Surprise #1 – SATA drive happiness

The new SATA drives I got were smaller physically than the old ones but had more capacity. Also, the SSD's were the tiny 2.5" ones. The surprise is better air flow around the drives and everything running cooler. Cable management also improved a bit because I had a chance to put the drives in the holders in order with the ports. The one true happy surprise was how easy it was to go back to my old OS by just swapping out the cables and power connectors. These new SATA connectors are great but you have to make sure they lock in properly. More than once I had cables coming loose causing a boot to fail.

Surprise # 2 – The Internet Rocks

Normally when I rebuild a computer I spent a huge amount of time installing software, configuring it, getting settings right, and all that mess. This time I just brought up Chrome, installed a few choice extensions such as Xmarks, session manager, and a couple developer tools. Then I was up and running with most of the tools I use all the time. Using these Internet sites instead of installing software and dealing with all the management of it saved a bunch of time. Any more our computers are becoming access points to services on the Internet. That is good in many ways and bad in some, but it sure helped eliminate a huge time waster for me this time around.

Surprise #3 – I was able to access everything

I use a password database called KeePass which is a Password Safe program. I find it impossible to live without. I keep a lot more than just passwords in it. I keep server addresses, configuration settings, logins and passwords of course, and any other kind of information I need to remember but will obviously forget. I keep the database file for it in Dropbox so that it is available to me on any computer I use and my Android. A couple of times I had to go to my phone to look up some information I needed to provide for a login, configuration key, subscription id, etc. I also learned of a couple things I forgot to put in. But overall I had 95% of the information I needed and so the rebuild process went much smoother than normal.

Surprise #4 – Always ask for hardware help

During the process of installing Windows 7, I had a problem that was causing the install to be very slow. Incredibly slow. Slower than watching grass grow in Siberia. After finally reaching a high level of exasperation, I called up my brother-in-law. He thought it was bad memory and had me try a few things including running memtest86+ which didn't find an error, but stalled while testing the 4th ram stick. Pulling it resolved the problem which wasn't apparent before because Windows XP never made use of that stick. I had 8 GB installed and just kept putting off the rebuild. It is my main computer after all and my livelihood so having it down for 2-3 days is a real problem. Getting his help put everything on the fast track so the idea here is to enlist the help of someone else who has a broader view of the situation and can probably see something you won't. I would rather have my machine running properly than to feel stupid for asking someone a dumb question.

Surprise #5 – Seeing the world through cleaned windows

I have enjoyed Windows XP for a VERY LONG TIME. It has been a very stable platform on which to do software development. It has its quirks of course, but over the years I have grown quite adept at dealing with it and being productive with the OS. Now that I have Windows 7 installed its as if I have emerged from a tunnel. Many of the problems my machine had are now working properly. The machine goes to sleep and wakes up properly. It boots extremely fast and doesn't spend 5 minutes after boot loading drivers, startup programs, and all kinds of other junk. And having a clean machine free of 100's of test installed, trial programs, and clean drives as well feels very liberating. I have drive space again, a small list of programs installed, and browsers that don't stall or need restarting all the time. It is amazing how much cruft can accumulate over the years and its affect on the OS.

So if you are postponing a rebuild my vote would be to go for it and just take the pain. Once you come out the other side it will all feel worth it. Just make sure you allow lots of extra time to deal with the problems that will pop up. I had a number of them but in the end I was able to get past them. Now I just have to tell myself not to try out every program I see or better, I should take the old drives and setup a machine where I can try out all kinds of things and not mess up my freshly build development machine.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/hardware/intel-details-atom-power-scheme

T-Mobile Deal Page

Looks like T-Mobile is playing serious. Click on the image to sign up or just go to http://deals.t-mobile.com/. I use Verizon but this is a great deal and a nice way to get one of the new smart phones.

Information

• · Glassfish Terracotta Performance?
  By msnuser168
  Then I found the reason is when The threads in SOAP UI exceeed 256. Then some request will fail with “java.net.SocketException:Connection reset”. I am wondering how to configue SUN web server 7 to get better throughput. …. Subject: Re: Glassfish Terracotta Performance? [Up]. ari ophanim. Joined: 05/24/2006 14:23:21. Messages: 629. Location: San Francisco, CA Offline, Not sure I understand this at all. Sorry, but can you explain more about your test and environment? …

• · Java Logger Memory Leaks
  By Aviad
  Code, Performance Add comments. Recently we switched from Log4J to the java.util.logger package (for this entry it will be called the “Java Logger”). Why, you might wonder, and I don’t have a good reason to give other than the illusion …

• · OVERHEAD: Java Application Scalability « Welcome to the Real (IT …
  By Max J. Pucher
  HTTP requests are load-balanced across stateless servers and routed to designated J2EE server for processing. Such Java applications exhibit intratier communication complexity that directly impairs scalable performance. …

• · Java Buzz Forum Java Performance News June 2009
  We list all the latest Java performance related news and articlesIf the comparison is consistent things are due to start picking up again in the first half …

• · What should I look for when improving performance in Java Stack …
  The Java compilers are also pretty good at sniffing for performance improvements probably better than any single human So while there are some obvious …

• · javanet Kirk Pepperdine on Java Performance Tuning
  Kirk Pepperdine talks about Java performance tuning in this java.net Community Corner 2009 podcast, recorded at JavaOne.

• · Introduction to Java Concurrency « Pure Java Performance
  Presented by David Moskowitz to the Sarasota Java Users Group on June 11 2009 … In addition performance improvements are much easier to add to a logically …

• · Java Performance blog: Eclipse Memory Analyzer, 10 useful tips …
  By Markus Kohler
  Java Performance blog. This is my blog about Java performance related topics. Thursday, July 09, 2009. Eclipse Memory Analyzer, 10 useful tips/articles. The Eclipse Memory Analyzer has been shipped with Eclipse 3.5 Galileo and I planned …

• · Editor’s Daily Blog Community Corner Podcast Kirk Pepperdine on …
  In Java Today In Kirk Pepperdine on Java Performance Tuning Kirk Pepperdine talks about Java performance tuning in this

How To

• · Generating Dump Java Data Files
  Watching the Watchers.org – USA
  by panoskrt Recently I have been running some disk I/O benchmarks, among others, with Java. I needed to check I/O operations performance with plain data …

Blog

• · Giju George’s Blog: Performance Monitoring using JMeter
  By gijugeorge
  Apache JMeter is an open source tool that can be used to measure the performance of Java applications. The JMeter can be used to test a wide range of Java applications like web, EJB, web services etc. I am not going to elaborate more on …
  Giju George’s Blog – http://weblogs.java.net/blog/gijugeorge/

Book

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I got to thinking that what the United States needs is a land-based “ferry” system. Just like the Seattle ferries, you go to the nearest loading point, walk or drive on, and then go up to the lounge and enjoy the trip. At your destination you walk or drive off, and head to where you are going.

What got me thinking about this recently is the need to take a few trips to Chicago, Illinois. I have the option to fly, but I hate having to get to the airport 2 hours early, walk forever to the gate, and then sit there waiting to board. The planes are small, loud, and full of people enjoying the situation as much as I am. At least I am able to get some work done, but the trip is anything but relaxing.

I live in Cincinnati, OH and my destination on the north side of Chicago is 338 miles one way. It is about a 5.5 hour drive but the only thing productive I can do is listen to an audio book on my iPod using a FM transmitter of course. The trip is not as stressful, but I have to watch the road all the time and driving that far makes me tired. If there were a land-based ferry though, I could go to the nearest loading station, drive on, and then do something productive during the trip to Chicago. Once there, drive off and head to my destination. I think demand would be huge since the benefits are so great.

• I can do anything I wanted for the next 5 hours. Sleep, read, watch a movie on my laptop, make phone calls, pretty much anything I could do on an airplane except with a lot more leg room and a lot less noise.
• My vehicle won’t rack up a bunch of extra miles. Less wear and tear so it should last a lot longer. I won’t have to rent a car once I get there. Just drive to wherever I need to go.
• This means fewer vehicles on Interstate highways.
• Fewer accidents from tired drivers trying to push themselves too hard.
• More productivity since there is no need to watch the road. Even if I just sleep the whole trip, I will be refreshed and ready to go instead of suffering from road fatigue.

In the news recently there has been a lot of talk about building a high-speed train connecting Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati Ohio. I wondered if I would ever use such a train to get to Columbus, OH where my mom lives. Honestly, I doubt I ever would. A high speed train sounds nice, but how do I get to my mother’s house once I get to Columbus. She lives 17 miles from downtown, but is still within the city limits. I wouldn’t have my car with me so I would have to rent one. Now my trip has cost me more money, and it has become less convenient. One might suggest that she pick me up at the terminal. If it was just myself that would work, but there are 6 people in my family and there is no way we would all fit. I also have to have car seats as I still have little children. It just becomes a huge hassle, and not worth the time savings a high-speed train would provide.

Instead of spending tons of money on high-speed trains that just take people from place to place really fast, create a system that takes them and their vehicle from place to place in a reasonable amount of time. The cost to build such a system would probably be much more reasonable, and people would use it provided that trips were offered frequently or better yet, on demand. It would provide the opportunity of spending the time on better things. And it would cut down on fuel consumption, green house gas emission, and many other enviornmental benefits. I would be very happy to use such a system to get to the places I need to go. Although I wouldn’t get there as fast as a high-speed train, I’m saving in many other ways and I don’t have the problem of how do I get from the terminal to where I need to go.

I don’t think America will give up the freedom it has by driving cars. They are a necessity as much as they are a convenience. People’s lives are not predictable enough for them to loose the flexibility a car gives them. For trips between cities though, it makes sense to have an option besides flying. The drive from Cincinnati to Columbus takes 2 hours. This is shorter than a flight would be if you measure the time it takes to get from door to door. The drive is long enough though to be boring and justifies the expense of using a land-based ferry. Would I take a land-ferry to Columbus? Most definitely. I have better things to do with my time than to stare ahead at the road and making sure I stay between the lines. Would I use the system to go to Seattle? Probably not unless it could be done much quicker than the 55 hours projected by Amtrak. Spending 5 to 6 hours to get to Chicago without having to drive the entire way, and having use of my own car once I got there, sounds like a great deal and could be an enjoyable trip.

Then yesterday the computer would not boot at all. I tried everything, even taking out all the hard drives, video card, and unplugging just about everything. All I got was a long single tone which said it didn’t like the video card. I couldn’t believe it, not even the keyboard was active so I could hit F2 and get to the BIOS.

I unplugged one of the USB cables and plugged the keyboard into a PS2 to USB adapter to see if that would get the keyboard active. The computer booted normally. Now I was really perplexed. Could it be that a USB cable could cause all this trouble. I saw that the cable I had removed was to my iPod Shuffle which was still in the dock. I couldn’t imagine why this would have caused all these problems but I was very happy that my computer was back to normal.

At work today I told my IT guy about my problems and how I resolved them. He told me that the iPod Shuffle was probably the problem. I couldn’t believe it but I was dying to know why. He said that the computer was probably trying to boot off a USB device and since the iPod Shuffle was there, it was trying to use it. His advice was to modify the boot order in the BIOS to make sure that USB was the last item.

I won’t be leaving any USB devices plugged in anymore when I shut down my computer.

The other problem is always having my passwords available for lookup. I use a number of different computers throughout the day and using USB drives at customer sites is taboo. A great solution I found is to use DropBox  (www.getdropbox.com) which sets up a special folder where you can place files and they will automatically be updated onto all your computers. I put the KeePass database file there and anytime I update it, all my other computers get updated as well.  My passwords end up on all my computers, and because the files are on multiple computers, I don’t have to worry about backing the files up. The password database is protected by encryption, and the transfer of files to other computers is encrypted as well.