Archive for April, 2006
The last few weeks, my neighbors and i have been hearing a weird scratching sound that seemed to emanate from the wall between the master bedroom and its bathroom or the attic. The noise almost always appears in the morning between 0600 and 0900. Our concern was the possibility of rodents, birds or squirrels living in the our attics or worse, in the walls.
I tried to climb up to my attic to see what’s going on but i do not have a long enough ladder to accomplish that. All i could do was to poke my head up in the attic. It was impossible to see anything in the attic because it was filled with those pink color fiber glass insulation material. I have a really bad experience with the same insulation material when i was working for the University of Kansas student housing one summer when i was in college. Even though i was wearing a mask, i must have breathed in enough of those crap to cough for the next few days. Oh yeah, my hands were itchy as hell because somehow the loose fiber glass material got onto my palms. So even if i could get hold of a tall enough ladder, i probably would not have gone into the attic.
Two days ago, we even got a pest control guy to investigate what’s been waking me and my neighbors up early in the morning. Jim from Eden pest control did a visual inspection of all our attics (4 units) and looked around to spot any possible openings. From what he saw, our units are very well sealed so it was very unlikely that animals could have gone up to our attics.
Yesterday morning, i decided to set up a “sting” operation to find out the source of this noise. My initial thought was that the noise could come from the roof. I told one of my neighbors to call me on my cell when she hears the noise. So at 0630, i went up to the Tower roof top with my camcorder. After waiting for about 15 minutes, i noticed a crow flew up to our roof and to my total surprise, starting jumping onto what appeared to be a ventilation pipe protruding out on the roof. There are 2 pipes from each unit that stick out on the roof. The crow jumped onto the pipe, starting pecking at it with its beak. Then, it would jump down from the top of the pipe and started pecking at the bottom of the pipe. This was repeated for about a minute. Sure enough, my neighbor called and told me she was hearing the strange noise again. Mystery solved!
I have no clue why the crow has taken a liking to the ventilation pipes on our roof. As irritating as it has been the last few weeks, it was a relief to know that we do not have any rodent problem in our units.
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“more capacity to store their videos, movies, and photos”
“allowing users unlimited access to their digital media”
“lightning-fast file transfers”
The above are quoted from the product page for the N2100 on Thecus website. To test the N2100 as a device for videos and movies, i ripped The Lord of War movie and stored it on the N2100. I then mounted the SMB folder onto my Apple G4 Powerbook. The DVD playback of The Lord of War was horrendous. The movie paused every few seconds. To be certain that this was not a Mac OS X issue, i repeated the same test on an IBM notebook running Windows XP Professional. The results were disappointingly similar. During the DVD playback, the CPU utilization stayed between 80-95 %, a rather disturbing number considering the fact that the data transfer rate requirement for a smooth DVD playback is probably in the order of 2-3 MB/s.
“We’ve designed the YES Box N2100 to be not only powerful but easy to use – a great way for users to experience the advantages of a dedicated network file server. By making the technology as transparent as possible, the YES Box N2100 reinforces our commitment to enhancing the digital lifestyle.”
Thecus CEO Edwin Lin
To be certain that the culprit was not my gigabit ethernet network, i connected my Powerbook directly to the second gigabit ethernet port on the N2100 using a crossover cable. The DVD playback was just as hiccupy as my previous tests. The Thecus N2100 as a digital media storage server that enhances the digital lifestyle? Definitely not in this current state.
The N2100 comes with a 128 MB of PC3200 400MHz RAM module. To see if replacing the RAM with a higher capacity one would make a difference, i got myself a 512 MB RAM module of similar specifications. Transferring a 448 MB file from the N2100 to my Powerbook took even longer than with the original memory module. The DVD playback was just as crappy as before. So adding more memory to the N2100 does not help.
“The Intel® 80219 processor provides both the performance and bandwidth necessary for applications such as sharing digital media throughout a home or office network as demonstrated by the YES Box N2100.”
Mike Wall, General Manager, Intel, Storage Components Division.
I am guessing that either the 600 MHz Intel 80219 Processor in the Thecus N2100 is way under-powered to perform any RAID operation (i have not tested the JBOD disk configuration yet) or Thecus has not configured RedBoot properly. I am hoping it is the latter because that can be easily fixed by a firmware upgrade. Initially, the thought that somehow Thecus might have misconfigured SMB on the N2100 appeared but that went away when i enabled FTP on the N2100 and found that the FTP file transfer rate is no different from those using SMB. On average, i am only getting about 7.5 MB/s of transfer rate. Is this the “lightning-fast file transfers” proudly claimed by Thecus?
The setup:
- Thecus N2100 with two Seagate 400 GB 3.0Gbits/s SATA drives in RAID 0 configuration. The firmware in the N2100 is v2.0.00. Internal RAM: 128 MB / 512 MB.
- Gigabit ethernet network (through two gigabit switches / direct connection using crossover cable).
- Apple Powerbook G4 17″ running Mac OS X 10.4.6 with 1 GB of RAM.
- IBM Thinkpad notebook running Windows XP Professional with 1 GB of RAM.
Yesterday, i sent yet another email to the tech support at Thecus regarding the meager performance of the N2100, also asking if changing the disk configuration from RAID 0 to JBOD is going to improve the performance. So far, i have not heard back from anyone.
Update 04/27/2006 2258
Talk about a fast response. Less than 10 minutes after publishing this post, i received an email from Thecus tech support regarding the performance issue. I was asked if i am willing to test the new beta firmware that should improve the performance. Hell ya!
Update 04/28/2006
While i was working with the helpful tech support from Thecus to resolve the performance issue of the N2100, i found out that the gigabit ethernet adapter in my Powerbook does not support Jumbo Frames. I am not sure about the actual bandwidth limitation of the gigabit ethernet without Jumbo Frames but i doubt it is less than 15 MB/s. I also realized that one of the two gigabit ethernet switches (D-Link DGS-1005D) between the test computers and the N2100 does not have Jumbo Frame support. Damn it…should have bought the Netgear switch instead. I only got the D-Link because it was onsale at the Fry’s store in San Jose when i was there last week for a business trip.
I installed the beta firmware (v2.0.02). According to the support personnel, the difference between the beta and the latest public release one is the “removal of NAT between LAN1 and LAN2″. I don’t know how this would help me because i am only using LAN1. The support personnel also sent me a Bit Torrent module to play with. With the intent on getting the performance issue resolved, i can’t say that i will be spending any of my time with the BT-module, but i installed it anyway.
After installing the beta firmware, i repeated the same 448 MB file transfer tests. As i expected after finding what was in the beta firmware but wished that i was wrong, there was no difference in the test results. I tested the Jumbo Frame support of the IBM Thinkpad by connecting it directly to the N2100 using a crossover cable. The transfer rate increased to 10.4 MB/s. So even with Jumbo Frame enabled, the best that i could squeeze out of the gigabit network (or the N2100) is only 10.4 MB/s. That is way lower than the numbers obtained by Tom’s Networking in their review of a Netgear gigabit switch. In the tests they performed, they were able to get a minimum transmit/receive rate of 50 MB/s without using Jumbo Frames.
In testing the DVD playback from a video_ts folder on the N2100, i found out that different DVD programs behave differently. The DVD Player that comes with Mac OS X appears to cache very little, if any, of the DVD files during the DVD playback. That explains why i was able to get a smooth playback using VLC on my Powerbook and InterVideo on the IBM Thinkpad. During the playback on both VLC and InterVideo, the CPU utilization of the N2100 remained between 6 - 12 % and every so often, the CPU utilization would go up between 90 - 100 % momentarily (i suspect this is when the DVD programs are reading a big chunk of the DVD file). For the playback using Mac OS X’s DVD Player, the CPU of the N2100 remained between 85 - 100 % utilized at all time. The question now is why is the constant reading of the DVD files maxing out the CPU on the N2100?
Update 5/5/2006
I tried to use the Bit Torrent module but on both Safari and Firefox (on Mac OS X), clicking on the “OK” button did nothing.
Update 10/12/2006
I am happy to say that the latest firmware (2.1.01) from Thecus has bumped up the file transfer rates significantly for both SMB and AFP. The iostat test results are here.
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Ever since i started playing Halo 2 (Xbox Live) on my newly acquired Xbox 360, my Team Slayer level has dropped from 23 to as low as 20. I understood quite well that it would take me at least 10 games or so to get myself acquainted with the layout on the new wireless game controller. What i had not anticipated was the extreme lagging that i experienced. This lagging is especially noticeable when i am in a small map like “Warlock” or in situations where there are more than a few players “duking” it out on the same screen. I am getting owned left and right. And i am not happy about it.
Another problem i found with Halo 2 on the Xbox 360 is that occasionally there is this translucent image that shows up covering more than half of my screen. It looks like the reflection of object on a glass and it won’t go away until the live game is pretty much over. Imagine playing a live game and not able to see half of your screen. I don’t like it and i am pretty sure no one else does.
On one occasion when i started up the Xbox 360, i got the “E 74″ error on a Black Screen of Death. Powering the Xbob 360 off and on seemed to have resolved it. I am not alone in getting the E-74 error though. According to Microsoft, this is the “fix” for it.
Needless to say, i am rather disappointed with Xbox 360. I pretty much play nothing but the Halo series of games on my Xbox and if i can’t play Halo 2 on my Xbox 360, what do i use it for? I have already packed up my original Xbox thinking that it is the last time the Xbox will see any daylight for a while. Just for Halo 2’s sake, my old Xbox will make its proud return!
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BBC reported that the “Swiss Tourist Board hopes scenes of bare-chested hunks tossing hay in mountain valleys will entice women dreading a summer of World Cup boredom”.
The Swiss Tourist Board produced a downloadable video, which is said to have “attracted interest from around the world, despite only having been broadcast on the internet.”
Here’s my version with tribute to my Swiss buddy Marco “The Whiner”.
Continue reading ‘Swiss hunks for the ladies?’
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Breaking the silence
By Juan Cole
April 18th 2006
Salon.com
The overwrought response to John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt’s brave paper only confirms its thesis.
By Juan Cole
Apr. 18, 2006 | John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt of Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government have put their hands into a hornet’s nest with their paper in the London Review of Books, titled “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.” As political scientists who routinely analyze U.S. foreign policy, they have gained a reputation for lucid and principled argument, but outside the halls of academia are not exactly household names. In daring to simply describe the well-known operations of the Israel lobby, however, they have made themselves targets of a massive smear campaign. Ironically, this reaction is just what their paper predicted.
Fair and gentlemanly to a fault, and widely respected in their discipline, the two professors are impossible to imagine as fire-breathing racial bigots, devious purveyors of blatant falsehoods or wild-eyed conspiracy theorists prone to ignore obvious evidence, but these are the sort of epithets being hurled at them by their critics.
In “The Israel Lobby,” Mearsheimer and Walt argue that U.S. policy toward the Middle East has been dangerously skewed by a powerful pro-Israel lobby, which inhibits free discussion of the issues and has made the pro-Israeli position a political sacred cow. Congress, they point out, virtually never criticizes Israel: It is an untouchable subject. And this taboo has had enormous consequences, which are themselves off limits for discussion. Because America’s blank-check support for Israel arouses enormous Arab and Muslim rage, Israel is a strategic liability, not an asset.
Continue reading ‘Breaking the silence’
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After waiting for about 5 months, i have finally got my hands on a Xbox 360! While i was snowboarding in Whistler over the weeekend, G-man sent me a text message that he had spotted a Xbox 360 at the 4th Ave Costco (the first Costco warehouse location). A few minutes later, he sent another text message telling me that he bought the Xbox 360. The last time G-man saw a Xbox 360 bundle at Costco, i hesitated when he asked if he should get it for me. By the time i went there, it was already gone. So when i got back from Vancouver on Sunday evening, the first thing i did was to go over to his place to pick up the Xbox 360 bundle. The bundle includes the Xbox 360 Premium package with an extra wireless controller, a racing game (i think it is PGR3) and a Play & Charge Kit.
With the limited amount of time i had (i had to get ready to leave for San Jose early next morning) on Sunday night, i managed to configure the Xbox 360 with the receiver and transferred my account on Xbox Live to Xbox 360. I realized that after transferring my gamer tag over to Xbox 360, there is no way to transfer my saved progress in Halo2. I guess the co-op game that i have with Smelly will have to be started from the beginning all over again.
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I was driving south bound on I-880 on my way from Milpitas to Mountain View to meet up with Ricardo for dinner. Even though i was on the rightmost lane going more than 70 MPH, this big ass truck was tailgating me on a rainy and wet evening. I didn’t understand why he was right on my ass. It’s not like there was not enough room on other lanes to pass me by - we are talking about a 7-lane interstate here. I got so used to the morning route to work so i instinctively moved two lanes over to the left. When i realized that i should be taking Highway 237 to Mountain View, i decided to move one lane over to the right to take the exit to go westbound on Highway 237. As soon as i moved into the right lane, the red pickup truck, which had been driving on the rightmost lane, cut right in front of my rental Toyota Corolla, barely inches away. So i honked at him. No sooner had i done that, the asshole driver in the pickup truck braked his truck hard, apparently to force me to brake hard, even though i was already slowing down when he cut in front of me. The worst was yet to come. As he sped away, he held his hand out and gave me the finger. Twice.
I was told by my client in San Jose that drivers around here are not only rude but also very inconsiderate. I have to believe him now.
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Tamara Murphy, chef and owner of Brasa, will be having a 8- to 12-course dinner on April 20th using four of the pigs she is helping to raise. Unfortunately, i most likely won’t be able to go because the earliest i can come back from San Jose that night is 2130. If you are interested, you can read about the progress of the pigs here.
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Yesterday morning, i decided to set up a “sting” operation to find out the source of this noise. My initial thought was that the noise could come from the roof. I told one of my neighbors to call me on my cell when she hears the noise. So at 0630, i went up to the Tower roof top with my camcorder. After waiting for about 15 minutes, i noticed a crow flew up to our roof and to my total surprise, starting jumping onto what appeared to be a ventilation pipe protruding out on the roof. There are 2 pipes from each unit that stick out on the roof. The crow jumped onto the pipe, starting pecking at it with its beak. Then, it would jump down from the top of the pipe and started pecking at the bottom of the pipe. This was repeated for about a minute. Sure enough, my neighbor called and told me she was hearing the strange noise again. Mystery solved!
