Oh Gawd, Not This, Please

There is an idea in the air - send more spam to fight spam. And, lo and behold, the same day I get a message with a subject "From Hackers With Love", which begins with

With Valentine’s Day looming, don't be fooled by one of many online scams!

I don’t know about you but I’m not a big fan of Valentine’s. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been known to get romantic – but I much rather celebrate a day which is special for me and my partner than get caught up in the commercial hype , especially when there is no in between. On the 14th of February you are either in or you’re out.

and then goes on with a longish text about fraud protection, and concludes with

1. Be wary of any e-mail received from an unknown sender and do not click on any links provided.
2. Run up-to-date anti-virus and anti-spyware software with behavioural protection – such as Spyware Doctor with AntiVirus.
3. Ensure your software is up-to-date and run Smart Updates regularly.
4. Keep the programs running in the background at all times.
5. Use common sense.

Yep. it's the Good Spam™.

Yeah, it's all good and nice, except for two things:

• My mailbox already receives about 600 (yes, six hundred) spam mails a day, and that is after it's been rigorously checked with Google Apps engine;
• New kind of spam does, in fact, not get caught by the spamtrap, because it is, in fact, a different kind of message;

So now not only I have to wade through the spam box (for, unfortunately, there are false positives, more often than I wish there were), but have to read each Good Spam™ message and figure out whether it is Good Spam™ or the usual spam. And I don't think I can afford to mark it as spam - for the reason above, the patterns are different and there is no guarantee that it will not skew the spam engine heuristics, and ALL my mail starts being sent to the spam folder.

I sincerely wish that we don't get into a situation where because of one idiot who tried to set his shoelaces on fire, all of us have to take off the shoes now...

Interview Questions

A coworker just forwarded up a list of interview questions and silly answers (like "How can you drop a raw egg onto a concrete floor without cracking it?" - "Concrete floors are very hard to crack") and remembered my favorite interview question. The question is:

Tell me about your most bizarre work related incident.

People get upset a lot - they don't expect Spanish Inquisition (speaking of which, I earned a nickname "Torquemada" at one of my jobs, for my interviewing style, but that's a different story for a different time) and don't realize that the answer to this question matters more in the final decision to hire or skip them than their professional qualifications - "qualified" people are dime a dozen, but it's not qualified people that make teamwork happen, it's the similarity or complementarity of point of view. Of course, this is a simplification, but let's declare it sufficient for the scope.

You may ask, what is my most bizarre work related incident? Well...

Long ago, in a different life and different hemishpere, our ISP lost power. We were the physically closest location, and there was a signal cable between us and them - four 1.5mm² wires. They've called and asked to unplug the cable from the cable modem, and plug it into the 220V power outlet - to give them a chance to run until they get the power back. "If you do this, we'll give you a backup dialup, and you'll have *some* connectivity. If you don't, *everybody* is down", they said.

Well, by today's business standards at the place of residence this is situated somewhere between "outright stupid", "suicidal" and "career limiting move". However, on the flip side was the countrywide network trading securities, with zillions in loss for every second on downtime. Be damned if you do, be damned if you don't. Forget management approval - the manager was one of least bright people I've worked with in my life, and had he known this, I'd be fired on the spot. I'd be fired for downtime too, though - without the possible charges for destroyed equipment, though. No matter what happened, though, the responsibility was mine to bear.

Well, all things considered, I gave them power. They fed off a signal line for the next four hours, which was sufficient for them to get a backup diesel generator, fuel for it, hook it up and switch over - which was a small miracle by itself on a Friday night.

In retrospect, we were incredibly lucky. No connections were flimsy enough to overheat and catch fire deep down in cable tunnels. No service personnel touched wires under power voltage, not signal voltage. No equipment was destroyed or damaged. No downtime, either.



Whereas it is definitely bizarre for today's US, this is actually Business As Usual for other places. Note that the solution was incredibly risky, but at the same time incredibly cost efficient. Now that we're looking at lack of everything, be prepared to conduct this sort of activities more and more often (if you're the one that has to actually do the job), and to give more and more slack to your subordinates (if you're the one to bear the responsibility for their mistakes).

Topsy-turvy HTPC case

Wrote a couple of critical reviews on Antec P182 (on Newegg and here), and immediately remembered the good old YY-0110 (YY0221 is a closest approximation available today).

It wasn't too good at all when I bought it. Well, to begin with, it was bought in 1999 (it was difficult to find and especially verify anything on Internet back in those times), and I had very little idea about what I was doing - it was the first time I was building a computer. Stamped steel, point welding, sharp edges, damaged threads. Resonated like a steel guitar. Inferior PSU, gave up the ghost pretty soon.

However, the role this box played in the transformation of a person with no practical skills into a person that is not afraid of any DYI work can't be underestimated.

...It all started with a freezing video card, Riva TNT2. It was freezing as soon as the card temperature was above 30°C (for comparison, XFX GF7950GT PVT71JYHE9 feels just fine at 130°C). And of course, there was no money to replace it. Well, the less money you have, the more is your motivation to turn on the brains, so I did. Took out the card, took off the heatsink, swore at lazy workers that didn't put the thermal paste right, fixed it, put it back, rejoiced. But there was a side effect to it - at first, Pulse was created, and it eventually grew into DIY Zoning...

But I digress.

All in all, this box had been in service until 2005 (running PIII/550 with 512K RAM), first as a workstation, then as a server. Then it was retired, and it was collecting dust - until the need for a new computer materialized.

That was when things got interesting.

By that time the noise finally got on my nerves.

Lian-Li PC-60 (the original, with three 80mm fans) was bad. Lian-Li V-Cool PC-V1200B, with two 120mm fans and a squirrel case, even on rubber grommets, was even worse. So the verdict was: no new case, YY will be modded, 80mm and 90mm fans will be thrown away, quiet 120mm fans will be installed, and the end result must be quiet enough to put it in the bedroom or into the entertainment center.

The case was gutted, metalworking tools were engaged, and in a couple of weeks the case was difficult to recognize: instead of one 80mm and one 90mm fans there were four very quiet 120mm Scythe S-FLEX SFF-21D (bought here). I can't say whether they really deliver promised 8.7dBA, but you can only hear them in a very quiet room at night, and you have to get down on your knees to hear them. Two intake fans at the front, one intake fan at the left (where the CPU is), and one exhaust on the rear (below the PSU).



PSU chosen was fanless (kind of) Antec Phantom 500. That was before I got disappointed in Antec PSUs after two consequent failures, both shortly after warranty expired. Interesting fact is that I'm seeing a sharp decline in Antec popularity recently - I guess I'm not the only disappointed one. Another disappointment was that as soon as the auxiliary fan kicks in, you realize that no, it is far from zero noise, it's much worse than regular - but that doesn't happen very often, especially if you're only using the computer as HTPC, and not as a gaming station.

After long consideration, fanless XFX GF7950GT PVT71JYHE9, fresh new on the market, was bought. That turned to be the worst disappointment of all: it didn't fit into the case. I was 4mm short. Sure YY is a big case, it's just that the motherboard compartment is more shallow than most... I said, the hell with it, cut out the hole in the side panel, and it works happily since.

That was the end of it, and it seems that the case turned out quite right. It is quiet as a coffin, and cold as a tomb.



CPU temperature (AMD X2 3800+) doesn't get above 49°C with the fanless video card (above), and doesn't get above 52°C with two G92 8800GTS/512 SLI (it is interesting that even those two monsters, the noise level wasn't bad at all). Hard drive is in a wind tunnel between two fans, I don't think it will ever overheat.

Bottomline...

It's been 10 years since I've started buying computers out of my own pocket.

• Bought two whole computers - HP Pavilion out of ignorance, Dell Dimension E521 because of crazy sale;
  
• Bought four cases - YY-0110, Lian-Li PC-60, Lian-Li V-Cool V1200B Plus, Antec P182;
• Got four cases as a present;
  
• Built total of eight computers (not counting endless tinkering with existing ones).
  

All things considered, this case is so far the best.

Yes, it is somewhat ugly.
But it works.
And it is cold.
And it is quiet.

And it is NINE YEARS OLD.

I don't think I'll be buying more cases anytime soon. There's a stack of old cases gathering dust in the corner, I'll just pick the one that fits the purpose the best and start hacking away...