Over the last couple of weeks I have been setting up a new SharePoint server for my most recent company that I am working with. I took a little bit more time with this install than I did with our previous ones and actually set up several sub-sites in advance. I am hoping that this site will be utilized well, but only time will tell.

The more I watched of Season 1 the more I really liked Christopher Eccleston as the Doctor. By the time the season was towards the end, I was not sure I would even like Season 2 anymore! However, they did a good job wrapping up Season 1 with the transition to the newest Doctor, and Season 2 turned out to be very good.

This afternoon Sonja and I wrapped up our viewing of Season 2 of the series. I have to admit, seeing the show from the beginning made a few scenes make a lot more sense, although overall nearly any episode can be watched pretty easily without seeing any previous episodes. Season 2 was a lot more sad than Season 1 though.

This week I may need to pick up Season 3. If we time this out right, it might work out perfectly as I heard Season 4 is to be released in September of this year.

• Case: Antec Three Hundred Mid-Tower ATX $59.95
• SATA Backplane: Athena Power BP-SATA3051B $109.99
• Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-EP35C-DS3R LGA 775 (8 SATA) $129.99
• CPU: Intel C2D E7200 2.53GHz/3MB 65W $119.99
• RAM: G.SKILL (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 1066 $59.99
• HDD (Initial):
  • 1×750GB - SAMSUNG Spinpoint F1 HD753LJ 750GB - $109.99
  • 2×250GB - Existing HDD - (FREE)
  • 2×500GB - Existing HDD - (FREE)

In an effort to keep my costs down, I am electing to temporarily use one of my spare Power Supply’s until a later point when I would wish to upgrade.

I had also considered switching to a standard Intel Pentium 2.2GHz dual-core, but I do not think there is much merit in leaving the Core2 product line to save $40.

In sad news, yesterday the 750GB hard drive I wanted was $10 off, I should have bought it right away. It is back up to 110$ again today.

Also, if you are wondering why I have such an expensive motherboard, it is the 8 sata ports. A 4-port SATAII Controller Card is $59.99. So, in essence, it is like buying a $70 (129.99-59.99) motherboard with a 4-port controller card. Since I already know I will need the extra ports initially, it saves me both money and expansion ports on the motherboard for later.

It looks like I over-estimated the capabilities of the Antec Nine Hundred case. I assumed the drive-bays in the front were all functional drive bays. It appears this is not the case, and I will be unable to use them for the 5-in-3 SATA Back Planes like I wanted. This limits me to 9 drives instead of 15. Considering I am starting with 5 drives, and that will be near 100% full, this leaves me an undesired amount of expandability.

Grand Total for this build: $589.90 $529.95

One of things I have been considering for my desktop is that after building the home storage server, I really will have no use for the large, server-style cases that I have used in the past. Ideally I would like to drop down to something much more compact, like one of the Shuttle cases.

Does anyone have any input about them? Any brands that anyone has heard about or have had experience with? Any advise would be ideal.

Realistically, all I should need is pick up a decent video card, cpu and some ram to go along with this barebones kit. Since everything else (hdd, keyboard, etc.) I have spares of, a new system should only run about $500 total if I manage my current recyclable parts appropriately.

My only concerns are around power, heat and noise. The power concern would be a result of the G31 northbridge chipset on the motherboard. Then the heat and noise are me just being unfamiliar with the case. Both are huge deciding factors. I do not want a noisy desktop, that’s why I have a server tucked away in the basement. Also, a desktop that overheats and crashes when I use the system does not do me any good either.

If anyone has any input about this case or another recommendation, I would greatly appreciate it.

Under normal circumstances this would be no problem, and actually a decently fun task. In this case, however, it is a “rush” job, and we were given notice to have a working system with less than one-week’s notice. In fact, we were only given 2 business days for configuration, and 1 for UAT.

Fortunately I am used to this kind of scenario, as I have worked in this business long enough to know that I will never get adequate time to do what I need, which means that we need to find creative ways to find the time to make things happen. I spent a good amount of time over the weekend researching the areas I have not done in awhile and figured out a few the odds and ends details.

Today ended up being a busy day, hence the ‘ninjas on fire,’ but it looks like we are in the clear. We have all of our usage tracking configured and set up as of close-of-business today, and tomorrow we will be doing last minute tweaks and customizations before submitting for UAT.

Note: If you are wondering how the image fits into this post, I went to look for a good picture of “Ninjas On Fire” to use, but when I searched in google this is the result I found! I guess it was someones user name, hence the NOF in the upper right hand corner.

As for the phrase, it was from Scott Hanselman’s blog where he states that it is “a response to when you’re totally overwhelmed with deadlines and work.” For more details, see here.

I am not sure what it is about the show, but I like it. The acting and effects are both a little cheesy, but I think that even adds to it a little bit. The show seems to have a general “change is good” theme to it.

The episodes I have seen on TV have all been from Season 2 or later of the 2005 relaunch, so I really wanted to see the show from the beginning. So this weekend Sonja and I started watching Season 1 of Doctor Who (2005).

The main character, the Doctor, is played by Christopher Eccleston in Season 1. Many of you may recognize him from his role as Claude in Heroes (Season 1), or if you are like me, you will recognize him as the bad guy in both 28 Days Later and Gone in Sixty Seconds.

In any case, in Season 2 and on the Doctor is played by David Tennant, of which I was so very proud of Sonja for recognizing him right away as Barty Crouch Jr. in the Harry Potter film, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005).

I am excited to finish off Season 1, as it so far has been fairly captivating to me. Plus, I am curious to see how they do the transition to the new Doctor.

I know a little back story about the Doctor from what I have read about the series. It is actually kind of interesting as it is one of the BBC’s longest running shows. I believe the show started sometime in the 1960’s and there have been upwards of 9 or 10 different people who have played the Doctor.

Anyway, if you have not seen Doctor Who, and you like science fiction/nerdy films, I would at least recommend giving it a shot. I wouldn’t get your expectations to high though, it is a fairly low-budget show, and most of the time it is very obvious.

The whole process feels like it is taking forever, even though we really are making good progress. I am sure it would feel like we were flying along if we didn’t have jobs or other responsibilities. It is a little hard to get much done when you only have one or two days on the weekend.

Today we focused on the west-side of the house, also known as the front yard. The entire front is finished now, we even did a little edging around the crappy electrical box in the front corner of our lawn. I am sure that will be nice when it comes to mowing once we actually have grass.

All that is left is a small strip on the north-side of the house where we have a retaining wall that helps to well out a basement window. Unfortunately, we can not continue to work on that side of the house until after we hear back from a landscaping place in town.

The wall is good, but we need it extended an additional 8 feet or so to help smooth out the transition from the front yard to the back yard. Until this is done, we can’t connect the edging on the side of the house to the edging in the back.

I am a little disappointed that we are so close to being done with edging and rock, but we can’t actually finish. I am hoping the retaining wall people will be quick to act and finish the job in a timely manner. It is probably wishful thinking, but they were pretty quick when the put in the initial wall. Maybe we’ll get lucky!

In any case, it is still nice to be done with edging and rock… for now.

No more random readings, no more lectures to listen to, no homework, no quizzes. Yay!

I have been working on my parts list for a new WHS, I think I have it narrowed down in my prevoius post (which I have been randomly changing/updating as I find new hardware). Total cost breakdown is a little higher than I wanted, but it is also a pretty decent setup:

Case/PSU/SATA_BP: $319.93
CPU/MB/RAM: $309.97
HDD’s: $109.99 (Starter HDD’s)

Total: $ 739.89

Ouch.

The storage server will be more beneficial than just “adding another hard drive.” It will also alleviate my other computers from requiring so much storage. My media center will also get to run a lot cooler once I am able to pull the extra three hard drives out of him. It will also let me build up my new desktop to be a mini-tower or shuttle-type desktops to save power/space.

Partial Parts List:

• Power Supply: Antec TPQ-850 850W $149.99 (85% efficiency)
• Case: Antec Nine Hundred Mid-Tower ATX $119.99
• Case: Antec Three Hundred Mid-Tower ATX $59.95
• SATA Backplane: Athena Power BP-SATA3051B $109.99
• Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-EP45-DS3L LGA 775 (6 SATA) $107.99
• Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-EP35C-DS3R LGA 775 (8 SATA) $129.99
• CPU: Intel C2D E7200 2.53GHz/3MB 65W $119.99
• RAM: G.SKILL (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 1066 $59.99
• HDD (Initial):
  • 1×750GB - SAMSUNG Spinpoint F1 HD753LJ 750GB - $109.99
  • 2×250GB - Existing HDD - (FREE)
  • 2×500GB - Existing HDD - (FREE)
• HDD (Expansion):
  • SATA Backplane: Athena Power BP-SATA3051B $109.99
  • 5×750GB - SAMSUNG Spinpoint F1 HD753LJ 750GB - $549.95

Case/PSU/SATA_BP: $319.93
CPU/MB/RAM: $309.97
HDD’s: $109.99 (Starter HDD’s)

Total: $ 739.89

Note: I am not dedicated to these parts just yet. I am more than open to suggestions. This list is just a start for me to have a record of (and links to parts). Also, I am more than confident that this is an overkill for what I need, and may consider downgrading some items. However, I am trying to build a case with the SATA II backplanes (preferably room for two, if not three) so that I can hold more than a stock 5-6 drives, like in a standard case.

Basically, what it comes down to is that I want something with expandability. I will be putting in 4-6 drives in the WHS just to start with, and if that maxes out the space, then it would not do me a lot of good if I am unable to upgrade past that point. With three SATA backplanes I would be able to easily add 15 drives, plus 1 system drive. That should leave a good amount of room for future expandability, which should hopefully help keep this thing from being worthless in 6 months.

Edit: There is a third option that I guess I did not consider, instead of uber-expensive and/or moderately expensive, I could use my old P4 as a “starter” WHS. It would save me from buying a new case, power supply, motherboard, processor and ram. There are a few major down-sides though:

1. The P4 is not 100% “stable.” The computer does alright most of the time, but still has his quirks and random restarts. This could also be from a crappy PSU, or just a really old install of XP. I am not sure how WHS will handle random restarts though, especially if it is in the middle of file replication.
2. The current case only has room for 1x SATA II backplane, which means I would have to install some drives internally, and also limits the amount of drives I can install to 8. This could prove to be a pain later if I have to transition the parts into a new case.
3. I have not read how easy/hard it is to move from one WHS install to another. If the P4 eventually craps out on me, how easy is it to restore the content on the drives to a new WHS install? This is actually the one thing that scares me about WHS, the “system” partition has no redundancy. The data can, but the system doesn’t. I would like to know more about how WHS handles “restores.” I may have to purposefully reinstall over WHS after putting some temp files on the storage array first to verify how easy it is to recover, however I will still have to do research about how easy it is to move the storage pool to new hardware/install, if it is even possible at all.

Happy Birthday, Sonja!

Last year around this time we were having a big get together to celebrate a few birthdays at the same time, since there are quite a few in July/August. This year, however, it is going to be a little quieter since we already did our big party bus a few weeks ago.

The plan is to simply enjoy the evening. I can feel us turning into old people already. Going out for supper, hitting up a movie, and probably calling it a night back home. Not to shabby for a mid-week birthday though. I can feel the years creeping up on us though, it is not the same as in college when you would go out and party all night without worrying about the consequences and then having to drudge through the next morning!

Even without the party bus and a massive hangover, I hope you still enjoy your day.

Happy Birthday!