IT Legends – Tech in Connecticut

Repairing a friend’s PC tonight. She got it for free and it didn’t work.. Someone had previously tried to fix it and replaced the Power Supply with one that is so not correct it is silly… They put the 20 pin connector into the 24 pin slot on the mother board.. hmm Why won’t this power on???

I know, I know.. those pins aren’t “Required” but with a Pentium D class power hog, what do ya expect..

Luckily we had an extra PS around the house(surprise)

Anyway.. to the point.. I’ve mostly managed to avoid Vista.. really, but this PC has it installed and I have to say.. WoW.. It really sucks!

First I couldn’t connect to my own wireless networks, so I disabled the  firewall, then it displayed that it was back on, then it displayed that it was off again,  is not on.. now it is on..Then Windows showed it ON but not at recommended settings. So I click on what is recomended.. mistake…

So I mange to get onilne and head straight to windows update… more fun…

First, There are no important updates, just optional ones.. So I click to see those.. oh wait.. now there are actually 69 critical updates right next to those… . sigh..

I’ve used Windows 7 for a couple hours, nothing like this crap….

Disclaimer: I’m still on XP on my main PC.

I just got a Zalman ZM-GWB 8800GT/GTS on my favorite website, Ebay! (Finally, a full cover block for my EVGA 8800GT Super Clocked!)
Having several days for it to arrive I scoured the web looking for images of it esp the internals but  I couldn’t find any of the inside!

So, as soon as it arrived I did the only thing I could do: Opened up and snapped a few pics with the Iphone.

Here they are:

BTW: I also just picked up a 2nd one of the 8800gt cards.  Now I’ve got to get a 2nd water block!.. Will update once I get them hooked up.
Also.  I went with these instead of the Danger Den for 2 reasons: 1. Price  2. Size/orientation: These have the barbs on the side while the DD ones are on top and I’d have to cut a chunk out of my Sunbeam acrylic case. (same 2 reasons that I have the 8800GT and not the GTX, that and power usage) I already had to drill 2 holes in the case for the coolant tubing.

Disclaimer: I received no product or  Treasure from the listed companies. (though I’ll take some, and then of course disclose it)  Just writing what’s at hand and what I know. I purchased all this myself.

My co-worker just put me on to a cool new hardware/software solution coming out in Jan.
She saw it on an episode of  This Old House.
I just contacted PowerHouse Dynamics to ask them for a demo unit for their Total Home energy management solution.

The cool part is that it has current clamps for all the circuits in your breaker box and software that looks pretty slick to monitor everything.

Will update when I hear back from them.

Travis.

Have you ever gone to a 3-day intensive training and feel like you didn’t absorb all the information?  Somehow you missed out and now your boss expects you to be an expert in the topic.  If we establish an analogy of learning to food, you could compare these types of trainings to 3 days of multi-course meals, one after another.  Your body can’t digest all of that material.  So much goes to waste.  The same with training.

Digestible training would be training in chunks of size that your brain has an appetite for and capacity to assimilate.  Perhaps not all training can be done in this fashion, but the tools available to us today to provide skills training at a distance are incredibly easy to use.  I think trainings can be broken down into small, 15-minute or less digestible chunks.  If a topic at hand truly takes 8 hours, then break it down into something more easily processed and retained.   If its self-paced distance learning, it gives people the opportunity to work at their pace to properly absorb the skills and information.  People that learn fast can take on more chunks at once than someone who might be new to a subject or got stuck on one point and needs to research a little more to grasp a concept.

It is my goal to issue a series of digestible training videos to my clients and different ones the public at large.  There are a lot of good examples of this type of training already out there, but I still see a lot of these intensive 3-day training camps that, in my mind, are more of a waste of money and time than a benefit (if there were other ways to teach the topic – some skills to not lend themselves to distance learning).  Here’s a good example of how to make an MP3 podcast in digestible chunks.

Tonight, I’m finally installing the Astaro Security Gateway for my home network.  Yes, I know I’ve was running with no AntiVirus (I caved and installed Avast – but I’ll be changing that to Microsoft Security Essentials).  I have good net habits.  But there are still exploits out there that might bite me.  So i’m installing an Astaro Security Gateway on an old computer I’m no longer using.  They have a great, free home use license.  It will filter email spam (unless you’re using a web browser for your email), filter the web for your kids or malicious content, and protect your network from people trying to hack in.  If you don’t have an old computer lying around, go find a used one.  You can get one for less than $200 that will run this system for you.  You just have to add another network card to it (1 for the Internet, 1 for your local network).  No, its not a wireless router – you’ll have to get a wireless access point (or convert a wireless router to an access point – this can usually be done via the interface) for it to work.  Its good for up to 50 computers at a time on your home network!  So you should be covered for awhile.

I’m looking forward to hooking it up to my office network (which runs an Astaro Security Gateway 220) so I have VPN hooked up all the time instead of just when I run the client.  :)