CPU Cooling...it actually does something!

My saga this week has been that my server has been quite unstable and would lock up at seemingly random times. My first attempt to fix it was replacing the power supply; Monday morning, I noticed my server was completely off and it wouldn't power up, so I yank 2 of the 3 hard drives from it and it started. The conclusion (which I now believe was wrong) was that the power supply couldn't handle the 3 drives. So, I replaced it with a high efficiency one that is supposed to be quiet. Tuesday I still had problems and they seemed related to when I used one of my backup hard drives. So, I replaced the drive (which wasn't a bad thing as it was left over from my old server). I also figured out how to finally get lm-sensors to work with my motherboard. I spent time over the last year trying to get it to work, but to no avail. One of the things I was curious about was the temperature of the CPU and case. Now that lm-sensors was working, I had this information. When I looked at the CPU temperature, it ranged from 50-80 degrees Celsius. This indicated to me that there was a problem as I read that the Pentium 4 chip I have should usually be below 40 degrees Celsius. Things started clicking...the times when the system froze were when I was backing up to my secondary drive; my backups use rsync and tar/gzip, both mechanisms are very processor intensive. So it was looking like when the processor got hit hard, the temperature on it rose and the system froze. Ah ha! I may have found the cause. So another trip to Fry's to pick up a new CPU Cooler, new case fan and new hard drive cable (for good measure). I put everything in and almost fell over when I saw the temperature. It was ranging from 15 to 25 degrees Celsius! Under maximum CPU load (during my backup), it wasn't getting above 25 degrees Celsius and hasn't locked up, yet (knock on wood). I ended up getting a Cooler Master Hyper L3 as it looked like it would fit (my case has an airflow vent on top of the CPU and some of the coolers are way too big) and the heat pipe technology seems to make sense.

Hopefully all this work will actually solve this issue.

Chair design flaw

The other day I bought a kneeling chair to help my posture. I went to the Healthy Back store and bought an inexpensive one; I liked it better than the others ones. I ended up getting the Healthy Back Kneeling Chair. It wasn't until today that I discovered a huge design flaw in the chair. I was noticing that the chair wasn't rolling properly and after some detective work (and luck), I found that if I lowered the chair, the problem went away. The chair is in two pieces in an x pattern with a height adjustment (and a pivot bolt) connecting them. The problem is that all 4 casters are perpendicular only at the lowest seat position. As you raise the seat, the front part pivots causing the casters to no longer be rest flat on the floor. This is fine on carpet as the carpet and pad take up the slack, but I have hardwood and the chair doesn't roll. I went back to the store and after a brief explanation and demonstration, they let me exchange it. I got the chair I was originally going to get and because of their special sale, it only cost me $1.08 more; I still like the other chair I got because of the angle adjustment, but I'd rather not scratch my floor when it doesn't roll. I was very pleased that the store made things right.

Excellent Fry's customer service!

I'm usually the first one to bash Fry's as their customer service and shopping experience is quite poor. However, this morning, I discovered that the power supply on my server died (I unplugged 2 of the drives and it booted, so it was quite apparent that this was the plug), so where else do I get a power supply that is close? My choices are CompUSA or Fry's. Fry's is slightly closer and is open at 8 am. I got there about 8:15 am, found one power supply in the area where I saw them before, but knew there were more so I asked a guy, who happened to be the assistant store manager where they were and he took the time to walk me over there. Not only that, he asked me about what I was using it for and recommended the brand I was going to get anyway (Antec). Then he explained some of the differences in the Antec power supplies. I was quite impressed and it may have changed my attitude towards Fry's.

Why is currency programming so hard?

One of the most requested ReceiptWallet features was to be able to handle receipts in multiple currencies. OK, simple enough I thought as I could just treat all values as strings so that they have a currency symbol in them. The problem was that I had to verify that the currency symbol was valid and format the value so it is appropriate to that currency, for example, the Japanese Yen doesn't have decimals in the number. My first pass that this was pretty decent, handled dollars, Euros, Yen and a bunch of other currencies. Turns out this wasn't a complete implementation. In order to build my list of currencies, I used what are called locales on Mac OS X to get the currency associated with a locale. Problem is that some currencies aren't associated with a locale, such as Swiss Francs (I have no idea why). So I had to find a way to get a list of currencies and do some formatting magic. I think that I managed to do this, but I just don't understand why it was so hard. Is it inconceivable that people would want to use multiple currencies on one machine? If it was easy, everyone would have this type of code in their programs!