does it ever rain in Seattle?
In a summary about the new snooping scandal by the NSA, Slate has a big ass ad from none other than Verizon, a willing participant in giving out its customers’ call information to the government.
This is what the ad says:
This is what it should have said:
After whining about the GE appliances in my townhouse, i finally made the bold step to replace the crappy GE Spacemaker (i nicknamed it GE Noisemaker) washer/dryer unit with a stackable LG washer and dryer.
After
The installation was not without any hiccups. I had to get two brand new 6-ft hoses for the washer because i was told using the existing one would void my warranty. Also, because there is only 4-prong outlet in the closet, the 3-prong plug from the washer has to be connected to an outlet in the small bedroom via an extension cord. Prior to the installation, i had removed the folding closet door. Originally, i thought the folding closet door could present a problem because it hinged on the left side, the same side where the washer door opens to. After putting the door back, i quickly realized that my worry was unfounded. But i discovered a new problem. With the door hinged on the left side, it was not possible to completely open the detergent drawer, which is located on the top left side of the washer.
So i took the folding door out again and moved the top and bottom hinges to the right side. I also had to switch the positions of the roller and the fixed hinges on the door itself. I was actually amazed how easy it was to switch the hinges from the left side to the right.
The new LG washer and dryer, especially the washer, are extremely quiet. I can hardly hear it when it is operating. Now i don’t have to worry about doing my laundry 3 o’clock in the morning!
I have nothing against Thecus personally. In fact, i appreciate the fact that Thecus is coming out with neat storage products and its tech support is quite responsive to my inquiries. That said, i have a big problem with the misleading and somewhat deceiving marketing materials for its product, especially the N2100 Network Attached Storage.
On the marketing brochure for the N2100, Thecus claims that the dual Gigabit ethernet ports provide “lightning-fast file transfers”. In the performance test i did, the maximum file transfer rate that it could muster was a meager 10.4 MB/s. To be fair, Thecus has not published any performance data that indicates the actual file transfer rate. But, for me, a file transfer rate of 10.4 MB/s is not exactly “lightning-fast”. I was also informed that as of now, the FTP transfer rate is only between 8.5 - 12.5 MB/s in RAID 1 configuration. Again, i don’t consider this “lightning-fast”.
In the recent news release from Thecus, it quoted a review by X-bit labs. By conveniently omitting portions of the review that describes the negative aspect of the N2100, it appears as though the reviewer at X-bit labs is fully endorsing this product. The portion that Thecus chooses to omit happens to be one of the more important features of a NAS product: performance. According to the X-bit labs review,
“Unfortunately, the results were pretty disappointing: the results I obtained weren’t even close to “very high speed” that was promised in the manual. No matter how the drives were formatted…”
“it (CPU) was hitting 100% during read/write operations almost all the time! On the one hand, it was very frustrating: we cannot possibly get the promised high data transfer rates ever.”
“N2100 processor simply lacks the computational power.”
I have come to the realization, albeit rather unwillingly, that i should not expect to see any performance improvement of the N2100 in the near future, or ever. What i would like is for Thecus to remove the misleading and deceiving information regarding the performance of the N2100 from all its marketing and product materials.
Update: 9/22/2006
The latest firmware (verson 2.1.01) for the N2100 has improved the file transfer performance significantly. In some cases, it has more than doubled the transfer rate, achieving transfer rates of greater than the theoretical limit of a 100Mbps on a gigabit network. Refer to here for the performance results.
I used IOzone to check the file transfer performance on the Thecus N2100. The test was run under Mac OS X on a 1 GHz Powerbook G4 17″ notebook with 1 GB of RAM. The Powerbook is equiped with a Fujitsu 60 GB 4200 RPM hard drive with 2MB cache. The Thecus N2100 is configured with two Seagate Barracuda 400 GB 7200 RPM SATA 3 Gb/s hard drives with 16 MB cache in RAID 0 configuration. The Powerbook is connected to the Thecus N2100 through two Netgear GS605 Gigabit switches.
Note: The Gigabit ethernet adapter in the Powerbook has no Jumbo Frame support.
I have been doing extensive air travel for the last 9 years, racking up probably 90,000 miles on average each year. There are quite a few things about air travel that drive me nuts, including the baggage claim carousel hoggers, which i have addressed in my post about the solution to that problem.
During the first year or two when i started traveling for work, i had always carried with me the airline-approved suitcase for storage in the overhead compartments. Occasionally, i would not be able to find any available space and i would have to pass my bag to the flight attendants to have them checked it. Needless to say, it was a pain in the ass. Imagine boarding late for your flight and to have to open up every overhead compartments to search for a space big enough for your bag. It is not fun.
After the first two years, i made a decision to always check my bag in for my business travel, boarding my flights with just my laptop bag. My reasons:
That said, i also understand why people want their luggages as carry-on instead. Not having to wait at least 20 minutes for your luggage at the baggage claim carousel and not having the need to deal with lost luggage are probably the main reasons. However, if you do decide to take your luggage on board as a carry-on, you should also take the risk of not finding any space in the overhead compartments. What really pisses me off is that some people have the gall to ask you to remove your bag from the overhead compartments and put it under the seat in front of you while they can use the space for their own luggages. No one forces them to bring their luggages on board. Why does someone else have to pay just so they can save a little time?
This morning, i was “comfortably” half asleep in my own aisle seat on the Alaska Airline flight 344 to San Jose when i was rudely awaken by this fat toad who asked if the laptop bag that she was holding about 5 inches from my face belonged to me. First of all, i do not like to be disturbed when i have already made myself “comfortable” in my seat. Second, what made this inconsiderate fat lard think that she could inconvenient me just because she wanted the convenience of having her luggage as a carry-on? I did not get the chance to fly first class on this flight so i was literally stuck in my coffin-like seat with my feet tucked in the space under the seat in front of me. Imagine being 6 foot 3 and being stuck in a coffin made for someone who is 6 inches shorter. Oh yeah, and the headrest is also made for someone who is 6 inches shorter. That was how “comfortable” i was. Being extremely sleepy and rather irritated, even though i wanted to tell her to go kiss my hairy ass and put my laptop bag back where it belonged, i shoved my laptop bag under my legs.
Next time if this happens again, no more Mr. Nice Guy.