It's alive! Alive, I tell you!

How's that for drama?

At last, this past Sunday, Mr. T and I finally had the time and all of the components to assemble Jennifer's new PC. In the previous blog I put down all of the hardware that went into the box, so I won't bore any with the details [*again!!]). We had enough time to get it up and running, and get Win7 Pro installed on the SSD. We have one more component to install, a third 120mm cooling fan that will exhaust directly over the CPU. At that time, we'll also hook up the HDD (which was not playing nicely with the SSD during the build), and take care of cable management, as well as installing Microsoft Office and the usual suite of security applications.  

The fan.

Mr. T  secures the mobo.

A funny anecdote from the office: one of my coworkers- Frank- is also a dyed-in-the-wool geek gearhead and gamer. When I showed him these pics and told him the speeds and feeds, his reaction was quite precious- "Dude- don't even try to tell me you built a gaming rig... for your wife!"

Well, yes we actually did. On the day I announced that she was getting a new box, she was quite concerned- the last couple of refurbs we purchased have been real duds. When I told her that we were going to build it, she seemed somewhat relieved, especially since it would be up to date. And, she wouldn't have to hack any more cases to install a power supply to support a video card that is needed to play Civilization V!

We all were very pleased with the lack of noise output from the ThermalTake NiC F4. According to the manufacturer's website, the dual 120mm fans will move up to 79.283 cfm (cubic feet per minute- sorry, I don't have a metric equivalent for cfm); fan speeds can be firmware controlled, and noise is 18.0/30.2 dBa. According to Industrialnoisecontrol.com, 30dBa is really quiet. From my very limited experience, this box is stealthy quiet. I'm guessing that even after we install the final 120mm exhaust fan that this is going to be one quiet machine. Apart from the previously mentioned software installs, HDD hookup and burn-in, this box is locked, cocked and ready to rock! Pi Day update- I had hoped to deploy this box on Sunday, March 16, but I just checked the tracking and it most likely the fan won't arrive until Monday at the very earliest. We've discovered that when we order things, we usually get them very late in the day, so if it does arrive on Monday, it won't get installed until Tuesday (I work nights, as you may recall). And- I still have software to install!

In other news, I've taken a break from Facebook games and am using the time saved to work on the database. I think March 11 was the "official" start of my break, so that makes this Day 5. I'm not off of Facebook completely, just skipping the games (which probably accounted for 90+% of the time I spent there). I'm a bit excited about the upcoming 100th post- when I started this I didn't really think I had the discipline or tenacity to carry it this far. I guess when that happens I'll finally be able to publish a Top 10 list of posts.

That's all for now- speeds and feeds will probably be updated on or about blog entry #100.

Until then, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.

New Year's Day- a relatively useless holiday

If one were to give honest consideration to the relative importance of holidays, I'm not certain New Year's Day would rate very highly. It's somewhat akin to being the Seinfeld of holidays- a holiday about nothing. I'll grant you that the date does have usefulness: it tells how old someone (or something is), and it tells accountants and other number crunchers that its time to reset their counters to zero.  But its value as a holiday is pretty much a zero. Here's a brief rundown of some holidays celebrated in the United States; I'll let you be the judge of how New Year's Day stacks up.

1/19/2014- Martin Luther King Day**
2/14/2014- Valentine's Day
2/16/2014- President's Day**
3/4/2014- Mardi Gras
3/17/2014- St. Patrick's Day
4/20/2014- Easter Sunday
5/26/2014- Memorial Day**
6/14/2014- Flag Day
7/4/2014- Independence Day
*I think in August we just sweat
9/1/2014- Labor Day**
10/31/2014- Halloween
11/27/2014- Thanksgiving
12/25/2014- Christmas
**These are Federal holidays and are observed on a Monday, so the dates move.

Looking at this list, I say that New Year's Day is pale and insignificant. Of course, that's just my opinion. How am I celebrating it? Well, I get to go to work tonight. Although the presses are shutting down in the late afternoon, a few hardy coworkers and yours truly will keep the fluorescent lights burning in Data Services, staying ahead of the proverbial curve and some time around midnight we're calling it a day. I'll probably put the finishing touches on this blog (proofreading and rewriting), and then work on the database (or, maybe start work on the fitness workbook that I've been threatening myself with for months- Ryan and I have a plan which we roughed out last night), and maybe play a bit of Civilization V. As far as celebration goes, I'm going to whoop it up, taking down the 2013 Lego calendar, and unwrapping and hanging up the 2014 Lego calendar. Yes, we certainly know how to properly observe the flipping of a calendar page here in the Secret Underground Lair. I almost forgot- I've got some pickled herring in the fridge...in the immortal words of Abe Lincoln (as uttered in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure)-

"Party on, Dudes!"

As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.

*The End-Of-Year-Addendum (not quite like The End Of Days or anything like That)

Okay, I admit to writing everything above this on the 31st of December. Its now officially January 1st, so its time for hoopla and stuff.  First of all, Happy New Year. I think you got my ideas on New Year from what I wrote above, but if you're a big New Years fan, Happy Day! As some of you may be what are known as "resolutioners"- that would be those who want to get in shape in the New Year, might I suggest Iron Sanctuary. This is a weight lifting site dedicated to strength and overall wellness. If you like lifting, this is a great site.

Lastly, here (in no particular order) are the Top 5 blogs of 2013- I hope you enjoy and share them!

http://hochspeyer.blogspot.com/2013/05/why-2k.html
http://hochspeyer.blogspot.com/2013/02/normal-is-town-in-illinois.html
http://hochspeyer.blogspot.com/2013/01/something-new.html
http://hochspeyer.blogspot.com/2013/01/like-data-we-are-in-it-sense-fully.html
http://hochspeyer.blogspot.com/2013/01/who-does-that-anyway.html

Quantuum leaping for non-physicists

Working the hours and days that I do, I quite often find my mind is set to the wrong day of the week. This is occasionally an issue. For example, this past Thursday I was getting ready for work and I told Jennifer that I'd probably park in front of our neighbor's house when I got done. She reminded me that there was still construction going on. No problem, I said- tomorrow's Saturday. No, she replied- tomorrow's Friday. Yes, these conversations really do happen in our house. It's like an endless loop of the original Terminator movie, the scene where Reese is asking the cop what the date is. Except instead of the cop being startled by the demand for the year, in our house, its the day.

It was the Tuesday evening, and I had the night off. I'd promised myself that if it was a no-work night, I'd spend some quality time with the database- which I'm quite happy to report I did. Some ground rules were needed though, because as I think I've mentioned earlier, while I don't really hate data entry... I'm just not horribly fast. So I came up with a system to make the process move forward and not be horribly tedious: modified carrot and stick. The "stick" is the actual work: I grabbed six CDs, and then checked the Name table, entering the missing ones where necessary. Next, I checked the Media_Title table, once again entering  new album titles where necessary. After that came the "carrot"- a round of Civilization V (henceforth, Civ V). Now there's a bit of a catch here: more often than not, Jennifer is quite underimpressed with my self-discipline, especially when unsupervised, and doubly so when computers are involved. On this night, however, I had my "A" game on, and things went quite well. As mentioned, first all of the artists were checked and updated, then the album names, and finally the songs. For the songs, though, the rules change slightly: after every two albums, I get a turn on Civ V. The other caveat is this: as I consider myself a Civ V neophyte, the game I'm playing is a twelve-player hotseat game, with yours truly playing each player (in other words, no AI or NPC players except for city states, so each turn is actually twelve turns). And yes, the data entry is being done on one PC while the game is happening on another machine.

I just did a guesstimate of how much work I have ahead of me. Considering just A/V titles (including games), I think I'm going to have ~2K titles to enter. This does NOT include books, .mp3s and downloads- and the last two I hadn't even thought about until just now.

Oh, well, I like a good project!

*From the IN-CASE-YOU-MISSED-IT Department- some handy links to older blog posts. This will be an occasional feature- any thoughts about my shameless self-promotion are quite welcome!

http://hochspeyer.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-final-frontier.html

http://hochspeyer.blogspot.com/2012/12/a-free-night.html

http://hochspeyer.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-tilde-hero-for-everyone.html

http://hochspeyer.blogspot.com/2012/12/an-it-christmas-whole-lotta-cliches-in.html

http://hochspeyer.blogspot.com/2012/12/december-31-2012-state-of-blog.html

As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.

2100? Time for a Monster!

My job requires a certain amount of flexibility; more importantly, as a contractor I must be cognizant of time worked in a given week. And, the state of the economy being what it is, my week is typically capped at forty hours. Which is reasonable, and fine by me.

Occasionally, though, circumstances will dictate otherwise, and today was one of those circumstances.

I had a pretty simple plan for today. I had two jobs to finish, and I expected they wouldn't take more than four hours, which would leave enough daylight to cut the grass and do a bit of yardwork. After that, dinner and world domination (*more on that in a bit).

I arrived @1215, and got down to business- after all, I had a Plan. After a bit of initial difficulty, I started moving rapidly through the first of the two jobs. The door behind me opened and in walked the imaging tech that was on duty. "There's been a change to this job," he said. He put two mockups on the desk, one marked "Old" and the other "New" and began to relate how the customer came in ON SUNDAY and wanted changes made AFTER the job had started printing! He then began to describe how heads needed to be move to different RIPS, and something about blankets and the next thing I knew a Romulan Bird of Prey had blown open half the roof, and the two Romulan sisters were shimmying down ropes, obviously intent on doing no-good to Marty McFly and Indiana Jones... of course, they had not counted on Yoda who was crouched on top of one of the presses blocking their way.

"How long do you think it'll take" the imaging tech asked. "Probably two to three hours," I replied almost instinctively. "But, there's no one here that can do it. I'm on overtime as it is- let me make a phone call." This satisfied the tech, and he left me the mockups and departed.

I called the programmer but got no response. Next, I called my boss, and he said he was aware of the changes, and the imaging tech should call his boss. At which point I said that these were new changes from the customer. That phone call pretty much ended with my boss telling me to get details and get back to him. I got all of the info I needed from the pressroom supervisor and then relayed it to my boss. The twenty-five words or less answer from my boss was NO WAY.

Time for another trek to the pressroom supervisor. He called the customer service supervisor, and on speakerphone, we tossed some ideas around. The customer service supervisor finally decided he would get one of the customer service reps that is on this account team to come and get a new press layout, and would talk to my boss. The pressroom supervisor had prepress shooting new plates for the press, and making backgrounds for my department. Now that everyone had a Plan, I went back to my office and finished working on my Plan, which would be torpedoed before the next paragraph is concluded.

I finished the second job, put everything away, and was getting ready to fill out my timesheet when the phone rang. I answered it... I will NEVER learn. The pressroom supervisor asked how long it would take to reprogram. "About three hours", I replied- it's got to be some sort of autonomic reflex! Fine. I hung up and went back to getting ready to leave- my four hours were up. The phone rang again. I picked it up-again. This time it was my boss. "How late can you stay?" Hmmm, Plan vs money. I'll take the money. He said he was able to contact the programmer, who would be in ~1900-1930.

The programmer arrived at 2000; at 2100 I popped open a Monster Absolutely Zero. At this point it doesn't matter, because as Rufus said, "the clock is always running in San Dimas." My boss said take all of the overtime you need to do the job right- this is on the customer.

So I apologize for no programming, spreadsheet or exciting data updates. In the time waiting for the programmer, I got as much prep work as possible done, and then spent the remaining time researching web hosts; I think I found one that I like, but need to bounce it off Jennifer first.  And speaking of Jennifer... we're supposed to get storms tomorrow, so no grass cutting or yardwork; dinner didn't happen tonight, but we may get to continue our game of Civilization V which we started yesterday. And, best of all, we're going to pick up some catfish nuggets tomorrow.

Timehack (2nd posting) 1810

As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.

Combat job searching

Yesterday afternoon, in the middle of my continuing quest for permanent, gainful employment, our older son plopped down on the couch and began a session of Battlefield 3. It was actually an oddly pleasant diversion from the quiet of Dice, Indeed, Monster and Gmail. Well, except for the obscenities that a few players on the Playstation Network were using, it was pleasant. I have to say I'd like to try that game sometime- I can't do much worse at it than I do at the driving games which I enjoy playing.

Speaking of games, I installed Steam on the Windows 7 box last night, which began a domino effect in the Secret Underground Lair. I've been doing a bit of reorganizing in the Dungeon. The Dungeon is where the weight bench and weights live. In the Dungeon is a small, disassembled desktop shelving unit that has basket drawers. I got it some time ago for a since forgotten purpose, and it has been gathering dust. Actually, there were two of these units, so I had the brilliant idea of putting one of these together and substituting a top shelf
for the drawers. The end result is rather nice- there is enough room on the desk now for the keyboard or the mouse. The speakers are also on the lower shelf; it ended up being a very nice arrangement.

Concurrent with the rearranging of the monitor and keyboard, I installed Dirt 3 and Civilization V. Both of these are games I really love to play. I do pretty well with Civilization; Dirt, not so much. I also got out the old P Touch and began labeling equipment. Eventually, all of the major hardware components of the network- including routers and switches- will get some sort of network identification label, and the wiring will also be labeled.

And then everything will be mapped out in Visio. Of course. As I am working the next three nights, I think I'll do some database work tonight.

As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.