A little of this and that, douchebag

by Duf Anything and Everything

I tried to keep my Wednesday evening busy and diverse. I did some laundry, finished a mission in Heart of the Swarm, watched this weeks Dexter and Ray Donovan, worked on Mom’s new computer as well as the refurb Ipad 2 I got for the running club.

Originally I was expecting to have to resort to Craigslist to get a used Ipad for the club however when I saw I could get a refurb Ipad 2 direct from Apple for $318 it was a no-brainer.  The laptop will initially be used at the running store to allow people that are handing in paper apps to pay with a credit card via Square or even better, convert them to signing up online on our club web site.  We may be able to use the tablet to take credit cards on race day as well, something we currently do not do.

I installed the SSD drive in mom’s new computer, the third SSD drive I have now installed.  I have to say, I wouldn’t buy anything except the Samsung SSD drives at this point just because their data migration software is so damn easy.

I attached the SSD drive to the system via USB using an external USB to SATA rig I have. Then I fire up Windows, load the data migration app, hit one button and wait.  Once it completes I pull out the conventional mechanical drive, velcro in the silent, tiny SSD drive and start the system.  The only remaining tweak is installing the Samsung Magician software which allows you to do one click OS optimization, performance testing and firmware updates. Done.

This was the oldest PC I have installed a SSD drive into.  As a result the SATA controller is half the speed of newer controllers and does not support AHCI mode which maximizes SSD performance.  Even with the older controller the SSD drive performance was dramatically faster than the old 80 gig platter drive it replaced.  The window disk performance score jumped from 5.2 to 7.1 (max is 7.9)  The boot time of the system was cut by at least 80% and everything that relies on disk I/O was much, much better.

Tonight after work I am going to my mom’s place to set up the computer.  I already utilized Logmein and Dropbox to do most of the migration ahead of time.  I think she will be quite pleased with the new computer although I am sure at first she will have anxiety about the new aspects of it like Windows 7 and full Outlook email. (instead of Outlook Express)

I’ll be scoring a mom cooked meal for my efforts, a fair trade.

Good job Eagles wide receiver, Riley Cooper, for exposing yourself as a racist douchebag. At some concert after he felt slighted about something he was caught on video saying he would fight ever n-word that was there.   I would be surprised if he is wearing Eagles green when the season starts.