Well That Was A Waste of Money
The XP computer is next to my right leg and the Win7/Linus computer is next to my left leg. When I need to do something on the XP machine, I can just change my monitor to use the VGA port, but I need to swap out the keyboard and mouse. This was annoying and wasted space, so I looked for a solution.
I saw the write ups on the Logitech Unifying receiver, and thought “Problem solved, I’ll just plug one of those little buggers in both machines, and then I can use the same keyboard and mouse.” I don’t use them at the same time, so there shouldn’t be any conflict.
I was wrong. While the receivers work in all three operating systems, the keyboard and mouse can only be assigned to a single receiver. The connection information is stored in the keyboard and mouse, not in the receiver.
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That said, it’s a cool widget for my laptop. I keep a keyboard and mouse and extra power supply stashed at home and in the office, and leave the widget in the side of the laptop. When I get home, I plug in power and video, and I’m rockin’. When I get to work, I plug in power and video, and I’m rockin’. No more plugging and unplugging of keyboards and mice.
But I’m curious about why you don’t simply invest in a KVM switch…
I thought about getting a KVM, but that meant more cables in an area where I’m trying to eliminate cables. The cats have a habit of playing with the cables, and it is a pain to plug them back in. Right now I have to crawl under the desk and re-connect the HDMI cable about three time a month. I’m about ready to switch to DVI to stop that annoyance.
I will never understand the arrogance of people who design cables without some sort of positive retention mechanism. Perhaps it’s justified in the case of mobile devices like laptops, where if someone walking by gets snagged in the cable it’d be nice if the cable merely pulled out rather than yanking the laptop bodily off of your lap, but other than that… reminds me of a piece of hardware that I had the task of building manufacturing tests for. Not only did a myriad of internal cables lack positive retention, but they also lacked any distinguishing characteristic. When you have two 8-pin flat cables coming from the front of the computer, one is the RS232 port for the front keypad, one is the i2c bus for the front blinky lights, one goes to the motherboard, one goes to a controller card that it plugs upside down into (i.e., gravity wants to make it fall out, and remember, no positive retention), and *neither is marked nor has any other distinguishing characteristic”… gah, the stupid, it burns, it burns! I *still* don’t know how that company managed to survive 2 1/2 years more after I gave up and left… half the time the manufacturing techs plugged the wrong cable into the wrong place (thus my manufacturing smoke test in the bootstrap flash literally blinked the LED’s then demanded that the technician press a button to validate that the correct lights flashed) and had to open the case back up again to swap them around, then when it arrived at the customer half the time that bloody cable had fallen out and they’re, like, “why are there no blinky lights on the front panel and why am I getting temperature alerts?” (There was an i2c sensor chip up there too, and if you couldn’t talk to it and got 0’s in return, well, that kinda was too cold for the hardware, yo). Sigh! Cables. The unacknowledged Achilles’ heel of modern computers.
I got used to Cannon plugs in the military. There was only one way they would fit together, and they screwed in. You can’t have things coming loose in an aircraft. If there were two connections on the back of a piece of gear, they could never be the same exact size. If they were both 8-wire, one of the connectors would have 9-pins while the other had 8, so there would be no confusion, even if you couldn’t read the label on the connector.
I could operate my station in total darkness because the knobs were different shaped, as well as different colors. The position of controls was consistent for all of the equipment, so you always knew what the left most knob did. It cost more to do things like that, but it damn sure made life easier for people who had to use the stuff.
The cost of the pin connectors with the plastic ‘hooks’ isn’t that great and you don’t have to be a civil engineer to design a hold-down to keep a card in a slot, but people keep saving pennies in manufacturing that cost them dollars in service calls.
Even without the cats, I occasionally knock out that bloody HDMI cable when I stretch my legs out at the desk.
Hi Bryan,
There are other solutions other then expensive KVM’s. There is an open-source (FOSS) product called Synergy that works on Win, OSX, & Linux. It’s a Server-Client network based tool that allows you to share a KB and Mouse over a LAN. However, you need a screen on each machine still.
You could try using something like TightVNC or TeamViewer (both free).
The new TightVNC 2.7.7 solved the problems I was having connecting to my VPS. It also now allows you to control and view a single remote app instead of the whole desktop.
There are some solutions to sharing a display over a LAN or USB, but you usually need some hardware.
Good luck.
Oh, speaking of badly designed connectors (which includes almost all of them on a PC), I recently had a chance to try out a ‘PC Power & Cooling’ Silencer Mk III 1200W PSU. It used the metal thread-locked XLR 4- & 5-pin connectors instead of those crappy plastic ones every other PSU maker uses for their modular cables (just what you want in a high-end expensive build, power cables that can come out). It was a bargain price here for what is probably the best high-end PSU on the market, $266! Pretty good for a 1200W 80+ Platinum rated PSU with PFC >0.98, efficiency >93% (tested by reviewers, and the 1200W rating is very under-rated!) Heck, it’s so well designed, the fan doesn’t even turn on until it reaches 50% load. (once again, the USA still does make some great products).
I’m just finishing a new WC high-end gaming design ($7k-$8k range for complete system) for the guys who supplied the parts from my friend’s son’s Xmas build. They are in the process of building one to my spec, and are pretty excited about it. It promises to out-perform the lad’s system for less than 3/4 the price. That was the PSU I recommended. If the system works and they sell a few (and they are sure they will as they get a lot of requests for a system like that, but they typically cost more to get the performance I believe this one should deliver) they will give me one of those PSU’s (as well as a 7% commission). No complaints from me (other than it meant I had to put my web stuff on hold for a week). *shrug* I need the money.
Dammit. Trying to do several things at once here… getting pretty annoyed also which isn’t helping.
I should have added that if you do decide to use TightVNC (I’d recommend it’s worth a shot), grab the DFMirage win driver. “DFMirage mirror display driver allows TightVNC to gain the best performance under Windows. With DFMirage, TightVNC Server can detect screen updates and grab pixel data in a very efficient way. If you use TightVNC as free software, DFMirage is FREE for you as well.”
Umm… also, as well as an msi installer for win, you can also get it as a Java JAR & source code (C++ or Java). Though I think the JAR is a slightly older version.
Also, they have another nifty tool called TightProjector.
“TightProjector is a program that can transmit the screen of a particular Windows computer to other computers in the same local-area network. The data is transmitted continuously, in real time. In other words, you ‘project’ a screen to other networked computers.”
Oh, one other nice thing about TightVNC is that you can save and replay sessions using their RFB protocol. They have a Java tool called ‘RFB Player’ to playback the saved sessions. It’s come in handy for me a couple times!
I think that’s about it. I need to get some work done.
Later…
The problem with VNC / RDP (he’d be using RDP to control the XP box) is that they only work when the OS is up. If he needs to tweak some BIOS settings he’s out of luck. I usually use VNC to access my Linux boxes and RDP to access my Windows boxes, I have four racks full of gear so I certainly am not going to access them any other way (!), but sometimes I have to actually walk back into the machine room and hit a button on the KVM switch to hook a keyboard/video/monitor to the physical box to see WTF just happened. Not *often*, mind you, but it happens.
One of the things I like about my big Supermicro server is that it has IPMI. I can use Supermicro’s IPMI console viewer to view the console just as if I were directly connected, and if the OS is completely frozen up / blue screened I can view the BSOD and, optionally, send a CTRL-ALT-DEL or just bang the reset line. Unfortunately a Supermicro server with IPMI is not cheap, just the bare-bones chassis (PSU’s, motherboard, backplane, and drive trays) cost $2K for mine, *without* the Xeon processors and memory to make it actually operate. I understand that you can get Dell servers for less that will do IPMI KVM, also. But then you have a Dell server :).
I don’t run the two machines at the same time, as the XP is strictly used for some legacy software that I wrote for a client. If that needs tweaking, or I need to update the system, I turn it on. I’ll probably end up with a USB switch, if I bother to try to do this at all. I didn’t link the XP to my LAN, because the only time it is on is when it needs updating [like today], or that client needs something done. That’s why I put the new ‘Unifying’ dongle in it, as both the mouse and keyboard associated with it have on/off switches.
Sigh, it not like the good old days when I could control everything from the administrator’s terminal. 😉
Kryten, when you are in business for yourself, anything that generates cash flow is a great idea and worth doing.
On power supplies, I wish people would stop selling those that depend on the wall plug to give them decent power. Upstate New York was the only place I have ever lived where that was true, and those places were supplied from the Niagra Falls hydroelectric plant. San Diego really sucked. There were a lot of places in the Middle East with more reliable power than that produced by SDG&E. It was the power supply graveyard. There were places where you were lucky if the voltage hit triple digits. There was almost no maintenance unless something went down in an earthquake or was taken out by a fire.
Yeah… Most places I worked around the World had lousy power grids. Most of the places I worked were for companies that could afford their own usually, so it wasn’t a problem if you worked for that company. Most of rural Aus has lousy power and in really remote areas, they have to supply their own. Most people even in the cities or suburbs here believe that they will magically get exactly 240V anywhere, any time. Uhhh… NO! It’s actually: 250-260V if you are near the main sub, 235-245V near a secondary sub, 230-240V near a booster xformer (the big grey ones usually up a power pole, oil cooled), and 210-220V if you are at the end of the line. So, you better make sure your appliances support that range (and many don’t. The cheaper appliances are usually rated 220-240V. The more expensive ones might be rated from 110-250V). So you better not live at either end of the supply line unless you can afford really good electrical goods or to have your power supply sanitized.) This is of course the case since they privatized the power utilities. Before it was never a problem as the various State Gov run power utilities actually cared about making sure people got what they paid for and not about max profits at their customers expense.
After 50+ years, I now believe that anyone who wants to be a Politician should simply be hung or shot to save everyone the trouble. They are either complete moron’s and couldn’t get a real job, or are crooked bastards and Government is the perfect vehicle for their future cozy/comfy no-worries life where they can engage in criminal activities without any fear of being held liable or accountable. I’ll admit that I have rarely met an honest Politician… but that was rare and they generally didn’t last long. And I have worked for several Gov agencies around the World, either directly or via attachment (liaison), so I feel qualified to make that statement. During the 70’s & 80’s, I actually enjoyed working for some Gov agencies (for example, SEC Vic, Vic Rail, SCC, SEQEB, and others). Notice I don’t mention any Military, Law Enforcement or Intelligence/Security agencies in that grouping.
OT: Well, the rain is really coming down here in Vic! Now we know what Qld was like a couple years ago. There are several flood warnings around here, and a couple communities have had evacuation notices near waterways. They say this is the wettest June in 20 years. We’ve had something like 225 mm (8.86″) of rain since Wed last week due to a massive coastal storm off SE Aus. And the temp’s have drooped quite a bit too (we had -2C here one morning).
Australia Flood Threat Targets Victoria
In other news… It’s been just almost 2 weeks since I demanded to be taken off the anti-Depressants (mainly because I’ve felt completely useless and always tired since I’ve been on them). The past week has been tough going, but for the first time in 6 Mth’s I feel somewhat *normal*! I had my first really decent sleep last night, and my mind feels clearer than it has for 6 Mths! So I believe I have made the right decision, Doctor’s be damned! I guess time will tell. It’s just after 8 Am, and I got up at 7 and had a *normal* morning for a change! Had a hot shower that I enjoyed, and a decent breakfast and I’m enjoying my 2nd coffee! (Notice that word “enjoy”? A word that I haven’t applied to myself in over a year, and especially since taking the damned AD’s!) So hopefully, I can finally get productive! Woohoo! That will be good.
Now I’m just going to finish this new high-end Gaming design for my new friends. Should be done today (just a few minor changes and tweaks and triple checking). I think it will be an impressive system. They plan to offer two models, a *do-it-yourself kit* (I have to finish writing up a manual for that), and a pre-built & fully tested system. The pre-built system will cost $400 more, but will have an extra 1 yr warranty and full piece of mind (and will probably work much better than the DIY kit given some of the idiots I’ve seen trying to build their own!) The primary kit will be just under $8k with a ~$650 optional component. The Pre-built will be about $8.4k with a *Premium* version about $9k. The initial benchmarks yesterday indicate that this will perform somewhat better than the Lad’s Xmas build for about $3k less cost. (He’s not very happy with that, but 6 Mths is a long time in IT!)
You might be interested Bryan to know that I designed this all with an Open Source CAD/Modeling system first. Been awhile since I’ve done any *REAL* engineering!
It’s based on CAE Linux with some other s/w.
Of course, a model is only as accurate as the data it’s driven from! But since I first did a completely CAE designed & prototyped system in 1986 that earned 4 Queens awards for Excellence, I feel somewhat competent (and since I’m off the double-damned AD’s, somewhat shakily confident!) Anyway… So, I’ve had the guy’s in Melb. measuring EVERYTHING that can be measured! The grumbled, but I put my foot down as told them that if the want this to work, it WILL Be damned well done PROPERLY or not at all!! Hmmph! And they are on board now since (what a big surprise) they discovered there were indeed some differences to the published spec’s for many components! Not just mechanical, but electrical (such as power draw at idle and various load’s for eg. Many are not linear, as I expected of course. Many companies publish spec’s because people think numbers look cool! If you want the *real* numbers, many companies guard them like gold. So I took the guy’s shopping for reasonably accurate measuring tools (mechanical & electronic) a couple weeks ago, and showed them how to use them. the Boss and a couple tech’s have taken too them like a kid that just inherited a candy store! And they have been feeding me a steady stream of numbers, and adjustments as they get better with the tools. It’s great to be back in the swing of it! 😀
A lot of the water cooling components were a curious mix. Some were way worse than their spec’s indicated, and some were better, but most results depended upon the *system* components as a whole and how well they work together. Because of this, we have been able to choose the components that work well together, many of which are lower cost than the ones that are supposedly *really fantastic* (and therefore, expensive)! A prime example is the CPU. I am pleased to say that the Intel Core i7 3770K LGA1155 (~$370) + Intel Z77 chipset when used in a well designed and cooled system, can outperform the Intel Core i7 3970X LGA2011 (~$1200) +Intel X79 chipset, in many *real-World* situations. And the primary culprit seems to be the chipset/Motherboard rather than the CPU itself.
Anyway, I am looking forward to having (finally!) a good productive day. Hell… I may even smile for a change! 😉
If you are interested m8, I’ll post some of the results in a couple days (assuming the guy’s in Melb give me approval).
Good luck to us all, ehh? 🙂
Tell them to send you a one of the 20-man life rafts that are carried in military aircraft. It’s handy to have, because the one-man version gets really tight after the second day in it, and they aren’t worth much for sleeping.
I’m not 30 feet from a step-down transformer to reduce 4KV to 120V, and the 4KV line originates less than a block away at a transformer dropping from 16KV. I get brown outs, that my big battery back-up complains about, but deals with before the secondaries that are plugged into it notice. Our power is rarely out for long after hurricanes because the 16KV line is a priority, but that doesn’t mean the rated power is available to the end user.
Most of the specifications are ad copy, not real world. Some of them aren’t even in line reality, but when you are dealing with customers who want to know the number of heads and sides an SSD has, you can understand why they do it.
Stay dry, Kryten.
Ah yes, materials specs. I was once involved with a 48-drive six-CPU beast that had *four* power supplies. It was supposed to be able to keep running if two power supplies died. Well, the beast bloody well kept blowing up three power supplies then shutting down! Finally we went and looked at the actual physical hardware rather than relying on the specs. It turned out that the power supply backplane simply had big power diodes on its outputs, then a sensor wire to the switching power supply that went to the *bus* side of the power diodes. So let’s say that one power supply was calibrated to 12.2volts, one to 12.1 volts, one to 12.0 volts, and one to 11.9 volts. The 12.2 volt one would look at the voltage on the bus, which was below 12.2 (because or’ing together the other voltages resulted in around 12.05 volts), and try to increase its output. It’d max itself out trying to push the voltage up to 12.2 volts (as the other power supplies backed off because they thought they were in overvoltage) until it overheated and cut out. Then the 12.1 volt power supply would do the same. Then the 12.0 volt power supply would cut out and the whole system would crash to a halt as the remaining power supply shut down to protect itself. We had to send the backplane back to the supplier and tell them to re-design it to have a PIC chip with an A/D converter monitor the bus and send signals to the power supplies to ramp up or down based on the bus voltage, rather than each power supply attempting to determine that on its own. But note that these 12 volt power supplies were supposedly accurate to within 0.5% of spec. That decidedly was *not* what we saw when we tested them both under full load and partial load! (We had a large dummy load for testing this, of course, along with a digital scope to check the quality of the power output, and of course the required Fluke to accurately measure the voltage).
Then there was the batteries. They had a spec from the factory. We did a drain test, just a 10 watt light bulb hanging off the battery until the battery shut down due to its internal protection circuit (lithium ion battery), and discovered they would only provide about 80% of the rated energy.
My bosses were shocked, shocked I say, that the components manufacturers were feeding us bullshit specs. But they were software geeks, for cryin’ out loud. They merely *thought* they knew how to put together systems from off-the-shelf components. Hey, it worked with the stuff they brought home from Fry’s Electronics, after all :twisted:.
That was a frustrating job. I quit it eventually because my bosses had no understanding of what I was doing and its importance to the company, and treated me like crap. Bah. I had better things to do. My next two jobs were far more fun :). And that company never released another new product after I left them, and went out of business. A shame, they had some good ideas, but simply were inept at executing them. So it goes.
Oh, regarding XP, I have a single piece of legacy software left that requires XP. I run it in a virtual environment on my main computer as needed, since XP’s resource requirements are minimal. Is there some reason you aren’t doing that, Bryan?
I am running virtual XP on my Win7 box, but I’m not yet convinced that it does everything the software requires. I have been testing it, and it has worked so far, but I want the XP box to stay current in case there is something the virtual XP won’t do.
Hey guys. 🙂 Well… I’m back. *sigh*
I soulda kept me big mouth shut about the flooding and *everything is going great*! I know better! About 2 hours after I posted the above, the internet died! Turned out that the local exchange got badly flooded and killed a lot of equipment. They finally had it repaired and got us back online about a half hour ago.
Typical. *sigh*
Now I have to play *catch up* and it’s really messed up my schedule.
Mentioning XP… I use it simply because quite a bit of the s/w I need to use runs better under XP than Win7 x64, and definitely better than Win 8! Including s/w that has supposedly been “completely re-written to take advantage of W7 and 64bit architecture” (it say’s in the manual)! And I’m using 32buit XP so I loose half my RAM, but they are far better! *shrug* So, until that changes… I’ll keep using it. Also, the two kid’s I look after regularly love some of the older games that only work properly on XP anyway, and I still like to play a few legacy games now and then (like Warcraft III). 🙂 There is definitely still life in that old dog yet! 😀
Yeah Badtux… been there too (as you would guess). 🙂 With the experience I had when I started that major project in the late 80’s, I had 3M come in set up the R&D areas and the delivery/storage area to their highest anti-static standards, and then train everyone properly. Bought testing tools and every part or component or piece of equipment that came in was tested, and all delivery receipts were signed conditionally that the items passed or rigorous testing before final acceptance. It’s how I found that Motorola’s either had no AS handling procedures or standards, or nobody followed them! Almost half the CMOS components (including RAM) were faulty. We sent a sample batch of chips to 3M for microscopic analysis, and they sent back pic’s of craters in many that whilst they were functional, would have died any day! I went to all the suppliers of components we needed, and the only two who would allow 3M to audit them were NatSemi & TI. So guess who we went with. 😉
After working in the *Real World* ™, I never believe the Fairytale spec’s that most companies publish. My Grandfather drummed into me at a very early age the two mantra’s: Test, test and test again!” and “Measure twice, cut once”.
But companies for the past twenty years or so are so short sighed and have no long range vision other than how to maximize profits at the expense of everything else, that rather than create good products that will last, they want the products to die after a year so people will have to buy more. It’s why they all want to be monopolistic. The fewer options consumers have, the better for greedy bastards that want to rip all consumers off. And most consumers are stupid and allow it. It’s why I got out of it all, and refuse to go back. My hard earned reputation *IS* important to me. It’s also probably why after 30 years I am still the highest awarded Engineer in Aus. 🙂 My Grandfather would be very proud, and I care more about that than anyone alive today’s opinion of me. I have actually been told by an Exec after an interview that I was foolish and wouldn’t get a job because I refused to see the *reality of the World today*. I replied “What you mean is that I refuse to see how greedy, short-sighted, immoral, unethical probably criminal and stupid you and others like you are,a nd you are all annoyed that I do have moral’s, ethics, and principals. And BTW, I do see and understand your World perfectly clearly, which REALLY annoys you! And it’s an illusion, and like all, will eventually end.” Others have told me that my qualifications for the job were perfect, but they wouldn’t hire me because I’d have their job in six Months. I usually reply something like: “I am glad you told me that. And now that I know how insecure you are, I’d probably have your job in two Months actually. And for the record, you are a fool.” 🙂
It’s why I like it here. 🙂
OK! Much work to do… TTYL
You have to wonder who does the siting for these companies. I’m on DSL because they bury their cable, but their local exchange would flood in heavy dew, never mind hurricane storm surge. They have the damn thing less than two blocks from the water at about a foot of elevation above peak high tide.
The first time they attempted to do something about it, they sealed the equipment area, but didn’t seal the office area, which meant instead of flooding from the outside, the water flowed in from the office. It’s better now, but I still don’t expect it to be in service after a major storm. The cabling will be alright, but the switches will probably have to be replaced. Salt water does nothing good to electronics.
In ancient times, components either failed during the 48-hour burn-in, or lasted forever. These days there is no way of telling. When the guys at the top only care about one quarter at a time and get huge severance packages when they screw everything up, there is no way of trusting what they produce.
HI m8,
Yeah… this placement was really stupid. It’s the 2nd time it’s flooded I was told today. It’s not far from here… My unit is about 20m from a railway line (which, being a country line only get’s a train ~2-4 hours. In fact, I’m so used to it that when I hear a train, I usually know what time it is. The station is about 100m away). On the other side of the line, is a creek that follows the line. Vic Rail, being intelligent when they built the line, built it on the high side of the creek since the land slopes away from here. Telstra, being the morons that they are, of course built on the low side. After the last flood, they *solved* the problem by adding a concrete drainage ditch between the exchange and the creek and adding a large square steel grid drainage into the storm water system. Obviously, they failed to understand what *FLOOD* means! It almost always overloads the storm water system, which actually increases the flooding! Morons. If they had built on this side, they would have had no problems (it’s really a head-scratcher given that this old exchange was built before Telstra was created during, what we refer to as *The Privatization Decade of Stupidity*, and it was still Gov owned, and so was the land on this side (being owned by Vic Rail which was State owned), and where they situated it was private land that had to be bought.
I just got an interesting eMailfrom SpeedMatters about the Lifeline debate I posted about before. Seems some Dem’s may have found some bit’s of backbone… Maybe. 😉 Of course, the Rethugs proving once again they care about no US citizen at all, want it completely shut down. And yet, morons there still vote for them. To quote an American idol (well, he was before he *came out*), Gomer Pyle: “Surprise, Surprise, Surprise!” 😛 (See… I follow the important happening in the USA!) 😆 A shame Jim Nabors had to wait 38 years to legally marry his partner. Ahh well… bit by tiny agonizing, resentful bit… the USA sloooooowly matures and begins to grow up, just a tad. Sadly though, usually just after the USA grows up a bit, they regress further than before. Crazy.
Speed Matters (CWA) have some other interesting items you may be interested in.
Speed Matters
“President calls for more wireless spectrum”
“As they have for almost 20 years, cable prices rose much faster than inflation.”
“U.S. tablet ownership doubles to 33 percent”
“Obama: Let there be broadband”
Nice to see a Union actually truing to make things better (even if it is self-interest at work. There is nothing wrong with *Enlightened* self-interest. It’s better than the GOP version which is “Me an me mates are all OK. You all can go drop dead!”
Anyway, my Maternal Grandfather, who was a staunch Unionist (or, as my Grandmother referred to him “A professional trouble-maker”), he was a Shop Steward for three large Unions after WW2, would be quite proud! 😀 I have his ticket’s and log books. Nice bit of history to have. I even have a WW2 Ration Book of his that still has about half the ration tickets in it. I’ve been offered a pretty penny (as he would say) for it… But I could never sell it (or any of the other memorabilia, such as their Birth/Death Cirt’s, Marriage License, His military papers and awards etc! Even if I had to live on the street. Well.. I might consider an 8 digit figure (otherwise my Grandfather would rise from the dead to haunt me mercilessly and continually ask me if I was totally insane!) 😆 Everyone has a price, mine is quite a high one (in this case I mean of course). 😉 Heh…
Being of a suspicious bent, I would want to know a lot about whoever owned the private land that was purchased by the government for public use, when there was public land available. Maybe it doesn’t happen in Oz, but in the US there have been cases of worthless land being bought by the government for absurd prices that turn out to have been sold to the government by friends or family of politicians. Buying land on a flood plain for a POP doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
The problem my family faces is finding someone who has the space to store all of the accumulated stuff. There is a silver coffee service that has spent more time in transit, than in anyone’s home. I think my Mother has had it more than once, because I remember hauling it to UPS a couple of times. It is sort of a metal fruit cake that keeps getting ‘re-gifted’.
‘Enlightened self-interest’ is certainly a step up from the rampant greed that we have been seeing lately.
(it’s really a head-scratcher given that this old exchange was built before Telstra was created during, what we refer to as *The Privatization Decade of Stupidity*, and it was still Gov owned, and so was the land on this side (being owned by Vic Rail which was State owned), and where they situated it was private land that had to be bought.
Reminds me of the Sunshine Bridge. Governor Jimmy Davis’s family owned a bunch of land alongside both side of the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. His wife’s family also owned a lot of land in southern Bossier Parish. During his second term of office he built a bridge inbetween Baton Rouge and New Orleans, the Sunshine Bridge. This was literally a bridge to nowhere — there were no roads leading to it! Meanwhile, he built a road in South Bossier Parish that ended directly at the Red River, and plopped a bridge pylon right down in the middle of the river — but built no bridge! It turned out that the reason for both of these mystifying events was to enrich his family by having the state buy the right-of-way for the roads at a high price. The bridge was pretty much just an afterthought (as the Jimmie Davis Bridge in Shreveport proves — it was built several years after the road right-of-way was purchased and the road was built), and just there to justify buying Davis family land at an inflated price.
Like Bryan, I’m wondering if someone politically connected owned land on the flooding side of the creek :).
Regarding memorabilia, I basically have three pieces of memorabilia — my grandmother’s well-thumbed Bible and Broadman Hymnal, and my grandfather’s 1948 Sears single-shot 20 gauge shot gun. I am the end of the line for my branch of the family, and somehow it seems silly to keep souvenirs when they’ll simply get thrown in the trash once I die by whoever cleans out whatever place I’m living in (probably an orderly for a nursing home since I have no family living nearby or capable of travel). So I gifted pretty much everything to other branches of the family ahead of time. They’re just things, anyhow.
Heh.. Yeah… I was thinking the same thing about the land for the Exchange. 😉 And it wouldn’t surprise me a bit. Our Gov’s (Fed, State, Local) are as criminal & greedy as anyone elses. *shrug*
Memorabilia is meant to take us back to happier times and places (I think anyway). 🙂 If I’m having a particularly bad day, sometimes just going through my Grandparents & Mom’s papers and photo’s helps quite a bit and I usually feel better and have a smile. Even if I also sometimes miss them. They were good people and were always there when I needed them. Now, there’s just me. So, it’s good to know that even though they are no longer here in the flesh, they are still able to help me through a tough time. I’d like to think that when I’m gone, I can do the same for others long after. Can’t really ask for more than that! 😉 🙂
My Grandfather taught me to shoot with a Ruger .22, and when I could handle it, I got to try his Weatherby MK IV Deluxe that I’d been dreaming about for years! 😀 (He used to say that the Weatherby was the only thing made in the USA worth buying!) 😆 😉 It was an amazing rifle, most accurate non-sniper rifle I’ve ever used, and I’ve used a lot! Was made from walnut & rosewood. He gave it to me before he passed away. I sold it to a buyer in the USA after my Grandfather passed away as I had no legitimate use for it, and keeping a weapon for no good reason is a stupid idea IMHO. I could have traded it to the Gov on the buy back’ scheme they implements, but I wouldn’t have gotten what the Yank paid for it (US$1850, he was a rancher and had a legitimate use for it, and said he understood my reasons and the history) and it would have been destroyed. Curiously, I’ve tried searching for ‘Weatherby MK IV Deluxe’ and have only seen references to people selling a few. They are a rare rifle, but the most common Weatherby on the ‘net seems to be the MK V or Vanguard. *shrug*
I’m still going through all my eMail and news items I missed. When I came across these two, I thought of you badtux! 😉 😀
ADATA Displays New LSI SandForce SFF-8639 2.5″ SSD With 1.8GB/s Speeds & 200k IOPS & 1600GB Capacity
I want one (or four!) 😆
Anyway, Adata aren’t the only ones doing this. 🙂 I got an newsletter from Prometeus (my hoster) that had an item about them becoming the first EU site to test HGST’s new Enterprise SSD’s with curiously similar spec’s to the Adata SSD above. They provided a link:
HGST Launches the Industry’s First 12Gb/s SAS Solid State Drives
Things are getting interesting! 😀
Indeed, things are getting interesting.
I have my eye on that Crucial 960gb SSD for my laptop. It’s currently at $599US at the Crucial site, and would replace the 750gb spinning rust as my bulk data storage drive. We’ll see what happens… if I get a spare $599, that sucker is *mine* :). (Not for another two months at a minimum alas, all my spare change is accounted for at the moment).
The various roots on my family tree are mostly Northern Europeans who are more into doom and gloom than those in the South. They tend to remember disasters, more often than good times, and base their time line on deaths more often than births. That tends to color the memorabilia they leave for the following generations. That does tend to color your attachment to them.
Yes, if you have the spare cash and are willing to part with it, the need for speed can be satisfied.