New Technology MUST HAVE

I just bought 10 of these for our Pastors!! It really blew my budget, in fact I had to take out a loan to get them but they are sure worth it! I'm saving to purchase the VR model for my own personal use!




These guys are hilarious.

Green Data Center

That photograph is the Telehouse Dockland Facility - and they are doing exciting and innovative things!

I know how hot my little server room gets here at APC - and it's a shame to have to waste that energy. But greater minds than I have figured out a way to use it. They are going to put that kind of heat to work heating homes and businesses in London.

"The Greater London Authority has approved a plan in which waste heat from the $180 million Telehouse colocation facility will be used in a district heat network for the local Docklands community.

The project is expected to produce up to nine megawatts of power for the local community, and allow the 130,000 square foot Telehouse West to reduce its carbon footprint by 1,110 tons. “The energy savings will equate to boiling 3,000 kettles continuously,” the company said."

Wow!!! This is very exciting stuff! You can check out the full article here.

And you can check out Telehouse at their web site.

One Step Closer to Gibson's Dream

I was in my early 20's when I became a self proclaimed Cyberpunk, and William Gibson, the father of Cyberpunk has always been someone I've very much admired.

I loved the idea of cybernetic implants that could not only make you 'better, stronger, faster' but that would also allow our brains to directly access information located in cyberspace.

I was delighted to find that we are one step closer to developing that very brain implant that I will gladly test one day!!!

Check out the very newest and incredibly useful wearable technology.

And no, I don't think that this kind of implant would make me any less human that sitting in front of my computer all day does. :-) I would still love and server the Lord. I'd just be able to serve him 'better, stronger, faster'.

Sonic Wall Fiasco

My Sonic Wall TZ190 went south. When it went down the first time it lost some settings. Our connection went down 2 hours later, and I reset the Sonic Wall by power cycling, and again it worked. But the third time was a charm. They are sending a new one overnight, but in the mean time we're using a little linksys router...

Ya, very hinkey, but I specialize in hinkey. At least we can get to Google Docs

0.0

SonicWall TZ 190 ships with poopy firmware

I hope poopy isn't a swear word. (sigh)

Anyway our SonicWall TZ 190 install is done. I hope. It was a thrill to know that it shipped with a corrupt OS, and the firmware has to be installed immediately. My advice is to do this before you manually insert the settings, as it wipes them and you'll have to do it all over again. The firmware it ships with won't allow you to export the settings.

O.O

It was not a joy, but I hope it will be now that it's in place and I can begin tweaking.

Cell Phones and Cancer?

Dr. Ronald B. Herberman, director of the prestigious University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute has issued a warning against Cell Phone use.

I'm flabbergasted.

168 Pin Dimm

I needed some. Our IT department is on a very tight budget, and I pride myself in making donated machines work.

I have a nice little machine that was given to us, nothing at all wrong with it, it is perfectly capable of running Firefox to use Google Apps, and it has an old but decent networking card for our server. Smallish hard drive but that didn't matter. Except it had 64 megs of Ram. Ouch. 168 pin SDram. Double Ouch.

Tigerdirect had it Centron 168-pin 256MB PC133 SDRAM for 30 bucks. Plus shipping. I wasn't ready to spend that much, for a donated machine.

So I checked Ebay. I was reluctant, because you are never certain about what you're getting until you get it, and I was spending the Churches money.

I found MostMoe - the man with the memory, and he's got a Computer Memory Market online too.

I got 512 Megs of SCRAM for 25 bucks and free shipping. I paid via PayPal, and I had the ram in 2 days.

If you are in need of older ram you might wanna give his store a look!

Dell Problems, and Bashing

I've heard uber geeks complain about Dell before. But then they complain about any 'off the shelf' computer that wasn't put together by their own hands. I like Dell. I like that I can open up the boxes and work on them. I like that they are very reasonably priced. I like their warranties and the fact that they are quick to replace problem parts (if you can stand talking to their help desk people until you get one that understands and/or believes you.) But all in all I like Dell. I can live with Dell.

Until recently...

We were in the market for 2 laptops for 2 pastors who have been living with computers that I would have used as a frisbee long ago. I was watching the trade sites for a sale, and lo and behold Dell made me an offer that I couldn't refuse! Six hundred and forty eight dollars for this:

Specs:
Intel Core 2 Duo T5270, 1.4GHz, 800Mhz, 2M L2 Cache
3GB, DDR2, 667MHz 2 DIMM (? but...)
128MB NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS
250GB Hard Drive, 5400RPM, SA160, for Dell Vostro 1500 Notebook
Windows XP Pro,SP2,Vista Business with Media,Notebook English,Vostro
And more...

Very good price. I ordered two on May 30, 2008. They offered delivery on June 6.

On June 6 I got an email saying that the order had been delayed until July 13, and on the 13th I got an email saying that it was delayed to the 20th. No biggie. I'm patient.

The 20th comes and goes, and on the Monday June 23, 2008 I got an email saying:

• This email shows a specific Order Number within your purchase that has been impacted by the Federal Mail Order Rule. To view the status of the rest of the orders within your Dell Purchase ID, click here.
• To obtain further information, please e-mail us at US_Dell_Notify@dell.com or call 1-877-868-3355.
• Please include your Customer Number or Order Number with any correspondence you return to Dell.

I had to wonder what the heck the FEDERAL MAIL ORDER RULE was. I called, and was connected to one of their outsourced help centers. I was told that they tried to deliver the Dells, but no one was here, so they took them back and cancelled our order and no we can't have them resent.

I knew this was bogus because I had called Dell the Friday before and was told they were still in production. And we're a Church, we're here all weekend.

I insisted on talking to someone else, and by the grace of God was put through to a not only very efficient help desk employee but a very truthful one as well.

After some investigation, he told me that no, they had not mailed those computers, but there was a problem with getting the video cards that were to be placed in that computer, so someone from Dell had just cancelled them.

I plead my case in a gentle though firm fashion, and he did a work up on the same computers for me. The cost now: 978.00 dollars with Windows Vista, the XP upgrade would be extra. Again I plead my case in a gentle but even more firm fashion, and he put me through to the upper level customer care representive, whom I'm certain is reserved for only the most difficult of cases.

Her name was Venus, and while at first I was a bit worried about that, she made good on the entire deal. We're getting the two computers to spec XP and all, with a coupon for the difference in price.

So yes, it was a nightmare. My blood pressure suffered that day. But they did fix the problem. And that is really all you can ask from any company.

I still like Dell. I do.

Submerged Computer

This is the coolest thing going!! It's a computer that utilizes a Fish Tank as the tower, then is submerged in liquid (Mineral Oil). I'll admit to being more than a little skeptical, but it works!

You can watch a video of them making it on YouTube here, and quite frankly it's astounding!

I'm going to make one of these someday for the Church Concourse!