sluggish network performance

i reformatted my computer Friday afternoon and used it normally. somehow I managed to use it for 2 days before I noticed that the network was slow.. probably because it was the weekend and I wasn’t really using my computer as much. I thought my router was being lame and I wanted to put DD-WRT on the Linksys WRT54GL anyways so I did.

it was still sluggish and I realized that I forgot to patch TCPIP.SYS to allow more than 10 half-open connections at once.. I just made it 100, lol. I also changed in Firefox network.http.pipelining to true and network.http.pipelining.maxrequests from 4 to 20. now it’s nice and fast again, and not interrupted by some cap on the number of connections.

DD-WRT!

• Belkin F5D7230-4 v2000: not worth losing my LAN ports over
• Netgear WGR614v5: can’t do
• Netgear WGR614v6: can’t do
• Airlink AR430W: xinetd issues. will try again later.
• Linksys WRT54GL v1.1: works, duh!

installing it for the Linksys was cake. too easy, perhaps, and not challenging at all. flashed using the stock Linksys web interface but it only accepted files up to 3 MB when it could really take more, so (as instructed) I had to flash the mini version of dd-wrt (~2 mb) and then inside the web interface of that (since that has no restriction), flashed the normal (~4 mb) version of dd-wrt.

now I am running it, and testing the waters for the next 2 months before I bring it to school.

coincidentally my Netgear RP614v2 was being a little sluggish yesterday for some odd reason (not number of connections, or bandwidth).. and that had nothing to do with trying dd-wrt, but I guess it worked out.

USPS Flat Rate Box woes

i was shipping ~15 hard drives so I used a USPS Flat Rate Box, and since it was 20 pounds I taped the thing 5-6 times around each way to make sure that it wouldn’t break.

my dad told me afterwards that they would reject me because i covered the words “Flat Rate Box” on the box, even though I only really covered “Rate”.

I waited in the longest line of my life, about 30 minutes.. just to have them say no, “because our guys in the back can’t see that it’s flat rate”. really, how can you not tell?

I went home and spent 5 minutes pulling off tape to fix it and mailed it again yesterday, and she asked, and i pointed to my little cutout, and fortunately didn’t get rejected again.

quite a valuable lesson learned. i should have listened to my dad, but the last 2-3 times he warned me i got away with things like these.

synergy 2

one small thing i noticed recently is that i tend to power off the client machine using the host’s keyboard and mouse. (duh, if i had no physical keyboard or mouse directly connected to the client computer, how do i go to shut down after closing synergy?! aside from setting the power button to shutdown)

but when I do this, synergy terminates abruptly, and the host machine pops up with an error, wondering where the client went.

however, when i do it under Ubuntu, synergy terminates “cleanly” because the Linux shutdown procedure sends a SIGINT to all processes, allowing them to clean up after themselves. the client cleanly disconnects from the host, and the host knows that the process was closed. nothing to complain about!

synergy

i haven’t posted in a week, so i figured i’d say something..

i had this random problem a long time ago, where if i’m on the host side and move my mouse out of a fullscreen application, it will minimize out.. and it makes things annoying/impossible. i just figured ways around it, and really.. didn’t need it.

i was googling ways to use a dual-monitor setup with 2 single-output video cards, but it seems like there are only shaky linux implementations, so that’s a no-go for my dad. sucks that i need to use a geforce fx 5600 ultra just for dual-display, but whatever.

while googling i found some article on synergy and of course, since i’m a synergy user (or was – limited uses now, but I do use it every now and then) I read it, and he discussed an option to remove some annoyance with “the start menu bar appearing” or something. for some reason I thought it was related to my fullscreen apps problem, when it really wasn’t.

so in synergy i went to Options and checked “Don’t take foreground window on Windows servers” and viola, problem solved, even though that solution was for some other problem. now i can be inside a fullscreen app and use another computer without tabbing out!

ripped out CPU

in my mom’s mini tower, i have to pull out the heatsink to change a hard drive.

(it was funny how things turned out:)
since i’m reformatting, i might as well change the hard drive to a quieter one
since i’m changing the hard drive, I have to pull out the CPU heatsink
since I have to pull out the heatsink, I might as well change the thermal paste on it.

back to the subject — I decided to just leave the stock drive in there too, but disconnected. so I pulled out the heatsink again, but this time, after unscrewing it, it seemed a bit more attached to the CPU than before. it’s usually stuck to some extent – moreso on these retail machines than my self-built ones – so i just yanked a little harder, and I just ripped the CPU out of the socket along with the heatsink.

fortunately, no pins were damaged in the process, and i put it back in, and it works.

.. although i wouldn’t mind having one less computer in my house.

portable AC unit

I never thought I’d buy one of these, and just take the heat.. and step out of my room, and do work outside my room..

but my mom insisted, so whatever. I thought the things cost several hundred bucks, but this cheapo one cost $60. It doesn’t seem to work as well as others, but it does its job. i just toss a bunch of water (and ice!) down into the water storage and watch it blow cool air! awesome.

i thought these things were huge on power, too – but i measured the power dissipation of the device to be 70/75/80 watts at low/medium/high speeds. unfortunately i don’t have any equipment to see how much of an effect it has on my room, but I guess I can just feel for it.

I guess this thing beats having two fans blow hot air all around with the same power dissipation..

psxpad “fixed”

from last time – i couldn’t get psxpad working because it was unable to find the I/O address of my parallel port. interestingly enough i just googled and it seemed like most LPT1’s were located at 0x378, which was the second option on the list.

i kept going through Setup to change the configuration to use that port, but that didn’t work.

i don’t know how, but i randomly got the idea that changing the configuration through the installer wouldn’t work – i would have to uninstall and reinstall. so i did that, and the playstation controller was detected! yay! a change or two to some settings and it was working just fine.

so i got my ddr metal pad up (FINALLY, only like 3.5 weeks since summer started) and tested it out on an easy song since i was on bare feet. i somehow AAA’ed Abyss.. and then AAA’d Ecstasy.. what?

anyways, i guess i’m happy i finally got a more permanent setup done with the HTPC, although the electromagnetic interference between my computer and my really old TV is not cool.

wtf USPS

i send out packages with stamps regularly, but since they’re over 13 ounces I have to do it at the customer service counter… so… I do. and they’ve worked for a while, but today a surprise came at my door.

one of my packages came back saying basically “>13 oz, stamped, must take to counter.” umm.. that’s exactly what I did..

so i went back to the post office, explained the situation, and mailed it again.

lol.

the lady said to have them issue a $0 PVI (shipping money label basically – Postal Validation Imprint) to show that it was processed through the front counter. and that “the rest of them might just come back”. too bad it’s worked for all the other ones..

psxpad

had it installed on one of my computers for a few years so I could hook up my DDR pad to my PC, but I sold that computer and had to install it on another one. i had installed it maybe 2 times already so I figured it would be easy, but for some reason now I’m getting..

Missing Gameport or Gameport Drivers!
Your Gameport or Gameport drivers are not properly configured.
Please consult the Device Manager.

this computer’s newer so it lacks that port, but Windows is assuming that I’m installing it on that port? (the converter goes into the Parallel port.) so either I need that port to install it even though I won’t use it, or I’m missing something somewhere else.