Happy New Year

Have a happy and safe New Year's celebration everyone. My wife is a little bummed because our cable subscription does not include the Asian channel that shows the annual New Year's Eve singing competition in Japan.

Regarding my health, I've been staying at home the past four days doing nothing. Because of the radioactive iodine treatment, I can't be around anyone. But I feel great. I think the quasi-quarantine period is about over.

YouTube

I hate to admit it, but I've become addicted to YouTube, the video sharing site. There's a lot of interesting stuff, though some of the vidoes are rather lame. People just trying to draw attention to themselves. I like watching old music videos from the 60's and 70's. They're not MTV-style videos. Just clips from old TV shows like Shindig, etc. The music and clothes bring back many memories, some good, some bad.

The Future

2007 will be another exciting year for computer buffs. 45nm chips will be the next milestone in semiconductor manufacturing. Next year Intel will release a 45nm processor, codenamed Penryn. At some point, and Intel knows this, Moore's Law will no longer apply. It will be increasingly difficult to double the number of transistors on an integrated circuit every 24 months. But that's down the road. I'm looking forward to 2007.

Treatment underway

This morning I began treatment for my thyroid condition. I was given a pill containing radioactive iodine. I have to stay away from people for about a week because of the radiation. I don't feel any different. There's a lot of work around the house that I've been putting off and this is the perfect excuse to get some of it done.

Merry Christmas

I just wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year. Much has happened since I began this blog almost a year ago. I'm older and hopefully a little wiser, though my wife thinks I'm still a kid at heart.

RD600

We are starting to see previews of the DFI RD600 board. Looks very good. Some people are expressing disappointment with the maximum FSB. But it still does 500+ which is nothing to sneeze at.

Over 500,000

I passed 500,000 points on the World Community Grid a few days ago. Hoping to reach 1,000,000 during the first week of the new year. I have four machines working hard, including my quad core. That CPU generates more than 10,000 points daily.

Diagnosis

Just wanted to give an update on my health. My doctors have determined that I have Graves' Disease. It sounds worse than it really is. Basically my thyroid is not working properly. It's not producing the right balance of two hormones that control many things, including my metabolism. Both my father and younger sister had thyroid problems, so it must be hereditary. There are various treatments. One is to surgically remove the thyroid. Another option is to take a pill that has radioactive iodine. The thyroid absorbs iodine. Radioactive iodine will kill the thyroid. After that happens, I will have to take medicine so that my body has the hormones it needs to function properly. I've decided on the second option and will begin treatment in about a week. No hospitalization is required. I'm actually relieved that doctors have found the cause of my ailments. Will keep you posted on my progress.

Bears

As you can see, my wife is turning our house into a bear factory. She's been making them to give away as Christmas gifts. You can see our cat in the upper part of the picture. I think he tries to ignore all the bears.

Super Folder

My quad core is now crunching workunits in my benching rig. Averaging over 10,000 points per day with just that CPU. Running the Q6400 at 3.2GHz with 1.4v (bios). Temps at 100% load are 49-50C.

Other components:

M/B: Asus P5B Deluxe Wifi-AP (0801 bios)
RAM: Team Xtreem
PSU: Zippy 600W
Video: Leadtek 6600

Health

I was having what I thought were health-related issues. I have lost a lot of weight in the past year. My wife thought it might be diabetes, since I showed a few other symptoms. But lab tests indicate my blood sugar is not really abnormal, just slightly above the norm. There is also no family history of diabetes. My doctor suggested it may be stress. The doc recommended that I drink less coffee (I drink a lot). I was given a prescription to address one of the symptoms. I feel fine. We'll see. By the way, I'm not posting this because I want people to feel sorry for me. There's nothing to feel sorry about. When you get older, your body does not function the way it used to. And I have not helped myself in many respects, including my diet.

BOINC

BOINC (Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing) is the open-source program that many people use for grid computing. The program will detect and utilize all of the cores in your CPU. So if you have a dual-core processor, BOINC will crunch two WU's at the same time. With a quad-core chip, it will crunch four WU's. This will result in 100% CPU utilization, so make sure you're running at the stable speed. It will also increase your CPU temperature, so have a good heatsink.

Q6400

Just got my hands on a Q6400 quad-core. Because the highest multiplier is only 8, I needed a board that could do high FSB with Kentsfield, so I used my P5B Deluxe. 3.7GHz seems about the limit with air cooling. But there are QX6700's that can't do much better. Now crunching WU's at 3.23GHz with VCore at 1.4v (bios).

At first I was having trouble getting above 415FSB. As it turned out, the HDD was going bad. It eventually died. When I reformatted with another HDD, there was no problem doing 450+ FSB.