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  1. Mercutio

    Media Player Appliances

    I actually started typing up something almost identical to that.
  2. Mercutio

    Media Player Appliances

    Playlist for each folder. I can probably script something, but since this is partially to answer a question for someone else, I don't really want to bother.
  3. Mercutio

    My new system

    I don't think 4.3GHz is anything to complain about.
  4. Mercutio

    Media Player Appliances

    Anyone know of a tool that can scan and create .pls or .m3u files for all the directories in a tree? Does Foobar do that? Or MediaMonkey?
  5. Mercutio

    My new system

    Three minutes is too much down time. :P I was planning to buy Megahalems for my two big guys. They're not cheap (one of the reasons I've been dragging my feet) but supposedly nothing else out there is really better. My 920s have Scythe and some $20 Coolermaster thing on them, respectively...
  6. Mercutio

    My new system

    Yeah. I've been thinking about getting Prolimatech HSFs for them. I just haven't gotten around to it. My game machine, the 2600k, has another 16GB RAM I've been meaning to throw in it for the last month and I haven't even managed to shut it off long enough to do that.
  7. Mercutio

    My new system

    I've been running BD rips all night. I have four i7s: a 2600k, a 975 and two 920s. My 975 is currently reporting a temperature of 80C and 4110MHz clock speed at 100% CPU utilization. My 2600k is reporting 4670MHz and 87C. Both numbers are on stock cooling. I'm sure Handbrake is what has been...
  8. Mercutio

    Poll: How much data do you take care of?

    I just dropped 377GB of .m2ts files on one of my servers in about 90 minutes. Though at least those will be a more manageable 65GB by tomorrow.
  9. Mercutio

    Christmas 2011 PC for Wife

    An E3 Xeon compares very favorably with an i5, which is actually the place I was heading with that thought.
  10. Mercutio

    Christmas 2011 PC for Wife

    Might as well buy a $200 SSD. The 3TB Hitachi drives I was getting for $110 are selling for $220 on Newegg right now. I've been suggesting the Xeon E3 + Asus P8B combination for higher-end users. Yes, it's a more expensive than normal motherboard, but I think the argument for an 80W i7-class...
  11. Mercutio

    Poll: How much data do you take care of?

    Needs a more than 20TB option.
  12. Mercutio

    Media Player Appliances

    Plex is another interesting new development and yet another fork off of XBMC. Boxee has a social aspect in that you can tag videos to watch later and share what you've been watching with your OrkFaceSpace friends. Plex is a media service that lets you share your library through its media hub...
  13. Mercutio

    Seagate introduces 1TB-platter drive, cuts warranty.

    Great. Now I have to wipe this tea up off my monitor.
  14. Mercutio

    Portable printer for an iPad?

    This is entirely apropos. Particularly definition #2. Note in context that the term was coined by an African American writer/cartoonist and given voice by none other than Samuel L. Jackson.
  15. Mercutio

    Media Player Appliances

    I have discovered one of the reasons I haven't been as enchanted with the Boxee box: While it has (some) support for uPnP, it's not actually DLNA certified. Apparently that is the cause of my weirdness with playback and browsing performance. It's better with SMB, which is fine other than the...
  16. Mercutio

    Portable printer for an iPad?

    You know iOS is barely capable of printing and even then it only works if you buy the goofy-ass printers that have been anointed to support the gimmick, right? Here's the list. There's an ipad 2 and a 17" Macbook Pro on my desk right now. I'm going to see how long I can leave them boxed up and...
  17. Mercutio

    Something Random

    Who the hell actually WANTS snow? That's like wanting gangrenous dick cancer.
  18. Mercutio

    Annoyance of the day - ATM charge for usage

    In a normal month, I probably charge $2500 for stuff and pay it off at the end by the due date. I'm at least two months ahead on any bill with a recurring charge; I'm a whole year ahead on my power bill. I don't like owing people money or interest payments, and stay ahead on bills is is a...
  19. Mercutio

    Annoyance of the day - ATM charge for usage

    I'm not made out of money. My living expenses are well within my means and the "extra" money I get from contracting work is the money I carry around all the time or use to buy my toys.
  20. Mercutio

    Supermicro deal on Ebay

    4. Water Cooling is a complete pain in the ass and not something I want to use for a system I expect to run 24x7 for the next few years.
  21. Mercutio

    Annoyance of the day - ATM charge for usage

    My banking needs are met by ATMs. I don't see a reason to stand in line or bother a human being with my deposit-making needs.
  22. Mercutio

    Better audio from a laptop v. Aune Mini USB DAC / Headphone Amp MkII SE

    Why not? The fact that Sandisk players support FLAC is probably the single biggest reason I bought one.
  23. Mercutio

    Something Random

    Probably. Office updates usually don't have the gravity of Flash's or Java's. I tend to ignore them.
  24. Mercutio

    Something Random

    Charter school so... both public and private, I guess. The school does things like block off access to our parking lot for about two hours a day, including times when our students and customers would normally be trying to visit or leave, and use an intercom system throughout the day that is...
  25. Mercutio

    Media Player Appliances

    theRenamer is actually quite functional. I set it loose on some of the videos I've acquired from the internet and I found that it mostly worked well. In a few cases I had to switch the database it was using to pick up something or other. Files with truly idiosyncratic naming I found I could...
  26. Mercutio

    Something Random

    I'm actually doing something similar. One of our classrooms is completely unusable during the day because of noise from the middle school that's on the other side of wall. So now I have a dedicated space and explicit approval to work on loud-ass rackmount equipment in that room. I used to have...
  27. Mercutio

    Supermicro deal on Ebay

    ... yeah. The one I could actually find was $55, which seems like a waste for a CPU that probably sells for about $15 these days. I was planning to get a nice Prolimatech HSF to stick on my game machine but there's something to be said for being able to use the 32TB of hard drives I have stuffed...
  28. Mercutio

    Online backup

    The thing I keep telling my students is that restore time is nothing compared to losing the last decade of digital photos or financial records or for that matter the collection of music they spent two or three years either painstakingly ripping one disc at a time or slowly stealing using the...
  29. Mercutio

    question Smallest Server 2008 footprint

    Yup. You can have Core if you don't need all that fancy GUI stuff. There's nothing like TinyXP for Server 2008.
  30. Mercutio

    Something Random

    Thinking of ddrueding's setup, I think I'd want 4 switched ports to support three servers in some kind of clustered configuration (is that Vsphere?) plus a backend storage server containing the guests. Isn't the point of getting all the VMware stuff in a high availability environment so that the...
  31. Mercutio

    Something Random

    There are some 10Gb Ethernet NICs on ebay for $120 right now. If I could get four of those and even 4 actual 10Gb switch ports, I'd be thinking long and hard about finding a place for iSCSI instead of local drives.
  32. Mercutio

    Supermicro deal on Ebay

    Yeah. I did find a Thermaltake LGA771 cooler that operates at 30dbA and supposedly fits in a 2U enclosure, but I don't know if I want to spend $55 on it or if I'd be better off with different 80mm fans.
  33. Mercutio

    Something Random

    I think that's the point where you start actually paying for the ecosystem and getting the management tools. VMware for me is "I need to continue running a server system that was on old-ass hardware" not "I need to run dozens of single task guest systems with an iSCSI back-end and...
  34. Mercutio

    Annoyance of the day - ATM charge for usage

    No doubt. Let's just say that I have $550 more in my pocket today than I had on Monday.
  35. Mercutio

    Something Random

    Last time I was at an actual computer store, I saw that somebody is making an ithing to RS232 adapter, presumably for console sessions on network hardware. Also, remember that IBM (Lenovo) is a big player in POS systems, where RS232 is very much a living technology if only because there's a...
  36. Mercutio

    LSI buying Sandforce

    The first thing that comes to my mind is that they're buying relevance in future storage products. Sandforce clearly has found itself a nice market with huge growth potential and a commanding if not dominating presence. That's not a bad thing and it match up well with the other parts of LSI's...
  37. Mercutio

    Buying a projector

    I'm not even remotely interested in cars. They're right up there with sports as far as things I don't give a crap about.
  38. Mercutio

    Supermicro deal on Ebay

    I have a pair of Xeon E5320s, quad core 1.86GHz chips with a very reasonable TDP of 80W. They're meant to have passive heat sinks on them with cooling from massive 7k to 15k 80mm cube fans that are normally situated in the front of the case. I replaced my i7 with the original Supermicro board I...
  39. Mercutio

    Buying a projector

    Because beer. Or the devil's weed marijuana. Or perhaps black tar heroin.
  40. Mercutio

    Google sucks

    I've not observed this issue. I have the same phone and carrier as Will. The only time I turn on 802.11 is when I need to do a site survey.
  41. Mercutio

    Annoyance of the day - ATM charge for usage

    People give me cash all the time, so I always have tons of it. I never use it. It's not all that unusual for me to have several thousand dollars in my pants pocket. I go to the ATM to deposit it at the point where the pile of bills gets annoying.
  42. Mercutio

    Merc's Useful Tools of the day

    unetbootin + bootable .ISO file = Bootable thumb drive.
  43. Mercutio

    Annoyance of the day - ATM charge for usage

    I'm the opposite. I've never spoken to a teller inside a bank branch or at a drive up. I do everything through the machines.
  44. Mercutio

    question Printer - Scanner

    I don't think you can discuss awful printers without mentioning Lexmark. I've had generally positive experiences with Samsung printers other than some difficulty sourcing toner cartridges. Brother has been my first choice for a while, though I normally try to convince businesses to look at...
  45. Mercutio

    Buying a projector

    'kay.
  46. Mercutio

    question PC may have died-need some feedback on MB/CPU/RAM

    A little. But historically, prices go up in the fall and into the new year. I've always assumed that was due to demand on the supply chain leading up to the Xmas bonanza plus a lot of new annual technology budgets. Anyway, money has a time value and buying RAM that won't be used for six months...
  47. Mercutio

    Annoyance of the day - ATM charge for usage

    I have an Amex. I use it for a lot of stuff. But a lot of places don't take them. And my Debit card is a Visa. Which everybody takes. So sometimes it gets used. Oddly enough, I accidentally threw my debit card away on Saturday. I knew I did it right away, but rather than dig through a trash...
  48. Mercutio

    Thailand Flooding Threatens Hard Drive Supply

    I'm not clicking on a Fox News link to anything.
  49. Mercutio

    Timing of building a new system

    It does not.
  50. Mercutio

    question PC may have died-need some feedback on MB/CPU/RAM

    That is an assload of work for a 10 year old motherboard.
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