Hurricane Irene just wandered up the east coast and once again my house was spared from any significant problems. We lost power for about 11 hours, but that was nothing compared to my neighbors, many of whom were without power for days. Luckily, I have a 12 KW whole-house generator. And because Verizon kept the FiOS TV and Internet going full speed for the entire storm I spent the day watching Looney Tunes with my daughter and surfing the net for information. My neighbors spent it manually bailing water out of their basements.

The day after the storm traffic to my generator article doubled. Go figure … I suspect generator sales will increase too. But one reader made left an interesting comment: “I never see anyone say how large their propane tanks are and how long the generator (a 17kva, let us say) can run on a certain quantity of LPG. Thanks!” That’s a good point. The reason is probably because the calculations can be complicated, but decent estimates can be made. Here’s how I figure it all out.

Step 1 – How Much Fuel Does Your Generator Need?

This should be a relatively straight-forward answer. Though it depends on the load at which the generator is running, ultimately this is a straight power calculation. In AC electrics, power is expressed as kilovolt-amperes or kVA. In some instances one kVA = one kilowatt or kW. But for some types of loads (capacitive rather than resistive like a motor versus a light bulb) something called a “power factor” must be taken into consideration. In these cases, 1 kVA may equal more than 1 kW. Why does this matter? Because the fuel your generator consumes depends on the load or the number of kVAs it is driving at any time. But most generators are rated in Watts. If you are really concerned you can look at the specification plates on all your appliances and add up the kVA loads and do a conversion to kW. Or you can assume that the overall power factor for your appliances will be pretty close to 1 and just assume 1 kVA = 1kW. That’s what I do. Ultimately you could calculate the power required to run what you want to run, add a bit for the inefficiency of the engine and alternator, and then calculate how much fuel is required to deliver that much power.

The easier way is to let the generator’s engineers do this for you. Somewhere in your generator’s manual there will be a chart that shows fuel consumption versus load. Mine looks like this (found on the second page of my manual at http://www.kohlerpower.com/onlinecatalog/pdf/g4097.pdf):

Then it’s just a matter of figuring out your load, converting the cubic foot measurements to gallons, and voilà, that’s how much fuel you will burn. Except it’s not really that easy … the exact expansion of a gallon of liquid propane to a volume of gas is governed by things like temperature and pressure (remember the Ideal Gas Law from high school physics? PV=NkT? This is why you should have paid attention.) Since propane techs have better things to do than run around with cheat sheets listing the Boltzmann Constant and Avagadro’s Number, they take temperature and pressure out of the equation and work with the actual energy requirements needed rather than volumes. These are listed in column 3 of my chart and are based on the approximate energy value of a cubic foot of propane listed in the Kohler manual.

Thus, at 100% load (the worst case scenario) my generator needs 180,000 BTU per hour to run. The National Propane Gas Association lists one gallon of propane having 91,502 BTU. Thus my generator will need to vaporize and burn approximately 2 gallons per hour at full load. (Or, a bit more accurately, 1.97 gallons per hour.)

Step 2 – How Much Gas Do You Have?

My Dual 125 Gallon Tanks

This seems like a simple question, but it isn’t. My installation has two 125 gallon tanks (420 lbs. capacity each). So it might seem like they could hold a combined 250 gallons. Which, at the approximate 2 gallon / hour rate calculated above would mean that my generator should be able to run at 125 hours (~5 days) at full load on two full tanks. But that isn’t even close.

Propane is stored as a liquid. It must become  vapor before it can be used. To do this, it must absorb heat and then transition from the liquid to the gas phase. Gasses occupy many times the volume of liquids, so in order for this vaporization to occur, the gas needs a space into which it can expand. In a gas cylinder, this is called “headspace,” and it means that my 125 gallon bottles can never be filled to the top. Some room must be left for the gas to expand.

As a general rule, propane cylinders are only filled to 80% of their maximum capacity to allow for expansion of the liquid and enough headspace for the gas. Thus, each cylinder can only hold a maximum of 100 gallons of propane (125 gallons * .8 = 100). So when the fill gauges are pegged at 80% I have 200 gallons to work with or approximately 100 hours at 2 gallons per hour full load. See, we already lost a day of runtime. 100 hours is approximately four days, if we could drain the tanks completely dry.

But guess what – we can’t drain the tanks dry. There are a number of reasons for this. In ideal conditions, there comes a point where the empty volume of the cylinder is so large compared to the amount of propane left that even if it were to all vaporize it wouldn’t generate sufficient pressure to push out of the cylinder. And this can be exacerbated if the temperature drops as it does here in a Massachusetts winter.

So another rule of thumb is that you will never draw a cylinder down below 10% of its rated volume. Thus my 125 gallon tanks will always run out with about 12.5 gallons left in them. If they only start with 100 gallons each, and we can only draw until 12.5 are left, that leaves 87.5 gallons of usable propane in each tank or 175 gallons of total usable propane. That means that in a perfect world I have 87.5 hours running at full load, or just over 3.5 days.

Step 3 – Can You Really Generate the Gas Needed?

If you live someplace warm, the answer to this question is yes. Those of you in Florida can pretty much stop reading now. Just divide the amount of gas you have by the consumption per hour and there you go – that’s your runtime. But those of us who live in cold climates have an additional concern. The factors here are complicated, but essentially come down to this:

Can your gas system absorb enough heat on a very cold day to vaporize the amount of propane needed to run your generator at full load?

What factors determine this? Two mainly.

1. The “wetted surface area” of your tanks. The wetted area is the surface area of the tank exposed to the liquid propane contained within the tank. Obviously the wetted area decreases as propane is withdrawn, another reason why tanks can’t be drawn much past 10% capacity; on a cold day there’s simply not enough surface area available to absorb heat from the environment.
2. The ambient temperature outside the tank. Buried tanks have a distinct advantage in the winter versus tanks exposed to the weather.

This may help to answer an obvious question: why does my installation have two 125 gallon tanks rather than a single 250 gallon tank? The answer is that two 125 gallon tanks have a greater surface area, and a greater wetted area per unit of propane volume, than a single larger tank. This helps ensure that my system can generate the necessary gas volume even on the coldest day.

How can you figure out if your system will generate enough? Rego Products is a company that makes propane regulators and fittings among other things. They publish a handbook for propane installers which has some handy equations. The most useful appears on page 7 which lists the “rule-of-thumb” for calculating propane vaporization rates and correcting for temperature and cylinder volume (wetted area).

It looks like this:

Vaporization rate (in BTU / hour at 0°F) = cylinder diameter in inches * length/height in inches * percent volume correction constant * temperature multiplier.

Part 4 – My Particular Situation

In the summertime I don’t have much to worry about. I’ll get the 3.5 days at full load without trouble, and much more if I am careful with the appliances. In winter, the concerns are different. Rather than list all the constants and corrections here, please visit the Rego book and see for yourself. I will calculate the worst case scenario: -5°F weather and a full generator load all the time.

With full a full cylinder my calculation is:

2 * (30″ * 54.5″) * 100 * .75 = 245,240 BTU / hour generated. This is well above the 180,000 BTU / hour required at full load we calculated above. So, with full tanks, we know my generator will run at full load for some amount of time even if it’s -5°F out. What about at the end of a tank though?

Repeating the same calculation for a cylinder only 10% full I get:

2 * (30″ * 54.5″) * 45 * .75 = 110,362 BTU / hour. Uh-oh. My generator can’t run at full load at -5°F when the cylinder is at 10%. But a quick look at the original chart says this is still enough to run at 50% to 60% load.

If I raise the temperature to 0°F and 10% tank volume my result is 147,350 BTU / hour, well above 75% load capacity.

The good news is that the temperature in this equation is a 24 hour average and it rarely gets below zero for even a full day where I live. On all but the coldest days of winter my generator can run for at least 3.5 days at full load. Since I can be careful about the appliances I run I rarely approach full load in winter when its cold out (I have oil heat for example). So my generator can run for more than that. How much more? A rough calculation says that at a constant 75% load I should be able to run for six days on a full set of tanks no matter how cold it gets outside.

That is a comforting thought.

One Setting Makes it Rock

I’ve had my ReadyNAS Duo server up and running for several weeks, ever since my former backup, my Maxtor Central Axis, died and almost left me stranded.

It sits in my basement connected to the main 10/100/1000 Netgear switch that is the main hub of my network. My main computer is a laptop which usually connects wirelessly through a Linksys access point attached to a 10/100 Netgear switch in my Living Room. When I recently had to move 60+ GB of files from my laptop to the ReadyNAS, I opted to plug my laptop into a free 10/100 port to speed the transfer. The transfer averaged 50 – 60 Mbps, respectable for a home LAN.

But when I went back to wireless accessing files was sloooooooooooooow. I mean really slow. I fired up Picasa and told it to index the network location where ~4000 of my pictures are located and it was indexing maybe one picture a second. This is unusably slow. For a while I thought it was Picasa, but when I saw how fast it indexed pictures local to my hard drive I knew it had to be something else.

I began to search online and eventually came up with this post discussing the MTU settings for optimal wireless transfer from the ReadyNAS. Normally set to 1500, reducing the maximum size to 1430 increased my wireless throughput incredibly.

A big thank you to “dbott” for posting this way back in 2009: http://home.bott.ca/webserver/?p=226.

There was also a big discussion about this on the ReadyNAS forums with several posters agreeing that changing the MTU setting helped: http://www.readynas.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=36820.

Recovering Data From a Dead Maxtor Central Axis Server

I am a victim of inflated expectations and underwhelming execution. By Maxtor.

About two years ago I bought a Maxtor Central Axis storage server. It was kind of an impulse buy since Staples had them for a good price. As soon as I got home I noticed that many of the online reviews said that this wasn’t a reliable device. But I don’t always pay attention to online reviews. I should have. Note that the Central Axis is no longer made. After Seagate bought Maxtor they mercifully took this disaster of a product off the market.

For a while the Central Axis chugged along in my basement and worked well. I regularly backed up my system to it and even used it to store pictures so they were accessible to more than one computer in the house. But I was always taking a chance because the Central Axis isn’t really a true NAS (network attached storage) server. It’s just an external hard drive with an Ethernet port. Where many NAS servers have redundant drives in a RAID configuration, the Central Axis doesn’t. It’s just a drive. So if it dies, you lose your data.

You probably see where this is going.

A couple of months ago I decided to upgrade my Windows Vista laptop to Windows 7.

I reformatted the drive in my laptop.

Don’t worry I thought … all my important pictures are backed up. I can get them back. Then, the night of the upgrade I went into the basement and noticed a red light blinking on the Central Axis. I rebooted it. Still a red light. Oh crap. I just lost everything. Seven years of pictures and videos. Gone. More than a thousand dollars of digital music. Lost forever.

Except that thankfully the Central Axis is really a bad server with a hard drive attached rather than a bad hard drive with a server attached. So from what I’ve read most failures are actually the server and the data on the drive is recoverable. Here’s how I saved my pictures (my music I got back from my iPod).

How I Did It

First, I would like to thank user “darkfiregt” on the Maxtor message boards. His/her post on disassembly of the Central Axis (or the One Touch 4, which was the European version of the Central Axis) was invaluable. And also Dedoimedo for some additional information about mounting Linux drives in Windows.

This procedure assumes that your drive failed like mine (and countless others) with a red blinking light and perhaps a clicking noise. This is a last-ditch effort because you aren’t going to put the Central Axis back together again after this.

Basic Procedure

1. Remove drive from housing.
2. Connect to a Windows machine.
3. Mount the Linux partition.
4. Export data.

Why it Works

It seems that the main failure on the Central Axis is the drive controller. Most people believe this is because of heat. Once this happens, the drive may make a clicking noise, which is normally the sign of death, but in this case is because of a faulty controller which orders the drive heads home over and over again.

Inside the Central Axis is a simple Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM SATA drive. The server runs an embedded form of Linux, so the drive is formatted with an EXT3 partition. Although Windows can’t natively mount this format, there are utilities that can.

What You Need

1. Screwdrivers: 2 phillips, one #0 and one #2.
2. A place to mount the SATA drive. This can be a desktop PC with an available slot on the drive controller or a SATA to USB cable on a laptop. I used an Ultra Products USB to IDE/SATA cable I bought from Tiger Direct for $24.99.
3. Software to read the EXT3 partition. I used Explore2fs, which is free.

The Procedure

1. Using the small phillips screwdriver, remove 4 screws on the bottom of the case. One is hidden under the “Warranty Void if Broken” sticker (just push the tip of your screwdriver into this sticker and you’ll hit the head of the screw). Another is on the right side of the label just under the “H” in the “HDD”. Two more are under the rubber “foot” at the bottom of the case. (A bonus tool is handy for this – I used my small combination pick from my Harbor Freight pick and hook set to pull up the rubber foot.) Pull off the bottom piece.
   

   Bottom View of Central Axis

   

   Location of Top 2 Screws

   

   Bottom Screws Exposed

2. Slide the inner cage and drive out of the outer case. This is easier said than done. It took me at least 5 full minutes of tugging, twisting and pulling to get it free. There is a tab which can get caught in the vents at the top of the case if you’re not careful.
   

   Inner Assembly Removed From Case

3. Darkfiregt listed this as the next step:
   

   Once this is out, you’ll have a plastic “cage” surrounding a metal “cage surrouding the harddrive.  Look at the side with the 3 small + shaped posts.  The panel that the posts are on is what we’ll remove to free the drive.  On either side of the end posts, there is a little tap.  Push in on the tap to release the snaps that hold the panel in.  Pull the panel out.  The metal “cage” should now come out.

   Honestly, I just grabbed the plastic piece by the little plusses and pulled it apart.

   

   Inner Metal Assembly Removed From Plastic Cage

4. Remove the rest of the screws from the metal enclosure (4 large and 4 small) and pry it apart. The whole hard drive should come out.
   

   Drive Completely Removed

5. Connect the drive to your computer with whatever cable you have.
   

   Central Axis Drive Connected

6. Verify that Windows can see the partition. On Windows 7 use Disk Management (search for it under start) to verify that the drive is visible.
   

   Disk 1 (and the partitions without drive letters) Is the Linux Disk

7. Then, open Explore2fs and browse the drive. Right-click on any folders or files and Export to your local machine as needed.

Using this method I was able to save 68 GB of pictures and videos that I thought were lost forever. Good luck if you’re in the same boat.

I recently announced that I retired my venerable Dash 3G phone from T-Mobile and upgraded to a new G2.I’ve had the new phone for several weeks now, and I’ve even taken it to Europe for a week. And I really like this phone. Here are my impressions after the first few weeks.

Hardware

You can find the official specs on the official G2 site. The phone is made my HTC and has all of the main features that I was looking for, including a decent display (doesn’t have to be iPhone 4, Retina quality), a slide-out keyboard, and reasonable speed. I also like the idea of removable memory cards so I can expand the memory as needed. The phone has a decent camera and the touch-screen is sensitive and smooth.

The slide-out keyboard is an interesting design. Rather than a traditional slide mechanism, this keyboard flips out using a “Z-hinge” design (this phone is also known as the ‘HTC Desire Z in other markets). This hinge has received a lot of bad early press because it tends to come from the factory very loose or quickly loosens once the phone is used. Just go to YouTube and search “G2 hinge” to see more than you want to, but here’s a representative video:

Based on my use, I don’t have a problem with the hinge. Is it loose? Yes. But I don’t wear the phone on a belt clip or type while lying on my back, so I don’t experience the problems that some people report. But I advise anyone thinking about this phone to take the issue into consideration just in case it will bother you.

One downside to this phone: it’s heavy. This is not a super-thin iPhone 4. Compared to an iPhone it feels like a brick, and it’s not easy to pocket. It definitely doesn’t fit easily in a pocket inside a suit jacket, and it can be a pain to carry in a pants pocket too. But I’ve eventually gotten used to it. If you are looking for something sleek though, this isn’t it.

The keyboard is great. I admit I love HTC phones, and this is my third in a row. I started with my beloved T-Mobile Wing (also known as the HTC Herald) and replaced that with my Dash 3G (also known as an HTC Maple).  And HTC keyboards have always been great. The keys are nicely domed so my fingers can find them easily, and they have a nice ‘clicky’ feel. As far as smartphones go, this is a great keyboard to type on.

The GPS is solid and the camera is decent. I am so happy to have a decent GPS because the GPS on my Dash 3G was perhaps the worst GPS implementation in the world.

So, for my uses, this is a solid device for daily use.

Software

The phone ships with a lightly customized Android 2.2 (Froyo) OS that implements most of the native features. When the phone originally shipped late last summer it did nit implement one key 2.2 feature, Wi-Fi tethering (portable hotspot functions). However, T-Mobile did make these features available in a November OTA (Over The Air) update, and my phone downloaded and enabled this within hours of activation.

A good and quick review of the 2.2 features is available at the Android Developers website.

T-Mobile has largely left this OS unadulterated. If you are interested in an experience that is as close to native Android as possible, as opposed to something like Motorola phones running ‘MotoBlur‘ then this is a good choice. In its raw form, I thin Android is an excellent, if slightly less polished alternative to the iPhone’s IOS. In fact, I prefer Android in many ways (more below). And the G2 implementation is solid and quick. No lags or performance issues in my version anyway.

And as always with Android, the OS integrates perfectly with Google services. My domain (havasy.net) runs e-mail and calendar on a Google Apps account. So the mail and calendar integration built into Android works fantastically.

Network

T-Mobile get a lot of shit for being a third class network, even behind Sprint in most people’s eyes. I have no idea why. I’ve been a T-Mobile customer for over 9 years now, from right after the Voicestream acquisition. I have never considered switching. Do I have fewer bars than my Verizon-owning friends? Yes. But I also pay a lot less for service and have many fewer restrictions. Case-in-point: T-Mobile still sells unlimited data plans and allows tethering for only an extra $15.00 per month on . That means that I pay $45.00 per month for unlimited data and unlimited tethering. Seriously. And legitimately. No cheating required. On Verizon, an equivalent plan isn’t possible. The best you can legitimately do is $70 per month for a 2GB smartphone cap and a 10GB mobile broadband cap. Pathetic.

For where I use my phone the most, the T-Mobile network works fine. And tethering is important to me. I commute by train for 3 hours every day, and tethering allows me to use my laptop during that time for things like graduate school classes.

And, on the G2, T-Mobile has released their version of Wi-Fi calling. Which allows the phone to connect to an available Wi-Fi network if the cell signal is low and make calls over Wi-Fi. This is not true VOIP like Skype, since T-Mobile still charges plan minutes at the normal rate, but can be useful in certain situations. Like if you live somewhere that has spotty coverage. Or, and this is critical for me, if you travel a lot. I took the G2 to Brussels, Belgium for 5 days on business and was able to use my hotel’s Wi-Fi connection to make and receive calls with no international roaming rates. That’s right. After being afraid to turn on my phone because of horror stories about thousand dollar bills from roaming charges, I set it to Wi-Fi only and it worked perfectly. Imagine that – a world-band phone that finally allows worldwide phone calling. Unbelievable. I love T-Mobile more and more all the time because of features like this.

Overall

I am extremely pleased with my G2. It’s fast, solid, and versatile. In fact, after several weeks I like it so much more than my iPhone 3GS, even with the new iOS 4 update.

Why I Like the G2 More Than my iPhone

• Hardware

1. Replaceable battery. I think it’s criminal that Apple requires you to have the phone repaired to get a new battery.
2. Physical keyboard. I’ve had my iPhone for more than a year and I still hate typing on it.
3. Dedicated camera button. Sometimes you want to take a quick picture.
4. Expandable memory. Want an extra 32 GB? Just pop in a new microSDHC card.

• Software

1. Widgets. Not everything should be forced into a tiny icon. Android lets you add display widgets right to your homescreen if you want. Weather forecast? Twitter stream? Sports scores? No problem. All displayed right there with no need to click into an app.
2. Tethering!
3. AppStore not policed by arbitrary policies. No need to wait for Apple to approve an app before downloading it.
4. Real multi-tasking with background processes. That means real notifications from apps for Facebook updates, Twitter updates, etc.
5. Integration with Google services. I get push e-mail without Exchange. For free. No Apple (Mobile Me) subscriptions required.
6. Wi-Fi calling. Worked great in Europe.
7. Real app integration. Like the way Skype integrates with your dialer so you don’t have to launch apps to use additional calling features.

Conclusion

So – if you’re in the market for an iPhone alternative that allows real data usage, I say you can’t go wrong with the G2. Both my wife and I have them and we simply love them. And despite its perception, I think of T-Mobile as a top-teir international carrier who I have nothing but praise for.

There will be more to come I’m sure as I have the phone for a while, but right now I highly recommend the G2.

If you’ve read this blog for any length of time, you know that I was one of the last holdouts using Windows Mobile on a smartphone. For about 18 months I have been using a T-Mobile Dash 3G phone as my primary personal device. I actually like the phone a lot. It was a great 3G performer and I like the form-factor. It was light and thin and easy to carry. The stock Windows Mobile operating system was terrible though – so I set about flashing a new operating system (still based on Windows Mobile though) that made the phone much better. All of that fun was chronicled in a series of posts and are among the most read posts on this site.

T-Mobile G2

But – it was finally time to upgrade the capabilities and move up to a real smartphone. I knew several things that would inform this decision:

1. I remain uninspired by my iPhone (my work phone). It works fine and there are great apps, but it’s just an OK phone with some quirks that I don’t really care for.
2. I was staying with T-Mobile as a carrier. I’ve been with them since around the time of the Voicestream acquisition and they have always been good to me. Their rates are reasonable (especially for data) and their customer service is the best.
3. I wanted a slide-out or other physical keyboard. One of the things I hate about my iPhone is that the on-screen keyboard is such a pain to use. I really like physical keys.

This really limited my choices. Basically, T-Mobile currently offers two phones with keyboards: the MyTouch 3G Slide, and the G2. Since the G2 is advertised as 4G (OK, 3.5 G on the HSPA+ network) guess which I chose.

That’s right – I went to my local T-Mobile store and the guy there hooked me up with a BOGO deal. With upgrade credits (my contract was up 6 months ago), loyalty credits, etc. I walked out of the store with two brand new G2s (one for me and one for my wife) for $200 with a new 2-year contract. How can you beat that.

I’ve had the phone for just over two weeks now and I’ve even traveled to Europe with it.

And I can say that this phone KICKS ASS. I love it. Expect more detailed information in the coming days, but if all you want is a basic recommendation, I say you cannot go wrong with this phone.

If you follow this blog at all, you know that I finally abandoned Charter Cableas my Internet provider and switched to FiOS. I just couldn’t take the unreliable connection anymore and I wanted better speeds.

On Friday I was working from home and it suddenly dawned on me just how good this data connection is. All of a sudden I realized that the following was all happening at once:

• My Logitech Squeezebox was streaming our local NPR station in the kitchen.
• My weather server was pushing live weather data to the Internet.
• My laptop was streaming Pandora for background music.
• My work machine was connected via VPN to my corporate network and I was writing and executing SQL queries.
• I was talking on my Belkin Skype phone with absolutely no loss of quality – it was better than a cellphone call.
• Both my cellphones hasdWi-Fi enabled and were using Wi-Fi for data/e-mail/etc.

Granted, I’ve given the Skype phone the highest QoS priority on the Verizon router, but still. No degradation of audio quality on the call and no skipping that I could hear on the Pandora stream. I wasn’t in the kitchen to hear the NPR stream, but I’ll bet it was fine.

My point is, when I was a Charter customer, I couldn’t get Vonage to work with any kind of quality, even using the dedicated Linksys PAP2 Ethernet adapter and giving it the highest priority on my router.

So, the bottom line is – I’m glad I switched.

It’s no secret that I’m a fan of Kaspersky anti-virus products. I’ve been a loyal user for years and even switched my Mom over from Norton a few months ago. But when my own subscription came due a few weeks ago I upgraded into a nightmare that’s just killing my computer’s performance.

It seems that Kaspersky Internet Security (KIS) 11 (at least as of 11.0.1.400) has an issue with CPU usage on Windows Vista systems. As soon as I start the computer and KIS begins an update, my CPU usage spikes to 100% and stays there. Needless to say, that really reduces system performance. And for weeks it seemed like I wasn’t the only one suffering with this and no one had any idea how to fix it.

But finally I may have found something that helps.

First, the basics of my configuration:

• Dell Studio1735 laptop
• Intel Core2 Duo @2 GHz
• 3 GB RAM
• Windows Vista SP2

The system is about 2 years old now and has never been a great performer, mostly due to crappy video hardware, but some would say because of Vista itself.

Anyway, after installing KIS 11 the CPU would routinely spike to 100% use and stay there for hours. And KIS itself would routinely show that it was either updating or scanning, even when the system wasn’t really ding much.

I searched the web and found threads with many people suffering the same problems. Some examples:

• KIS 2011 – High / Erratic CPU Usage, Gets worse with time.
• KIS 2011-CPU usage 90% (intermittent), High CPU usage

The first thread finally yielded a partial solution: it seems that having the Windows Vista ‘Superfetch’  enabled causes KIS to constantly scan the files being written in and out of memory, thus pegging the CPU. I finally disabled the service today and it seems to be keeping the CPU under control.

If you have a CPU usage spike with Kaspersky and Vista, I recommend trying it.

A few weeks ago I wrote that I was finally sick and tired of the technical problems I was having with my local cable company, Charter Cable. In fact, I called Verizon and switched to FiOS because I had a problem with a few missing channels on Charter, which was a common (once a month) problem. Soon after I called, that turned into no channels above #99. Then a few days later it resolved itself and I was getting my channels again. Until my scheduled FiOS install day, when all the channels above #99 went black again. Figures.

Install and First Impressions

For what it’s worth, the technician who came to do the install really knew his stuff. He answered every question (with what seemed to be the correct answer) ans was incredibly efficient during the install. He knew exactly how everything went together and wasted no time. And it was pouring rain. I mean raining like you wouldn’t believe. And he pulled the new cable through that mess super quickly. People complain about Verizon customer service, but I was impressed. He arrived right on time, called ahead of time, and knew what he was doing. Can’t ask for more than that.

Anyway, the installation steps were:

My New ONT & Phone + Cable Distribution Box

1. Remove old Verizon NID.
2. Connect new fiber cable at pole on street.
3. Using old copper cable, pull new fiber to house and install hanger hardware. Route cable into basement via old NID passthrough.
4. Install the ONT (Optical Network Terminal) in the basement.
5. Route Cat-3 cable to the phone panel in the house and bring up the phone.
6. Route coax cable to the location of the network router (about 4 feet away in my case) and bring up the data connection.
7. Connect the home’s cable TV lines.
8. Install any Cable Cards needed (one multi-stream card in my TiVO).
9. Using a local computer on the network and software on a USB stick the tech had, verify connectivity and enable the cable boxes and cable cards.

In my case, everything worked flawlessly and the tech had the job complete in five hours. And so far, two weeks latr, everything works as promised. In fact here’s a speedtest from Speedtest.net. This is a pretty typical result:

My Speedtest

And the telephone and television work flawlessly too. Please note though that I have a TiVO with a CableCard for my primary set (which is only a 35″ 720P resolution TV anyway), so I have no experience with the Verizon box or tuner. That also means that I miss out on all the supposedly cool features like caller ID on the TV screen and the programmable crawl for traffic and weather etc. But the channels I do receive kick ass. And with the Ultimate TV package there is just a ridiculous number of channels. It’s truly obscene.

So far, unlike Charter, every single channel tunes in and there have been no disruptions, even with some foul weather. And I’m pretty sure that the standard definition channels look better than they did with Charter. This may be a misguided perception, but I think they do.

Internet Setup

My Network

This is where I expected to have trouble. For FiOS you have to use the router they give you, because it enables other functions like control of the set top boxes. And the router they give you is an Actiontec MI424WR. Mine is a Rev. C. Not exactly the most popular device in the world. And earlier versions had some issues, most of which are documented in the Verizon FiOS forum on Broadband Reports.com.

Unsecured Network

It took some digging through the menus, but I was ultimately able to get the Actiontec set up in a way that matched my network. Verizon has the routers configured with WEP on by default, and the WEP key and default SSID are printed on the Actiontec label. Frankly I applaud this … there are countless people out there who run unsecured wireless networks because the default is no security at all. Usually with the default SSID too. Need proof? One of my neighbors has been running their ‘Netgear’ wireless network for more than a year now. I just captured this screen as proof.

So, with a little digging I was able to set the SSID to match my own wireless network, and change the security to WPA2 instead of WEP (settings are on the ‘Advanced Security Settings’ link on the ‘Wireless Settings’ page). [For a discussion of the differences between WEP, WPA, and WPA2 wireless security protocols, I recommend this article. I run WPA2 with 128 bit AES encryption. I'll admit that my passphrase isn't 20 characters long, but it is a pretty unique combination of upper & lowercase letters and numbers. And I have a non dictionary word SSID. So I feel OK.] The WPA2 part was a pain because although the Actiontec can do it, it isn’t an easy setting to find, and then when you do find it and enable it, it looks like you’ve actually turned off all security. That was a bit freaky. Here’s what the wireless status screen shows:

No Security

Luckily, after a reboot, the main status screen does begin to show the proper security settings:

Updated Wireless Status

So, in the end, I ended up with a second access point to supplement my current Linksys AP and I am getting much better wireless coverage in the house, even if the Actiontec router is in the basement.

The rest of the network seems to be operating well. I set the DHCP server in the Actiontec to start assigning addresses at 192.168.1.10, leaving me with eight fixed addresses to assign to things that get managed frequently like my Access Point and my print server and my weather station server. I have a pretty good sized network for most home users. At any given time there are nine or ten devices connected and working away. This includes two networked printers, two TiVOs, a Linux server, a one Terabyte storage server, my weather station, and a couple of laptops and cellphones. And also an internet radio (a Logitech Squeezebox) and a Skype phone by Belkin. So far, no issues for the Actiontec or the FiOS connection.

Telephone Setup

There’s nothing really to say about this. My phone works. I barely use it. We have a home phone because my wife just can’t bring herself to give it up. Oh well.

Conclusion

So far this has been an awesome switch. Verizon delivered everything on time and the technician knew what he was doing. Everything works. I would highly recommend that people make the switch.

NO!

I am a big fan of dedicated devices. By that I mean I usually prefer a device built for a specific task rather than a device built for multiple uses. So yes, I’d rather carry a Buck knife, a saw, tweezers, and scissors separately in my backpack than a single Swiss Army Knife.

This applies to electronics too. I have an iPhone, but I don’t have a single song or video on it. I use my iPod for that. I could use my laptop to listen to internet radio at home, but instead I have a Logitech Squeezebox internet radio. I have a cordless drill for drilling, and a cordless impact driver for driving screws. Drills don’t drive screws – they drill holes.

And so, finally, I’ve found the perfect dedicated device for people who have weather stations at home and want a dedicated system for logging and uploading the data. A company called Ambient Weather makes a small plug computer loaded with an awesome weather data logging and uploading package. Yes, I’m a weather geek. And for years I’ve had a weather station at home and uploaded my data to the internet. You can usually see a real-time display in the right-hand sidebar of this page. But on April 21, 2010 the PC that had been collecting and uploading the data from my station had a catastrophic failure.

For about two and a half years I uploaded data from my system using a desktop PC that I built from parts from Tiger Direct. It was nothing special, just an 1.2 GHz AMD Athlon processor on a Asus motherboard. It ran Windows XP and had a Western Digital hard drive in it and it ran Ambient Weather’s Virtual Weather Station software to handle the data. And honestly, it was a royal pain in the ass to keep running. First, because it was a system in my home office, it had accounts for my wife and me on it in addition to the one that ran my weather station software. And over time the system got polluted with drivers and software that made it unstable. Then there is the problem that consumer-grade parts, like cooling fans and power supplies, just aren’t designed to run 24/7/365 without wearing out. So the case fans were constantly making grinding and squeaking noises and the thing was constantly shutting down. So when it died, I just couldn’t bring myself to rebuild it. So for five months – no weather data.

In addition to the hardware and software problems, I also realized that running an entire PC 24/7 with a 350 watt power supply wasn’t the greenest or most efficient way to get data from a weather station to the internet. The thing threw off all kinds of heat and I’m sure it cost more than a few dollars a month just to have running. There had to be a better way. After a few months of no PC I considered building a dedicated server for the weather station using a micro ATX style case and a simple motherboard. But I’d still have the problem of running a couple hundred watts 24/7 for no good reason.

WeatherHub 2

Then, while looking at the Ambient Weather site I discovered their WeatherHub2 dedicated server. It seemed too good to be true. Someone was selling a complete kit with the fantastic MeteoHub package installed and configured on a SheevaPlug server. It promised to do everything I needed and use only 2 watts at idle and maybe 7 watts at 100% use. The plug server runs a 1.2 GHz ATOM processor made by Marvell and an embedded Linux OS. Normally the SheevaPlug ships with Ubuntu installed, but for the MeteoHub package, a version of Debian is installed and then the MeteoHub package is installed on top of that. The server has a USB port which can connect to the weather station and an SD card slot which can be used to store weather data.

So, for $279 I ordered one and I can say that I’n not disappointed. It’s only been running for about 3 days (so I’ll save the detailed review for later) but it does exactly what I need with a minimum of configuration necessary. Honestly, I took it out of the box, followed the quick setup instructions, and was completely up and running in under 2 hours. And most of that time was spent figuring out a quirk (OK, bug) in the MeteoHub software that requires data collection to be enabled manually after making certain changes.

So, no more big hulking loud PC for me. I now have a dedicated weather station appliance taking up 1/10th of the room of a PC and using 1/100th of the electricity.

You can see the data from my weather station in the sidebar or directly on the WeatherUnderground website at http://www.wunderground.com/weatherstation/WXDailyHistory.asp?ID=KMANORTH12. I also submit my data for quality control checking via the CWOP/MADIS program. You can see my quality reports at http://weather.gladstonefamily.net/site/search?site=as792.

The other day I wrote that I was abandoning my cable company and switching to Verizon FiOS service.  Since I’ve had relatively unreliable service for years, you might wonder why it’s taken me so long to switch. There’s one main reason which still gives me pause about Verizon service: you must use Verizon’s router. Honestly, this bothers the hell out of me. Verizon gives all kinds of innocent sounding reasons for why you must use their router, but they’re all crap. In fact, one of the reasons they give, is the exact reason customers shouldn’t put up with it:

Your router also contains special diagnostic software that can help us trouble-shoot and correct problems should you experience trouble with your Internet Service. You will need to use the Verizon router with your FiOS Internet service.

Can you believe that – “special diagnostic software?” Inside your network. How can this be legal? Why don’t they just say “special diagnostic software that allows us to monitor traffic inside your network which we can turn over to the US Government like we did with your phone calls after 9/11.” And I get that they already do that with WAN/Internet traffic. But I’m talking about stuff inside my network. That’s unconscionable.

The second, and less conspiratorial reason to avoid the Verizon router is that it leaves you no recourse should it fail. And it inevitably will. At least with Charter I can use any standard hardware – I currently have a Motorola Surfboard cable modem and a Linksys router (without wireless). So, should something die, it takes only a quick trip to Staples and I’m back in business. In fact, several years ago lightning struck a tree right outside the house and fried both the modem and router. On a Saturday. I was running again in under 90 minutes with all new equipment. I don’t suppose Verizon is going to rush out with a new “special” router within 90 minutes of my failure.

So without much recourse, my plan is to build out one of the scenarios on Broadband Reports to put my own router in line. Heck, with a little luck I can get an Ethernet port enabled on the ONT and just use my own router. We’ll see. But you know Charter must be horrible if I’m willing to put up with this just to get away from them.