In my Mobile World

Just attended a local PC User Group, and got to thinking again about forming my own Special Interest Group (SIG) for Mobile Device Users.

If I do, I’m wondering what name I should give the group.    Since I’m old school, and I started-out on a PocketPC, part of me wants to start a “Sacramento PocketPC User Group”.  But in reality, the term PocketPC is fairly antiquated, and the new OS from Microsoft is now actually entitled “Windows Phone”.    So if I went with “Sacramento Windows Phone User Group”, then I would effectively be excluding other OSes like Palm and Apple.  

My best idea is to go with “Sacramento Mobile Device Users Group”, as it does not limit technology to Microsoft technology, but also infers a compact solution.   But after giving it some additional thought, I would not want to discount netbook or other technologies that just happen to be bigger than your pocket.  But since latops and netbooks are mobile devices, they would still be covered…

Hmmm….

Yayess!  

The used HP Proliant DL380 G4 is now mine!   The “Buy Now” bid was officially accepted today on eBay.  Now I just have to wait until my wonderful wife can pick up the item the next time she’s in the Bay Area…

I am making arrangements to obtain an HP ProLiant DL380 G4 64-bit Rack Server.   This is a professional-grade server, but it’s about two generations old, so it can be had at a totally reasonable price.   Here are some of the specs:

Processors:

• (2) 64-bit Intel® Xeon™ processors at 3.4 GHz.
• 800MHz Front Side Bus and 2MB of L2 cache.
• Intel E7520 Chipset.

Memory:

• (6) 2 GB PC2-3200R 400MHz DDR2 Ready Slots with online spare capabilities.
• 6x 2048MB (12288MB total) HP PC2-3200 DDR2 RAM.
• Support for dual-rank 400MHz DDR2 memory.

Storage Controller:

• SCSI model includes the integrated Smart Array 6i Ultra320 Array Controller with optional 128MB of Battery Backed Write Cache (BBWC standard).

Internal Drive Support:

• HP Smart Array 6i Ultra320 SCSI Controller with Internal hot plug capacity 1.8TB standard (6 x 300GB HDD).
• (6) hot-plug U320 SCSI drive bays, of which (1) 1.6″ bay that supports a hot-plug DAT tape backup drive.
• (6) 72.4GB HP 10K Wide Ultra320 SCSI Hard Drives.
• (1) 1x IDE CD-ROM.
• Optional PCI-X Hot-plug cage or Optional PCI Express Non-hot plug Cage.
• Optional dual channel drive backplane (2/4 split) for U320 SCSI models.

Network Controller:

• Embedded NC7782 PCI-X Gigabit Server Adapter.
• Embedded “Integrated Lights Out” (iLO) port for Remote Admin.

Expansion Slots:

• 3 Total Available Slots : (2) non-hot plug 64-bit/100MHz PCI-X slots and (1) non-hot plug 64-bit/133MHz PCI-X slot.

USB 2.0 Ports:

• 3 Total: (1) front, (2) rear accessible ports.

Redundancy:

• (8) Hot Plug Fans with optional full redundancy.
• (2) Hot Plug Power Supply with optional redundancy.

Management:

• HP Power Regulator for ProLiant, delivering server level, policy based power management with industry leading energy efficiency and savings on system power and cooling costs.
• Integrated Lights-Out industry leading remote management with new support for two-factor authentication, schema-free Microsoft Active Directory integration, Power Regulator p-state reporting, USB key virtual media and VLAN on the shared network port.
• Integrated Lights-Out (iLO) Standard Management on system board.
• Support for new iLO Shared Network Port enables access to the iLO management processor through one of the embedded system NICs.
• Automatic Server Recovery (ASR), ROM Based Setup Utility (RBSU), HP System Insight Manager, Status LEDs including system health and UID and SmartStart.

Form Factor:

• Rack (2U), (3.5-inch).

Pretty sweet, huh?

I”m going to be installing Microsoft’s Small Business Server OS on top of it, and see how well that works out.   I’m hoping that this new (to me) server will take good care of me and my business for years to come!

My hotel reservations were secured a few weeks ago, and I just recently bought my plane tickets, so I’m basically ready to go (minus packing a few days before the flight).

Having missed CES (Consumer Electronics Show) 2010, I am totally bummed to have also missed CntrStg 2010.   I really miss the interaction with my MVP peers and fellow bloggers, so the 2010 MVP Summit will be a great opportunity to meet new MVPs, connect with old friends, and enjoy the best that Microsoft has to offer!

Megalith-Systems (the original publishers of the popular GPS Tuner 4.x / 5.x series) has announced the release of DynaInk, a new and exciting drawing application for Windows Mobile devices.

DynaInk is a simple yet revolutionary new drawing application, which simulates real drawing experience on a touch screen mobile device.  Thanks to it’s patent pending technology, DynaInk can react your drawing dynamism, automatically changing the line width and line color accordingly.  The result is a rich and eye-pleasing picture.

Top Features 

• Natural Drawing Experience (Patent Pending)

• Dynamic line width and color

• Vector based, Scalable Graphics, EPS export

• Instant E-Mail with picture attachment

• Unlimited Undo with thumbnail images

• Works with Integrated Camera

• Manually Tracing Photos

• Markup your Photos

• Stylish notes and messages

With DynaInk, you can brush-up (pun intended) on your drawing skills, or quickly create a masterpiece!  Kids love it too!

For more info, please visit www.dynaink.com

My IBM Server’s Power Supply died unexpectedly on Saturday or Sunday.   I honestly didn’t even notice it until Jana pointed out that she couldn’t access the server on Sunday.

A quick check of the system proved the Power Supply had gone bad.   Pulled it out and tried a spare and it worked fine.  Just one problem.   The spare wouldn’t fit inside long-term (the original server Power Supply is odd-sized, and the spare is standard-sized).   So Monday after work, I was attempting to salvage parts from another system to add to the server, another component blew-up right in front of me, and took the IBM server with it entirely.

Not wanting to attempt to isolate further if the whole motherboard was bad, or just the processor, or memory, I decided to try another system entirely.  Luckily I had recently obtained an older Celeron Server, which I had stored in Mothball, so I hauled it out Monday and started to add components to it as well. 

Luckily, the mothballed system board still had the CPU and memory, so it was just a matter of adding the original server’s hard drive.  Unfortunately, the Power Supply on that machine was defunct as well.  It gave out with a bang in the dining room on Monday night, right in front of me and Jana (she was NOT happy with that).  That ended Monday’s attempt to troubleshoot further.

Fortunately, the spare power supply that I had would fit into that case, so I was able to get it up and running later Tuesday.

Unfortunately (sense a pattern here?), it was an older motherboard and I didn’t have all the drivers, so I stayed up until about 1:00am this morning trying to get the right drivers loaded.

But, happily, everything is up and working.  Yeow, what an adventure!

This updated version of GPS Tuner has a wider range of compatibility than the previous version, loads a lot faster, and is more finger friendly! 

New map content is suppose to be due out in short order, but I do not know when this will be…

Check out this link to register an account with GPS Tuner, then select Trial Download under “my GPS Tuner”.   This way you can download the trial, which comes with a single map-tile of your preferred area on the map.  Then if you like the program as much as we think you will, you can decide whether or not you want to purchase a license!

Happy Geocaching!

Wow!  I just got word that I received the Microsoft MVP Award for a second year in a row.   These last couple of weeks has been truly busy!   With this award I will be travelling in mid February up to Washington state to participate in the MVP Summit, and let me tell you I’m really looking forward to that!

Today begins my first day at the eNOC (Enterprise Network Operations Center) IPAG (short for Internet Protocol AGgregation) group.   Training should last approximately 5 to 6 weeks, and consist of some deep-dive topics relating to Ethernet switching.  The good news is that I’ll be joining my good friend Edgar (who accepted a position on the “first” wave – I’m on the second wave), and my original CMAC manager Kelly will be joining us as well!

A new version of GPS Tuner 6 is going through the beta test process (the public beta of which ends Monday), and the Regular Build released in a few days after that. 

The new version of the program will be renamed GPS Tuner Atlas, so as to differentiate it from the previous version.  

The new version will be a free update to existing users of GPS Tuner 6, so those users have good reason to rejoice, because this program is soooo much better than the previous version.  

GPS Tuner Atlas should remedy most every bug that prevented users from making full use of the initial program, and also make it compatible with older devices that did not support the Direct 3DMobile API that the original program was written for.

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