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.

11.12.13 (or, 12.11.13 depending upon one's location)

For whatever its worth, I usually take note of "special" number days- maybe its the geek in me, but I usually wish someone a hearty "Happy (fill in the number) Day!" It makes me geek-sad to realize that they don't always get it. For example, although it is nearly universally known (at least among my circle of family and friends), not everyone celebrates or is even aware that March 14th is Pi Day... I think even in parts of the world where this is rendered as 14.3 rather than 3.14, in the spirit of Pi the day is celebrated.

Of course, there wasn't much time for celebrating or even well-wishing as today was a work and a workout day. I got in relatively late Tuesday morning, and for some reason did not fall asleep too quickly. This may have been related to the pain in my knee, which does not takes sudden drops in temperature gracefully. A few days ago the temperatures had been in the mid- to high-fifties F (~11-15 C), but the past two days saw a sudden, dramatic drop- at one point the weather service on my phone said eighteen F (~ -8 C)! I had taken some of my over the counter medication in the morning two days in a row, but I still had a fair amount of tightness and discomfort. So today, after we got gas in the truck, we headed off to the gym. I spent about fifty minutes on the upstairs track, getting in nearly three miles (~4.8km). This did more than the drugs, and my knee felt nearly normal when I went to work this evening.

In the wonderful world of data, I finally pulled myself away from a few online distractions and added the check field to the Media_Title table. After such a (relatively) long lapse in development, I was glad to finally be able to get a little bit back on track. However, I ran into a problem right from the start: I had to keep switching between the two tables in order to synchronize my activity. I'm sure there's a way to automate this, but even if I knew how to do that, it would not work in this situation.

You see, to the best of my ability I've striven to keep the database as near to normalized as possible right from the start, and the existence of a Media table and a Media_Title table is a reflection of this. While each recording or publication may be unique, titles are often shared. In fact, as media has evolved, titles of the same work have been duplicated even in our small collection- to the point that we might now have even a print title in hardcover, softcover, audio, Kindle or .txt format. Ditto Music- vinyl, cassette, CD, mp3. And then there's video- VHS, DVD, Blu-ray and probably a few others. The whole point of the little parade of formats is this: in order to normalize, the title must come from another table... it saves a lot of brain pain. 

One little bit of progress was made just moments ago- I discovered that even on my relatively small LCD display on the computer I usually use in the Secret Underground Lair, I am able to display downsized windowed versions of the two tables side-by-side, so this may speed the process somewhat. I may also have the opportunity to use a PC with a larger monitor to expedite the process. We'll just have to wait and see.

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