Yesterday the Supreme Court, in a unanimous opinion no less, ruled that the police need a warrant to do long-term GPS surveillance. Yay for the Supreme Court! And no one can claim any liberal vs. conservative silliness either. Some of their reasoning was different, but they all agreed that the government couldn’t do it.

So many rulings at various levels, have been anti-rights/anti-freedom that I’m happy to see that there’s still an occasional win on the good side. Really there’s not been much good news on the rights/freedom front for the last eleven years.

The same day the SCOTUS was handing down the GPS opinion, Rand Paul was causing a stir of his own when he decided the TSA was being unreasonable (a wholly reasonable decision I think). I doubt the conversation will get very far, but at least Paul has the clout to start one.

Anyway, it’s kinda fun that there’s some stir about these issues during an election year. Maybe a few people will stop paying to the red-cape issues like what people might be doing in their bedrooms (and with whom), and will vote Libertarian.

Hey Everybody (all two of you who read this).  It’s been a good Christmas with Amy ‘n me lounging around here at home.  Idaho has been very cold this year, but no snow in the valley yet.  Last year the local ski slopes were open before Thanksgiving, and this year they’re still waiting.  It’s dipped into the single digits (Fahrenheit) a few times already, but there’s been only maybe a day or two where it didn’t get above freezing at some point.

As always, people got us too much stuff for Christmas.  As we were building new computers (see previous several posts), those were our presents this year to each other.  Amy’s family joined in getting her’s too.  But other than that, I got a couple computer games I’ve been wanting, several Blu-ray movies, some good music, and Terry Pratchett’s new book.  I put a list with Amazon links at the end of this post in case anyone’s interested.

Today’s a holiday, and I’ve also taken vacation days for Wednesday and Friday.  So, working Tuesday and Thursday.  Two days on, five days off; I could get used to a work week like that .  Probably not much going on at work this week anyway with most of my staff gone and few emails or phone calls coming in.  I’ll be able to get a couple projects done though, that’ll be nice.

Well, that’s pretty much it.  I didn’t have anything to rant about, just wanted to say thank you to everybody and wish you a merry Christmas – even though it’s over.

Media List

Movies:

• Red – This is the best action movie to come out in the last several years.
• The Big Lebowski – Umm, what to say about this?  Just “dude” I guess.
• 12 Monkeys – Directed by Terry Gilliam, reason itself to watch it.
• Taxi Driver – This movie is a bit whacked-out.  Martin Scorsese’s 1976 thriller.  This got Jodie Foster her first Oscar nomination, and Robert De Niro his second.
• This is Spinal Tap – Rock-band spoof biopic, just too silly.
• Inglourious Basterds – Interesting Tarantino movie set during WWII.

Music:

• Portishead “Dummy”
• Pink Floyd “Dark Side of the Moon – Immersion Set” – There are eight versions/mixes of DSotM in this set.  Amy’s gonna go spare as I listen my way through eight hours of a 1-hour music set, with only slight variations between each version (except the live version, it’s quite a bit different).  Lucky for me, Amy likes Pink Floyd too .

Book:

• Terry Pratchett “Snuff” – The lasted “Discworld” book.  I hope it’s as good as the last two.

Games:

• The Witcher II – The follow-up to a popular game from 2007, by the upstart Poland-based game company CD Projeckt RED STUDIO.  The original was buggy and the US version was nigh incomprehensible due to the censors cutting it up so much (some unofficial patches fixed a lot of this).  The reviews say the second game is as buggy n skrewy as the first, but it’s such a new twist on the tired old RPG game that we play it anyway.
• Space Empires V – This is old old old, written for Windows 95, so it’s going to be a trick to see if I can even get it to launch on a Windows 7 box.  The game requires 32MB of RAM and a 120M hard drive, hehe.  Problem is, some of these games were coded in such a way as to not be able to recognize the existence of modern RAM and give me a “not enough memory” error.  Which is funny since I could load the whole game into RAM and run it from there.  Anyway, I might have to play this on the Linux box if I can’t make it work on Windows.

Since my computer is currently in pieces distributed randomly about the office, living room and kitchen, I’ve not been distracted by games and have been doing a few other things.  I put a bunch of time in on my blog, not so much with writing, but updating it to the new WordPress 3.3 software then changing the theme.  I’ve been using the “Kubrick” theme pretty much since 2005, and I thought it might be time for a change.

I checked out one of the bundled themes in the WordPress code package, called “TwentyEleven” I’m assuming that’s a reference to the year but who knows.  Anyway, it’s kinda fun so I installed that one.  One of the neato things about it, is that I can upload pictures which will be randomly displayed as part of the page header.  I got about 160 images up there, so no one should see much repetition for a while

Other than playing with the blog software, I’ve rebuilt Amy’s and my old computers, the ones we decommissioned when building our new ones.  The older machines are still perfectly serviceable for word processing, interweb stuffs, music, movies, and simple games.  I got Amy’s old machine up and running on Ubuntu-flavor Linux since it’s a huge pain to try to make it work with Windows XP.  Her computer came out during the Windows Vista days when Micro$oft was strong-arming hardware makers into not writing XP drivers for their computer parts.  This was supposed to increase the Vista sales; not sure if it worked.  Anyway, Linux instaled seamlessly with no need to go out and snag drivers from weirdo webservers on the Pacific Rim.  Got that all installed and updated, then moved the computer into a guest room.  I need to get a little 17″ monitor or something for it, then we’ll have something that people can use when they come over.

I rebuilt my old machine with Windows XP, since it was old enough that there are drivers easily accessible for all its hardware.  Well, mostly, there were some old AMD CPU drivers that were a little hard to find, but I hunted them down.  So got it all updated n whatnot, so we have a few working computers in the house now.  My main machine will probably be off-line until later this week when the new parts come in, but at least I can do web n email n stuff.

After the debacle of my trying to buy a semi-pre-built computer, we decided to build Amy’s from scratch.  Her family joined in and made this her Christmas present from all of us.  I bought all the bit through Amazon, and the list is below.  There are no hard drives on the list, since she already has a 1TB and a 2TB drive that we were able to move over.

The build went pretty well, and we got Windows 7 Home Premium installed.  I struggled for three hours trying to figure out why the OS was not recognizing her data drive.  The BIOS was detecting it just fine, but Windows was not.  Finally I found that I had to go in to the Disk Manager and manually assign a drive letter to it.  How annoying.

The CPU is overclocked to 4.6Ghz, and the graphics card is running at about 20% over stock.  I had the CPU up to about 4.9GHz, but the system seemed to be a bit unstable, so we backed it off a bit.  No crashes recently.

Anyway, thank you for Curtis, Jeanette, Rick, Robin and Kevin for helping put this together for her.

I posted a few weeks ago that these days it’s cheaper to buy a pre-built, or at least semi-pre-built computer, as opposed to buying the bits and assembling them. I was wrong. The machine I got from Ascendtech.us had some problems, so I tried to rebuild it. During that process I discovered that they had used incredibly shoddy parts, worse than I’ve ever seen. So far I have spend an additional $335 just trying to get the thing up to a decent level of functionality. By the time I am done, the only part of the computer that I’ll have left from the original one I bought from Ascendtech, is the CPU. I’m going to rant for a while about all the problems, then I am going to link this post in a bunch of computer building forums in hopes of warning others off from using Ascendtech.

The Case

The case the computer was built in was my first clue that Ascendtech.us uses bad parts. In their defense, I did not pay for any kind of case upgrade; excuse me for assuming that a custom PC builder would use a minimally-functional case as their base model. It was made from thin cheap metal, with almost no ventilation for air flow. In fact, the only air intake was through the power supply unit (PSU). I paid for two case fans for additional venting (more on that later) and they were both set up to exhaust air out of the case. One vented out the back, and one vented from the side near the back. So air was being pulled in from the back, and send out the back, resulting in little/no airflow over the CPU, RAM, or drives. Between that and the fact that it would bend out of shape if I looked at it cross-eyed, the case was pretty bad.

Then, to add insult to injury, the front ports (USB 2.0 and audio) didn’t work. Upon investigation I discovered that the ports had been anchored in to place by someone wielding a hot-glue gun. I mean, wow, I’ve never seen such shoddy workmanship in computer components before. As you might expect, the glue was a poor anchor. So, when I tried to stick a headphone jack into the audio port, it would push the port back in to the computer so far that the jack would not be able to pick up an audio signal. When I tried to plug a USB device into the front ports, it would short something out and reboot the computer.

This finally drove me to buy a new case for the computer. When I tried to move the guts over to the new case, the real troubles started.

Power Supply Unit

I paid extra for a 650w PSU upgrade from Ascendtech.us, selecting the unit that had the “recommended” tag by it. After working with it for a while, I have to assume that Ascentech.us bases their “recommended” choices on what will get them the most profit, as opposed to what will be the best component. The PSU is unbranded and old old old. And even by old standards, it was junk. I think someone sold Ascentech.us a warehouse full of these things (since no customer would buy one if they could see the part first) which Ascentech.us now sells to unsuspecting buyers over the internet.

For starters, the power cables are a bit short; this means that using a real mid-tower case (not the POS case Ascentech.us bills as “mid-tower” but is about 2mm bigger than a mini-tower) the cables are not long enough to reach all the power sockets. Also, the hard and optical drives have to be installed near each other and close to the PSU, otherwise the cables won’t reach them either. Speaking of drives, and I think I mentioned this earlier, the PSU had only two Serial ATA connectors. This means one hard drive and one CD drive is the max. Ten years ago that might have been reasonable, but not today. And speaking of not-enough-cables, there is only one 6-pin 12v power connector. Current motherboards require one, and most current video cards require one. I had to buy a few adaptors to make it work, but I was kind of able to get it to a minimum functional level in the old mini-case. But now, no luck.

The Motherboard

This was mostly my fault, I should have done a lot more research on the mobo before I ordered it. Turns out Ascentech.us sold me a micro-ATX mobo instead of a regular ATX. Again, just cheap. As I was trying to wire it into my new case, I found all sorts of missing bits, like no USB3.0 connector for the front ports, slots for only two case fans, and a dire shortage of expansion slots.

Again, this was mostly my fault. Unlike the case, PSU and fans, Ascentech.us actually told me the model of mobo they were selling me, and I didn’t do enough research to see that they were flogging junk.

Fans

As I was pulling the guts out of the old case and trying to make them work in the new case (I wasn’t able to by the way), I took a good look at the CPU fan and got really mad. I paid extra for an “Ultra high-speed, quite run CPU cooler” and Ascentech.us gave me the stock CPU fan that ships with the CPU. This is flat-out fraud, and I have contacted them demanding a refund of the extra I paid for a good fan. Of course, it’s possible that Ascentech.us re-sells the free fan that come with the CPU as an “upgrade” and if I’d not paid for the upgrade they would have installed something made from Tinker Toys. Either way, this is bad business practice.

I mentioned the case fans a bit earlier, and this is another place where Ascentech.us skimps. I paid extra for fans, but just got the regular models – no upgrades. I expected even the base model to be a semi-decent fan, but they are the cheapest ever made. I’ve never seen fans this poorly made before.

——end rant about specific parts——

Anyway, I am 100% unhappy with my experience with Ascentech.us, and will spread the word wherever I can to try to keep others from buying from them. I recently bought individual components (good ones) and built Amy a computer, and it cost the same as the one I bought from Ascentech.us – but all the parts are rock-solid.

If you’re looking for a custom-built computer, you should probably go with one of the more reputable (though much more expensive) places like ibuypower.com, or CyberpowerPC.com. But you’re going to pay $400 – $500 more than just buying the parts and building it yourself. Granted, you’ll get some newer parts, but why bother when you can buy 1-year old parts for 25% of the cost.

——– Update December 19, 2011 ———

I contacted Ascendtech.us to see if their customer service was any good, here’s a hint; it’s not. Below is the emails. Oh well, live and learn I guess. I will continue linking this post in every forum I can find through Google searches like “custom pc builder,” and “hand built pc.”

I am having the rebuild the computer I bought from your since the case was of such poor quality as to be nearly useless. The power supply is also a piece of junk.

However, the reason I am writing is that I paid for a “HIGH SPEED – HEAVY DUTY QUIET RUN COOLER” as part of my order, and as I am rebuilding my machine I see I have the stock came-in-the-box-with-the-CPU fan.

I expect a refund for the upgrade cost of the fan.

There isn’t much I believe I can do about the useless case and way-outdated PSU, other than make sure I make my thoughts known on every forum I possibly can. But selling me an upgraded CPU fan then giving me a stock fan, that’s fraud.

***********

From: “support@ascendtech.com”
To: ‘Mitch Scoggins’
Sent: Monday, December 19, 2011 11:35 AM
Subject: RE: Order #: 316963

My computer was starting to show its age, and it was time to update it.  Last time I bought one, I got an off-the-shelf model then upgraded the video card and put a bit more memory in it.  It was kind of a good idea, but not really.  The computer had decent specs, but it had an end-of-life-cycle motherboard in it, so I couldn’t extend its life very far by adding newer components.  It was maxxed at 4G of RAM, and would only take a 4x PCI-e video card.  Many of you know I love Sid Meier’s Civilization series of turn-based strategy games, and my old machine was below the minimum specs to play Civ V.  I was still able to kind of make it work since I was running a stripped-down version of Windows XP; I’d stop all unnecessary processes and close all other programs and could then play Civ V on the smallest map with all the video settings dialed back as far as they’d go.  The game would still chug pretty bad.

Anyway, it was time to upgrade computers.  It’s hard for me to find what I want since computers generally fall into two categories; 1) general family machines for web and office applications, and these are too wimpy to play the games I like to play, and 2) gamer machines which are crazy expensive since they use all the latest components.  Computer parts, in general, drop about 50% in cost every six months as the new generations come out, so by buying a part two generations old (1 year) I can get them for about 25% of the cost of new.  Those older parts are too powerful for family machines, and too weak for “gamer” machines.  I don’t play the kind of games that need the newest parts, first-person shooters and that sort of thing.

I decided to buy a machine from a place where I could custom-order each of my own parts, for them to assemble.  This is actually cheaper these days than buying parts and assembling them myself, go figure.  After looking around a lot, I decided to buy from Ascendtech.us (12/2011 update, buying from Ascendtech.us was a mistake, please read http://m1s.org/blog/?p=288 if you’re thinking of buying from them).  I almost went with Systemax from TigerDirect.com, but I’ve had problems with TigerDirect’s customer service and the Systemax systems are not as configurable as the Ascendtech systems since they do not let you pick the motherboard.

When I buy a computer from now on, I plan to skimp on just about everything except the motherboard.  If I buy 1-year old parts (or older) and a beginning-of-life-cycle motherboard, I can continue to upgrade the components in the coming years as they get cheap.  Ascendtech let me pick everything from the case, the size and number of fans, the aforementioned mobo, and they even let me pick if I wanted certain parts.  Other companies force the buyers to pick at least some kind of hard drive and RAM. The problem is that my current hard drives are fine, and for some reason all the build-your-own-pc companies charge too much for RAM.  For the RAM it ends up being a choice of paying too much (like double) for the RAM I want, or paying just enough to get the lowest level possible knowing I’ll just throw it away and replace it.

So anyway, here’s what I ended up getting from Ascendtech:

• Mobo – ECS P67H2-A3 (LGA1155 slot) Not the best LGA1155 mobo out there, but at least the 1155 is the latest slot type.
• CPU – Intel Core i7-2600 (not K) 3.4GHz
• High-speed fan for the CPU to keep it cool when overclocking
• Arctic Silver Ceramique thermal paste for between the CPU and fan.  I actually read-up on this to make sure it was not snake oil.  Thermal compound is essential of course, I just didn’t know if the higher-end stuff really made a difference.  According to various computer-builder websites, there is a noticeable heat difference when using this stuff.  It’s all about how well the compound wicks heat away from the CPU.
• Video - ATI Radeon HD6770 (16x PCI-e)
• 650 Watt Power Supply – a bit more than I need, but it’s better to run the power supply at 35% – 50% of capacity, again for heat reasons.
• Two case fans to pull heat out of the box

I bought 8 Gigs (2 x 4g) of Corsair Vengeance RAM from Amazon, and planned to pull my hard drives and DVD burner out of my old box to finish out the machine.

The build time from Ascendtech was supposed to be 2 – 7 business days, but it took 8 and they did not communicate too well.  But I did receive the shipment on Wednesday, which gave me something to do on Thanksgiving.  First suggestion, spring for the non-stock case.  I just stayed with the base computer case Ascendtech offered, and it’s little better than molded tinfoil.  I pulled my hard drives and slotted those into the new machine, but when I tried to do that with my DVD burner I discovered that there are no IDE slots on the new motherboards.  This should not have been a huge surprise, everything’s been Serial ATA for a while now.  So a quick run to Walmart got me a SATA DVD burner.  I could have saved $7-$9 by buying online, but I didn’t want to wait five more days to set up my new machine.

Next problem, the power supply Ascendtech put in only has two SATA power connecters.  This is just dumb and I do blame Ascendtech for this.  I ordered a power supply a few steps up from the low end one they offered (though far from the high end).  I did not do any research on the unit assuming (wrongly) that Ascendtech would not sell it if it was not appropriate tech.  To put a power supply with only two SATA power connectors, into a setup that has a mobo with no IDE connectors is just dumb dumb dumb.  At least they should have thrown in a couple LP4 – SATA adapters (they cost like a quarter each in bulk), but noooooo.  Anyway, I have two hard drives and one optical drive, and only two power connectors.  I plugged in the main HD and the optical drive for the install process, then after I was done I unplugged the optical drive and plugged in my data HD.  I’ve ordered a couple LP4-SATA adapters and they’ll be here early next week.

So, hardware all set up.  I installed Windows 7 ( I need a 64-bit OS to address the RAM I have, and Direct X 11 does not work on WinXP).  I got the mobo drivers all installed, and was doing everything else I needed to with the CD drive before I disconnected it to connect my data HD.  Nero Essentials 9 shipped with my DVD burner and I made the huge mistake of trying to install it.  It broke my whole computer and I had to wipe the hard drive and start over.  I went out onto the web to see what was up, and conventional wisdom is Nero software now sucks, and should not get near any computer.  For some reason Nero software up to version 6, is some of the best CD/DVD burning software ever made; but versions 7 and later are total junk.  I am not sure if the company got bought out or what, but Nero is a total mess now.  Unfortunately Nero 6 (which is all I’ve used until now) will not work with Windows 7.  So anyway, I reinstalled everything all over again.  It always goes faster the second time.

Once my install was done and all the updates were run, I started messing with the BIOS (and flashed it) and overclocking.  For some reason the RAM defaults to 1333MHz, though it’s rated at 1600MHz, I changed that in the BIOS.  I downloaded some temp and fan monitors, then started overclocking the CPU while watching the CPU temps.  At stock speeds the CPU maxes out at about 55 C at full load.  I took it to 20% over stock and the CPU maxxed at 69 C, which is not bad.  Still, I don’t need that much speed (yet) so I backed off to 10% overclock, but I know I can squeeze more speed out of it if I ever need to.

My mobo also lets me adjust the CPU fan’s speed profile.  It has a CPU temp bar that fades from green, through yellow, orange, then red as the temps go up.  The base profile has the fan running at about 1100 RPMs when the temps are green and yellow, then scaling up as the temps hit orange and red.  The only reason really is fan noise, which I really don’t care about.  I’ve never been one of those “my PC should be silent” guys.  I jacked-up the base fan speed to about 1250 RPM’s, then have it scaling up as soon at the temps hit yellow.

Last, I started trying to up the speeds on my video card.  ATI has an application that will run a test on the card, to see what temps it hits under load, then will recommend overclocking settings based on the outcome.  I let it run and found that it recommended stepping up the speed about 10%.  I left it at that for now, again knowing that I can jump it up further in the future if I need to.

I’ve run various benchmarks, and everything seems to be performing as needed and expected.  And for the real test, I loaded up  Civ V.  I can now run the largest map at the maximum video settings, with no noticeable chugging.  Whooo hooo!

Now, as the months and years go by, I will be able to swap out parts as mine start to show their age.  With the PCI-e 16x video slot, I will be able to put new video cards in there for a long time.  The latest and greatest cards today cost over $500, but 2-3 years from now when I want one, I’ll be able to get it for ~$100 or less.  I can put a new CPU in here if I need one, and I can also take the RAM to 16G.  So this machine should survive a good long time, unless I screwed up on the overclocking and melt the mobo to slag   Merry Christmas to me.

I got this scam email yesterday and it was too good not to post:

RE: FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION SEEKING TO WIRETAP THE INTERNET
From : “FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION (FBI).”
To :
Received :09-12-2011 04:32 PM

* * * * *

FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION (FBI).
WASHINGTON D.C ROOM, 7367
J. EDGAR HOOVER FBI BUILDING
935 PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE,
NW WASHINGTON, DC 20535.

ATTENTION:

RE: FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION SEEKING TO WIRETAP THE INTERNET

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Washington, DC in conjunction with some other relevant Investigation Agencies in the United States of America have recently been informed through our global intelligence monitoring network that you presently have a transaction pending and you have been sending payments to Nigeria.

You are hereby ordered to stop every communication with this person(s) so we can help you process your funds and you can receive your money without any further delay. As from this moment, we are monitoring every mail you send. As time goes on we might need certain information from you regarding to this person(s) so we can track them down and put an end to their unholy acts.

Furthermore, you are required to forward to us your EMAIL ADDRESS/PASSWORD and your TELEPHONE so a Scam-Email Protector can be installed in your email box at no cost. To stop these unscrupulous elements from reaching you and many others.

You are strongly warned to desist from communicating with this person(s) henceforth. Do NOT comply with this person(s) in Nigeria to avoid loosing your hard-earned money. Be WARNED.  You are being tracked. As soon as we are convinced that you are dealing with these scammers, even after this email, you will be picked up for aiding and abetting scam.

Do not worry about your fund. In the next couple of days, we will reach you and guide you on how you can receive your fund through the Legitimate Offices and Procedures.

Send your EMAIL ADDRESS/PASSWORD to AGENT LARRY SIMMSONS now at: agentlarrysimmsons@gmail.com

He will oversee the installation of the SCAM EMAIL PROTECTOR in your EMAIL BOX at NO COST. He will also advise/guide you on the legitimate procedures to get your fund.

DO NOT FORWARD OUR CORRESPONDENCE WITH YOU TO ANY FRAUDSTER, WE ARE MONITORING YOU, IF YOU DO, YOU WILL BE DULY PROSECUTED AS THE LAW DEMANDS. DO NOT FEIGN IGNORANCE, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

We earnestly await your urgent response to this matter.

Best Regards,
Mary Callaghan
Federal Bureau of Investigation.

______________________end silliness______________________

I must admit I am considering creating an email address just so I can send them the address and password just to see their follow-up scheme.  These guys are just tooooo hilarious.  I particularly like the part where they are going to “put an end to their unholy acts.”

Just poked my head in to Amazon dot com and saw that Neal Stephenson is releasing a new book, Reamde: A Novel, September 20th.  Whooo hooo!

Someone asked me in the comments section if I had an amazon main-page link associated with my user ID, so that any shopping done using that link would give me a bit of credit.  I do, and here it is: Main Amazon Page If any of you do not already have anyone else whose affiliate link you are using, I’d appreciate your using mine. It would not cost you any more, but each time you bought something I’d get a little Amazon credit. Just click on that link, and set it as your Amazon dot com bookmark, and after that it’ll work.

I logged into to my blog’s admin panel this morning and found that WordPress had released their 3.2 version code.  Problem was, to use it I had to be running PHP version 5.2.4 or greater, and I was on 4.something.  I also needed be be on mySQL version 4.1.2 or better, but I already met that requirement.  I logged in to 1and1.com (my domain registrar and host, and was able to submit an online request to have the latest PHP version put on my site.  I went golfing and by the time I got back the new code was ready to go (yay 1and1).  So, I updated my WordPress code and tada, it’s working.  You’ll probably not see any major differences when viewing the site – unless you live under a rock in Albania and are still using Internet Explorer 6.0, in which case the site will not work well for you.  Of course if you’re still on IE6 your computer is so infected with viruses, spyware and trojans that the web doesn’t really work for you anyway, so no harm done.

If you’re looking for a webhost and/or domain registrar I heartily recommend 1and1.com.  If you use that link, 1and1 will give me credit on my hosting fees (I pay less than $100 per year anyway and that’s only because I have 4 domains with one of them being supported with PHP and mySQL).  Simple domain registration and hosting is like $10/year.  If you are thinking of registering a domain and want to see if it’s available, use the search box below to find out.

[UPDATE Dec 2011 I had to remove the search box since it was messing-up the viewability of this page on mobile devices.]