The one where it comes alive!

"The Beast" has risen. It may be considered a geriatric recovery by most computer nerds, but I am ecstatic. This was quite the feat!

Monday night, I got a call from cousin Chad: "Wanna' LAN it up?" How do you turn down an offer like that? My first instinct was "Let me see if I can revive 'the beast.'"
As you may recall, my RAID array went haywire a few months ago. Over the passing time, I've slowly been trying to monkey with the box, here and there. I figured out my BIOS processor problem - BIOS thought it was an Athlon XP 1500... but the chip is an XP 1900. Change a few settings, and back in business. No more CPU check errors. And it seems as though the memory testing I've done indicates that the 3 1GB Crucial modules I have are all good. There were some indications to the contrary earlier on.

In addition, it seems as though only one of the 2 drives in the RAID array went south. I actually almost recovered it, but just has too many bad sectors... and is now making that fabulous seeking clunking sound.

I'm hoping that with the old installation of Windows on there it just had too many unorganized corruptions to keep track of, and eventually just went south. So far, I've had no blue screens in the setup tonight after getting home from date night with Christina in Kenosha.

So, anyway, last night was a long story. I can't express the frustration I was running into with my Windows installation. In a nutshell, the disk was corrupted. Chad was nice enough to hang a new disk on my door knob tonight for me. So, tonight, I went to town right away when I got in the door.

I pulled all the drives out and did some diagnostic scans. I pulled out my old 60GB Seagate Barracudas that used to be my RAID array in this machine when I first built it in summer of '02. 6 years is a pretty good run for a gaming rig. And, it seems as though it has some more life left in it.

So, I've finally learned my lesson. I setup a RAID 1 array, "mirrored," with the two Seagates. That's going to be my important files backup. I'll sync up my laptop to backup here on my network as well seeing as the Western Digital 250GB "my book" I bought for this purpose decided not to even power up on it's 3rd use in May. If you could have seen the steam pour out my ears as DJ S2H was preparing for a show. It's very difficult to pull songs from your library of 150GB of MP3s when the drive won't even turn on. Turns out, the early generation was rifled with crappy power supplies. With a little creative debugging with the help of Nate during my DJ gig, we were able to narrow down that the power supply was the problem, not the drive. So, I picked up a replacement supply on eBay for a bargain $6.99. Gotta love those mass qty Chinese suppliers. Upon inspection when it arrived, it seems like a pretty decent unit...for consumer grade stuff. I look forward to getting the drive going again...

Anyway, yeah, so the Seagates are going to be my "important" data for backup. It will actually be duplicate backup because of the RAID Mirrored array.

So, I also did some reorganizing. Moved some cards around (to redistribute PCI bus loading), pulled out the dead drive, added Seagates, removed an old CD-ROM, put a new TV tuner card in (from another computer), and cleaned out the dust bunnies - doesn't look like I cleaned from the pictures, but there was a 1/4 of dust layered throughout the case. I also rerouted some cables to help improve airflow. There are 4 case fans for this beast to help keep the drives cool... and the proc and video card, course.

So, why try so hard to resurrect this beast? Well, for one thing, I'm cheap. Hoping I don't have to invest in a new desktop for a while now. It seems there's another major financial obligation I'm saving for (hmmmmmm). That, and my laptop (while a thunderous gaming laptop in it's day of 2004), is horrifically slow. Laptops are all about comprimise. Here is a beautiful example...
I started a fresh install of Battlefield 2 on my emachines M6802 laptop last night at Chad's. It took 1hr 20 minutes to install the game off of 3 CDs. Following that, there is a major patch update over 500MB in size. The patch took an additional 2 1/2 hours. 3hrs 50mins total.
Tonight, I installed all 3 discs on "The Beast" in about 23 minutes while I've been typing up this post. The patch update is 50% complete or so, with a grand total of 13 minutes on the clock. Now, I'm sure a new gaming rig would smoke past these times, but you can see that this is a major improvement. Imagine the improvement in game play! We're looking at about 45 mins total for the Beast.

Well that said, here are a few pictures of it while I was screaming in the background... "It's.... aaa aaa -aaallliiiiiiiiiiivvvvvveee!!!! IT'S ALIIIVE!!! [Muuuuuuuwwwwwaaaaahahahahahaaaa]"

The one where they forgot to put the cap on

"Don't take it to those fly by night shops. They use crappy oil, crappy filters, and who knows what they'll forget."

You'll notice a few things in this one. Yes, this is Christina's car, Foxy Vanilla. Yes, that's my my Venture in the background. Yes, this is in a parking garage downtown Milwaukee. Yes, it's on the 10th floor on the parking garage. Yes, that is oil on the ground in front of Foxy Vanilla. Yes, that is oil from Foxy Vanilla's engine.



Closer inspection...


What you can't see is that the hood liner is SOAKED with oil... some spray is evident in other areas.


And the problem... anybody notice the cap missing? I peeked in the hole, and there's a rocker arm almost directly underneath the hole... perfect for spraying oil out the top and into the engine compartment.


Apparently, the car was running fine until just before Milwaukee. The oil light would come on here and there, car still running fine. Pulling into the garage (about 20 degree incline), the car reportedly started shaking pretty bad.

Intuition tells us that eventually the oil got so low in level that the oil pump started not being able to pull it out of the reservoir, thus the oil pressure would occasionally drop down in curves as the oil would slosh to one side of the pan, and thus turning on the oil pressure light occasionally. As she started heading up hill in the garage, there was no hope of the pump getting any oil from the pan... and by some miracle had enough lube in the engine to run it all the way up 10 floors in the parking garage. The oil you see on the ground in the first picture is what eventually dripped out of the hood liner, onto the engine fan, and eventually the ground.

So, knight in shining armor arrives (that's me). On the way to meet her, I picked up a 5 quart bottle of oil, oil filter, adjustable wrench, filter wrench, and bag of shop rags from Wal-mart. As I was crawling under the car, I actually had to lift the car up with my hands for me to fit my head between the ground and the frame. I was inspecting to make sure they managed to get the pan plug and filter on properly and tight enough.

All of a sudden, the car drops and smashes my head. Yup, I pooped my pants. I scream, kicking my legs and trying to get my oily, slippery hands back under the frame to lift it up again. My head happened to be looking out the drivers side. I was screaming for Christina, but she was apparently on the phone... IN THE CAR. I peered out with now blurred vision from smashed temples, and see some vaguely adorable feet dangling out of the side of the car. (Picture a little kid with his legs hanging over the edge of a pier/warf on a lake... real cute, right?) It took about 3 microseconds to figure out what happened. Christina had plopped down into the driver's seat while talking on the phone. As kindly as I could, "GET UP GET UP GET UP GET UP GET UP!" I don't know if you can picture what it was like for me under the car to see those legs dangling out the side... if you do it right, you'll be laughing a lot.

Lesson: use jack stands.

Anyway, as I was fumbling around underneath the car, following the near-death experience above, I was feeling around for the oil filter. All of a sudden the cap for the valve cover plops to the ground. Somehow, it managed to fall onto a frame member and wedged next to a plastic panel for about 70 miles. Thank God He worked that into our favor - good luck finding an auto parts store for a replacement in downtown Milwaukee.

While pouring the new oil into the engine, I kindly said something like this to Christina, "You realize that you're NEVER going to one of these Jiffy-lube type places again, right?" "Yeeeeesss, I know."

The one with the noisy rotors

So, in an effort to make the Intrepid more appealing to a buyer, I figured I should probably get rid of the sound of a G-65xtz warp drive winding down while braking. About 60,000 miles ago, I put on a set of cross-drilled and slotted rotors. They were a really big boost in braking performance, but as I came to find out, most of the performance gains were in the new pads I was using more than the upgraded rotors.

Back in January, my good friend Ben was up visiting from Uruguay and I let him borrow my car (...one of the extra 7 vehicles I have sitting around...). He called me the day after I dropped it off for him and commented saying that the brakes were totally worn out and down to metal on metal. I chuckled. "No, Ben, that's just the way those performance rotors sound when you get on 'em hard."

In all fairness, the noise has gotten significantly worse in the last year. When replacing them a few weeks ago, I realized that the slots had gotten packed with salty rusty goo. it filled them up and no longer allowed proper function of the slots (to excrete the build-up of gas during heavy braking - i.e. eliminating "fade"). It got so bad that there was enough consistent friction that it was heating up the entire disc, bearing, hub, through the wheel and into the tire. That's a lot of heat transfer... the last few times, it got the tires so warm, they smelled like burnt rubber. Not good. I'm amazed the rotors didn't warp under such extreme heat...

So, I was able to trade in a pair of old struts at NAPA that I bought about 4 years ago and exchanged for a new set of rotors for the front.

Here's the old (left) and standard new (right).


Ever wonder what the strut and arm assembly look like on the LH series of cars? Here you go. This is with the wheel, brake caliper, and brake rotor removed. The signs of 8 years in the salt belt are evident...


This is my "workspace," not my "office."


And the finished product... aren't they perrrrty? This was taken after "break in," involving numerous 60mph to 0mph hard stops in immediate succession.

Rawley Benefit - Rev 01

A friend and coworker is supporting his wife as she battles cancer a second time. Some friends of theirs threw a huge benefit party for them a few weeks ago. A couple coworkers joined in on donating a speaker package for the live auction that I designed - and now, built :-) No worries - I quoted the job to be complete mid-late June. [whew]

I decided to buy the cabinets for this project - one of my suppliers donated to the Rawley's as well and gave me some nice discounts on the cabinets. I had seen the new cabinets that they carry in person last fall at the most recent speaker nerd gathering in Iowa.

I chose the shaped/curved cherry finish. It's real wood veneer, so it looks really nice - not like those crummy vinyl "wood grained" overlays. Originally, the plan was to use different drivers. I talked to some other speaker nerd friends, and one of them was going to donate some nice ribbon tweeters. One thing lead to another, and I discovered that they wouldn't fit with the midbass driver I was planning to use - both physically and acoustically. I guess acoustically is physically too. Hmmm. Anyway. They were too big and they also turned out to required too high of a crossover frequency (the midbass just couldn't fill in the gap). So, I dug around my stash and found a pair of Seas aluminum dome tweeters.

Here, you can see the baffles all taped up (thank you, 3M for the most wonderful tape in the world). The tape prevents chipping from when I router out the holes for the drivers. The panels have a really nice finish to them that I didn't want to risk chipping. The other baffle is flipped over; I was laying out the driver positioning, exploring my options. "But Scott, those look like they're on top of each other..." - Patience, my young Padawan. "But... but..." Silence!


Here you can see the holes that I've routered out; one with tape, one with the tape peeled off. You'll notice the tweeter has a beveled step in it for flush mounting. When the face of the tweeter flange is flush with the baffle face, this helps to keep the frequency response nice and flat. Normally, this would be done for the midbass driver as well. But, well, you'll see...


There - now do you get it? The midbass actually overlaps the tweeter - they use the same hole for the screw. This allowed me to leave a little bit of flat edge left for the tweeter on top, and more importantly, allowed me to reduce the center-to-center spacing. Ideally, the center of the tweeter and midbass should be right on the same axis. Obviously, that creates great difficulty when it comes to multiple things occupying the same space. That said, typically, "rule of thumb" is to keep the spacing less than 1/2 the wavelength of the crossover frequency. There I go, giving away those marvelous nerdy secrets.


This one's a bit more on top for better understanding. The drivers were just dropped in for a fit check, so the midbass isn't quite centered.


And this is the "Table-o-fun." (Thanks for the naming idea, Christina). Parts parts parts parts parts... and that glorious bottle of blue Mountain Dew. I'm a fan of this new flavor; hopefully, it stays around for a while. It's a little sweet for normal drinking, but I was working and sweating my tail off today. The extra sugar was earned. So, here, I was just laying out some parts, trying to see what I had in my bin for testing. These are just test sample boards for listening - us audio geeks are never done tweaking...


So, here's Rev 01 of the crossover. Prior to desiging this, I made a rather drastic design change last minute. I decided that the aluminum dome tweeter I had planned on using might not be the best for this project. In analyzing the numbers and sound timbre in my memory, I didn't think it'd match well with the sonic signature of the midbass and sub. So, I decided to change to a soft dome tweeter from Seas. I'm so glad I did - great move, Scott.


Here's the cabinets with the baffles removed. You can't see it, but there's acoustic "stuffing" in the back half of the boxes. This helps to eliminate standing waves and reduce distortion. It also affects the acoustic properties of the box "alignment" in how the midbass plays low frequencies.


Here's the back side, prior to the binding posts being installed. If you look closely, you can see the holes about a third of the way up on the back face for them.


And here's the beginning of assembly, the preliminary crossover mounted (temporarily) to the middle brace. There's a ring of closed cell foam used as gasket material to help seal the cabinet - NO AIR LEAKS.


And the final assembly...


Here's a picture of them playing one of my favorites, Alison Krauss. I know, I know - it's a totally sweet TV. Yes, my center channel is bigger than the sub I just built for these speakers (see left side)... FYI, my center channel weighs in at ~80 lbs.


Right, back to the Rawley Benefit speakers.


Yes, that's my socks - the left stand has a bolt that sticks up a bit past the surface of the stand shelf. I didn't want to risk scratching these new pretty cabinets.


I wasn't able to play much other some "light" female vocals tonight - downstairs neighbors are sleeping. I'll be sure to give them a good run in the morning while I get ready for work. In a word, they are remarkable. I'm really pleased with them - this one might not go much beyond Rev 03 for the crossover. I almost nailed it the first time. I'll have to have those that helped make these possible over for a night to listen to them a bit before we have to give them away. These speaker projects are really hard to let go of, even when I get paid for a set. Lots of blood and sweat go into these little buggars, even when I don't make the cabinets.

Stay tuned for more. Time for me to collapse into bed.

Men of honor - prayer for this nation

I toured the Billy Graham Museum at Wheaton College today with Christina after spending a little family time with her brother's family before they head down to Cayman for month. You guys totally ... stink. Hopefully, that's not "penguins" territory. Here's a shot of Tori on our stroll to the French Market after breakfast.


In any case, I saw one of my favorite quotes strewn across a wall, and had to take a photo. Now, I want you to seriously take in all that this is - the important part is WHO this is. Not the man, but his title. The President. The most powerful man in the world. At one time, this kind of thing was EXPECTED of a President - today, it is shunned - about the only remaining recognition is our "National Day of Prayer," something the Anti-Christ Liberties Union [cough cough], I mean ACLU, and the New York Times are perpetually trying to destroy. As a result of seeing this today, and meditating on it as I type, I have been moved this evening to lift up our downward spiraling country in prayer. Hopefully, you'll do the same.

Read and envision it 3 times, and tell me you're not in tears.

This has to be worthy of a Dilbert comic...

Officially, I have no idea where this came from. What I can tell you is that the person whom sits here can thumb down any one of those piles and within 7 seconds and get you the exact email (hard copy printed out) or spec sheet you're referring to. It's really quite amazing. And shockingly organized.

Yes, all those file cabinets are full. Yes, there are the same kinds of piles under the desk. Just one hole for his feet.

What a pair...

Alison Krauss and Robert Plant. And a deaf sound tech. Seriously, are they everywhere?!?!?

Christina treated me to pavilion seats at Ravinia for the dynamic duo. It was an awesome concert. Alison was definitely out of her element... but the arrangements were quite well done. They did some of the old Zeppelin tunes and some of Alison's - but, each were arranged to the other spectrum. Classic rock and bluegrass turn out to be a really great mix. Christina and I were shocked how good Robert Plant sounded - his chops were still in great shape.

There I go again, sneaking a kiss. I'm so sneaky.


Seriously - look at that smile. I take it back - I don't want to have to hurt you.


This is the best shot I could get with my phone... not bad, considering it was pitch black and they were moving on stage... and that my big, fat, wavering man-hands did the picture taking.


The organizer of the whole concept, producer, singer, musician, T. Bone Burnett.


If you can catch these guys on tour, go now. Really great. I hope, for your sake, the guy we had running the sound board is on vacation that day.