Tag Archives: NVIDIA GeForce 860M

2015/07/29 (W) Drive Shaft

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I had had a 9:30 AM appointment at Brighton Honda to have a drive shaft replaced and suggested that we just continue on to the Brighton Panera a half mile down the road for bagels and coffee.  Linda never refuses to go to Panera so that is what we did.  The Wi-Fi was out of service but we both bought things to read so we did not care.  We sat in the two comfy armchairs by the fireplace, which was turned on, because the temperature inside was very cool, a frequent problem with this particular Panera store.  We each had a bagel and many refills of our coffee cups and stayed long enough that Brighton Honda called to let me know my car was ready to be picked up.  We left at 12:30 PM and Linda dropped me off to retrieve the ca.

Back home we had the leftover couscous with caramelized onions and the rest of the kiwis for lunch.  Linda finalized her grocery list and headed off in search of food.  I spent the rest of the day and most of the evening working on the design/drawings for the built-in sofa.

Through the course of the day I had QSOs with Jim (N8KUE) on the Novi 440 repeater and with Chris (K8VJ), Steve (N8AR), and Mike (W8XH) on the South Lyon 2m repeater. I also installed an updated driver for the NVIDIA GPU in my ASUS laptop, installed updates on the older Sony VAIO workstation (which still has Windows XP Pro), installed updates on the Linux box, and took time out for dinner (a delicious red lentil potato curry) and dessert (very sweet watermelon).

I went back to work in my office and sent an e-mail to Mike (W8XH) concerning Windows 10.  He replied via the South Lyon 2m repeater.  We had a long chat from 10:10 PM to just after 11 PM that was joined briefly by Steve (N8AR).  There was also a group QSO taking place on the Novi 440 repeater that I listened to in the background.  After I turned the radio off and came upstairs Linda said it appeared that my ham radio transmissions were interfering with our OTA TV signals.  The antennas are on the same tower but the OTA TV antenna is mounted below the Diamond X-50N 2m/70cm vertical ham antenna so I was a little surprised that it would be causing interference.  The vertical antenna has an omnidirectional radiation pattern which resembles a donut sitting on a horizontal surface, so the location directly under the base of the antenna should be a region with very little signal.  Apparently that is not the case and I will eventually have to do something to remedy the situation.  For now, however, the solution will be to not use the radio when someone s watching television.

 

2015/05/21 (R) Cats, Cars, and Tenure

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Linda got up around 6 AM and got ready to go to the bakery.  I was aware she was up but I slept in.  Once up I showered and dressed for the day.  I did not plan to work in the bus today so I did not put on my work clothes.  Instead I needed to catch up on blog entries and take the cats to a 2 PM appointment at Plaza Veterinary Hospital in Farmington, Michigan.

I was putting a few things back in the master bedroom closet and noticed that the air-conditioning return air grill was stuffed full of insulation.  We had found this in the other return air grills and removed it but we overlooked this one.  I removed the grill and then removed the insulation and threw it away.  There was a 1/2″ thick filter material stuffed up in the register behind the insulation.  I trimmed the filter to just fit inside the grill and reattached it to the ceiling.  Putting the rest of the house back together will take both of us so we will do that this evening.  Besides, we like to give the carpets as much time as possible to dry out.

I went out around 9:30 AM to fuel my car and get a cup of coffee at the co-located Dunkin’ Donuts.  Back home I put my floor mat back in front of my main computer station and settled in to check e-mail and work on my blog.  There was a new driver available for the NVIDIA GeForce GPU in my ASUS laptop, so I initiated the download.  AT&T was providing me with a 160 KB download speed and the 277 MB driver said it would take an hour to download.  No point tying up the Internet connection until the download finished so I used my iPad while I waited.

The driver downloaded a little sooner than predicted and then installed quickly.  When I finally opened my e-mail and had another 50 MB of stuff to download; a lot of it BCM related.  They are trying to wrap up the April 2015 issue and sent me several drafts since I last checked my e-mail.  I have not been 100% successful in getting folks attached to the magazine to transmit large files via Dropbox instead of attaching them to e-mails.

Tim Olsen from our GLCC chapter called yesterday to let me know he had registered for GLAMARAMA and wanted to park with the chapter.  I updated my spreadsheet and need to e-mail a few folks to clarify their intentions before giving an updated coach count to the rally parking coordinator.  As often happens, I did not have much time left to work on blog posts before I had to round up the cats and take them to the vet.

Both cats complained for most of the trip to Plaza Veterinary Hospital, but they are cats and that is what they do.  I weighed them on the scale in the lobby and gave the receptionist the pertinent facts concerning their health.  Once in the exam room I opened their carriers.  Juniper immediately came out and explored the room.  We were early and had to wait a while but Juniper stayed very busy.  Perhaps she was looking go for a way out.  Jasper did not leave his carrier.  Perhaps he figured he was safer staying in there.

Dr. Carron examined Juniper first since she was already out of her carrier.  The cats both got a clean bill of health other than some tartar on their teeth.  Dr. Carron did not suggest, however, that they needed to be cleaned at this time.  They each got vaccinated albeit for different things.  Jasper also had blood drawn.  He is just a month shy of being 11 years old and Dr. Carron likes to do annual blood work on cats 8 years of age and older.  Juniper is due for a 3-year rabies booster in December of this year but Jasper is not due again until sometime in 2017.  Besides rabies certificates we may need an International Health Certificate for each cat to get them into Mexico and/or back into the United States if we decide to make the trip to Puerto Penasco in February 2016.

I had just left Plaza Veterinary Hospital when Linda texted me that she was wrapping up at the bakery.  It was already after 3 PM at that point and traffic was thick and slow in the usual places.  I had a nice QSO with Mike (W8XH) on the South Lyon 2 meter ham radio repeater for the last six miles of my trip.  He and several other club members bought Yaesu digital radios at the Dayton Hamvention to use with the new Yaesu Fusion 2m repeater that five of them bought from Yaesu for a special promotional price of only $500.

I got home around 4 PM and replied to Linda’s TXT message.  I got the cat carriers inside and set them free.  There was no hesitation about leaving the carriers this time.  Linda got home around 5 PM, 90 minutes after she left the bakery, and I filled her in on the cats’ veterinary appointments.  While we were chatting we got an e-mail from our son letting us know that Shawn’s tenure at the University of Michigan had been approved by the Board of Regents at their meeting today.  We were understandably pleased (and relieved) to finally receive this news and texted back our congratulations.  Shawna sent back a cell phone photo of themselves celebrating at a local Ann Arbor establishment.  They looked very happy.

Most car dealerships in this market are open until 9 PM on Mondays and Thursdays, and neither of us was ready for dinner yet, so we paid a visit to Champion Chevrolet on Grand River Avenue between Brighton and Howell.  We were greeted by Ken, but he only dealt in used cars and handed us off to Dan Danaher.  He had a Chevy Colorado on the lot so we checked it out.  It was not the 4-door crew cab Z71 off-road model, but it did have 4-wheel drive.  We climbed in/out of the front and back seats and played with the tailgate.  The front seats were fine but I could not sit in the back without the driver seat being all the way forward.  The 4-door Crew Cab adds about 7″ of rear leg room but it would still be tight.  That is one of the tradeoffs with mid-size trucks.  The front seats fit us nicely but this is not a truck for tall and/or large people IMHO.  The Z71 off-road version may sit slightly higher but we should still be able to get in/out without needing an accessory step or running board.

The MSRP for the truck we saw was just over $30,000 and overall felt very similar to the Nissan Frontier, nice but not luxurious.  In other respects, however, the trucks were very different.  The Colorado 4×4 models have a transfer case and can be towed four wheels down with an automatic transmission.  We liked the Frontier but it can only be towed 4-down with the manual transmission and for that reason alone is not a viable alternative for us.

Dan gave us a brochure on the Colorado and made a few notes on what we are looking for.  We would obviously like to see the 4-door crew cab and drive the Z71 4×4 off-road model before deciding to buy one.  He said he would call if/when he had those available for us to see and test drive.  If we ordered by the end of the month we would get a 2015 model but it would take 8 – 10 weeks to arrive.  Starting June 1st orders will be for a 2016 model and still take 8 – 10 weeks for delivery.  Recent history suggests a 0.5% to 1.0% price increase for the new model year.  We do not plan to order a new car before the end of May and a 1% price increase would not motivate us to change our minds about that.

On our way back to our car we took a quick glance at the Camaro sitting outside the showroom door.  If we were buying a nostalgia car thus would be it.  Linda’s first car, purchased before we were married, was a used 1967 Chevy Camaro convertible.  It was white with a red interior and had a 327 cubic inch V8 under the hood.  No emissions controls in those days, just raw power and $0.35/gal gasoline.

We drove to Panera in Brighton and had black bean soup and Mediterranean veggie sandwiches for dinner.  By the time we got home we were ready to relax.  First we took the spacers out from under the living room furniture, so we had someplace to sit, and put a few items back where they normally go.  I opened one of the bottles of Malvasia Bianca white wine from the Heart of the Dessert (Eagle Ranch) winery in Alamogordo, New Mexico and we celebrated our daughter-in-law’s attainment of tenure.  It’s been a good year for our son and his family and it is nice to see things finally falling into place for them.  The wine was very similar to the late harvest Rieslings we get from Michigan’s Leelanau peninsula; very sweet and thus a good cocktail or dessert wine.  We watched the final episode from season 1 of A Touch of Frost before turning in for the evening.

 

2014/04/29 (T) A Family Visit

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Our son decided to bring his daughter to visit with us this morning.  They arrived around 10 AM and left around 1:30 PM.  This was the first time I have seen her since December 16th.  Linda got to see her when she was back in Michigan in late February and early March.  Madeline was one year old when I last saw her and was crawling.  She is now 16 & 1/2 months and walking like she invented it.  She seems to take great pleasure in her independent mobility for its own sake; pure joy.  She also loves to go up and down stairs (with adult supervision, of course).  She is curious about everything and took great delight in exploring the main floor of our house.  It was an excellent visit.

I made a run to the post office and used my 2m mobile ham radio while in transit.  Mike, W8XH, came back to my call and we had a nice QSO.  It was good to finally be back on the air.  I stopped at Teeko’s and ordered 2 lbs each of our two custom blend coffees for pickup on Thursday.  These are half regular, half decaffeinated blends that Jeff roasts right in the store from his amazing assortment of green beans.  Sweet Seattle Dreams is 1/2 Seattle Blend (reg) and 1/2 Sweet Dreams (decaf), and we were the first customers for whom Jeff ever made thus blend.  It’s a blend of two blends, so it has at least four different coffee beans, maybe five or six.  He told me once, but I have forgotten.  The other blend is all Ethiopian Yirgacheffe.  Both are excellent.

I did some research on laptop computers while Linda pulled together something for dinner.  She got a Samsung ATIV Book 8 a year ago.  It is a fabulous machine: 64-bit Intel Core i7 (Gen 3) microprocessor, Windows 8.1 (64-bit), a 15.6″ diagonal touch screen (16:9 aspect ratio), backlit keyboard, and lots of ports including USB3.0 and HDMI, but no internal optical media drive, so we bought an external one.  She especially likes the touch screen as it makes the computer work more like her iPad2.  I decided to get the Samsung ATIV Book 6 which had very similar specifications to the Book 8.  After dinner we went to the Best Buy store in Brighton to see if they had either of these machines.  When I went to the Samsung website and looked for a store near my location the only thing that came up in SE Michigan was the Best Buy chain.

Best Buy in Brighton has some people in their computer department who seem fairly knowledgeable.  I asked about the differences between Win 8 and Win 8 Pro and got a fairly technical answer.  The Best Buy chain also has small Samsung stores-within-a-store staffed by Samsung employees.  The bottom line was this:  Best Buy did not have, and could not order, the Book 6 and had one Book 8 in the store.  It had the Gen 3 processor but the Gen 4 has been available for a while.  It became clear from the discussion that Samsung has not released an updated laptop in a while and may be getting out of the laptop business.  We also found out that Sony has sold off their computer line to someone, and that Dell has not released or announced new products in many months following a private equity buyout and their continued presence in the laptop market is highly questionable.  I had Allen, the computer sales associate, show me what they had and it came down to a choice between a Lenovo (formerly IBM) and an ASUS.  ASUS actually makes the own computers as well as the excellent Nexus tablets.  I opted for the top-of-the-line model G750JM notebook computer.  At least it was top-of-the-line in terms of what Best Buy carries in their stores.

The G750JM has a 17″ diagonal HD (1900 x 1080) matte finish screen.  It is not a touch screen, which was fine with me.  The size is big enough that I can work with spreadsheets and edit photographs.  The matte finish screen means it will work well in the bus where there is a lot of light during the day and reflections can be a problem.  While the newer 4K (retina type) displays are stunning, they are only available in the smaller 13″ screen size and are often packaged with smaller capacity, but much more expensive, solid state drives (SSD).  The G750JM has a 1 TB HDD.  The HDD includes a 16 GB SSD that is primarily used to buffer the OS.  It has 8 GB of very fast RAM that is upgradable to 32 GB should I ever feel the need (and the price of 16 GB RAM modules comes way down).  It was the only laptop in the store that could be upgraded to that much RAM.  A maximum of 16 GB was the norm.  The video/graphics is powered by an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 860M with 2 GB of VRAM.  The computer has built in WiFi, of course, four USB 3.0 ports, an HDMI port, a LAN port, a bunch of other ports, and a built-in CD/DVD player/writer.  Basically, this machine is aimed at high end gamers, but that also made it well-suited to the things I need to do with it, and it was only $50 more than the Samsung Book 8.

We unboxed the machine as soon as we got home and plugged in the battery and AC power adapter/charger to bring the battery up to full charge.  Unlike older laptop computers the new ones do not require the battery to be installed in order to operate.  I would never run it without the battery, however, as the battery provides a built in UPS in the event of a power glitch.  We powered it up and it found our various home WiFi networks.  We selected one and proceeded with the initial configuration, personalization, and registration steps.  Part way into this process a fast moving storm front brought intense lightning, thunder, and high winds so we wrapped up what we were doing, shut down, and unplugged.  Ditto for all of our sensitive (read data storage) devices.

Based on my limited exposure to the computer thus far I am very satisfied with the purchase.  It will take me some time to get it fully configured and switch over to using it as my primary computer, but with the end of support for Windows XP I need to get it done sooner rather than later.  Truthfully, setting up a new computer, especially one with a (radically) new operating system, is not at the top of my list of really fun things to do.  It is inevitable, however, and always yields significant rewards once I get over the initial hump in the learning curve.  It is also an opportunity to start clean and exercise moderation with the objective of having a more streamlined and efficient operating environment that allows me to focus on the things I really need to do.