When you open your sent message you will see it’s exactly the same document as if you opened the meeting from the calendar view.

There is no obvious way to “confirm” that the update has been sent except that, if you did not encounter any issues when you saved the update and if your calendar entry reflects the update, then it has been sent.

Posted under Lotus Domino

As glasses styles get smaller and smaller, I find that my glasses no longer offer the protection for my eyes from wind and dust when I’m cycling.

So I decided to treat myself to a good pair of glasses that I would use for sporting purposes. They would be larger than my current glasses, they would curve a bit around my face and they would have transition lenses to offer some daylight dimming but would not interfere with evening and night activities.

I have a pretty modest prescription. I can see things at a distance but I just can’t focus well enough to read signs and see details at a distance easily.

I decided on a pair of Oakley Tightrope glasses as I thought the frame was pretty attractive and the Rx-able lenses would shield my eyes nicely.

I purchased the glasses on November 4, 2009 from my local Pearle Vision shop and would need to pick them up a couple of weeks later as I was headed out of state on a week long cruise.

When I picked up the glasses, I knew there was something odd about them as they made me a bit woozy but I couldn’t put my finger on the problem. immediately assuming that I just needed to get used to the new lenses I wore them out of the store and tried them for a full day.

It turns out that the curvature of the lens required for this wraparound style frame introduces some distortion on the inner portion of the lenses (this is the part between the pupil and the nose). Looking through the lens from my pupil toward the periphery was perfect, but trying to look toward the center had everything appearing to “bunch up”. Unless I’m looking straight ahead, at least one eye was always facing a compressed view of the world. Moving around, i.e. driving a car is so dynamic that the constant shift of perspective was nauseating.

So I took the glasses back and they actually experimented with a couple of lenses even grinding one on the spot to see if that would work. My desired frame could only work with a limited range of curvatures (I believe a “7″ or an “8″, whatever that means in optical terms).  But the result was still the same with that peculiar compression toward the center of my view.

They then ordered in a few alternate frames that I could try to see if any would meet my needs. Ironically, when I went in to check them out the original tightrope frame was also in the tray and I gravitated to it immediately before we all realized that those were my original frame choice. None of the other alternatives offered the protection that I was looking for. They were pretty stylish but not so sporty.

So the Pearle Vision folks then shipped the frames and prescription off to Oakley and, to their credit, did not charge me any extra for having the lenses ground there. Apparently there is a significant premium to doing so that they elected to eat as we were now in early January, about 2 months after this Odyssey had begun.

I picked up the glasses about a week ago and – ta da! – the lens is optically correct for me.

I was, for a while, worried that Pearle was just trying to make me overstay my 60 day chargeback limit for my credit card. I don’t deal often with things optical but my recent dealing with Wal-Mart’s optical department had made me very wary.

But the Pearle Vision folks were true to their word and they made sure that my prescription and my glasses needs were met. I’ll be popping in next week to thank them personally and to ensure that they know that their efforts are recognized and appreciated.

Posted under Retail Experiences