So true!

96%:

Try it! Although I had a look at the answer sheet.

Question 1 about MySpace I had correct, though I guessed. "Tom" was the obvious choice of course 😉

Got the Digg question wrong.

And this one too apparently, wtf, question 24:

Which of the following is a valid IP address? 550.18.1.4.62

As far as I can see that’s not a valid IP. I clicked 10.0.0.1, which in my opinion IS valid. 

I’ve got a few Supermicro X5DLR-8G2 motherboards to put into SC813T-500C cases. Now, the boards are not certified by Supermicro to put into a 1U chassis, which may could some trouble. However the X5DLR-8G2+ is an identical mainboard which is fine for 1U. Actually the difference between these boards isn’t that big, as you will see in a few sentences 😉

I installed everything in my chassis, and put a Supermicro AOC-SAT2-MV8 SATA controller in to control the 4 SATA disks. However, the controller BIOS wasn’t initialized and while booting the BIOS told me "warning: the riser card is not installed". Hrmz. Upgraded the BIOS to the latest version. No dice.

Contacted my fantastic supplier about this, who contacted Supermicro, who came with a solution to the warning: flash the latest bios of the X5DLR-8G2+. Yes, the + which is the 1U version. In (my) 2U version, there is an extra part in the PCI-X slot which is meant for use with an active riser card, i.e. 1 PCI-X slot -> 3 PCI-X slots on the riser. I guess that is what the BIOS is (not) detecting. The BIOS of the 1U version doesn’t check this obviously. For the rest everything just works.

Only, the warning was now gone but the card still wasn’t initialized, which meant I couldn’t boot from it (it must be said that even with the previous BIOS the card was visible from Linux after booting from CD). I was playing around a bit, enabling the onboard SCSI, enabling PXE, resetting CMOS, … and ended up lowering the PCI-X speed from 133MHz to 66MHz. Suddenly it worked, the BIOS was shown, also on 100MHz (and on 32/66). Just on 133MHz it wouldn’t work – even though the card itself has a PCI-X 133MHz logo printed on it. Oh well, it’ll work fine at 100MHz as well, as I only have 4 disks and 100MHz*64bit is more than enough.

If anyone has the same or a similar problem, try this. The X5DLR-8G2 board will fit in a 1U in any case (har har).

As a result from our shopping spree, I now have a Re-Volt Intelli-Plug power brick. I connected it to my HTPC and plugged my TV in. I immediately got to test out the software as by default all outlets are off. Woops. Luckily there is Linux software (never unpacked the Windows CD) to control it, sispmctl , which works fine (on/off at least). Cool stuff, a bit cheaper than an APC MasterSwitch (which of course has its own network card, 8 outlets, etc. 🙂 so quite another league)

On our way to Belgium we stopped by Pearl in Basel. I was looking for a Re-volt Intelli-Plug , which is a USB-controlled power plug. As the store was in Switzerland and they have different power plugs there I wasn’t very hopeful of finding it there, but luckily I did 🙂 Also went out there (after being there for >1.5h) with a 4-channel video-output switcher (PC+Wii+NES and only 2 SCART connectors on our TV), some smaller parts, some clipart stuff for Diana, etc. Whew, never let me into a store like that again, there’s way too much “cheap things” in there (adding up the price of “cheap things” cheap gets a different meaning though). Cool store, lots of stuff (even non-computer), a bit far to drive to when not in Switzerland/Germany though 😉 But there’s a webshop… 🙂

One of the gifts we received was a Nintendo Wii! Including one Wiimote and Wii Sports. On our way home we passed by MediaMarkt and picked up a second Wiimote (including WiiPlay) and a Traditional Controller, plus a Wiimote charge station with rechargable batteries for 2 controllers. Upon installing it we immediately started playing tennis, bowling and all the other fun stuff. The Wii controller really is a novel way of control (yes, I’m 8 months late with my constatation) 🙂

It’s a bit silly that it has built in Wifi and the (ethernet) LAN connection costs an extra 40 bucks; I’d expect it to be built in like in any other console. That said, the wireless connections works fine and supports WPA (thank god) unlike the DS. 

Got some Wii Points and made Diana happy immediately by buying Super Mario 64. 

Now looking for another Nunchuck, seems to be a bit harder as they’re sold out everywhere. :) 

Since thursday 12 july 2007, 10:55 Diana and I are happily married! We married for the law in Bümpliz, Bern, Switzerland with our family and witnesses present. Been in Switzerland for a week (Mon->Sat) and had a lot of fun, even without an internet connection present and our car in the garage for repairs. We got back on saturday around 23:00 and have been resting/relaxing since, but tomorrow I’m heading back to work…

Thanks for all the presents, thanks for coming if you were there, thanks to Steven for coming with me to Switzerland, thanks for the congratulations; if you weren’t, maybe we’ll see you next year for the wedding in the church + big(ger) party!

Pics coming when we’ve collected all the 4708324 camera outputs. 🙂

On sunday evening I returned from a great bachelor’s weekend in Amsterdam, organized by my friends Ash, Danny, Jack/Kristof and Steven [alphabetical order]. Had a great time, hanging out, lasershooting , movie’ing , coupling’ing , eating, walking, drinking (coke), comedy’ing and much more…

Thanks again, guys – it was great.

So, we’ll need to do that again – who’s next? 🙂 

Needing cable management is one thing… but motherboard management??

I reinstalled my WinXP last weekend, and have been annoyed by this the entire week already. My last install just did it like that, too. Anyway, how to fix:

• Open regedit
• Find HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ Keyboard Layout
• Create DWORD called Attributes and set the hexadecimal value to 00010000
• Reboot

Enjoy!