Runner's High

I thought it was about time I post an updated account of the trials and tribulations I have faced configuring Black Velvet. I originally wanted my computer to dual-boot Windows and Ubuntu. I knew I would primarily use the Ubuntu partition, but I needed Windows to play the Sims 3 (and to run other applications, of course!…) I also wanted my computer to have a RAID5 array, since I bought three identical 500GB hard drives and my motherboard supports RAID5. After installing Windows XP on Black Velvet, I attempted to install Ubuntu Jaunty Jackelope. Unfortunately, the partitioner did not recognize my RAID array. After a lot of struggling, desire to have a working computer took over and I settled on temporarily using Windows XP as a single boot.

A summer of playing the Sims 3 and half a semester later… I decided it was time to tame this beast. I gave installing Ubuntu onto a RAID5 another go. Note: Details here may be a little fuzzy, as I hopelessly switched between Karmic/Jaunty, Live/Alternate Install CDs. I found a handy article on setting up FakeRAID, which was helpful, but ultimately didn’t do the trick because it seems that my (fake) RAID controller and Ubuntu don’t play nicely for RAID5. Eventually I settled on having a RAID mirror for my Ubuntu partition and no redundancy for Windows 7. This made things a lot smoother. I was able to use my actual RAID controller, which only has 2 SATA ports, as opposed to the multiple built-in SATA ports that are “capable of RAID 5”. Using my motherboard’s hardware(ish) RAID controller came with some perks, such as naming my RAID array. I chose to name it TOAD.

Setting up the Windows 7 dual-boot was actually pretty simple, once I found the right information for how to do it. I had to edit menu.lst to include the following information:

title Windows 7
root (hd1,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1

When it seemed that things were finally going to work out, I ran into another gotcha. This one was mostly my mistake, though. When I upgraded from Jaunty to Karmic Koala, it asked me what I wanted to do with menu.lst, as the upgrade had modified it. I mistakenly chose not to overwrite. When I went to reboot, my new kernel was not listed in GRUB and inaccessible. Note that this was all in hindsight- at the time I had no idea why GRUB was not updated. I may have ended up re-installing Jaunty, but this time overwriting menu.lst when upgrading to Karmic.

The last major struggle with achieving my setup was…. a degraded array! Shortly after I got the dual-boot working, my RAID array was reported to be degraded. I began to question whether it was a hardware issue. I was almost convinced one of my hard drives was bad when I realized that my RAID array worked fine and dandy running Windows XP in the summer. I also drew the conclusion that I had used Jaunty for a week or so (before upgrading to Karmic), and the array didn’t degrade. I determined it must be some type of issue between Karmic Koala and my RAID array, and have since been using Jaunty Jackelope without any issues. I am hoping that the next long-term support version of Ubuntu will not cause my array to degrade, but only time will tell.

It’s nice to see my computer finally functioning the way I want it to. It seems like I have experienced more than my fair share of problems, but I guess it’s experience and builds my troubleshooting skills. Sadly, as much as I went through to get Windows on Black Velvet, I rarely use it. I don’t even have the Sims 3 installed currently… but I blame school on that one. Hopefully this summer I can get back to using Black Velvet as my primary machine.

The semester is well under way, so I thought I would give everyone (the three or so people who read this) an update on what I’ve been up to. In summary: class, cross country, work. Class is going pretty well. I’m in Real-Time Embedded Systems this semester, so I have been spending a decent amount of time working with my team on that. As the semester progresses, I will be spending an insane amount of time on the project. I may need to invest in a sleeping bag for the Train Lab. I am also taking Income Tax for my Accounting major. Those two classes are my primary focus. On the side, I’m taking Music of our Time, which is proving to be quite interesting. I lack any kind of musical abilities or knowledge, so I am learning a lot and becoming exposed to some good music along the way. My new discovery is Bob Dylan. I really like “Blowin’ in the Wind”. My two other classes, Legal & Social Environment of Business and Operations Management, are some of the general business classes I have to take. I have done a minimal amount of work in those two classes thus far, and my test grades last week showed it! I need to kick it in gear a little, or maybe just open the textbook.

Cross country has been… interesting. I did the most training I’ve ever done in the summer, but yet have struggled more this season than ever (except maybe my freshman year). Allergies have been a potential cause, but maybe attitude also. At a Division I school, I am a mediocre/middle-of-the-pack runner. Because I am fully aware of this, I let myself feel inferior, especially on a team with new, talented athletes. Our team is huge this year, and by huge, I mean we have 17 girls on our team. This season has just been different, and I can’t quite put my finger on why. I will also note my best friend transferred to Iowa for pharmacy school, so the atmosphere has totally changed for me. We used to sing, quote Grey’s Anatomy, and laugh at jokes no one else understood while on an OD (over distance) run or warm-up. I would say things have improved the past two weeks, especially with the change in weather. I am looking forward to upcoming 6K races, most notably the Bradley Classic on October 16. I have learned the last couple seasons that longer races tend to be my best. The last couple days I have been fighting with tendonitis in my shin. I’m hoping I can recover from this in a day or two. More to come on cross country later….

Work. I’ve been keeping busy working as a ResNet Lead again this year. This is starting to feel like a Christmas letter… anyways, I attended the Fall Career Fair at UNI, and ended up with internship interviews at State Farm and Principal. I have a second interview with State Farm on October 18-19 in Bloomington, IL. I haven’t heard from Principal since my first interview, but word has it that they are still accepting applications through the end of this week. I’m really hoping for internship offers from both companies, but I will be happy interning at either place.

And… that’s all for now. Enjoy!

I have a new blog! As you may have noticed, I haven’t blogged a lot in the last eight months, averaging around a blog per month. Did I mention I am OCD about certain things? My blog layout is one of those things. The various themes available on Blogger were not appealing to me, so I lacked the motivation to blog. After seeing how cool Shawn’s new blog using WordPress turned out, I decided to give it a try. WordPress’ software allows you to write code, using some of their pre-defined functions, to customize the look and feel of your blog. They also provide a gui for those with less coding experience. A great benefit of this whole project has been learning pHp and css (cascading style sheets) in the process. I still have a ways to go, but I hope to continue to expand those skills as this site develops. W3Schools Online Tutorials has been a godsend for css!

After working on this in waves over the last month or two, sometimes into the wee hours, the blog side of things is finally finished, for the most part. Comments and archives are soon to come within the next week. The current theme is inspired by the strawberry, grape, and raspberry gummies in Welch’s Fruit Snacks (the blue pouches). Within the next couple weeks, I would like to have a home page with information about myself. Other future additions include additional themes, selecting your own theme, and a “tank cam”, which will stream live footage of my fish swimming in my 55 gallon fish tank. For the tank cam, by “future”, I mean a few months. I need fish first… more on that tragedy in a future post.

Special thanks to my boyfriend Shawn for hosting my blog on his 13throse domain. What a peach!

When I wrote my last blog post on Black Velvet, the computer I recently built, I mentioned difficulties installing Windows XP. One month later, I am finally getting around to writing about it. The root of my problem would have been avoided had I installed Vista or a Windows 7 Release Candidate. However, I chose to install Windows XP on Black Velvet until Windows 7 was officially released, upon which I could get a free copy from the CS Department.

I bought three 500 GB HDDs to arrange into a RAID 5 array. In order for RAID to work properly with XP, you must install the drivers during installation of the OS. What I hadn’t considered until it came time for installation was that XP requires the RAID drivers to be installed from a floppy disk. Considering floppy disk drives are pretty much obsolete, I didn’t purchase one. But all was not lost. We have three old computers in my basement all have floppy drives… maybe I can cob a drive out of one of those. I decided to first try the floppy disk drive in a bare bones kit my mom bought for me after running 1200 minutes one summer. The computer had various issues and ended up being neglected. Unfortunately, two of the pins were bent. Hoping it could still be salvaged, I jammed the ribbon onto the pins, leaving the floppy drive straggling out the side of Black Velvet. Armed with a potentially working drive, I then needed to load the RAID drivers onto a floppy disk, which proved to be just as much of a struggle.

To do this, I need to use another old computer in the basement. I chose to use the Dell, which my dad and sisters still use occasionally. Dust bunnies were burrowing in the drive. After trying a whole plethora of floppy disks with various problems, I gave up and decided I would buy some from Wal-Mart. No such luck- floppy disks are so obsolete, even Wal-Mart doesn’t sell them! In desperation, I searched through our desk drawers some more, and finally found a potential candidate.

Next, I started installing XP from the .iso I burned from the CS Dept. Not much to my surprise, I ran into problems. The CD wouldn’t boot. I ended up using an old XP disc I found in our basement. When it came time to insert the floppy disk into the drive, it became apparent there was a problem with either the disk or the drive. First I decided to try another disk. I fired up our old Packard Bell running Windows 95 to attempt to properly format my floppy disk, but was unable to load the drivers because the CD drive was not working. So, I returned to the Dell, broke out the canned air, and finally got the RAID drivers on a floppy disk. Unfortunately, there were still problems with the floppy disk drive. I decided to try using nLite to slipstream drivers onto my XP CD, but the CD wouldn’t boot. I went back to the Dell and ripped the floppy disk drive out, which involved using a Shop Vac to get all the dust bunnies and spider nests out. Amazingly, both the floppy disk and CD drive worked! Now, for the next “gotcha”…

When I got to the point where I needed to enter the product key, UNI was in the middle of an e-mail upgrade, so I couldn’t get the product key out of an e-mail from CNS. When the upgrade was finished, I entered my product key, which didn’t work because the CD I burned and the CD I found in our basement were slightly different versions. Next I found an internet source for retrieving a key off the XP CD. I entered the key, which was invalid. That afternoon, I went back to Wright Hall to burn another .iso image, only to find out it wouldn’t boot either. I think there is something wrong with their .iso…

That night, I went back to the basement to search for another XP CD, and found one in the bare bones kit CD drive. Miraculously, the key worked. Victory at last! It’s amazing Black Velvet did not end up being defenestrated.

After a year of consideration, I finally built my own computer. I had hoped to build one over Christmas break, but I was too busy with finals to research parts and such. Towards the beginning of May, I got serious again about building a computer and ordered the parts within a week. All of my parts came from Newegg. Here are my specs:

• LIAN LI PC-7B plus II Black Aluminum ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
• GIGABYTE GA-MA790X-UD4P AM3/AM2+/AM2 AMD 790X ATX AMD Motherboard
• EVGA 512-P3-1150-TR GeForce GTS 250 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card
• Rosewill RP600V2-S-SL-S 600W ATX12V v2.01 SLI Certified CrossFire Ready Power Supply
• AMD Phenom II X4 940 Deneb 3.0GHz 4 x 512KB L2 Cache 6MB L3 Cache Socket AM2+ 125W Quad-Core Black Edition Processor
• mushkin 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory
• (3x) Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD5000AAKS 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5″ Internal Hard Drive
• Microsoft JUA-00003S Black USB Wireless Optical Desktop 700
• ASUS VH242H Black 23.6″ 5ms HDMI Full 1080P Widescreen LCD Monitor 300 cd/m2 1000:1 (ASCR 20000:1) Built in Speakers
• LG Black 22X (CAV) DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 16X DVD+R DL 22X (CAV) DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 12X DVD-RAM 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 32X CD-RW 48X CD-ROM 2MB Cache SATA 22X DVD±R DVD Burner with LightScribe
• ENCORE ENLWI-N IEEE 802.11b/g, IEEE 802.11n Draft 2.0 PCI 2.3 Wireless Adapter Up to 300Mbps Data Rates 64/128-bits WEP Encryption WPA, WPA2 WPA-PSK, WPA2-PSK

The three 500 GB hard drives form a RAID 5 array. A blog will soon follow on my lovely experiences installing the RAID controller drivers with Windows XP. I also have plans to install Ubuntu, which is the main operating system I will use. I set Black Velvet up to dual boot into XP so I could play games.

I named my computer “Black Velvet” because it is entirely black, except for the blue glow from the power supply. It is also a song performed by Alannah Myles.

The major driving factor for me building a computer is the fact that my laptop is about three years old, and is no longer able to fully meet my needs. For one thing, I had to use a special cheat when playing The Sims 2: Free Time to prevent my game from crashing to the blue screen of death, due to the insufficiency of my graphics card. The Sims 3 released June 2nd. Releases from the development team made it very apparent this edition would be highly graphics intensive, so I knew I would need a new computer to even attempt to play it. The second driving force for building Black Velvet is: I am a computer science major. I tend to lean more towards the programming side of computer science and haven’t had as much exposure to computer systems. This has been a great learning experience. If something is wrong, I am the one who needs to fix it. Not to mention, I spent around $1100 for the entire thing, but in turn have gotten a computer 10x better than one bought from a retailer.