Meet DESTROYER, my not-at-all absurdly-named computer
Thursday, 12 January 2012 08:40
Matt O
It's January 2012, and that seems like a really good time to upgrade my workstation.
It's been a long time since I've done a real overhaul on my computer system. Although I did replace my video cards about 6 months ago, the rest of the system has been plugging along for a year and a half or more. Because of some end-of-the-year corporate spending requirements, I found myself looking at computer components on the 29th of December, and a few days later some boxes showed up at my door.  Go figure.
Anyway, what follows is a list of hardware because last time I wrote a post like this it was supremely helpful in terms of remembering what was in the box that sits next to me all day long when I needed to download drivers, troubleshoot problems or generally do something useful. Sometimes posts like this are purely for me, and for that, I apologize. Tombstone, my old system, is still mostly running, although in a semi-gutted state, waiting to be re-purposed as something awesome, either a system in Andrew's growing empire or the hub of my still-theoretical porn empire. Dunno which yet. Maybe something yet different from that.
Anyway, after the break you'll find the components, names and some reasoning behind each piece of the puzzle.
Last Updated ( Thursday, 12 January 2012 12:11 )
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technology is my nemesis!
Wednesday, 13 April 2011 22:11
Matt O
Despite what I just tweeted, I don't think my inability to grasp a few simple tech concepts is a symptom of getting old, although maybe, upon reflection, it is. My failing comes in the way I learn, either by doing (and making shitloads of mistakes) or by talking about doing, then doing, and making way fewer mistakes. Probably because I'm old, I have way less time to just do shit, and somehow, fewer people to do them with. I guess we have less time to screw around and learn the hard way now than we did as kids? I dunno.
I mention this now because I'm messing with the whole PXE thing that's clearly been around forever (in computer time, anyway), but I'm just now getting to it. A well-configured PXE server could be a real benefit to me, or could soon be a real benefit to me, and I just can't dedicate enough time to it to make it work. I went into it assuming that it'd be way too complex for me, but that turned out not to be true at all. What's more the case is that I can't dedicate enough time to get over the absurd hurdles that I keep finding, and that seem endemic to this type of project.
Anyway, this is only interesting to me, so I'll keep it short. But you can bet I'll tell you when I've figured something worthwhile out.
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Say goodbye to AVG!
Friday, 28 January 2011 08:18
Matt O
 For years, AVG has been my antivirus scanner of choice - it was fast, didn't bother you, and didn't bother my computer. As of AVG 2011, that has all changed to the point where I decided to ditch it yesterday. I defended their awful, spammy, shady-looking download page (you know the one, where there are six, bright "START YOUR DOWNLOAD HERE!!!!" buttons all that install spyware on your computer), I defended their more-and-more aggressive tricks to force you to buy "protection" that wasn't, and I even defended their unconscionable decision to partner with has-been joke Yahoo and try to trick users into installing the spyware toolbars that Yahoo peddles Hell, I even tried to rationalize their "prefetch link scanning" crap that's been the bane of webmasters everywhere. Looking back on that, I should have been embarrassed.
But I had to restart my computer yesterday (I actually did it twice) and I found myself staring at my HDD activity lights lit up like they were decorations on a christmas tree for more than five minutes after my full Windows Desktop had come up and all my startup programs had ostensibly loaded. Looking at my disk usage, I was dismayed to find six or seven AVG processes all at the top (along with the dreaded Windows Search bullshit), just churning away unbidden. I didn't request a scan - hell, I've even disabled automatic scanning because why thrash my HDD when AVG is theoretically there to keep me from getting virii in the first place? Then I started to remember all the sketchy shit that AVG was into these days and was a little chagrinned (oh, and a 100MB download for an AntiVirus program is another absurdity).
Now I'm looking for an alternative to AVG Free, the software that served me well for years (and not so well for the last couple). So I'm trying another AV product. It has some of the red-flag issues that AVG had like 6 versions ago, but none of the real problems yet. I may try a couple things (in a virtual machine, maybe?) to test the different installs and memory usages, etc., before I settle on something new to recommend to clients.
Speaking of which, it's time to get back to work.
WHS woes
Saturday, 15 January 2011 20:22
Matt O
I'd like to believe that I've learned my lesson this time. Only time will tell.
Excited by the potential of WHSv2, I finally got around to putting it on an awesome server (last-genQuad-Core Xeon) in an awesome case (20 hot-swap drive bays) and migrated all my WHSv1 crap to it. I added a couple of hard disks, too, 'cause why not? Then M$ decided to pull drive extender, which is bullshit. Then they expired my beta copy without giving me an upgrade path or even an extension. Just the "your shit expired, now it shuts down every hour" that they do with all Windows server packages.
Anyway, since the PS3 was having hiccups even reading my media off the WHSv2 box, I decided that enough was enough and have spent the day getting WHSv1 on that machine and now I'm trying to get things copied over and everything set up the way I want it. I have enough SATA ports for 12 drives, which is boss, but at least through tomorrow I'll only load up 3 500GB drives and let that balance for a day or so before I get all jiggy with more drives. By the end of the week, we're going to be at ~10TB of space, so that's okay.
Meanwhile, I'm re-copying ALL of my friggin' data again, hoping not to do this ever again (or at least until someone comes up with a linux-based home server solution. I should write up my personal requirements for something like that and see what I come up with. The lesson, by the way, is that you never, ever install a Microsoft Beta product on a computer that you expect to get daily use out of, even in a home environment, because they'll slowly cripple and then kill everything good about it while you helplessly watch.
Last Updated ( Saturday, 15 January 2011 20:32 )
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With the decommissioning of my old computer, I really took notice for the first time of a strange limitation in WHS - there's no way to export an image of one of your computer's backups to a compressed folder.