I have had this on my to do list for over a month now, and instead watching a movie or some anime I decided to work on rewiring my broadband setup since some items have reached the end of their lives and started acting screwy. I ordered a D-Link DSL-2640B to replace both my Thompson (Qualitynet Modem) and Buffalo Airstation Router. I took a look at the area behind my desk and computer and its nothing short of a nightmare to try to figure things out. I had a few items that I wanted to disconnect and rewire but that would require shutting down everything and doing it the right way so I left that for later, just the network cables alone add up to more then a dozen wires. So I unpacked the D-Link modem and powered up to configure it before plugging in the RJ-11 (telephone) cable, and as usual I tried doing things from memory, but I messed up Qualitynet’s setting so I called them up and got these details:

• Login type: PPPoA
• VPI: 8
• VCI: 35

Configured the modem which logged in right away, while on the phone the guy told me that I entered the wrong password and asked if I want to set that as the password, which was helpful but I prefered to keep the old one after remembering it. Then I went on to configure a few port forwarding, the wireless, the DMZ zone, and a few other details. This modem is pretty good with lots of customizing capabilities, the menu is a bit lacking in ease but if you figure your way around there is a lot you can tinker with in the device. After 20 minutes I got a call from Qualitynet on my mobile telling me my connection disconnected and they were asking if everything was ok, I was pleasently surprised, I told them I kept messing around with it and it had to reboot every time I made a major modification. Overall I’m very happy with this setup, initially I haven’t seen any problems so I’m hoping that things go smoothly and it turns out to be a solid modem/router.

Disconnected:

• 6 year old Maxtor Network Hard Drive (250 GB) which was a lot back then
• Thompson ADSL Modem from Qualitynet – Didn’t have any features and was acting up a bit
• Buffalo Airstation – Lasted me a good 4 years before giving up, I think the 2 meter fall from a high shelf ended its life span.

This helped free up some sockets, I got rid of a lot of wiring, I cleaned up the rear area of my computers which was still dust filled. I’m trying to lessen the amount of cables and equipment I have, minizing after knowing your needs is a lot harder then it seems.

• Duplication issues take place so the warnings come out and WHS notifier shows exceptions that files that can’t be duplicated.
• A warning stating low storage space warning on Hazmat Server
• Drive Extender Failure due to duplication issues.

All these services on WHS which face issues when you are at capacity, I will have this resolved hopefully by end of next week but I don’t like running at the edge. At this point I think I have become extremely dependent on my WHS server since it houses everything. The only thing that I think they should have adjusted is having a recycling bin in the WHS if you accidentally delete something you would be able to recover it.

I have been on a downloading rampage and the results are aparent, I pretty much forgot about Hazmat Windows Home Server since upgrading it to 14 TB in May. It didn’t take long to fill it to capacity and with only 70% duplication for a few folders. Its really not recommend to reach that high a capacity with all the hard drives, they balance each other and right now very little data can flow between the hard drives to spread the data. So now I’m running on suicide watch, keeping an eye on the server to see if anything goes wrong right now, one of the hard drivers required to be repaired because the data was slighlty inconsistent. I stuck with my other WHS since I think the Motherboard died and I knew it was on the verge of giving up but I have been too damn lazy to perform the transplant. So I have jumped the gun for a quick solution, I ordered a Sans Digital Sata 8 TowerRaid which will connect to the other two eSata connections on the PCI-X card in Hazmat Server. I’m crossing my fingers that the Tower Raid gets here quickly.

These are the latest Hi-Def movies that I have managed to get my hands on and its on my server at this point. Some are for archiving purposes and some are new movies that I want to see which I haven’t seen or ones that I want to watch again like Fast and Furious. Some are itneresting movies, which I will get a chance to watch at the beach house. The main shows have ended but we haven’t finished them all yet but we still have a few left to watch over this summer. But there are still a lot of movies to watch, I’m making my TV list for this summer too and its turned into an interesting list of shows.

• 17 Again 2009 720p
• Austin Power Trilogy 720p
• Big Nothing 2006 720p
• Bottle Shock 2009 720p
• Boy A 2007 720p
• Bronson 2009 720p
• Duplicity 2009 720p
• Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon 2000 720p
• Doctor Who Planet Of The Dead 2009 720p
• Explicit Ills 2009 720p
• Fast And Furious 2009 720p
• Fatal Attractions 1987 720p
• The Legend of Zorro 2005 720p
• The Secret of Moonacre 2009 720p
• The Uninvited 2009 720p

I have been a huge fan of netbooks but they do have their drawbacks, I picked up the HP 2133 but it had the Via chipset which was slow as hell but with the new Atom it worked better. There are a lot of drawbacks as well as advantages to the netbook phenomenom and one major point is they trade processor power for portability. This time around I think they struck middle ground with this HP unit, and I really liked the build and quality of the HP 2133. This time around it seems to have the same quality build with a lot of other extras that I am curious to try, it supposed to come out sometime in July and starting at $449 which isn’t bad. I’m assuming that will jump up with the SSD option, and most probably I will downgrade it to Windows XP SP3 instead of Vista because it would suck the life out of it and based on the screen details I’m assuming it can play HD movies without any real issue.

Specs that I am looking at:

• Intel Atom N280 (1.66 GHz, 512 KB L2 cache, 533 MHz FSB)
• Mobile Intel® 945GSE Express
• 2 GB 533 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
• 128 GB Solid State Drive
• 10.1-inch diagonal LED-backlit HD anti-glare
• Mobile Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 950
• Integrated 2 MP Webcam
• Intel WIFI Link 802.11a/b/g draft-n;
• optional HP Mobile Broadband powered by Gobi;
• 6-cell (55 WHr) high capacity Lithium-Ion

Link: Gizmodo

I have been waiting for Windows 7 for some time now, planning on installing it on one of the test machines that I currently have laying around. I have always been one to opt for installing the higher versions of Winows XP or Vista, since they have a few features which aren’t available in the home variety. This time around Microsoft has taken it a step further, not only is Remote Desktop not available in Windows Home and Windows Home Premium, but you can’t Remote Desktop into a Windows 7 machine running Home or Home Premium, that I find to be a major disappointment.

• Windows Home (No Remote Desktop)
• Windows Home Premium (No Remote Desktop)
• Windows Professional
• Windows Ultimate

I’m always interested in new hardware, what I have always found interesting is SSD drives and what they are doing with them. Fusion io came with the idea of a PCI Express SSD with 256 GBs and priced at $4000+ but this time around they teamed up with Fatal1y to come up with “budget” priced PCI Express SSD. You still can’t boot from this PCI Express card but the read and write speeds are ridiculous, there are some firmware updates which my add some new features but thats at a later stage.

Link: Gizmodo

I never thought that there would be a curved screen such as this. A 43 inch display in a curved widescreen format, its resolution is around 2880×900 double WXGA, a 10’000:1 Contrast ratio, single link DVI-D and HDMI inputs, on screen display, and probably the coolest screen to hit the market. You can have it by July with a very nice price tag of $8,000. The one part which seems to be missing in the description is that there is 9 inch back end resembling the good old CRT monitors from back in the day. Still for the techi who can afford this its one interesting piece of equipment, makes working on panoramic photos and editing IMAX movies easy as pie.

I have installed previous Linux OSes before but I have been pretty lazy to do anything about Ubuntu. Now I’m a bit fed up with one of my machines and I don’t want to upgrade to Vista for it and its too weak to handle windows 7, all I need it for is mostly FTP downloads. So I decided to switch it over to Ubuntu, I’m just going to have it delete the whole damn drive I don’t even really care whats on it, I’m that pissed with that machine. What annoys me about Windows is how the DLL files get messed up even when you don’t install anything at all or pretty much don’t download anything except media. So for the sake of my sanity I’m switching it to Ubuntu and its only a 4 year old PC so its still got some punch left it, to be exact its an old Alienware cube. Not that Windows is not a good OS, I think its an excellent OS, especially the development of Windows Home Server that made my life a lot easier with back ups and everything in a central location. I’m going to install it and I have a few softwares ready for all my needs, well a few at least to cover my basis.

I think everyone has something personal on their computer and have passwords at this point in time and the worst thing that could happen is to lose that password. Well my nephew messed around with a family members laptop and somehow managed to changed the password, keep in mind that he is only 4 years old. I’m more and more amazed what kids these days are able to do. Well I was called in to tackle the problem which I knew wasn’t going to be very easy, but simple enough. I did it my own way but the link below has the simplest and clearest way of explaining how to tackle this if you are in this situation. Windows Vista has an ability to create a password recovery CD which you can insert and reset your password but if you haven’t done that then there is another way.

• Download Active Password Changer on to another computer
• Install ImageBrn onto your system so that you can burn a Bootable CD
• Using ImageBrn, burn the Active Password Changer DOS bootable iso onto a disc usually located here: C:\Program Files\Active Data Recovery Software\Active Password Changer\Pwd-changer-boot-cd.iso
• Boot up your locked PC with this disc, make sure it boots from CD first
• Then you can go through the steps of finding your MS SAM database where the user and passwords are installed
• Once thats done you clear your password for a specific user, if their are multiple users
• Restart your PC and take out your disc, and it will go through with the user have no password
• Then you create a new password for that user

This is a basic breakdown of the steps that I went through, took me a little over 45 minutes to get through all that and its pretty simple. The link to ItsVista has a complete breakdown of the whole thing with screenshots.

Link: ItsVista