Server died… Twice!

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!

GPS Tuner Atlas now available for download!

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!

Received the Microsoft MVP Award for a second year…

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!