For the last couple of days I think BBM has been acting up, at first I thought it was my phone since it has started to do strange things and I think my Blackberry Curve is probably at the end of its life at this rate. I have been getting delayed msgs from the same conversation, somebody would get a msg I sent a few hours later asking what I was talking about. Or I would get something someone sent a few hours earlier, again later in the day which is really really strange. I can’t imagine what could be wrong but these delayed messages are really confusing the hell out of me, a few throw me off as they are out of context of the conversations that I might be having. I don’t know if others are experiencing this as much but I hope this gets resolved soon.

I have been holding to this diet a for a little while now, almost two weeks, cutting back on most foods, cutting down portions, and I am feeling a difference over two weeks now. I have lost about 2.5 kgs but I haven’t done anything except cut off soda and cut back on food a bit. It does feel good that I don’t want to fall asleep right after every meal and I can go out and do things, but I do miss that feeling being completely full and remaining stationary for a an hour or two. Now I just have to integrate some exercise into this solution. I feel better after all this but I do get urges to eat or get really full, the other day I got the monstrous urge to eat a whole cake or 10 scoops of Baskin Robins, I would have finished it too. But instead I went out to get me a small Pinkberry ice cream which satisfied me for a bit but I still wanted to go crazy. Lowering the portions of food when its just in front of me, but I have managed to do it and I get up satisfied and not stuffed.

I have had this thought of cutting back on Soda for a while now and shrinking my portions a bit. I realized that I now drink coke on a consistent basis, just telling myself that I just feel like it right now. First step of getting healthier was cutting back on all forms of soda, so when I stopped soda completely I got a headache for a few days, its the sugar levels adjusting, it was annoying but now after 10 days I dropped about 1 kilo without doing anything but stopping soda. So now the other steps is cutting back on portions which I have partially started but I really need to get into it. I have gone for a few kilo walks the few weeks but not consistently enough. Its a start and I feel good about it, but I need to keep it up, I’m not having dinner this week except for fruits, its good that I love tangerines and lots of them. Hopefully I will manage to get into a healthy system, those starving diets work to drop weight but never to keep it off for me so I’m trying to figure out what fits at this moment. And the gym will come in soon, its in the works but I need to get over a few hurdles first.

It seems Dubai has turned into the Center of Credit Card thieves and credit card fraud, I got a call from the bank late Thursday night if I made transactions in Abu Dhabi, Hong Kong, and a few online transactions. The amount was 460 KD, I told them I only used my Credit Card once in an ATM in Dubai at a National Bank of Dubai ATM in the Mall. How in the hell could my card have been copied from that terminal, I honestly looked at it and scrutinized it and I still got taken. The bank said it isn’t a problem and they will clear it up, I won’t get charged but they found the transactions to be odd. I use this credit card once in a blue moon, so all these charges seemed odd to them. The first time it happened with my NBK Check Card and that was a huge inconvenience, since they changed my account numbers and all the details, but this time it was my credit card. I try to travel with sufficient cash to Dubai but sometimes I have to use my credit card and I decided to use my credit card instead of my check card so I’m lucky that the amount wasn’t huge and the bank reacted quickly. They told me two days for a card replacement and I will be able to use the card normally.

This is one of the most complex Windows Home Server systems that we have built yet, and it drove us nuts. We started this project out in June of 2009 and didn’t finish it until March of 2010. We have reinstalled this system probably 4 times to have a clean install, its sensitive to install any Windows Home Server Ad-Ins once its working. We wanted the ultimate WHS Storage with the large capacity all in one unit, it would take a certain hardware setup to achieve this and thats what we aimed for. We suffered set backs, my system at one point just had a black screen, we switched out the motherboard, and nothing, we switched graphics cards, still nothing, changed the ram, and at the end it turned out to be a faulty power supply. Luckily my friend and myself were building the same system together so we just kept on testing as we went along, we got busy towards the end of 2009 but this was one difficult machine to get fully stable. I slowly kept gathering more and more 2 TB Hard Drives, we started off with 10 x 2 TB Drives and I just kept ordering a few when I saw a deal for them. Now that the system is operational it fantastic, we are doing some stress testing, its looking good with transfer speeds of 78 to 90 MB/s over the network which is the fast I have seen.

HW Configuration:

• Norco 4220 Case
• ASUS P3S WS
• Intel Quad Core Q8200 2.33 Ghz
• OCZ Vertex 120 GB SSD (Main HD)
• G Skill 4 GB
• 2 x Sata SAS Controllers (To Control 20 HDs)
• ATI Radeon 7500

With the Sata SAS controllers we could use the extremely effecient and powerful SF8087 connectors to connect to each one of those back planes. Each back plane held 5 drives with 4 back planes for a total of 20 drives. Overall I installed 17 out of the 20 drives with e Western Digital 2 TB Drives to get it up to 30 + TB, and I have a little bit more room to go, I think I can get it to 36 TB with the last few drives. Going overboard with the storage is understatement in my case, but it has been a long and arduous trip with this machine but with a clean install and the right setup its very solid.

Now with Windows Home Server running on Windows Server 2003 it has taken a lot of steps forward Power Pack 3 and all the patches. Now I have two WHS servers running, one is extremely solid and this new one, planning on running one as back up to the other so I have two complete back solutions for the other. Now I’m just waiting for Windows to release Vail which Windows Home Server built on Windows Server 2008 which is a huge step forward. When that is out I’m going to just format and reinstall one of the systems and test it out.

I was in need of some tools, a tool box, and a small storage box for different types of screws that I have. I passed by Ace Hardware after work as they have the best selection of tools from all the other stores in the market. I was surprised that they have stocked up with tools now, they also have the Bosch blower back in stock, about 7 or 8 boxes were on the shelves. They had even some cool Stanley tool boxes for the car garage, nice and big with wheels and a few other items.

I found a nice compact storage box which you can pick up like a handle, and picked up a nice small Stanley tool box for all the tools I had in mind. I am always working on servers, computers and other electrical equipment, wiring things and taking things apart. What I need is a good tool set, organized, high quality and a nice range of sizes to be used for different applications. I picked up a Craftsman and Stanley screw driver set, since they had different ranges and they are quality made products. Then I picked up a few individual items such as cutters, pliers, allen keys, and a few other items. Overall I put together a quality tool box for every day use with a few specialized tools all for 38 KD, and it helped when I was working on the server and putting things back together again.

I have tried a lot of shipping companies and very few have been as consistent as MyUS with all my products and taking care of the shipments. The best part of MyUS is consolidating all your items into one big heavy box and so the shipment comes out to be cheaper then expected. What I really like about them is that they pay attention to the details, they send you an email with all the items that they recieved and when they consolidate the items they either keep the invoices together in the box and list the accumulated value which makes it easier for customs. They ship through three options, UPS, FedEx and DHL, and usually Fed Ex has the cheaper charges and they are very consistent in their shipments always 3 to 4 days from the moment it hits their mailbox. For small items that I don’t care how long they take I send it over to Aramex since it cheaper but it takes an average of a week to ten days, another decent service is UShopWeShip from what I heard, but the nightmare I just heard about is DHL since they changed their pricing structure without notification from Mark’s post. Overall MyUS has been consistent and they are very accomodating, and I’m going to stick to them even though they are a bit more expensive in the small items, but what I do is try to order a few items together for a heavier weight one shot and then shipping them, it has worked out to be cheaper then Aramex. Whenever I ordered a model or a large computer part Aramex would charge me an arm and a leg but with MyUS its within reason.

Link: MyUS

To fix this issue we had t reinstall Windows Home Server from scratch and check which hard drives had issues. So we did a clean install which takes a little under an hour, then installing all the updates on the WHS Server as including Power Pack 2 and Power Pack 3. The whole process took about 2 hours and then another hour to test the hard drives using one Add-In called SMART which shoes you which hard drive might have bad sectors and might be failing. If a hard drive has more then 10 bad sectors, send it in to be RMAed and luckily Western Digital has a very good RMA process for all their hard drives. Out of a large number of drives only two were need to be sent back to be replaced. I have learned from numerous installs and hardware configurations that having a clean updated install without any Add-Ins will have the smoothest operating Windows Home Server, any of the faults that I have received after a clean install was always due to an Add-In, so I did without it and it was the solution as the P80 install is what caused many of the issues.

Side Note:
Windows 7 is fantastic, lots of preloaded drivers for lots of items, and I have installed some odd hard ware which works perfectly. The whole install of a machine took no more then 7 minutes to get everything working smoothly with a complex machine, and Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit was up and running.

I have come to the very clear conclusion over the last two weeks that I have reached the worst physical shape that I have ever been in, not as in gaining weight but as in endurance or any physical activity what so ever. There are a few factors that have lead me to this conclusion.

Walking:

When I was walking the long walk in Dubai Terminal after landing with Wataniya Airlines I felt like that became a very long corridor and I was walking very quickly and quickly running out of breath, when an old gentlemen passed me as if this is normal walking pace, then another gentlemen over took me while I was trying to catch my breath. That was a very apparent indication as to my health is not in the best of shape.

25th & 26th Weekend

During that weekend I ran into several limits of my physical capabilities. As I was tossing some of those balloons at young children feeling like a very big man, and any victim that I can see, I ran into a problem. I pulled my shoulder muscle and my back felt out of whack, I felt like a really old man who could barely move, that was a very sad feeling. The second day I decided just to watch and laugh, but towards the end of the day our neighbors kids ran out of people target so they decided to target us, I never knew that 7 to 11 year old kids could be so evil, they ran after us with those foam cans and some of my friends suddenly became ridiculously fast and I was running for my life when the kids caught up with me and pounced on me. I felt like a deer between cheetahs, never in my life did I think I would be slower then a 7 year old kid, thats a new low.

The Solution:

Simply enough, there is no way around this, I need to get back into shape, I’m going to start it realistically but I’m going to start it and stick to it.

As of recently my WHS Server has gone through a major Hardware failure, and luckily WHS seems to be handling it to a degree, but there is only so much it can take. My setup is one Back Plane inside the Lian Li case with two Sans Digital Tower Raids each holding up to 8 Hard Drives each connected through eSata with a PCI-e interface.

This setup works perfectly except that the Sans Digital Tower Raid failed before and once I replaced it, it all worked perfectly again. Its rare that two hard drives fail at the same time, and its very rare that three hard drives fail at the same time but in this case its 5 hard drives which are becoming inaccessible meaning its hardware failure at the interface level and not the hard drives again. I’m looking for an alternative solution because this has gotten ridiculous.

Results of inaccessible Hard Drives:

• Usually I get 40 to 70 MB/s on my network when streaming shows or transfering files but due to the system unable to find files or trying to search for them it drops down to 0.58 to 4 MB/s and sometimes stopping to think. It finishes the job but you get stopped sometimes
• Files go missing due to the missing hard drives which makes it difficult to continue watch any episodes, you have file duplication running but because of this mass Hard Drive failure so files are not accessible so you can watch a few episodes and can’t see the rest of the show