Archive for October, 2009

Urbanathlon 2009 Finished!

Wednesday, October 21st, 2009

So I am finally back from Chicago where I finished my first ever Urbanathlon. I beat my personal goal of an 8:30 mile with an 8:22 and I am super stoked about the result. The best part was that I felt great at the end of the race and I know I could have run it even faster! The obstacles were great motivators. I could feel as I closed in on them the urge to run faster and pound through them. As I tackled an obstacle a surge of endorphins rushed in and catapulted me onto the next one. I can see these types of races becoming significantly more popular in the future.

Dan and I Strutting Our Stuff Post Finish
Dan and I Strutting Our Stuff Post Finish

Dan and I woke up at 6am to start getting ready for the race. It was cloudy and cool out, but the weather forecast promised no rain and temps in the high forties. Perfect running weather for me. As we jogged the mile and a half down to the starting line the clouds darkened up and half pea sized hail started falling from the sky. This was not going to be a fun race I thought. At least the hail doesn’t soak your clothes, it just bounces off and stays on the ground. We checked our bags and walked around the tent city. Free beer, a climbing wall and free swag awaited us post finish.  By the time the race started the clouds had parted and bits of sun were poking through. The perfect race weather was here! Thank goodness since I decided to take my chances and run in just shorts and a t-shirt.

Dan and I ready to get our run on
Dan and I ready to get our run on

Dan and I started together and he was kind to keep me company for the first mile and then off he went while I trotted at my own pace. I was petrified of the 500+ stairs near the end of the race and how much they would exhaust me. Would I be able to make it over the final wall?

Man can Gretchen take a good picture!
Man can Gretchen take a good picture!

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The New Efficiency Windows 7 Launch Event

Thursday, October 15th, 2009

I attended Microsoft’s The New Efficiency launch event for their new Windows 7 operating system. The presentations were targeted to Developers and IT Professionals, although I got the distinct impression that these people were few and far between, but I will get to that in a minute. The event was held off the Boston Common at the Loews theater. The event staff were friendly and helpful. The presentations went off pretty much without a hitch and the giant movie screens were great for displaying demonstrations. My main problem with the event was that the presentations consisted of talking about what features Windows 7 offers (many of which I was aware of from reading internet articles) and very little about how to actually code them.

Hey Windows 7 can do this! Download the demonstration code when you get home!

My response was:

Hey, why don’t you mail me my copy of Windows 7 and not waste my time!

I know I am being harsh, but I expected a lot more depth to the demonstrations, but perhaps the reason for lack of depth is because of what I alluded to earlier at the start of this article. It seemed that there weren’t many developers there. The guy next to me got up and left after the first break, maybe to take a nap in the bathroom stall until he could get his free copy of Windows, and was replaced by a guy that had to ask me what managed code was. The other guy I was sitting next to was nice enough, but admitted he wasn’t a developer. Somebody else decided to shout out to the presenter whether you can use a laptop touchpad to control the multitouch functionality of Windows 7. So perhaps they already knew that this wasn’t a true developer demonstration and were just doing a feature overview for all the computer nerds drooling to get their hands on a free copy of Windows 7 Ultimate.

Anyways, let me get to a quick overview of the features covered.

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My First Watercooled System

Thursday, October 8th, 2009

For the uninitiated a water cooled computer is one that substitutes a radiator, water pump and a cooling block to replace the fans in your computer. This allows you to run your computer faster than spec. My first water cooled system was a Frankenstein of parts. For a radiator I used the heater core from a car at the junkyard, I bought a pump at the aquarium store, ordered a copper cpu block online and hooked everything together with tubes and fittings from the Home Depot plumbing aisle. To power the affair I dismantled an old PSU and stuffed it into my case.

I was no expert and combining water, electricity and knowing just enough to get yourself into trouble… I got myself into trouble. The thing about PSU’s is that they contain high energy capacitors that can discharge very quickly. So you need to be careful to not touch them and kill yourself – which has happened before. In hindsight having a hacked up PSU in my case was not the greatest of ideas. One night while trying to force something or another into the case I was greeted with a flash of light, a billow of smoke and the lights going out through the entire house. From downstairs I could hear my roommate Mike calling up… “Tom?!”

Needless to say I lived and after dealing with leaks, cutting my case up with a dremel, and tweaking my computer to the fastest speed possible I finally had a working system. It was a lot of effort and I loved that computer. I ran blacklight sensitive automotive radiator fluid through it and would use it to host music at parties. I enjoyed people walking into my room and exclaiming – “What is that?!” Most of all I enjoyed the process of building something unique and seeing it work. These days you can just order up a water cooling kit and hook it up in fifteen minutes, but in those days it took blood and sweat.

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