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Lots of things will slow down an internet connection. Home routers generally do. So does antivirus software. This is why a lot of techies don't like or bother with Antivirus software.

I've seen them on woot a couple times.

Most of the time, the people I'm dealing with have been customers for years. Most of the time, their needs aren't all that complex. Right now I'm looking at taking two new customers on for the first time in literally years and I can't believe I'm bothering to do it. It's such a PITA to work...

Er, the above only applies when dealing with HD discs of various sorts. Everything else is just peachy.

The default device doesn't seem to "stick": On my setup, at least, my choices are to either output sound through HDMI or to not have sound at all. If I tell Vista to only use Default devices, I get no sound at all. Everything is OK if I'm 1. Using a DVI input rather than HDMI (which I am...

If you're using ATI cards on Vista, it's either a requirement or at least there doesn't seem to be a way to make it switch to something else and still play back properly. There's no control over it in PowerDVD, either; the "use SPDIF" option goes gray while dealing with HD content. Even worse...

The monitor's USB ports are affected by the power state of the monitor itself. I've found - to my dismay - that plugging my phone in to charge on a lot of monitors that have USB powers only works if the monitor is on and displaying something. Not in standby and not off. On a cell phone this is...

I've built and sold a few Phenom systems. Some of the lower end CPU + motherboard combos can be had for only a tiny bit more than what a Q6600 costs. The general argument isn't for the CPU, it's for the high quality onboard video and other motherboard features. AMD's current offerings are not...

I thought the only reason to look at Craigslist was to find the skeeviest "casual encounters" postings before the admins modsmack them. Which, granted, is pretty much the same thing as what sechs is describing, only with different merchandise. The only things I've ever listed on Craigslist have...

I suspect that savings in line with using a ~15% more efficient PSU can be had by properly configuring S3 suspend on the systems in question. My main issue with the PicoPSU I can see there being an extra labor cost above and beyond just buying a case with an efficient PSU in it, like as an Antec...

I have another issue. How the hell is it worth the return on investment to buy and install a $50 mini-PSU in a case that already has a fairly efficient power supply in it?

Why are you using IE at all in the first place? Anyway, here's a short list of things to do: 1. Get the hosts file from mvps.org. Copy it to c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts 2. Download Spywareblaster, install updates and Immunize 3. Download Spybot, install updates and immunize 4...

The classroom machines I maintain use Intel boards (946GZs) and CPUs (E6300s), Optiarc burners and Samsung or Seagate hard disks, along with smaller NSK3380 cases, but they have been magnificently reliable for me. Were I building my fleet today I'd probably use 45nm E7200s or the cheaper...

According to Comcast the issue in my case is actually an extra-crappy SNR on my cable modem. The guy I talked to also wanted to know how I convinced a Comcast rep to provide business services to an address with an apartment number. Anyway my DSL option is a Verizon-provided line. Verizon billed...

Doesn't BES rely on Exchange, too? And for that matter, does Blackberry push the calendar and contacts?

Some of my clients are on a service contract. In other cases, I do the work anyway just because I don't want there to be a crisis that would reflect poorly on me.

Nothing I'm doing is making me rich. Had I to guess, I'd say that Fushigi probably has double the annual income I do (including his benefits etc), and ddrueding probably manages some in the same general ballpark with about half the hours worked. I'm not doing what I do for money, either.

My trainer job has no benefits beyond my salary, but the thing that makes my job as happy as it is, is that my schedule, barring extraordinary circumstances, is four 10 hour days or sometimes three 12 - 14 hour days. I was used to spending three hours+ a day commuting before I took the job, so...

My parents have an Odyssey minivan that they use for long trips and to haul their dogs around. They're planning a driving tour of the Pacific Northwest in a couple weeks. I couldn't believe they wanted to drive that distance given gas costs, but apparently the particular model they have does a...

My Element came used from Carmax with 6300 miles on it. I literally put it in a shopping cart and went "check out." It took about 10 minutes to do the paperwork when I got there. With a 100,000 mile warranty it was under $15k and the interest rate on my loan was only 3.5% or something. That was...

Did I say weeks? I meant years. I've been on the clock 27 of the last 48 hours and worked two normal 8 hour days as a trainer on top of that, and that's the way I actually like things. I can't quite get away with working from home. I usually associate "home" with "needing to look for more...

I will say that the last time there was a serious storm, and I was running my cable connection off a UPS in a blackout, I had a DSLreports speed test that showed 22Mbps to a server in Texas. So if you want your Comcast connection to be faster, just cut everyone else's power lines. :D

Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. They've been doing that since the end of June, I think. Unless they're planning to get even more severe.

I got paid $500 once to delete duplicate records in a Foxpro database (40 seconds of typing a SQL command, basically). That was pretty funny to me.

The point of working the way I do is so that I do not have time to think about anything but the next place I am going to do work, or the next thing I need to get done. If I stop, depression takes over and then I can't get anything done in the first place. Since I've been doing things this way...

I got them to archive Inbox E-mails more than 24 months old. That's a victory, right?

You must be better at dealing with the constant stop and go around Chicago and the Suburbs than I am.

Not at the moment. Actually it's just at my apartment, so I suppose it might be an issue just on my segment or local box or whatever, but my connection has just sucked for the last few weeks and I'm too busy to bother with calling them. Last I read, Comcast's traffic shaping plan basically...

I am having a sudden onset of bastard operator syndrome just now and entertaining fantasies of setting 100MB quotas on their inboxes. I must say it's doing wonders for my mood.

I tend to think of TV Torrents basically as a secondary resource. It depends on what I want, but almost all the stuff I like is geek friendly enough to be readily available. Plus Comcast keeps screwing around with traffic shaping so I really can't download anything these days anyway. >:(...

I have two trip meters in my Element, so I use one to mark fill-ups and the other for paid mileage. That's how I keep track of those things. :)

Originally, I *did* migrate them to Gmail, set up IMAP and moved all their mail. Except... The worst offender in all this, the dude who pays the bills, bought a Motorola Q two weeks ago and managed to make it work with the wireless "push" E-mail/Contacts/Calendar on his Exchange Server...

That's kind of funny, actually. For as long as I've been driving, I've kept a mileage logbook for the sort of thing (plus paid mileage). I can't believe more peopel don't do that.

I'm dealing with a guy right now who keeps telling me Outlook is sluggish on his PC and, in fact, a lot of Outlook clients in his office aer sluggish. So I look. The guy has a 7.4GB Exchange Inbox. Other people in the same office have 1.4, 2.5, 2.8GB and likewise complain of E-mail slowness...

That thing is probably overkill, but I know some engineers who would probably kill for one. Bet it weighs 12 lbs.

I managed at hat trick this weekend and get about 40 hours of contracting work this weekend (from Friday to, uh, about an hour ago), which is more than I've had in probably the last month prior. So I spent all weekend in luxurious central air cooled offices. The temperatures all weekend have...

Venture Bros, Weeds, Battlestar Galactica and Heroes are I think the only shows I watch that are still on the air. There's a show on Comcast On Demand called "Bikini BBQ" that was pretty hilarious to watch with a bunch of lesbians.

woot has 750GB Seagate ASes for $77 + $5 flat shipping (for up to 3 drives). I've had to ship back almost half the 750GB Seagate drives I've bought (6 out of 13)and I know ddrueding has had problems with them as well. And I had huge problems with the 80GB models I bought for my summer computer...

woot has 750GB Seagate ASes for $77 + $5 flat shipping (for up to 3 drives). I've had to ship back almost half the 750GB Seagate drives I've bought (6 out of 13)and I know ddrueding has had problems with them as well. And I had huge problems with the 80GB models I bought for my summer computer...

Windows Server has a technology called dfs that you might want to look in to. With dfs implemented (and it's really, really easy) your data is replicated to all participating servers and users can always look in a single namespace to find the data that they want.

Also, who the hell cares about sailing? And insofar as someone might, does being a sailor make one an athlete? Is the performance of an olympic sailor related in any way to his physicality, or is it a matter of his expertise with instruments and objects? I eagerly await the day when Starcraft...

I am not arguing that point, regardless of the undeniable correctness of my opinion. My concern in this topic is that as loathsome and disgusting as I find the national preoccupation with such things as Basketball, Golf, Hockey and NASCAR, at least people seem to have a constant level of...

As someone who thinks sports are at best a completely pointless waste of time, space and energy, the thing I cannot comprehend is how, once every four years, we suddenly give a flying fuck about all these sports that might as well not even exist 1447 days between Olympics. Wow. Ping pong...

At least in Chicago there is cable industry competition. Where I live there is only one municipality that doesn't have an exclusive franchise with Comcast so that residents can choose to get Wide Open West. Oddly enough, pretty much everything Comcast offers is about $15 a month cheaper there...

I switched the hardware out and took the boards. I may play with them on my own. I can't believe they'd be that bad or that they'd be bad in the way that they were. My client was on the verge of strangling me over the performance of those machines. I have about 20 non-billable hours above and...

They have one standard 750GB SATA drive that's being used for the OS and 3 750GB drives that are completely unconfigured. All are on the motherboard's onboard disk controller (the three drives will be run in softRAID 5, but as I said they aren't even formatted). And there's no disk encryption...

Drivers are off the Intel web site, current as of Sunday. I've been looking at Process Explorer already. Again, nothing is REPORTING that it's using massive CPU time, but the CPU time is reporting being used. It was like that before the previous wipes and the hard disk change as well. At this...

I'm running the drives through ACHI. There does not appear to be a DMA mode setting in Windows and I don't remember seeing anything in the BIOS for it either. 178 minutes to copy 2GB of files from one of these machines to NAS box that's on the same 1GBit switch. Server 2008 also uses the "more...

Well, after a 20 minute adventure of opening the page and getting the program downloaded and running on both machines, I see temps that are in the normal range of 42 - 50C per core (the delay was literally waiting for the pages to load, not downloading). In a server room. Both machines are in...

I'm not physically in a place where I could install a DVD drive or access their USB ports at the moment. They're completely headless machines. They use Intel DG965OTMKR motherboards. I've tried Crucial and Corsair RAM. They've had Samsung and Seagate "AS" 750GB drives (slow crappy drives, I...