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So it finally happened; my computer is dead. Actually, it’s more like I finally carried out the mercy kill. My computer started life as a high end gaming system I built back in ‘02. Since then it has been reduced to a heap of barely functioning part, strung together in an attempt to keep it functioning long enough for my wife to finish college. The RAM was reduced from 1GB to 512MB when I determined that a faulty stick was causing Warcraft 3 to crash. The DVD burner died and was replaced with an old 8x CD drive, ripped from a machine on it’s way to the recycler. The machine has seen a string of hand-me-down video card pass though it, like a parade of bad step-fathers. The final nail came a few months back when I installed Dofus on it. The next day, I fired up the computer and found that I had no boot sector. Apparently my computer hates the French.
Normally this isn’t a dire situation, I just wipe and reload. But my wife has a bunch of pictures on the drive that weren’t backed up. Since then, I’ve tried the standard fixboot stuff. I’ve manually replaced the NTLDR file. I’ve tried performing several repair installs of XP. Nothing has worked.
Needing to burn some vacation, I decided to take yesterday and today off from work. I was determined to retrieve the pictures off the computer. I bought an 8GB flash drive. I was going to boot into the recovery console and copy all the files to the flash drive. I quickly found that while in the recovery console, I only have permission to copy files in the root of C and the Windows directory. Time for plan B.
I burned Parted Magic and System Rescue Live CDs from my Linux HTPC. I booted my Windows box on Parted Magic first. Parted Magic stalled while trying to eject the CD after it loaded the OS into memory. I tried running it again with the boot option that keeps the CD in the drive; reading from it instead of RAM. This seemed to work. The system booted, I could launch the XFCE desktop and I was able to mount my Windows partition. I located the pictures and tried copying them to the flash drive. I received and IO error. I did a little searching and found that the boot option I used provides no media support, including flash drives. I popped the disk out and tried System Rescue. It didn’t even see the Windows partition.
It was now noon. After several hours of screwing with my computer the only thing I had accomplished was finishing off the rest of the Dick’s Danger Ale in the fridge. My computer was a bucket of fail.
Technically, that is a picture of a bucket of fail inside my bucket of fail, making the computer a meta-bucket of fail.
My wife came home for lunch around this time. She asked how the battle was going. I explained to her the problem I was having. I figured the next step would be to slave the drive into another Windows box and pull the pictures across. Since our other computers are the Linux HTPC and an old Powerbook G4, I would have to take the drive somewhere else. This is when the day took a dramatic upswing. She gave me the OK to build a new desktop. She told me to spec out two systems, a miserly one like I usually cobble together and a higher end one. I fired up Newegg and got to work.
I started by designing the low end system with guts identically to my Linux box:
AMD BE-2300 CPU
AM2/AM3 Motherboard
4 GB PC6400 Memory
750 GB Western Digital HD
DVD burner
Since the BE-2300 is no longer available, I bumped it to an Athlon II X2 245 CPU. I figured I could salvage the wireless NIC, PSU and case from the existing system; putting the total around $300.00. For the higher end system, I started to spec out an Intel i5 system. I was bouncing around Anandtech and OCC, looking for motherboard recommendations when I found some information on the Athlon II X4 620 CPU. The reviews and benchmarks for the 620 put it a few paces back from the i5, but for the price, it was exactly what I was looking for.
I threw out the previous lists and came up with the following build:
AMD Athlon II X4 620 CPU
ASUS M4A785 Motherboard with on-board ATI 4200 GPU
4 GB OCZ Reaper HPC (PC28500) Memory
1 TB Western Digital Hard Drive
22X LG DVD Burner
OCZ Fatal1ty 550w PSU
Antec Two Hundred Case
The total price came in at $480.00, including a new PSU and chassis. Not a bad price for a complete quad-core system. I still have a beta of Windows 7 I can slap on, saving me the OS cost until next summer when it expires. I’ll post a review of the components and some system benchmarks once the parts arrive and I get the thing assembled.
Cheers!
Kevin
My wife pointed me to an article on the Green Lantern area of Slate by Nina Rastogi titled “Which is better for the planet, beer or wine?” The article focuses on comparing the carbon footprints of beer and wine.
Now I’m going to digress for a minute and rant about something that really pisses me off. The term ‘green’. I fucking hate it. It doesn’t mean anything, but has fast become the marketing term of our time. Need to move more widgets? Paste green on the box. The most ironic part of the whole ‘green’ movement is how at odds it can be with can be with the concept of carbon footprint. Take Hybrids for example. If you need to purchase a new car, buying a Hybrid will reduce your carbon footprint. If you buy a Hybrid just to be a trendy fuck, you’re not doing the world a bit of good. Much of a product’s carbon footprint comes from manufacturing. Buying a new car when you don’t need one is a huge waste of manufacturing. We can apply this same idea to reusable shopping bags. The carbon footprint of recycling plastic and producing a reusable bag is the same as producing hundreds of regular plastic bags. If over time, your reusable bag can carry more groceries that a carbon equal amount of regulars bags, you made a carbon positive decision. I think the better answer is to continue using ‘one use’ plastic bags. After you bring them home, line your waste cans with them, negating the need for trash bags. Or, layer them up and use them just like a ‘green’ bag. It just doesn’t look as cool strolling through Whole Foods with a bunch of evil ‘one use’ bags. Again, fashion wins out over functionality.
The other problem I see with ‘green’ products is their dependencies. A product stops being ‘green’ when it forces other products to use more energy or create more waste. Earlier this year I built a HTPC (home theatre PC) for my living room. One of the components I purchased was a Western Digital Green Drive. WD claims that the drive draws 4-5 fewer watts than a standard hard drive. I decided on this drive because, sitting in the living room, I wanted a quiet computer. I chose parts that all had low power draws, creating less heat and reducing my need for noisy fans or a large power supply. If it had not been for my application, I would not have chosen this drive. The ‘green’ drive has slower RPMs and slower access times that other drives available. This means that the entire computer has to stay on longer to perform the same task; drawing a lot more watts than the 4-5 the drive is saving.
Now that I got that out, we can get back to the article. What did I think about it? I think the author hit on a concept that I fully agree with. Packaging, shipping and storing are a huge part of a product’s carbon footprint. If you can buy local, you are probably going to reduce your footprint no matter how it was produced. Does this mean that I am going to stop drinking all the great beers that the world has to offer. Absolutely not, but you have to remember that I am an evil Republican and it is our ultimate goal to purge every living thing from the planet that we can’t teach to either secrete petroleum or swing a coal pick. Listen up Polar Bears, I’m talking to you.
Seriously though, even if you don’t give a crap above carbon, buying local helps the community. So, the next time you are having a local pint or picking up your imports at a local bottle shop, give yourself a pat on the back. As for me, don’t worry. If it makes you feel better I am much more of a Libertarian than a Republican. I’m just too lazy to change my voter registration and regurgitate Ayn Rand novels.
Cheers!
Kevin
That’s right, big daddy Goggle lured me in with his smooth talk and promises of ad revenue. He told me that all I had to do was provide a little room for his friends and he would treat me right. Before I knew what was happening, my innocent little corner of the interwebs was crammed full of strangers, peddling their services and wares. Now my father cries at night.
Actually, this is more of an experiment than anything. Google offers a service called Adsense that pays you for allowing them to advertise on your site. These things are everywhere. Anytime you see a “Ads by Google” logo, the site is using Adsense. I’ve heard that Adsense is like crack. Once you try it, you start obsessing over it. You dump endless hours into tweaking your ad formats and placement. You try to dupe your users by disguising them as actual content. This whole time Google trickles a little revenue your way. Not enough to compensate you for the time you have invested, but just enough to keep you addicted. Well, that is what I’ve heard.
So, how much will Goggle pay you to turn tricks for them? Well, that is a tricky question itself (hah, wordplay). When I first went to the Adsense page, I was informed that there are two types of ads; those that pay per click (CPC) and those that pay per 1000 impressions (CPM). The rates were not disclosed. To see rate information, I had to sign-up for an account. A few clicks of the mouse later and I am ready to be turned out.
Now it’s time to see what I can earn. Wrong. Google never tells how much revenue a particular ad brings in. Instead, they tell you how many clicks and impressions have occured and the resulting revenue. They divide the revenue over the number of impressions and extrapolate the value of 1000 (eCPM). Of course, before you can see any of this information, you have to start hoin’.
Once you start bringing in some dough, Google does provide a nice assortment of tools that let you see exactly how much your used up ass is worth. The biggest downside I see with their reporting is that both CPM and CPC revenue is used to surmise eCPM. Why does this matter? The first time I logged in to check my Adsense earnings, I had a couple dozen impressions and one click. All of my earnings were from the one click (I am not allowed to disclose actual earnings). This made my eCPM look fantastic since Google took the click’s revenue and divided it over my pittance of impression. Daddy loves me. Now that the ads have been up for a couple days, I have had several hundred more impressions. SinceI have not had any additional clicks, that same amount is now divided over all these new impressions. My eCPM is now garbage.
So, now that I’ve explained how everything works; what exactly is the experiment? Is it whether or not I can profit from Adsense? No. My experiment is in the human condition. I am a reasonably intelligent person. I know what my time is worth. But, now that Goggle has dangled the carrot; how much of it will i fritter away at a net loss, trying to increase my revenue? How deceitful will I become with my ad integration? Will I end up human garbage? The experiment has begun.
Cheers!
Kevin
If you haven’t noticed already, this is a Wordpress blog you are reading. When I decided a couple weeks ago that I was starting a blog, I did a little research. Everything I read told me that Wordpress was the best blogging software. That a sack of doorknobs could look at the software options available and would know to pick Wordpress. Having previously tested my mental prowess against said sack of knobs, I deduced that Wordpress was also the correct choice for me. I registered my domain with GoDaddy, then sauntered on down to Wordpress.com and created an account.
What the hell? No wonder the sack liked this. I limited amount of layout options smacked of Geocities editor in the mid 90’s. No problem, I’ll just skip the interface and adjust the CSS. Wrong! I was directed to a page where I could purchase the option to use a CSS editor for $14.97 per year. Fucking clown shoes! I scanned down the list of other “premium” features and learned that I am also subject to randomly inserted advertisements and a 35 user cap. At this point it felt like I was buying a car. I knew I was getting screwed, but hey, I needed a car and I didn’t want to start the process over at another dealership. I banged out a quick home page and an introduction thread.
I mentioned my experience with my compadre Jesse at work the next day. He suggested (as he did the day before) that I host the blog myself using the Wordpress software instead of their hosting service. Not wanting to leave a computer on 24/7, nor wanting to pay for hosting (I already spent $7.49 on domain registration and I’m Burt Reynolds after all), I started looking into free hosting services. I stumbled upon 000webhost.com. They were the only free hosting option I could find that didn’t cap the SQL database size (most had a 10-20MB database limit). They also had high limits for monthly traffic and storage. I set up a hosting account and uploaded the zip file containing the Wordpress software. I was surprised to see that the file manager built into my hosting tools had an option to upload and auto-extract zip files. Nice.
In took less than five minutes from this point to create a database, edit my wp-config.php file and get the software installed. When finished, I fired up the admin tools and clicked the “Editor” button. Shazam! Full CSS control. Before I started to hack and slack, I browsed through the themes. There were just a biscuit under 1,000 available themes, compared to the 50 or so get with the Wordpress.com hosting. I found and installed Atahualpa, made some tweaks and knocked out the logo you see at the top of this page.
So, here we are. What do I think? Well, I think I should have realized right off that I wouldn’t be happy with the limited options of a Wordpress hosted blog. As for the their standalone software, I have to say, I am pretty fucking impressed. Then again, they tout their famous 5-minute install, so experience may just be par for the course. I’ll probably reevaluate my experience in a couple weeks after I have spent some time adding content. I am also impressed with 000webhost.com. If I ever find the need to increase my storage space or remove the traffic cap, I’ll definitely pay the $4.84 they are asking for unlimited service.
Cheers!
Kevin
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