Update as of 4/5/06:
I think I fixed the problem. I found out that I have a bad pair of memory sticks, Crucial 512MB PC3200 Ballistix. I went ahead and swapped them out for my working pair that I had in my work box and all is well. So far no more intermittent speed drops. It seems like it has all cleared up. I also started to experience download corruption. At the time I had already read about nVidia’s NIC causing corruption but come to find out, using both NICs caused the corruption. Sure enough, I decided to run Memtest86 from www.memtest.org and I did indeed have bad memory.
My memory is rated at like 2-2-2-8 @ 1T. I could NEVER run it that tight but with my new memory from my work machine, those timings are actually doable. I tried 2-2-2-7 but after running Prime95 for six hours it failed with one error. I’m going to have to change it back to 2-2-2-8 and see if it will pass Prime testing.
A few months ago I signed up for Giganews and Newzbin for Usenet service. Times got a little rough and I had to cancel my subscription to Giganews. During that time, I was able to get 590KBps consistently and the speed would never drop below 500KBps. I re-signed up again this past Saturday. I noticed that my speed would go up to 590KBps and then it would go down to 200KBps and then go back up. This would randomly happen every so many minutes. I ran trace routes, pings, all that good networking stuff to try and figure out where the bottle neck was, me or my ISP. I came to the conclusion that it was with my ISP after being shatted on by Giganews’ support. All they kept saying was, there is latency from this hop to this hop which means it’s your ISP, nothing we can do. Anyway, I go in to work today and try the connection from there. I’m live about a mile away from where I work. I go in, start the machine up, start testing and the download speed is consistently 590KBps or slightly below, it does indeed flucuate. It never once dropped below 500KBps which amazed me. I started to think maybe it was a software configuration with my box at home. I tried uninstalling a bunch of programs to no avail. I finally decided to change my NIC cards. I have an ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe motherboard which has two onboard NICs. One is the nVidia based NIC and the other is a Marvel Yukon based NIC. Sure enough, I change NICs, reset my cable modem and my speeds are consistent with my work box. Boy am I glad this worked itself out the way it did. I was getting very upset knowing for damn sure my ISP wasn’t going to give two shits if my speeds weren’t up to par. Anyway, if you experience terrible latency while downloading things, try changing your NIC and see if that helps.
Published at March 27, 2006
in Random.
I tie the knot officially today. My girlfriend and I will become a married couple and start our family. It has been seven years in the making and we believe it is now time to make that commitment. I haven’t had the time to update the site since we were so busy getting ready for this. After this I’m sure there will be more updates. I don’t know how many readers I really have but to anyone who even comes across this blog, thanks for reading and I hope you all have a great week.
Published at March 25, 2006
in Random.
Similar in nature to Mozilla’s Bugzilla, you can now submit bugs/suggestions to Microsoft directly using this website. Warning, you need to have a Microsoft Passport account in order to sign-in and post a bug. It is free to sign up for the Passport account. You will need a valid e-mail address.
Published at March 24, 2006
in Random.
That kind of rhetoric obviously isn’t going to work as Fios deployment ramps up. Many of you might recall Roberts’s 2003 promises that 100Mbps was a “real viable prospect” in the not so distant future. But while Comcast offers 16/1Mbps, there’s now rumblings in our Fios forum that Verizon is considering offering speeds as high as 60/5Mbps.
Comcast users in markets that FiOS is being deployed will probably see some nice speed increases due to the DOCSIS 2.0 upgrade of their network as well as competition. Competition is awesome; however, places where Verizon is not available and or has just recently left, they’re all left in the dust. As a resident of Hawaii, as of last year, Verizon left the island market and with that, competition went out the door. I know many people are going to say, what is someone going to do with 16mbit down and 1mbit up but there are many legit reasons. Be it from sharing videos and content with family and friends to doing video editting and music publishing. I’m not going to make it an argument as I know there are many people who disagree with the higher bandwidth claiming people only want it for piracy. Hey, whatever floats your boat but I think it’s innovation and it’s great for the market.
Someone lit a fire under a lot of ISP’s asses and that is a damn good thing, again, COMPETITION!
Sony FRV-37 notebook, in order to remove DVD drive, there are two screws in the hard drive compartment as well as a few screws under the keyboard.
Published at March 23, 2006
in Random.
So I got around to watching the new Marvel DVD called The Avengers. First of all, the rating is PG-13. From what I saw, it was mainly because of the violence between the good guys and the bad guys. It was a great watch, it had my attention through out the entire movie. Great action scenes although I would have liked it if they introduced other characters othan than Wasp and Giant-Man. I thought those two were kinda lame. I would have figured they would have opted for that one lady who wears a purple and black mask and Ghost Rider. I don’t even remember who was in the original Avengers but it was decent. I’d give it a 3/5 stars. The story follows Captain America very closely from his origin back when WWII ended up until the future where he is unfrozen from an underwater glacier. I’ll stop there, I don’t want to ruin it. Hulk makes a great appearance, Thor, and even Iron Man! Well, everyone have a great day.
Published at March 22, 2006
in Random.
Traffic and me do not mix. I am taking an accelerated course at a community college. This course is about three months long. I have gone to the class twice so far due to traffic constraints. I do not even work/live that far from school but still, traffic is what keeps me from being there on time, or there at all really. I mean it’s just ridiculous. I know traffic is probably bad all over, and I truly do not have a solution for it. I mean if places like LA, Vegas, etc all have bad traffic, it’s obvious nobody really has a plan to combat it or help to mitigate it even if a little bit. I am now going to withdraw from this course. I will have to retake it in the future. The bad thing is, there goes my money. Ahhhhhhhh, traffic, the joys of living on planet earth.
Published at March 22, 2006
in Random.
Published at March 22, 2006
in Random.
My fiance and I picked out a nice wedding ring for me last night. It was relatively cheap and it is nice, real gold. I’m happy and content. I can’t afford the best right now but I make do with what I can afford. My fiance and I plan to renew our vows eventually and have nicer rings since we’ll have a lot of time to save our money and get something that we both deserve. I’m thankful for what I have though. I am getting married in one week. I can’t wait.
Published at March 22, 2006
in Random.
You’ve now probably heard or read that Windows Vista has now been pushed back to early 2007. Reasons for the delay is that Microsoft wants to finetune it via beta testing with businesses lol. Businesses will get Vista towards the end of the year so in a sense they will be guinnea pigs for Microsoft before they actually release the OS to the public, per se. I have to agree with their frame of mind, get it right the first time instead of rush it out and mess things up drastically. I rather wait a few months than deal with unfinished parts of the OS. We’ll have to wait and see.