Cabinets for our computer room are stained

I got all the cabinets stained...

... but I killed the dining room

Minion Grace didn't stop with just her PC!

So it ends up that Grandma's PC is quite slow.  It also just happens that we bought three MX100 128GB SSDs.  Minion Grace would like to help Grandma with her computer woes and Grace just happens to be a trained computer technician!

We benchmark her PC and it clocks in a boot at 1 minute and 30 seconds (3 times of course).  Grace got right in there, screwed the SSD into the bracket adapter, and was jumping up and down waiting for the Steam login box again.

Mounting the SSD into the adapter bracket

We were working with a slower internet connection so there was a lengthy delay between installing the hardware, downloading/installing the software, and cloning the drive. The day was dreary, gray, and wet.  That was perfect for Minion 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 to go out and play in the mud!  I therefore finished up the last benchmark once the SSD got cloned.  It now boots in 1 minute and feels much more responsive!  I am not sure Team Ffreeze is 100% satisfied as of yet.  Are we all out of options or could we do more?

Stay Tuned!

Minion Grace Upgrades Her Computer

Minion Grace got a Crucial SSD from Papa Ffreeze to upgrade her computer.  Her computer was purchased late in 2013 as a Christmas present and it was a refurbished HP DC7900 (Intel Core 2 Duo 3GHz, 2GB DDR2 RAM (now 8GB) 160GB HDD).  It works great for the kids... er Minions, but I know it is slow.  Mommy and I got her a Crucial MX100 128GB for only $67 to breath new life into the PC but we had a problem.  How could we get her a $67 "gift" just because and expect her to appreciate it?

/ponder

I know, we will make her work for it!  She could do chores for it but I like to be creative and kill as many birds with one stone as possible.  

To get the drive she will have to:

1. Benchmark her system before and after the upgrade
1. Teach her about performance testing (never too young)
2. Do the physical install herself
1. Loose the fear of "hurting" a computer
3. Spend time learning from Papa
1. OK, that one was for me!  =)

3 Birds with 1 stone, not too bad!

Minion Grace and I got it opened up and then realized we had not benchmarked the baseline yet because we were to eager to get going.   

She doesn't seem too upset

Without getting too complicated we have to find a way to quantify the performance increase (if there is one).  (160GB HDD to a 128GB SSD as if there wouldn't be!)  We decide to boot the PC and time it until Steam service pops up a login screen.  Most, if not all, of the booting is done by that time.  While this method is not terribly precise I think it will work for a preschooler that doesn't know how to read yet.  =)

Turn on the PC and start the timer

Jump up ...

 ...and down while waiting for the Steam black box to show
(this is SOOO exciting!)

As she doesn't know her numbers or letters yet I had to help her a bit.  She was able to copy down the raw data though.  We of course took data from 3 runs each benchmark so we could note the standard deviation (HDD 0.57735 vs. SDD 0.57735).  That is not a typo, you do it!

Recording performance data

Now we get to get back into the case and let the REAL fun begin!

Picking it up after unplugging everything

This thing is not light

Can't drop it

Just get the corner ...

Almost got it

There!

Next up is to put the SSD in the computer.  As it was Minion Grace's PC she did all the work.

Screw in the SSD into a 2.5" to 3.5" converter

Make sure all 4 screws are in but not too tight

It FITS, I am so happy!

Running a Windows Experience Benchmark

The completed HDD to SSD upgrade report

Minion Grace's PC is a new PC for everything except rendering graphics for games.  It went from taking over 3 minutes to boot to booting in 32 seconds!  Wow, what a change.  You click on a program and it loads, get this, this year!  =)  I am waiting to see what the Nvidia 950 Ti is like.  We made save some money and stuff a full height video card into a Small Form Factor (SFF) case but that is another project.

What a great experience for Papa!  I got about 30 or so hugs.  That works out to be about $2 for a genuine hug.  If only the rest of the world worked like that.  The exciting thing is that it didn't stop there!

To be continued...

Minion Dax says, "Arrrgh" and "Ow, I got hurt"

Minion Dax gets in a fight with a solid wooden step. I ask him if he wants to get his picture taken and say, "Arrgh" to show how tough he is.  He says, "Yes."  See below:

Arrgh!

Minion Dax then asks if he can take a second picture and show how much it hurts.  I say, "Yes."  See below:

Ow, I got hurt!

The Weapons Commander was sweet!

So here we are, heading into Idaho City to go to the dump.  We had some cardboard to drop off but little did we know the trouble we would get into.

As the Captain I was leading the motley bunch on an easy recycling run.  The Transformer Commander (Minion Jocelyn), Weapons Commander (Minion Grace), and Cannon Commander (Minion Dax) were all in good spirits for an easy milk run.  Wow, were we surprised!  Weapons Commander sees that we were being chased by a Mist Dragon and she informed the Transformer Commander.  The Cannon Commander started blasting away to little effect while the Transformer Commander converted our ship into a jet straight away.

http://wandererlink.deviantart.com/

I continued to pilot the craft towards our final destination and let the troops take care of business, after all that is why they are apart of my crew.  They are quite talented.  The Transformer Commander had the idea of Ice Shot(TM) and informed the Weapons Commander to reconfigure the cannon's ordnance.

http://wandererlink.deviantart.com/

The Cannon Commander was unfased by the weapon's non-effect and had been blasting away unperturbed for the last 10 minuets.  He was a real trooper!  Once the Ice Shot(TM) was configured for every other shot he started to do some real damage.  Once the Myst Dragon was frozen and become solid, the very next round shot shattered him to pieces.  As the shattered Myst Dragon melted away we all sighed for relief.  Well, all except the Cannon Commander as now he didn't have anything to shoot.

http://athril-caine.deviantart.com/

Getting rid of books

/gasp!

We got rid of over 1/2 of the parent's books (I wanted to use "adult" in that sentence but it never came out right).  =)  We kept all of the kids books.  Our house is a bit tight with regards to storage (and most other things) so we just are really trying to keep only things that matter.  We donated many of the books to our local library and I am putting some of the good electrical engineering reference books in our shed.  Once I figure out a good system to catalog them I will share what I came up with.

We got some cabinets for our computer room

We need more room in our house.  We could either sell a kid or find some way to increase storage.  I wanted to make some money but Tonya put her foot down so now we have some new cabinets.  We will put 2 large cabinets, then 2 short cabinets above the window, and then 2 more large cabinets in the computer room.  We are going to stain them ebony like our desk.

I am going to add two power outlets in the cabinets so we can charge small USB devices.  I bought the electrical supplies too.  We are also going to add some LED lighting from our electronic experiments if things work well.  Each kid's desk should be able to control their own lighting via software.  =)

Two for above the window

4 total, 2 for each side of the window

WOW these are bright at only 3W (200LM at current power)

Changed the oil in the Outlander

No big deal, I just did it.  0W20 full synthetic weight oil is crazy thin.  I saw that you can also use 0W30 in place of 10W30 and get better gas mileage.  I bet my cavalier would hold the oil in as well as a strainer would at that weight!  =/

Just like ours

I got a new table saw!

This should help with the deluge of projects I plan on tackling around the house this year!  It is ~240lbs so it will be a chore to get it from my shed up the hill to my driveway.  Once I get (if I get) my garage things should get much better.  I will have to make some type of all terrain table saw sled.  =)  I also picked up a 90 tooth Diablo finish blade.

RIDGID R4512
Cast Iron 10"

Suburban Triage

The exhaust on the Suburban needs fixed, in a bad way.  Today I just preformed triage and I had to make do with a few "opportunistic" parts.  (I need something like this bolt assortment from amazon.com"

Not looking so good!

Ouch

Added some support

Fiberglass wrap for sound

Metal warp for strength (note the inventive use of cotter pins)  =)

I will need to either do the exhaust work myself or have shop fix it for real.  This should hold for a while until I figure out which one I want to do.  I would like to try it myself but I am not sure how to go about it.

I would need a new tailpipe, muffler, and pipe that goes in front of the muffler.  There is flex pipe for easy routing but I don't think that is the best way to do it.  I am also fascinated with max flow and quite exhaust systems.  I wonder what a serial muffler / glass-pack, serial muffler to dual parallel glass-packs, or serial glass-pack to dual parallel mufflers would sound like.  Does 1/2 the airflow though a muffler allow the muffler to attenuate more than 1/2 the sound?  Looks like some more research!  =)

Guess an Animal

Logan was sick today.  When I got home he had a bad fever and was resting on Mommy's chest.  We switched and he rested on my chest while she finished up a great Western Beef and Corn Pie dinner.  His fever broke and he was in a much better disposition the rest of the night.

At the end of the night we played Guess an Animal and it was a blast.  Dax's animal was a hammer head shark; Grace's was a cheetah; Jocelyn's was a blue jay; Lance's was flying lizard; Mommy's was a seahorse, and mine was a snake.  It really helps the kids develop good questioning skills besides being loads of fun.