I got in a bit over my head with my latest hardware purchase.

I bought a Shuttle SN26P barebones in January. It’s now June and the darn thing still isn’t working right. In this blog, I’ll explain my rationale behind this decision, what mistakes I’ve made, and what I’m going to do to finally get a working desktop system.

Background
In January, my desktop computer (a Pentium 4/3GHz) finally bit the dust. It had been having boot problems for a while — so much so that I made sure everything was backed up on a regular basis and ceased turning the darn thing off at night like I had been previously. One day, I needed to reboot because the system hung hard, and that was that… the system never worked again.

It wasn’t a huge deal for me, as all important data had been backed up on my laptop and I’d known this day was coming for quite a while now. Nonetheless, I wanted to get my desktop up and running again, so I hauled it in to Simpli and had Russ take a look at it.

After pulling out a spider web and a pile of cat hair, Russ decided that there were several problems that had caused my system to finally bite the dust. First of all, my ancient ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon 7500 video card had a fan that had died, which was probably what had been causing my (more and more frequent) system hangs. (Video card overheats… system dies. Sounds logical to me.) Since I didn’t really need a fancy video card — just one with DVI that supported 1600×1024 resolution, Russ offered to sell me his old one. “Great!” I said. He brought it in, plugged it in to my desktop, and lo and behold…nothing. Still dead.

Further diagnostics ensued. Whoops… not only had the video card died, but the reason my system had utterly failed, as opposed to just hanging on a regular basis and not booting properly, was that my motherboard (an older Asus) was also dead. “Hey,” I said, “that explains all of the USB problems I’ve been having of late.” (I was having a lot of problems where I would plug in my Treo or iPod to sync and get a “USB device has malfunctioned” error in Windows.)

At this point, with a dead video card, a dead motherboard, an obsolete Socket 478 processor, and a CD-RW drive that needed an upgrade anyway, I decided it was time to build a new system. We parted the ol’ desktop out and Lawrence from Ymetro (who works upstairs from us) now has the case. The processor went who-knows-where (I think into a desktop at Simpli) and the memory and CD-RW drive were set aside to assist me in building a new system.

After doing some research, I decided on a Shuttle machine. I wanted a tiny desktop that didn’t take up much space, was deathly quiet, and ran like a dream. I also decided on a nice dual-DVI video card, paying a small fortune for it but deciding that it was worth it because I could have two DVI ports for my two SGI 1600SW monitors. I decided to go with my first non-Intel desktop and pick the 64-bit AMD processor with the Nforce4 chipset. Little did I know what I was about to get into.

At the risk of taking the rest of the day to summarize this, here is what has happened over the past 6 months. Keep in mind this system goes for $2700 retail. This is NOT a low-end desktop. This is a premium, cream-of-the-crop sort of desktop. The fact that it has taken so long to even get up and running is disappointing in its own right, but it gets better…

What Happened
I bought Windows XP x64 Edition. I figured it would be able to run 32-bit applications. After all, on Microsoft’s website, it says “Windows XP Professional x64 Edition gives you access to greater amounts of memory while continuing to support 32-bit applications.” WRONG! Or should I say… NOT EXACTLY! While some 32-bit applications will work, most won’t. And that “most” means I would have to spend hundreds of dollars upgrading every application I use to the latest and greatest bleeding-edge stuff to even have a prayer of it working. Let me give you some quick examples of what does not work: iTunes (even though Apple claims it does); any version of Photoshop older than CS2; older versions of Dreamweaver (I’m still on MX 2004!); PartitionMagic; most virus scanners; most backup applications; most anything that burns CDs… and on and on and on and on.

Taking a step backwards… before I even found out about this problem, I had to get Windows XP x64 installed. That turned out to be a nightmarish experience. I have installed XP approximately 25 times on this computer. First, the Nforce4 drivers that Nvidia provided with the Shuttle do not work properly on x64. I tossed those and got the latest version, which, by the way, have to be installed from a floppy disk during the Windows XP install. Gee, I don’t have a floppy disk drive! Okay, I’ll be ghetto and hang one off the side of the computer. There, that worked.

Now Windows is installed, but the first time it reboots after the install, it hangs, saying it can’t find ntldr.sys. There is no solution other than to reformat, because this error means Windows can’t see your hard drive. I got conflicting reports from forums. I tried slipstreaming the drivers onto the CD instead of loading them from the floppy. No change. I tried different drivers from Nvidia’s site. No change. I tried some drivers from some German site. No change. Finally, I stumbled upon the answer. It appears that when you load the drivers off the floppy, or slipstream them onto the disk, if they are not “Microsoft certified”, Windows replaces them with its own drivers upon first reboot. So Windows replaced the drivers for the Nvidia SATA chipset with “Generic IDE” drivers of its own, which, of course, do not work with my chipset, thus destroying the system before it even had a chance to activate Windows. Solution? Someone hacked the drivers to stop Windows from doing that. I deployed the hacked drivers and it worked. (UGH!!!!) This problem alone took me probably 15 hours of work to resolve.

One of the first things I downloaded onto my new (and finally working!) system was iTunes. Unfortunately, iTunes does not work with some 64-bit systems. But before I even had a chance to discover that, I noticed that anything that I downloaded larger than about 20MB was giving strange CRC errors on install. In fact, any file I downloaded was a few bytes off the size it was supposed to be. Back to the forums I went. Hmm, looks like a lot of people using Nforce4 chipsets have this problem. And the problem is… memory bandwidth. The Nforce4 chipset says it supports dual-channel DDR400 RAM, and sets itself up automatically for that in the BIOS, and then (for whatever reason) the system cannot “write” quickly enough to its SATA chipset from RAM (especially when you have RAID-1 enabled on the chipset…I do), and “misses” a few bytes. What I want to know is… how the fuck did this get past QA? I have a $2700 (retail; I didn’t pay that much) system and here you’re telling me that the RAM it’s supposed to support does not actually work in it. Great. But since I only had DDR333 RAM anyway (remember, I’m using the RAM that worked fine in my last computer, and I ran a thorough memtest86 to confirm that there were no issues with the RAM itself), I went ahead and set my BIOS to force the RAM to DDR333 speed. Problem fixed… I think.

Today
I am typing this on my “new” system. It works, but it’s louder than I would have liked. XP x64 does not meet my needs, so I will likely go back to regular Windows XP. And I’m still concerned about the overall reliability of my system. My P4/3GHz worked great for 2 1/2 years before it finally started having problems. This system had problems out of the box, and while most problems can be fixed with new hardware, this looks like a buggy SATA chipset or RAM problem from Shuttle/nVidia that cannot be fixed simply by upgrading. It’s unfortunate that such a high-end system would run in to so many problems. I’m going to reformat to Windows XP (32-bit) soon, and will try to remember to post an update once I get that up and running. For now, my vote, for what it is worth, is to completely avoid nVidia’s Nforce4 chipset and to stick with Intel wherever you can (dual Opteron servers excluded.)

Update: I finally got it working. Complete details here.

Okay, I usually am not a big fan of blogging about the “OMG Google yourself and see what you find” memes. But this one is really fun. This was passed on to me by a hosting customer of mine, but I haven’t seen it make its way around the /. journal circle yet, so here we go.

The meme: Google the phrase “(Your name) looks like” and find the best one from the first page of results. Don’t forget to put it in quotes; otherwise it won’t work.

I went for it, Googled “Erica looks like” and got a hilarious page of results, but by far my favorite one was Erica Looks Like A Lion. (Yes! Click it! It’s a Flickr photo!) Now I do not know this Erica, but I can appreciate the inherent lioness in this Erica, as I feel I too have an inherent lioness. 😀

My other favorite link, since we’re sharing, is Would the real Erica please stand up?, which is a blog entry about the trials and tribulations of being an Erica Vonderheid and meeting another Erica Vonderheid. I totally get what this Erica is saying, too, because I know if I met another Erica Douglass, well, that would just be freaky.

What can you guys find when you Google this phrase? Post away! I hope to see this make the /. journal rounds. 😉

Russ wanted a “Simpli phone”, so I picked up a Sprint Treo 650 on craigslist yesterday ($275 including a 128MB memory card; slightly used) and began the long hassle of negotiating my cell phone plan with Sprint PCS.

Rep: “Thank you for calling Sprint PCS. How may I help you?”
Me: “I’d like to add a second phone line to my account.”
Rep: [launches into long reading of how great Sprint’s new Fair & Flexible plans are]
Me: [cuts him off] “I’m not interested in signing anything more than a 1-year agreement.” [Fair & Flexible plans require a 2-year agreement.]
Rep: [sounding disappointed] “Are you sure?”
Me: “Yes. What are your prices for 1000 minutes per month?” [quickly hits up Sprint PCS website to see retail prices]
Rep: “We currently offer 1100 minutes for $65.99 a month.”
Me: [notes that this is the same price as shown on the Sprint PCS website] “Now listen here. I’ve been a customer of Sprint PCS for 7 years, and I pay my bill on time every month. I think you can do a little bit better than that.”
Rep: [without missing a beat] “Of course. We have a special plan [snarky Erica note: “special” is defined here as “for the really pushy customers”] of 1000 minutes for $50/month.”
Me: “Great! I’ll take that, then. And it only requires a 1-year agreement?”
Rep: “Yes.”

This phone conversation took 40 minutes.

Morals of the story: 1) Cell phone companies suck. 2) Always negotiate, especially with big companies. You have more power than you think.

I wrote a blog a few days ago about how guys are in relationships/fuck-buddy-ships/whatever for one reason. And, while that generally may be true, it’s not always true. So, as a matter of swinging things the other direction a bit, I want to write about someone I love very deeply. That someone is S.

S and I first met in person in November, when I came to NYC and ended up staying at his place in Manhattan. There, we realized we have a lot in common. I first noticed it when I stepped off the plane to find him waiting for me and reading a book on quantum physics. It was then that I knew we would get along really well. We were shocked to find we had even more in common, from general attitudes toward life to personality tests (Myers-Briggs INTJ; Enneagram type 3) to jobs (S managed a datacenter for a big NYC Forex firm; I run a hosting company. The jobs are shockingly similar) to having been burned in relationships in the past and the consistent struggle to find someone who gets past the tough outer shell and into our hearts. S is a Pisces and I am a Cancer, which also makes us a natural fit, and also makes him best friend #4 of mine who is a Pisces.

The unfortunate thing is that S and I can’t be in a relationship because we drive each other crazy. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but the fact is that when you’re 99% the same as someone, the 1% of the time when you are completely different is so annoying as to be fatally damaging to any relationship that would try to develop. So that’s a bummer. But the good news is we realized that really quickly and were able to adjust to being best friends and having conversations that go something along the lines of “Can you fucking believe that <event> happened?” “No way! Well, here’s what you should do. …” “I TOTALLY AGREE!” And this goes on multiple times a day. The really good news is I’ve hired S temporarily to help get a bunch of stuff going on at Simpli, so all of our customers will have some cool new toys to play with this summer. And, before he moves out here on May 5, I just wanted to say, S, I couldn’t get through a day without you there to bounce ideas off of and tell me about all those cool websites you find (except UserFriendly. I could do without more UserFriendly links!) 😉 And, above all, I am glad that you are one of my best friends, and I will definitely support you in whatever you decide to do with your life. I love you with all my heart. Welcome to California!

I was digging through my Documents folder today, and I found the following essay that I had written in college for my Business 10 class. I’m going to reprint it word for word, minus company names, here. It is dated September 21, 1999. I was 18 years old when I wrote it.

—–

Career Plan
Erica Douglass

What do the next ten years hold in store for me?

To go into my future hopes requires knowing a little more about me, as well as my past. I am very much an entrepreneur, and “creative” has been the major word that teachers and friends alike use to describe me. I am currently running my fourth company, ShakaDesign.com. I have made enough money with these companies and Internet jobs to live on my own.

Right now I work at [a small startup company] as their web marketer. Basically, my boss hired me to redo their website, which is currently three years old and aging fast. Like an person getting old, some things have slowly started to bend or break with the website. To “rejuvenate” it, we plan to switch web hosting companies as well as give the site a badly-needed makeover.

That is where I come in. I do all of their “web stuff.” Anything directly or indirectly related to the Internet goes through me. I work 20 hours a week, get a free work laptop, and eat a lot of pizza sitting in front of my computer. It’s a great job.

I also get paid $20 an hour to do that, with a raise to $25 next month. I’m very pleased.

I am always coming up with ideas, and my father has suggested to me from a very young age that if I go to Silicon Valley and capitalize on these ideas, I could become very successful. He has implanted these concepts so much into me that I constantly write down new ideas I have.

My dream is to own my own Internet company… but it seems that now every teenager who is even slightly computer-savvy is a “web designer” and wants to be the next Jeff Bezos. However, I’m a little different in two ways. For one, I’m female. Two, I don’t want to be like Jeff Bezos because Amazon.com is not profitable! I want to be famous like Jeff Bezos, but I won’t envy his entrepreneurial skills until he can prove that his company can turn a reasonable profit by doing business solely on the Web.

I don’t want to sell books or over-the-counter drugs. I want to radically change the way people use computers and the Internet. I want to change the business model for the Internet instead of making “just another portal” or a bookstore. I want to help make it easier for the world to come online, and I don’t think WebTV is the answer. I honestly don’t think the answer has been invented yet, but that is what I’m here to do.

I’m also going to write a book someday. I don’t know what it is going to be about, but I will write it and it will be good.

I may sound cocky. Honestly, though, if at the age of 16 I had decided that I wasn’t a good web designer, I might have not emailed ten local design companies with a resume and some graphics work I had done. I might have also not gotten hired for my first real Internet job, a summer internship at a Cincinnati, Ohio web design company called [name removed]. (I lived in Indiana until recently.) I wouldn’t be where I am today if I had decided that this whole Internet thing was just too hard and that I was going to go back, sit down, and watch cartoons. And I won’t be the owner of an Internet company in ten years if I start slacking off and not learning new technologies and exploring new options now.

In the end, it all comes down to this statistic which has been at the front of my mind recently: 60% of the people in this world don’t have a telephone. Yes! It’s true! So how do we expect them to get on the Net?

I’m Erica Douglass, entrepreneur, and I’m going to help solve that mystery.