This is a balls to the wall system... but not asinine

MisterDNA

MisterDNA

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Feb 8, 2004
Messages
1,057
I am putting my plans together for a system that is meant to carry me for another five years. It's not going to look cool in terms of case modding. No lights and windows here. Leave that to go-l.com. But the cool part is when you push the big red box on the touchpanel to start the beast. It won't run on a 115VAC line. It's being plugged into an unused kitchen range outlet. 230VAC at 50A. Plenty.

Interface and slow media system:

Mid-tower case I've had forever (4 5.25, 2 3.5, 4 3.5 int)
Soyo TISU
1.2GHZ PIII
512MB PC133 SDRAM
2x30GB HDD in RAID 0
2x Gigabit E-net NIC (1 for LAN and WAN, 1 strictly for cluster)
Lilliput 7" WVGA or 8" XGA touchscreen
Gay AGP card with 8MB
DVD/CD burner
Another DVD/CD burner if needed
Floppy drive
PDA dock
keyboard and mouse ports moved to the front since usage is temporary
PCI Direct Digital I/O cards based on 8255 PPI circuitry (control and feedback)
Linux because viruses don't target it

Node 1:

Fulltower Case I've had since 2001 (6x5.25, 3x3.5, 8x3.5int)
Sealed as much as possible for closed loop cooling
Tyan S2885 mobo (Dual Opteron with shitload of PCI-X and 8 RAM slots)
Dual Opterons (speed will be top of line -1 when built)
2 GB via 4 512MB DIMMs (dual channel + NUMA)
Mellanox 4 Channel Infiniband board on PCI-X (10gbps, 4.5us latency)
3ware Escalade 8000 Series 12 Channel SATA RAID on PCI-X
12x SATA HDDs of 250GB or 300GB (11 striped RAID 5, 1 warm spare) = 2.5TB
Some bigass powerful AGP 3D accelerator, maybe a Quadro
reasonable sound card with digital surround
Kelvin of Italy Industrial Cabinet Air Conditioner 400W cont 600W max
Apple or whatever brand 30" LCD (It's for CAD, 3DS, simulations and high end crap like that)
XP Pro initially with Linux64, Longhorn later

Node 2:

Fulltower Case I've had since 2001 (6x5.25, 3x3.5, 8x3.5int)
Sealed as much as possible for closed loop cooling
Tyan S2885 mobo (Dual Opteron with shitload of PCI-X and 8 RAM slots)
Dual Opterons (speed will be top of line -1 when built)
2 GB via 4 512MB DIMMs (dual channel + NUMA)
Mellanox 4 Channel Infiniband board on PCI-X
3ware Escalade 8000 Series 8 channel SATA
8x 250GB SATA HDDs (7 striped RAID 5, 1 warm spare) 1.5TB
My Gainward GF FX 5600 256MB in AGP slot
Matrox PCI 8MB card I've had forever
reasonable sound card with digital surround again
Kelvin of Italy Industrial Cabinet Air Conditioner 400W cont 600W max
Dell 2001FP connected to the Gainward
Dell 2001FP connected to the Matrox and shifted to portrait format (ebooks)
XP Pro initially with Linux64, Longhorn later

Grunt cluster:

Connects to the admin node via Giga-E
Made of whatever I can find
Boot via network
decent amount of RAM
good for folding
expandable as hell


Power support

Industrial badass 230V UPS 3000W capacity for ten minutes
brownout protection capacitor bank (holds system at full load long enough to throttle everything back within UPS capacity with return to full power upon successful start of generator (initial system won't need to throttle back)
Natural Gas/Propane/Gasoline fueled generator, 15-20KW capacity depending on fuel, remote electric start


This is just what I'm looking at now. It will be refined with time. Dual Core Opterons, PCI Express w/SLI, etc. Whatever. I was lucky enough to find Infiniband cards and a cable. That's a technology I will not give up for a long time. It's like a Hypertransport link. This should be powerful enough to last me a while. Stave off upgrades for along time. Quad Opterons in two systems is good. Vapor phase cooling is good.

If I'm going to get a good job without the crap of college, I need something powerful to build my portfolio with. And with my talent for getting more out of my money, this will be a good entry in the same portfolio.

My landlady will regret the day she included electricity in the rent charge.

<click>
Powerlines: "SLUUUURRP!"
 
i am impressed.

btw... not sure how to say this so i'll just put it flat out:

:D i have been dreaming for a long time of founding my own comp corp. pm me your info, i will keep note for it for when i actually start trying to put my company together in a few years.


and those comps sound like they will blow the $#!* out of just about anything... i mean :eek: geez they are overpowered. it's sort of like putting a corvette engine in my father's ancient 81 honda!!
 
I do not mean this dis-respectfully at all, and I fully admit to the possibility of me being 100% ignorant to the subject, but how does building fast computers help one's portfolio? Or is what you're going to do WITH the computers the point? Enlighten me, please! (and post pics when done :) )


Edit: Oh, and in your sig, I hope you don't really mean "cross-drilled brakelines"?! :p

Edit 2: Just read up in "InfiniBand" stuff... I guess that's the stuff you would want on your resume, eh?
 
Novel post approaches on RADAR... collision imminent...

Starhawk, you may want to read this if you really want to know what makes me tick.

The following post will tell my story. I'm certain this story is very familiar to many of the most [H]ard on here as well as many others.

For the record, I'm not bragging here in any of this. If anything, when I speak of my apparent intelligence, I do so with the same resigning tone you would hear at an AA meeting from someone admitting their problem. In reality, I'm the guy who's sick to fucking death of people seeing me working out a schematic or flowchart on a napkin, watching me do my work, asking what it's about, and when I tell them about my technical skills, saying, invariably, "Then what the hell are you doing working here?"

See, when I would hear this in the past, I thought they were seriously wanting an honest answer: "I'm preparing for the next step. But a guy's gotta pay the bills somehow." But what they really want to hear is what they're thinking: "He's full of shit. He wouldn't be here if he wasn't." Like there are just so many companies looking to hire a guy whose test scores staple the label of "Genius" to his forehead even though he has no $50,000 sheet of paper to back it up in writing.

Even worse is the PhD fuckers who think it gives them a right to talk down to me. Those three letters don't mean much in and of themselves. I've met people who have the "Dr." title who should be asking me if I want fries or changing my oil. I've met others who are brilliant but cocky. I've met precious few, all of whom I deeply admire, who are both brilliant and very down-to-Earth. And if I could stomach college, let alone get admitted with my GPA, I'd strive to become one among the handful of those wonderful people.

But that will never happen... I'm more Nikkola Tesla than Albert Einstein.

I would be a mad scientist like tesla if it weren't illegal to be smart without paying for it.


I have an IQ of 144-151 depending on what test you look at and when I took it (3rd Grade on up through 12th and the recent online High IQ Society test I took). College is geared for those with 108 who follow the mainstream at any state University. MIT is for those with 132+. Look at the cool stuff they get to play with. The projects they get to work on. The people they have there to share knowledge with. Then look at what it takes to get in... Heh, try to act mainstream when I get bored to tears putting up with it just for a chance? No. Even though an MS from that school would give me a six figure income? No. There are certain things I just can not do. Hell, I was pulling in $7000 a month working in an AOL call center but I still quit because I felt like a whore. That just was not me and my price is a lot higher than six figures.

So with all my "brilliance", how did I do in high school? A GPA of 1.9 after being put in "resource" classes. Yeah, I know.

Resource is where you earn credit by doing work on a 6th Grade level. It means they believe you're a retard because the system says you are. I was put there because I wouldn't do my homework. Being put in these classes insulted me so deeply I refused to do any of the work beyond what it would take for me to pass with a D-. Imagine the reasctions of the administration when they saw me scoring D- grades in retard classes and that's exactly what I ended up with. They thought I was either on drugs or that I needed more Ritalin on top of the 40mg a day (60mg = FDA maximum) I was already getting.

The first Trimester (most use quarters but Utah is different) of my Sophomore year I went balls to the wall on my work and scored Bs in the classes that I would have written off for a D-. It was because of a girl. And this was when school had started again after I originally met her at the end of my Freshman year. Infatuation with potential, as I was told by many friends many years later. Not meant to be, though. She's Mormon and I'm not. Plus I'm married now. But the motivation I got from those feelings gave me a passion that put me to the grindstone where I performed miracles (and I had stopped taking the Ritalin during this timeframe, too). I just had to be pointed at a job to be done and I'd do it as if it was some fucked up game where I was Mario and she was the Princess and I had to complete the task to save her or whatever. But that made me lose focus on my technical pursuits other than treating them like any other assignment.

There was another time when I caught the same blast of passion and the objective was technical in nature. It was when I wanted to ask her to go to Junior Prom with me. In Utah you're expected to be creative about it and nobody had ever used a computer animation for that purpose before so I set to work for a couple weeks with Autodesk Animator 1.0 (the best I could pirate from the school) and some TSR programs with a batch file that would load the loop in RAM and play a CD with the video. I got it to work. But her teacher wouldn't let me stealth install a CD-ROM drive and a floppy drive inside with the boot disk and Joe Satriani CD in their respective drives. That bitch. I was truly ahead of my time there. I had free reign the next year as the school's computer tech.

I was crushed. I just soldiered on as she went with some dude and I was forced to go with the fat, arrogant neice of some family friends. Great. Send a guy to Prom when he was never expecting to go in the first place and hadn't had a haircut in three months or more, let alone had anything to wear that fit. I was the victim of the dramatic flair of a dozen people. A dozen people who made the first date of my life an exercise in manipulation. I felt like I had been force-fucked. I got home and just wanted to go to dead... I mean... bed.

With all the extra time I had from my D- lifestyle, I got so good with Electronics and computers that I creamed the living shit out of a guy who was trained at the technical college for his whole high school career other than what base graduation requirements like math and English. This was in 1998, the year I graduated.

I haven't managed to achieve a damned thing since then, save for building a few prototypes that were cheap to construct and get a bunch of shit down on paper for an EMS semi-automation and precision communication system for cop cars, ambulances, fire trucks and stuff like that. I still have it all. But I'll never have the money to bring it to life with the wages I earn as a Machine Operator for a company that makes the shrink film on your non-pirated software.

Like most who score high on the ASVAB, I was called a hundred times (literally, at one point, for quite a stretch) a week by various branches who would keep pestering me to join. Even recruiters for the FBI and CIA, of all things. I told them all that I wanted nothing to do with the government because I already had plans.

My plans? To go to ITT Tech. Worst mistake of my life. They start you from the bottom with Ohm's Law. I was way beyond that. Sure, I tried to test out to get bumped up, but the fact that I couldn't do a geometric proof to save my life and just sucked at algebra that wasn't applied to my work killed me. WTF do geometric proofs have to do with Electronics anyway? I can still do Trigonometry that's related to electronics fast as hell. I'm just so tuned for it, it's crazy.

ITT wasn't really my mistake. I wanted to back out, but my mother "confessed" to me that she had a dream where my great grandfather, her grandpa, came to her to say that ITT was where I should go and that I should let nothing dissuade me from that target.

And after I dropped out, she confessed the truth that she lied to me. That shit hurt. Damn...


I suck up knowledge at about the same rate that the "upload" hackers in the Hacker Jargon do. But I can only do it if I have a genuine interest in the material. Read: If I'm going to use it. Hand me a book on Modern European History that covers everything from the Dark Ages up through The Renaissance and the Revolutionary War and if you were handing the book to the high school Me, I would have handed it back to you because I didn't care about history. Hand it to me today and I'd dive right in because after watching "A Knight's Tale", I became interested in that period of time.

Hand a book on U.S. Government to me back in high school or even today and I'd probably take a shit in it and hand it back to you. I have no interest in how this nation is run. These days it's a circus anyway. May as well be a bunch of spoiled brat 3yo kids whining to each other. Filter out all the crap and you'll have nothing left, IMHO.

I'm saving money like crazy now. It was going to be saved for college where I would have to dedicate all my attention to my school work because my "learning disability" makes it hard for me to stay linear on anything. Especially busywork. And there's a lot of busywork involved in college. Who here agrees?

I've wasted enough time in my life. I'm 24 and I haven't done a single damn thing that I feel good about other than getting married to the girl of my dreams. It's time to get cracking.


My frame of mind in terms of education:

Why pay for an A+ cert or any other certs if you can just put the money toward the hardware?

Just describe in intimate and excruciating detail what I did, how I did it, why I did it, show the performance charts and that's one glowing piece of bling.

Then, take the system and do cool things with it. My main project is the video I want to make for my wife. It's supposed to be all CGI. It's a labor of love. I wanted to recruit people from [H] to help me with it, but that came up empty. I can't do it on my own, no matter how much I love her. But with the help of others, my passion can take over and I can work my magic. Hell, I've already seen what my passion can do to me. It's just so hard to get started... Everyone knows that feeling.

I'd like to be a movie director and have great ideas, but I hate the idea of working with real actors. Hollywood.... screw em. Cyberspace is extremely predictable. I would rather work with 3D models and voice actors. Hell, I already have a dozen good voices (Cocky superhero, "trainable", Radio Voice, caffeinated rapper, etc). I do and a few others that are duplicates of other people (Beavis, Meatwad, Butt-head, Hank Hill, etc). Voice actors aren't usually cheap.

Technology has caught up with what I want to do. Finally. It took decades for computers to get to where broadcast quality video could be edited non-linear in digital form on a home PC. Avid doesn't count, people. That's still expensive.

And no more than a couple years after HDTV was implemented on a large scale, editing that stuff is within easy reach of turbo geeks. Storage space is all that stands in our way. RAID takes care of that, to an extent.

But I'm a man with many things I wish I could do. Building the computer is but one thing. I wish I could make a video game. I wish I could design computers that make this one tremble with fear. I wish I could write programs that are the equivalent of poetry. I wish I could make a movie... I wish I could just make the money I know I'm worth.

But I don't have that one, lousy, stupid, damn piece of paper....
 
From that life story I gathered your main purpose for this "setup" will be CG... What's the point? I'd certainly say getting a generator for a home computer system is a bit.. asinine. I wonder what your landlady would say about a generator.

PS - I hope those teflon brake rotors in your sig are a joke. Right?
 
Pixelbound said:
PS - I hope those teflon brake rotors in your sig are a joke. Right?
Click to expand...

Nope. And neither is the carbon fiber windshield. Nor the fuel line blow off valve. Nor the Silicon Dioxide Wet Shot injection system.
 
OK so I see you're being facetious now, but you still haven't answered my other question. What's the point?

"Kelvin of Italy Industrial Cabinet Air Conditioner 400W cont 600W max"?? For what?

If you get even half this crap I'd like to see a pic. And then I'd like to see the work you produce from it. I agree with nsanarchist, I'm curious to see how having this rediculous setup will help your portfolio.

This all sounds like a big list of BS. If there is any truth behind it, from your condensed life story it sounds like a big money sink, where instead you could actually apply yourself and use the money to help obtain one of those "lousy, stupid, damn piece of paper" you seem to need.

PS - I think your view of college is a bit... off. Certainly there are a lot of people with degrees out there who are complete morons. I know quite a few. However a degree isn't merely a show of intelligence or your capability. It shows you put in the time and effort to obtain one. It shows you were at least a bit dedicated for a couple of years in reaching a goal. It shows you sacked up and got past your percieved superiority.
 
Pixelbound said:
PS - I think your view of college is a bit... off. Certainly there are a lot of people with degrees out there who are complete morons. I know quite a few. However a degree isn't merely a show of intelligence or your capability. It shows you put in the time and effort to obtain one. It shows you were at least a bit dedicated for a couple of years in reaching a goal. It shows you sacked up and got past your percieved superiority.
Click to expand...

College degree = piece of paper stating that the bearer is able to take it in the ass and do complete clerical bullshit work for 4+ years. Why does that make one more hireable? Because that's what companies do to people for the rest of their natural lives. Strangely, with some minor exceptions, this guy could have been talking about my life story (ADHD, 2.0GPA, etc.). but, thankfully, I found music as my true calling. In my experience, college is a great option for many, many people. For others, it is the most painfully dull, annoying, frustrating piece of crap ever devised by man, just like high school, elementary school, preschool, etc. For me, the worst part about school is that, while my test scores (SAT's, ACT's, etc.) said I was pretty fvcking smart, my grades said I was a complete dumbass. This was due to the fact that there is a bell curve of how people learn/can be taught, and (obviously) the system is set up to best teach the majority of people. This is why smart kids fail a sh*tload of the time. I dunno, this is getting semi-OT, but I just wanted to make sure the feeling of "Superiority" you were getting form him is learned, because when people keep telling you you're smart as all hell, and school keeps saying you're retarded, you can either think school is right, or tests/everyone else is right.

That said, being smart doesn't mean jack shit, except one can do things faster/more efficiently than others and/or can understand things more easily. Nobody is going to pay you to do that, so fuck it; do what makes you happy and use your "intelligence" to figure out how to get paid to do it. That sounds like what he's trying to do, although I think in his field, the people doing the hiring don't give a flying badger shit how smart you are, as long as you have a nice, frilly, piece of paper saying you're willing to take it in the ass...
 
Still doesn't change the fact that some companies will not hire you without a degree. It's a prestige thing for teh company, it lends credibility when they can say every one here has at least a 4 year degree. Is it stupid, hell yes, but that's the way the game gets played, you can get lucky and find a great paying job that doesn't need a degree, but it's just that lucky. You can make your own way too, which is just as good. Doesn't matter if you like it or not, there's a massive game going out there, you can follow the rules, or you can try to make your own, it's your choice, but don't get pissed off about it when things don't work out for you.
 
Pixelbound said:
PS - I think your view of college is a bit... off. Certainly there are a lot of people with degrees out there who are complete morons. I know quite a few. However a degree isn't merely a show of intelligence or your capability. It shows you put in the time and effort to obtain one. It shows you were at least a bit dedicated for a couple of years in reaching a goal. It shows you sacked up and got past your percieved superiority.
Click to expand...

yeah, i'm sorry but you just need to get it straight in your head what you want to do. you list things like comp. architecture design or something, then you just flip to saying doing voices for movies? i'm mean what the heck? if you apply your skills, which you say you have plenty of, then you'll have no problems going further with schooling. I mean stuff like algebra and geo. might not seem like a big deal and maybe they're not but just do it. I had to take crap like that too (i'm still in college, SO year) but I just did the work. Are you going to let a couple of cake classes stop you from earning a BS? honestly just put it into perspective. If you just work at something and stick with it you'll create a better life for you and your wife both. I say all of this not to flame but b/c I know how it can feel. just work really hard and don't quit.
 
defakto said:
Still doesn't change the fact that some companies will not hire you without a degree. It's a prestige thing for teh company, it lends credibility when they can say every one here has at least a 4 year degree. Is it stupid, hell yes, but that's the way the game gets played, you can get lucky and find a great paying job that doesn't need a degree, but it's just that lucky. You can make your own way too, which is just as good. Doesn't matter if you like it or not, there's a massive game going out there, you can follow the rules, or you can try to make your own, it's your choice, but don't get pissed off about it when things don't work out for you.
Click to expand...
not only that but if your willing to work for 4+ years and not quit it says to the company, this guy is more likely to work hard on projects, etc. also he'll probably be able to work well with others, and he just won't quit and give up in defeat at the least little thing. Now don't get me wrong b/c i'm one of those people that actually hates going to college. I just realize that if I want to get further in life is the easiest way in the long run. in the short run, yeah... it seriously sucks. :(
 
insanarchist said:
Strangely, with some minor exceptions, this guy could have been talking about my life story (ADHD, 2.0GPA, etc.). but, thankfully, I found music as my true calling.
Click to expand...
yeah, story of my life, dude. i got a 1500 on my SATs but only managed to get a 3.2 average for high school because I started working hard in my senior year. I'm in community college there, and it's a better class of people than you'd find in any state school, imho. it takes real strength of character to be a single working mother who needs the training to advance in your job, and still raise a family. these people are the grounding of our society, and i respect them a thousand times as much as any suit you can name.

MisterDNA said:
For the record, I'm not bragging here in any of this. If anything, when I speak of my apparent intelligence, I do so with the same resigning tone you would hear at an AA meeting from someone admitting their problem. In reality, I'm the guy who's sick to fucking death of people seeing me working out a schematic or flowchart on a napkin, watching me do my work, asking what it's about, and when I tell them about my technical skills, saying, invariably, "Then what the hell are you doing working here?"
Click to expand...
i get this all the time. I do repair work in my spare time, and the people I work for want to know why i'm helping them instead of making 3x as much doing boring crap i would hate. i can't understand that viewpoint. I would rather help people for free than do TPS reports for 100k a year.

hokay. with regard to the computer system, niiiice. any particular reason for 12 disks on one and 8 on the other? you could just get a medium-sized SAN for that, and have 20 on both...
what _is_ the a/c unit for? cooling, duh, but case cooling or mod it for promecia-like cooling?

on the "interface and slow" system, why o god why raid 0?

"PCI Direct Digital I/O cards based on 8255 PPI circuitry (control and feedback)": what 's this? temp monitoring or something for the cgi stuff?
 
I can sympathize with you... and give you advice from someone who has been there/ done that.

I could bore you with stats... but its pointless.

The only truth you may see in life is that if you want the money, the stablity, and the security... you have to play the game. Period.

So you're smart. In the eyes of a potential employer, that means dick. What a 4-year degree states to an employer is that you have dicipline to put up with the BS, the crap, and the bad. That if you are told to do something, you will do it. That if you say you will do something, you will do it. It isn't fair, it isn't right. But in a world where decisions are made every day in 5 seconds about whether or not someone can do a job... the degree means more than just prestige.

Life isn't fair, my friend, and it sucks. However, we can't change that... we can only bend the rules to fit ourselves into them.

I will be interested in this project... I wanna see this beast of a network put together and ran. Post pics and updates when you can,, all of us at the {H} will be watching.
 
food for thought...

two people apply and interview for the same job, neither have any real world experience save for the late night shift at their respective local mcdonald's. person A has a four year degree from Average-Joe Stare U where he got a 2.8 (B-B+) gpa, shows up to the interview on early, in a suit, sits up straight, is attentive, respectful, and asks meaningful questions. person B has no degree, has an IQ of 180, shows up to the interview in jeans and a polo shirt looking like he/she just crawled out of bed, talks only about how smart he/she is and how capable they are at doing the job.... who's getting hired?

college degrees aren't about IQs, GPAs and Test scores... it's about leadership, team work and socialization skills, and most importantly dedication. as an employer, i could give a shit about how much of a genius some hotshot thinks he is... you could be the smartest person in the world, and be completely qualified technically for the job, but any given businessman would much rather higher reliability over talent....
 
I couldn't agree with you more.

I have been in this field now for the better part of 10 years. In that time, I have held more titles than I care to count. I have long hair, My skin has a reddish tinge to it ;), and, to the average Joe, I stand out like a sore thumb.

But, when I go to an interview, I am well dressed, clean-shaven, early, respectful and polite. It is when the talk turns to my tech skills, that I let my confidence shine through. I know what I know, and I know what I can do. Am I better than the next guy? Not my decision. It is my belief, of course, but not necessary my decision.

I have nailed interviews, and left feeling as if I got the job. Only to receive a rejection letter the next week.

I have flubbed interviews, and been given a job.

I have not won every interview, nor have I lost every one. Confidence, and perserverance are two abilities that can lead one to very heights indeed... as long as they don't lead them off those same heights.

That whole reliability vs. competance thing? I fired a guy once, smart as anything. Extremely good at tech things. However, when he shows up for work 2 days out of 5, gets mad because he was not promoted... and sabotages a long running project "because we should fear him"? Do the math.

Again, good luck, and lets see that rig!!!!
 
kidicarus74 said:
food for thought...

two people apply and interview for the same job, neither have any real world experience save for the late night shift at their respective local mcdonald's. person A has a four year degree from Average-Joe Stare U where he got a 2.8 (B-B+) gpa, shows up to the interview on early, in a suit, sits up straight, is attentive, respectful, and asks meaningful questions. person B has no degree, has an IQ of 180, shows up to the interview in jeans and a polo shirt looking like he/she just crawled out of bed, talks only about how smart he/she is and how capable they are at doing the job.... who's getting hired?
Click to expand...


Are you stereotyping? Let's work with something more like what one would expect from me, shall we?

Person C, me, shows up with no degree, an astonishing portfolio, an IQ of 148, shows up in a nice suit that fits well, clean-shaven, a textbook case of good hygeine and personal care, sits up straight, all the other formalities and asks a lot more meaningful questions than the next guy. That's how I got the job I work now. Sure, it only saved me like six months of time, but it gave me $3 an hour more than if I had started at the bottom. And when I originally told the Plant Manager that I was intending to quit to go to college in 2006, he got the look on his face like "Oh man. Didn't see this coming. Shit."

Maybe the company has plans for me that I don't know of or something? Shit, almost as soon as I started work, I was showing my technical skills on the job. Computer problems? I had them fixed before the IT guy could even get out of bed to answer the call. Electrical issues? When I was working night shift, there were never maintenance people around and it would take them half an hour to get to the plant at least. I'd help where I could and managed to save a lot of time. Only an idiot would fail to see the value in getting a line running half an hour sooner than it would have. Especially when that line creates $1000 in net revenue every hour of operation. My boss can see that.

Anyone who says references from an employer don't count is full of shit.

To answer everyone's questions about the computer:

It's not for a showoff piece. It's mainly for CAD, physical simulations, electronic modeling and even making CNC programs. The CGI, movies and game creation part is secondary. As in: "Hobby basis"

The coolers: They are intended to bring the internal temperatures of the case down to room temp or lower (depending on condensation... I need good seal and dessicant)

The admin/slow media node: RAID 0 because that's all it takes to fire up and it's essentially free. All that node does is burn discs, run the DIO cards and dole out tasks to the motley crew of grunt nodes on Giga-E (if there will be any). It doesn't need to be all that fast. Read boot info into RAM where it gets shoveled out to the grunts. Doesn't take much to hold Linux in RAM, really.

The DIO cards: They act as two eight bit ports and two four-bit ports that can each be set to handle input or output in binary form. You can use an eight bit port as eight 1-bit ports if you have the right software. That's what I'm doing. I rig the outputs to start the coolers, start the systems, hit reset, scroll through channels on KVMs, turn on power strips, stuff like that. Inputs tell whether the coolers are running, detect which channel any KVMs are set to, detect whether surge suppressors are still doing their job, whether there's voltage from rails of the AC main (breaker trip? outage?), whether the comparator indicates the AC is good or bad, whether the generator is running, whether the UPS is indicating a fault, etc.

To put it real simple: It's like a soft-PLC. I write the software, figure out the ladder logic and get it to do its thing. Sure, I can do a few things over the network, but Ethernet isn't as reliable as a low data rate interface like DIO.

I'm learning more industrial stuff since that's what I know a lot about already. I'm an inventor at my very roots. I don't know what I'd do if I had to give that up. I would rather be poor than be denied my creative freedom.
 
So, to all the naysayers who want me to play the game, I have some questions:

Are you saying that because you're in college?
Are you saying that because you went to college and have the student loans to prove it?
What do you think of online classes?
What do you think of people who CLEP out of the maximum number of courses (within my reach, for sure)
Why not just start my own business? A high IQ means you learn fast. Business is all about learning. I tried once and shut down because I sold all my product and couldn't find more fast enough. It was two months of $7000 in sales with $3000 a month in my pocket. And I started it with my last $100. Wonder what a hundred times that would allow as far as sustainability? You have to spend money to make money...

Combine intelligence, quick mental reflexes, iron will, balls of steel and a touch of insanity and you have me. All I need is a direction that won't bore me.

If you wrote a book about your life, would anyone read it? At the moment, 227 people have already read a little slice of mine. And I want everything before today to be boring by comparison. I live for intense situations. It's just in my blood. College is never intense.

I'm not going to be able to reply to this thread for a while after Saturday because my Internet access is going the way of the dodo for a short while until the move is completed. But I'll stop in if I can wheeze a connect on an open AP.
 
Just look at Mike Dell just some kid in college selling used and referb. computer parts,And upgrading computers from leftover stock.started his business in college
PC concepts I believe.
Drops out of school and look at him now.

Scott
 
MisterDNA said:
So, to all the naysayers who want me to play the game, I have some questions:

Are you saying that because you're in college?
Click to expand...
Yes
Are you saying that because you went to college and have the student loans to prove it?
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I didn't have the best grades in High School, only a 3.0, but hard work (things like being an Eagle Scout, being involved in class and around the community, and being dedicated) got me a full ride to any state school of my choice

What do you think of online classes?
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Online classes are great, as long as they are being offered by acredited universities, I'm in an online CG class right now.

What do you think of people who CLEP out of the maximum number of courses (within my reach, for sure)
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I've got no problems, I started college as a second semester sophmore because of that. But whether it's the most prestigious or the must mundane college, you can't CLEP out of the whole thing, mostly just the first year or so. Like I said, college isn't just about intellegence, it's about hard work and even socialization.

Why not just start my own business? A high IQ means you learn fast. Business is all about learning. I tried once and shut down because I sold all my product and couldn't find more fast enough. It was two months of $7000 in sales with $3000 a month in my pocket. And I started it with my last $100. Wonder what a hundred times that would allow as far as sustainability? You have to spend money to make money...
Click to expand...
Starting you own business is great, if you can get it to work. I started my own business at the age of 16 with nothing but free time and desire. Today, at only 22, I own the largest and most successful professional home theater installation and consulting firm in mid-Missouri that didn't take off until I turned 20, two weeks after I earned my first degree, the reason which I got my first REAL contract. I employ 16 people, all who love their jobs, and a few who depend on their paychecks for their sole income. Everybody from part time college kids doing install work to the 2 full time developers i employ, both of which make over $35,000 a year (which is what your $3000 a month works out to, well, before taxes). The only reason people respect me as a businessman now is because I have one diploma on my wall and I'm working on my second. I've worked on everything from rich college frat boys that wanted better stereos to play playstation on all the way up through a multimillion dollar housing project for a housing development with lots ranging in the three-quarter to three million dollar price range. People aren't impressed with how smart i am, they're impressed with my reliability, my hard work, and my drive.

College is never intense.
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Spoken truly from a man who never walked across the stage in a cap and gown
 
First of all you seem to be hung up on this IQ business. I'd just like to point out that IQ means absolutely nothing. I have an IQ of around 145, depending on which IQ test you take, which on most puts me at the genius level. I meet the qualifications to join Mensa. But I don't. I don't flaunt my measured IQ, because IQ != intellect. All it means is that I'm proficient at tasks like pattern recognition, logic skills, etc. Sure, a lot of people who are brilliant also possess a high IQ, but there are quite a few people who are brilliant that do not.

As for your job interview scenario, I think if you went into a job interview and stated your IQ, 90% of those employers would think you were extremely arrogant and wouldn't hire you.

As for the value of college... College is what you make of it. Sure, you can enroll, sign up for classes, attend them regularly, pull off decent grades and get your very expensive piece of paper at the end. Great, good job. You've done what a lot of people can't. But you still haven't made anything significant of it. Simply stated, college is a world of opportunities. It's networking. It's building contacts. It's learning how to take those skills and using them within a group of people. All things that greatly affect your ability to find employment and your ability to work with others.

To all you naysayers who point out the success of people who did not go to college: Yes, it can happen, it does happen, but it is RARE. Compare the number of successful businesses started by college graduates compared to non-college graduates.

Yes, I have a degree. I will openly admit that the academic aspect of my college career was basically pointless. But the experience I got, the hard work I put into it, and the contacts I made were worth every penny.

I spent around $40,000 - $45,000 for 4 years at a state college. The average starting salary in my field will be around $60,000 a year, depending on cost of living adjustments. Think that was a good investment?

College isn't for everybody. Many people can be successful without it. But to think that college is totally worthless or a joke, means you are ignorant to the full potential of it.


With that said, MisterDNA you possess a technical knowledge about that stuff that is way above my head. Once you get all that stuff set up, I'd like to see pics of it, as well as your land lady's face when she sees the electric bill.
 
The days of discovering something.. or making something revolutionary in your garage ended a long time ago.. i doubt you will ever ever ever ever find what you need to get these "great" things of yours done.. it's not just money you need.. there are more resources needed than money in any modern project..

Just for kicks. name something great that has been done in a garage in the last 30 years?? maybe someone can prove me wrong.. i don't know.. defianlty nothing big in computing.. software doesn't count.. as i see software as more of an Art, and it's just something people kind of dream up.. plus software is more limited on hardware.. than hardware is on software...

I really don't want to put you down.. but i think you're full of it.. i mean, i understand your view to a certain point..but i think you've gotten a bit too far..

the truth is.. you're never really gonna use much of what you will learn in a class room, but it gives you a place to start, and you will have many opportunities to network, and once you network, that is when you will be able to find the resources to do what you really want to do.. and when your done with it.. it say's something about your character..

it say's you are willing to put up with a bunch of shit you probably won't use, to be able to do something you really want to.. because if you're willing to go through shit to do something you really want to.. then it probably means you trully want to do whatever it is you went through shit for..

Exactly what are these great prototypes and such do you have in store?? or on paper??

another.. not to bash you thing.. but.. in the real engineering world.. the first rule is

"Nothing will ever come out to how your theory say's and to how your calculations and schematics say"

I've already had a brush with this a few times from some design labs i've taken at my crap college..

So i mean.. i won't believe you on shit.. till you actually made something, and chances are .. to make something as great as you seem to be saying you can make .. you will need far greater resources than money.. I should as hell never heard of someone that owns their on IC manufacturing center... The cost to get started and continue operating?? LOL.. not possible man.. you need corporate money to do that.. and i'm sure that applies to many areas

Just my two cents...

to be straight about it.. i wouldn't hire you.. you didn't go to college.. a degree proves that you have at least some understanding.. sort of a .. you can speak the language type of thing.. It doesn't show what you're capable of.. and that's why you do other things aside from the college.

You can't go very far with this "I'm to good for this shit" attitude.. no one likes it.. i don't.. and i'm sure others don't either.. you will have to be able to do shit you don't like, and do it right, to do what you want to do...

that is what people look for.. especially employers.. that say's much more about your character than proving what your IQ is.. or how smart you are.. it doesn't mean shit..
 
Sorry.. i don't know if i came to an over all point.. if you get anythign from that post above.. it's this

Drop the bullshit attitude.. it will get you nowhere... Suck it up... now either go to college and put yourself in a better position.. or don't, and have a hell of a time trying to do anything... it will be way way way way wya ywa yaw yawyayawywaywa way harder without a degree.. even if you think the degree is bullshit (which i would agree it somewhat is.. but not totally).. you gotta do what you gotta do..

and the Telsa analogy just doesn't apply to todays world.. like i said.. the days of the garage inventor/engineer/scientist are long gone..
 
MisterDNA said:
Avid doesn't count, people. That's still expensive.
Click to expand...

Most expensive thing on the avid website, $7,000... if that's expensive, how in god's name do you plan on putting together this "balls to the wall system" that isn't asinine if you think 7 grand is expensive... ESPECIALLY if you were SUPER excited about making $3000 a month for 2 months... which, according to you, you don't make near as much anymore.

is it just me, or does it seem like none of this is actually true?

i applaud your effort, but i want pictures of the product. shoot, i'd even accept a picture of the unused range outlet you plan on using

edit: i worked for APC over the summer in their IT department... that "badass industrial ups" that you want is gonna be at least $6000, and that's the 120v model, no one makes a 250 with that small of an output
 
kidicarus74 said:
is it just me, or does it seem like none of this is actually true?
Click to expand...

i was gonna wait till someone else said it :D
im pretty sure only one of those computers will cost 3k unless hes got someone stealing parts for him. ill go do the math in a second here.
 
just did some quick neweggin'... the 3 monitors, the 2 big comps (minus those infiniband things), and the ups all come to a little under $20,000...

yeah... doesn't really seem reasonable for someone that makes less than $35,000 a year (which i can only assume is before taxes, health and car insurance, rent, food, and everything else)
 
In case you haven't realized, we're all nerds here. Bragging about your intelligence on the [H]ard|Forums is like bragging about your dick at a porn star convention. Oh, you're smart? Congradu-fucking-lations - now stop trying to ram it up my ass.

-SEAL
 
LOL!!!!

as i sadi before.. i ain't believing him on anything till i see something..

Andi still don't understand how this is supposed to help you build a portfolio??
 
as professor farnswroth would say "BUNK!!"

now lets all move on to a legit topic :D
 
SEALTeamSix said:
In case you haven't realized, we're all nerds here. Bragging about your intelligence on the [H]ard|Forums is like bragging about your dick at a porn star convention. Oh, you're smart? Congradu-fucking-lations - now stop trying to ram it up my ass.

-SEAL
Click to expand...

quoted for great justice
 
I've been out of school for about 2 years (not by choice, or I guess you can say I got what was coming to me). And I'm about 2 months away from going back. I used to think it was THE goal. I got an awakening when almost no school wanted me. I'm going back now and I have a completely diffrent view. You gotta do what you gotta do to get it done. It might be a bunch of busy work, but damn if the working world ain't FULL of busy work. them TPS reports are real shit, and you gotta take the good with the bad. Maybe it's just because I'm doing government work right now, but it's a job. I saved like crazy and now I'm going for my expensive peice of paper. As long as I'm not interrupted again.

Just do the busy work dude.
 
RancidWAnnaRIot said:
The days of discovering something.. or making something revolutionary in your garage ended a long time ago.. ..
Click to expand...

quite possibly the stupidest statement I have ever heard. My father is living proof that that statement is incorrect. Well, let me rephrase that; he invented an industry in the back room of a warehouse owned by a previous company that he quit from. I remember sitting there with him and one other secretary in winter jackets (no heat) stuffing mailing envelopes while we couldn't hear each other talk because of the heat and furnace for the main building (owned by the other company) 5 years ago roughly. Since that day 5 years ago, companies such as GE, Phillips, Kodak, Fiji have all joined the industry, with two of those trying to buy his company out for tens of millions, only to be shot down because he knew they had no chance due to the head start he had. His company is revolutionary, the industry is too. It changes the way all medical facilites around the country operate in regard to their medical imaging. In fact, it's now not far off to say that if you have had a medical image taken in the last 5 years in a hospital or imaging center owned by any significant parent chain, you're in our archive. Right now we own approximatley 80-85% marketshare, with GE, Kodak, Fiji, and a slew of smaller companies that we didn't drive out of business yet combining for the remaining 15-20%. Kodak just approached us about an internation joint venture. We were mentioned in the keynote address @ Linux world. The Air Force contacted us about handling all military images (that didn't work out though) We own basically all the advertising on several medical sites, and are mentioned in most medical magazines.

And you know what? My father never graduated from college.

HOWEVER, if there is ONE thing that he has impressed upon me it is how much amazingly easier for him it would have been if he had just finished college (he got good grades, he just didn't finish). He is bar none the hardest worker I know, but it still took him 20 years working before he developed this company. No one big took him seriously, just a guy without a degree, some random joe. It doesn't matter that he's a member of MENSA, and is also the smartest guy in any room he walks into. It set him back as much as 15 years, he estimates, a crapload of work and years of struggling to bring in the cash, and many millions in the long run.

So the bottom line is this: yes, major successes without college degree's are possible, but even if you do make it, you'll go through a hell of a lot more work, suffering, and always getting those "looks" from people that you're smarter than but look down on you. That's why he's planning getting a degree and a masters in history.

It's worth it in the long run. If you knew you were going to have to work 15 years longer than you could have and be millions poorer, would you work hard for those 2-4 years? I would.....
 
a new method of archiving medical images of all types and able to have them retreived by the hospitals in seconds no matter how old they are. Remember having to go pick up our x-rays or mri's or whatnot and drive them over to the facility? Or taking days for them to go dig up your x-rays? Gone. Instantaneous retreival, and hackproof since they aren't on the internet. Also, there is a law that states that you have to store all medical images for a certain number of years, and obviously that can be cumbersome to store and search in. He didn't invent a product, he invented a method and an industry. There's a lot more to it than that but I don;t have time to type for 30min :p
 
computerpro3 said:
a new method of archiving medical images of all types and able to have them retreived by the hospitals in seconds no matter how old they are. Remember having to go pick up our x-rays or mri's or whatnot and drive them over to the facility? Or taking days for them to go dig up your x-rays? Gone. Instantaneous retreival, and hackproof since they aren't on the internet. Also, there is a law that states that you have to store all medical images for a certain number of years, and obviously that can be cumbersome to store and search in. He didn't invent a product, he invented a method and an industry. There's a lot more to it than that but I don;t have time to type for 30min :p
Click to expand...

I'm probably in those archives.. as i've had a number of MRi's taken.. and never had to actually transport the MRI's they would do it through computers and junk


But..

when i said that the days of a discovery or something revolutionary. i was specifically talking more about like a discovery in science or some sort of new technology in engineering.. example.. i've never heard of someone owning their own high energy physics lab in their garage.. and completly fund it from a regular 9 - 5 job.. get me??

also for example.. stuff on carbon nanotubes in electrical engineering.. no one does that stuff at home.. it's all by corporations that have the cash for it.. it jsut takes too much resources to do..

I mean.. of course there are new methods for things and little inventions that will make you rich that you can make in your garage.. but i'm talking about crazy hardcore stuff like carbon nanotubes or galinium nitride pieces that can produce 100 Watts of power for every square cm.. crazy stuff like that lol.. but yeah.. that's it..

that's the type of stuff i was talking about..
 
aight i get you now, what you said at first made it sound like something along the lines of gate's saying "we wil never need more than 64k memory" or something. :p

and since you're in FL, I'd be willing to bet you are in those archives, we have a few client chains down there.
 
For great justice, take off every zig. At least now that I'm running an uncapped comcast line (thanks to my wife's dad)

It's hard to hide my true nature in the post. To take on a certain personality and act a certain way that is out of character for me. Acting is not my strong suit, but I got what I was after. It's kind of like Brandon DiCamillo's character in Haggard dressing up like a metalhead to set up Rake Yohn's character for an assbeating.

Nice range of comments here. I see everything from praise from fellow romantics to novels about the irrelevance of IQ scores (the absence of such comments would have been shocking) and even those who suspected games were afoot with my post (they were). I've managed to learn a lot from the comments and it's all stuff I can use. What you have given me, for free I might add, is a good idea of what I'm up against in terms of competition.

I never planned to take the road less traveled in terms of not going for higher education. I, too, know the game has to be played. And with what I already know, I'm just an assload of CLEP tests away from cutting a very sizeable slice off of my sentence.

I do plan to have a sizeable network (it will grow over time, naturally) and the plan, still, is to go for low latency. I have Infiniband cards but will never go over the two I've got until switches are cheap (as in never).

The generator is already installed. It's nothing special. A Briggs and Stratton mill can power a 10Kw load and I'm never going to pull that much. It was intended to be a backup for the computers to begin with because nobody likes having to restart a render just because of a power outage. The 220v line is in and has a max current of 50A. Just like an electric range or dryer. My landlady is my grandmother in law. She encourages the project as long as it will help me learn.

The UPS is a used unit that's meant for surge loads. It's about 10 years old and was from an asset liquidation.

The two Kelvin coolers will be sold off to pay for other stuff. Water cooling was a better direction there anyhow due to the space required.

The 2.5TB RAID array will be in the primary system only. The secondary will use a way smaller RAID 5 as a buffer while using the infiniband as a major data bus. The size of the RAID 5 is still going to be the same.

No Apple 30". A trio of 2001FPs are fine. And cheap.

And I'm still keeping the whole thing ugly. $200+ spent on case mods would be better spent on RAM or a faster CPU.

Also, I meant what I said about college not being intense. If you saw what I consider intense, you'd probably cringe. If your definition of "intense" means staying up three days straight, cramming for an exam, you're boring me to death. That's not intense. If that kind of "action" gives someone an adrenaline rush, they need to get out more.

I know plenty from experience how people are. This is something I didn't know in high school because it's such a fake place and I didn't treat it as such. I feel everyone should be required to work jobs where they have to deal with people of every type and mood. Expecially angry people and truly stupid people. You can never call yourself a people person until you've managed to intentionally get someone violently pissed off and then manage to calm them down to get them to buy what you're selling. It's a very useful thing to learn. And useful for job interviews. You are selling yourself, after all, as dirty as that may sound.

My overall plan is to put in my time at stupid college just to prove my balls and work my way up. Then use the money I make to strike out on my own. That's where IQ can give a much appreciated nudge. Pattern recognition, logic, anything like that. Everything happens in patterns. The stock market, especially. What people spend a lifetime learning is how to "buy low and sell high" or whatever the term is. But this is by no means confined to the stock market. It's at work everywhere. And if the guy with the knack for figuring out the inner workings of the logic can put into terms others can grasp, he'll make money. Like Dr. Roisum (he went through the motions in college, too) with his book "The Mechanics of Winding" where he takes the task of making good rolls of finished product down to a science. I read the book after figuring some of that stuff out on my own and it helped to upload his knowledge into my own mind. That's part of what college is for and I value that.

Opportunity knocks. Sometimes it knocks real loud. It doesn't beg. And you have to recognize the patterns quicker than the next guy to get it before he does sometimes. While that is true, it's also true that the second mouse is the one who gets the cheese. Recognizing opportunity isn't just about getting it before the other guy. It's also about making sure it's safe to do it. And if it's not, to let the other guy think he's fighting you for it. College is a place where you meet many "the other guy"s. Time is what determines which side of you they end up on. But you don't let the cat out of the bag if you're gifted in terms of IQ. Would Apple have allowed Microsoft access to the Mac OS if they knew what MS was going to do to them? Hell no. It would not have been good business practice to allow them to kill Apple's market share. IQ is an ace up the sleeve of anyone who has a high score who aspires to anything that can take advantage of its benefits. Nothing more.

Thanks for the input, guys.

Beers!
 
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