Enthalpic

Civ 6 comes out in October.

Between that and the annoyance of moving the computer every time I use Zwift I will be buying a new computer this fall.

Flatballer

Well, my laptop is on its way back to me from Acer, or will be shortly. All I got was an e-mail that says "Repaired". No idea what they fixed, hopefully it was the right thing. Maybe there will be some documentation in the box when I get it back. Who knows. Seems strange that there aren't any details. How hard would "replaced discrete video card" be to say?

grolby

Final update on my computer saga: turns out Apple won't fix it, because they can't. Because it's old enough to be classified as a "vintage" model, they don't have parts anymore. Apparently the communication between whatever department that runs Tech Support and the Apple Store isn't great, because apparently the advisor I spoke to was not aware of this policy (presumably she wouldn't have promised a free fix if she was). So I'm back to deciding between a DIY logic board replacement, or just a new computer. I went with the new computer. 12" retina MacBook is on its way, should get here Monday. Not the worst outcome ever. The biggest stress was choosing the model - would the base processor be enough, or should I upgrade to the top-level for an extra $225 (hell yeah education pricing saving me $75 on that option)? Ultimately I swallowed the prideful part of me that wants to think I'm a power user and went with the slow one. It'll still be way faster than my MBP, which is good enough for me.

I can't keep up with this stuff, heh. Shows you how much a "gamer" I am these days. I never had it as my top priority with my limited, and so I mostly play games on my iphone/ipad and a few old favorites on the laptop. Which is why I think I'll be fine with the limited performance of the new machine going forward. I like Civ V, and it should run just fine on the new machine from what I can tell.

shovelhd

I wouldn't spend money on a processor upgrade unless it was really significant.

grolby

Yeah. The MacBook has a 1.1 Ghz Core m3 256 GB build and a 1.2 Ghz Core m5 512 GB build. You can configure either with a Core m7, top of that chip line. From all reports the m5 really is a fair bit faster than the m3, but the m7 isn't too different from the m5. Sadly, the m5 model is a good $300 more than the m3, which was more than I wanted to swallow right now. The sweet spot would've been 256 GB/m5, but that's not an option .

Despite the difference in speed, it's mostly in things like processing large numbers of photos, or running pro apps, or transcoding video, encoding audio, compiling code, stuff like that - things I just don't do that often. I encode an MP3 for my podcast every other week and that's about it. And this computer will still do ALL of this stuff faster than my old machine, so it's all upside for me, really.

Flatballer

Man, this one has been dormant a while.

I've been doing some home networking for my in-laws since I'm staying at their house. They have Comcast (ugh) 50Mbps service I think, with a stupid Surfboard modem/router/wifi combo that they bought for some reason. They were getting like 20Mbps speeds often and most of the house had atrocious coverage with a cheap extender that would lose connection to the other router frequently.

My brother in law had some 200Mbps powerline adapters lying around, and I had a TP-Link Archer C7 in the basement, so used that to replace the wireless extender, which helped some, but those powerline adapters are limiting to about 25Mbps in the old wiring.

I bought another TP-Link Archer C7 for them, put that stupid Surfboard into bridge mode so it's just a cable modem now, and now they get 120Mbps near that router. I'm going to put the other router into WDS tonight and get rid of the powerline limitation.

I had no idea those surfboard router/modem combos were that bad. I knew they were bad, but wow. I'm also expecting that this will eliminate some of their spotty coverage (although some of it is on Comcast's side with the cable coming and going, I think they might go to Fios soon).

It's been interesting, and I've dusted off a bit of my networking knowledge getting it all working. At work I generally just submit firewall rules and someone else takes care of everything else, so I've forgotten a lot of the nuts and bolts.

mollusk

This is so geeky.

I recently found a 5 parameter set of exact solutions to the two dimensional steady, nonlinear, and incompressible Euler equations. They are a set of nonlinear partial differential equations in fluid mechanics that has very few known nonlinear solutions. I have now found a whole bunch of new ones.

Too bad I am retiring this spring because something like this is a career defining result for a fluid mechanics person and I am not even that. I work in combustion. I just stumbled upon it screwing around one afternoon when I was bored.

spdntrxi

you just brought me back 25 years in time

Flatballer

Wow, that's really impressive. Well done.

spectastic

i've poured quite a bit of hours into my motorcycle, trying to get it up and running. last time I worked on it was a few months ago. the stupid thing wouldn't start. the starter motor works, fuel line is clean. i'm guessing it's a ground wire, because the headlight isn't working properly either. at this point, it's probably worthwhile to spend money on someone who knows this ****, right?

shovelhd

You're overthinking it. A gasoline engine only needs a few things to run. Fuel. Air. Spark. Compression. You need to check all of those first. Fuel won't do any good sitting in the float bowl. If you can't see gas vapor in the intake then you've got clogged jets. Next is the spark. Pull one of the plugs and hold it against the head or rocker box, then crank the motor. No spark, then it's the plug, wire, coil, or trigger mechanism. Do the simple stuff first.

TMonk

I'm just finishing up writing a SOP on how to clean and maintain a Thermo ICP-MS - a document I started in June of 2015 . It feels good to finally get this thing done.

Enthalpic

LOL.

Ours is rather short, it basically says ask someone more experienced or RTFM.

spectastic

my problem is spark right now. bike's not cranking. it's an electrical issue. everything else should be just fine.

TMonk

I had to google RTFM haha . It's something that I'll begin to toss around at work here and there .

mattm

Getting a kick of this series - node.js, mongodb, javascript are covered.

mattm

On a really geeky note, I started reading the famous "Dragon book" about how compilers work.

It actually makes sense and is really cool reading. Not sure if I'll finish it all, but understanding something I use every day seems like a good idea.

mollusk

Sorry for being nostalgic, but I just started re-reading this old thread that I started so long ago.

I just had to reply to this.

I have taught engineering for a long time and I have found that many of the best local collegiate racers were also engineering students. In fact I have had two domestic pro racers do high honors projects with me.

So since some high level bike racers are geeks, I say that it does belong here.

And I am guessing there are a lot of not so high level bike racers that are somewhere on the positive side of the geek scale. Just look at any thread about power meters either for implementation or how to best employ in training.

Flatballer

So maybe this scenario has come up for some of you. I made it through another round of interviews with a pretty good company and what would be a good, challenging job. The final round of interviews is on site, and includes two presentations (ahhh, 35 minutes of presentations).

The first is "Provide technical presentation based on your experience working on (other non-direct competitor software here)."

Now, the company I'm interviewing with almost certainly has access to the documentation of that system, but it's not publicly available information, and I shouldn't really be a conduit. Any screenshots I can take either belong to the company I'm currently working for (who uses the software) and I can't exactly ask them, or if I take it from documentation it belongs to the creating company. The documentation is all very clear that it contains proprietary information and can't be distributed to third parties.

How do you go about giving this presentation? How do I create it, give them useful information, show that I know what I'm talking about, without breaking any ethical/legal lines?

The second presentation is much clearer, and also a little easier.

revchuck 

This is almost like resurrecting a necro thread...

I've got a nominal 25 meg download speed, but it acts like DSL. My wireless router is probably 5-6 years old. Would going to a new router help with the speed?

mattm

I would try a bunch of stuff before spending money.

Is the wifi router going through a cable modem? If so, reboot it (and/or both, separately) to see if that helps.

Is this 2.4ghz? How many other wifi networks nearby?

What speed are you actually seeing?

Firmware up to date on the router(s)?

Flatballer

Is 25 mbps what you're supposed to get, or what testing with speednet or similar actually shows? If it's the former, test with the latter and see what you get, and then complain to your internet company. If it's the latter, then it's probably an issue on your side, and a router might help, and won't hurt. I'd recommend the TP-Link AC1750 personally. I've bought 3 or 4 of them for myself and others, and they're always fast, easy to set up, and dead reliable. Great price too, for what they are. $90 or so.

miyata man

Have you identified internet speed as the bottleneck?

I get around 250 Mib/s (This is very important because it is misleading the way they measure internet speed. It equals about 20 MB/s) download. With an older laptop with an older SAT3 HD it maxed out at around 5MB/s. Newer desktop with fancy Samsung SSD will do 17MB/s all day. What I'm getting at here is buffer speed on your HD can severely limit the amount of data your computer can write. Which effectively bottlenecks the top download speeds you can get.

revchuck 

I specifically said "nominally 25 meg" because I know it varies based on usage, and it's 8:40 PM here so probably the highest usage period of the day. Two different sites said 1.6 meg download and .3 meg upload. I'm going to reboot the cable modem and check the firmware as Matt advised, also going to check the speed when I wake up at 5 AM to see if it's better.

ETA: I'm working on a several-year-old laptop, so the HD could well be the issue.

miyata man

The most obvious solution normally is running some antimalware/antivirus tests. By far the leading reason for a slow computer/internet. Rebooting, updating, and tidying up will help as well.

If you've never used an SSD it will make every aspect of using a computer faster than you'd think. Lew me know if you end up wanting to go that path and I'll find something decent on sale.