It's a really fast computer.

Sometimes I hate computers.
Sometimes I think I don't have the patience for IT work.
Sometimes I wonder how many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie pop.

(The owl answered that last one for us all.)

But this new computer I built is just AWESOME and makes me love computers all over again.
I won't get into all the technical stuff...oh, who am I kidding, just a little bit.

2.66 Intel Core i7 (Nehalem chipset) Which is quad-core with multi-threading. Shows up as 8 processors to the OS. (I could make a song from 8 little penguins dancing in a row.)

6Gb 1600Mhz RAM...very fast. G. Skill if you're wondering. I had Corsair Dominators in it at first, but they wouldn't run stable at spec speeds. So...out they go.



2x1Tb drives mirrored. IF one drive fails, the other one takes over until I can get a replacement. Drives are just ridiculous anymore. For less than $200 I have 1Tb mirrored. The fear with drives is losing one due to mechanical failure and not having a good backup. With two mirrored, there's a very low chance of both failing at the same time.

10 (that's TEN) SATA connections (2 are used for eSATA). I might get a few more drives and stripe them to create a large storage area.

Ginormous tower with lots of fans, keeps it all nice and cool.



I'm borrowing a video card from a friend. NVIDIA is going to be releasing their new line of cards in a few months. Current card prices should drop...waiting for that.

Now for the REALLY cool part.
I setup the old computer for the boys, now my oldest and I play Age of Empires III together. We network the game and play on the same team.

Splenda, it's oh so sweet.

There seems to be quite a lot of confusion about Splenda and the difference between Splenda and Sucralose and calories involved and why people use such long sentences and think it's OK because they use "and". I don't really care about the last part, it just makes a person look like they're in a hurry or ignorant of sentence structure or they don't care or they're trying to make a point or... I'm falling into the same trap with "or".

Moving on.

I'm not going to get into all the hype about it being poisonous or what have you. I don't eat it because I think it tastes horrible, not because of it's supposed poisonous characteristics. BTW the process for making sucralose was discovered in 1976 and there have been dozens of studies showing it to be safe.

Splenda is made using Sucralose and fillers. Sucralose as you likely know, is an artificial sweetener made using a process that starts with sugar. The process does something about removing some hydrogen-oxygen groups and replacing them with chlorine yadda yadda, blah blah, chemistry. I'm not a chemist and I don't play one on TV.
Anywho, since sucralose is about 600x sweeter than sugar, it has to be mixed with a "filler" for volume. The fillers they use are dextrose and maltodextrin.

For those of you that don't know, both dextrose and maltodextrin are used by bodybuilders in their PWO (Post Work Out) shakes to provide an insulin spike. Without getting too technical, insulin is a hormone that shuttles nutrients into cells. It's a storage hormone. When you take it after a workout with protein the idea is you jump start the muscle growth and recovery phase from the workout.

OK, so, Splenda has sugar "...but...but they said it's NO CALORIE!!". Technically, by law, they're right. Notice "by law" and "technically". As it turns out, when labelling the nutrient information of a product, if the product contains less than 1 gram of some item, you don't have to include it. Which is pretty handy when you're serving size is 1 gram and you have more than 1 substance in there.

Let's use the USDA Nutrient database to prove a point.

1. Search "splenda"
2. Choose the one search result. Just in case they add something "Sweeteners, tabletop, sucralose, SPLENDA packets"
3. Submit
4. Check mark both amounts listed. 1, 100gram serving and 1 single packet serving.
5. Submit

Now you get a table with some values...lots of values. Some, or rather most, of it is not interesting as it has a value of 0. While zero is certainly very interesting in it's own right, for this discussion, it is naught...get it? funny? no??? oh come on!!

The reason for selecting 1g and 100g is for comparison. I know you can take the 1g stuff and multiply by 100, but this makes it nice.

First kcal: A calorie is the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of one gram of water by 1 °C.
Food Calories are measured in kilocalories. Note the capital C in Calorie denoting a kilocalorie. I'll just use Calorie or kcal or Cal. There's also a fairly good chance I'll forget to CAPITALIZE the C. So if you see calorie, please use your brain realize it's should be capitalized.

OK, now that THAT is out of the way.



(1) Sucralose subtracted out.
(2) Sucralose not included.

100g of Splenda has about 90g of Carbs. 80g from Sugar, 10g from starch.
Remember the Dextrose and Maltodextrin mentioned earlier? This is where they come into the picture.
Dextrose = Sugar
Maltodextrin = Starch
So, we have again roughly, 80g of Dextrose and 10g of Maltodextrin.

Both are very rapidly absorbed into the bloodstream and have a dramatic effect on insulin levels...Dextrose is absorbed directly as glucose. Maltodextrin is a chain of glucose sugars, and is similarly absorbed after amylase works it's magic. Amylase is an enzyme that breaks the very weak hydrogen bonds between the links in the chain. Again, NOT a chemist...

So, don't eat 100g of the stuff right? Well DUH.

Ok, so 1g of it has 3 Calories. As it turns out, 1g of sugar has...according to the USDA nutrient database...3.87 Calories.

Wow, you just saved 0.87 Calories per gram WOO HOO!!!! (Typing WooHoo likely burned 4.0 Calories, I have no data to backup that statement. I really have no idea how many calories are burned typing. I'm sure someone knows...JFGI if you want to know. I couldn't care less.)

Not so fast there sparky, it's not that bad...really.

Since Splenda is sweeter, you don't have to use as much. So if you might use 4 packets of sugar, you might find 2 packets of Splenda suffice.

4 (2.8g/packet) packets of sugar has about 43Calories.
2 (1g/packet) packets of Splenda, about 7.

That's a savings of...let's see, ought into ought is...carry the one, divide by two, add three...36!!

So substituting Splenda for sugar will certainly save you some calories, but only if used in moderation and not on 1-to-1 ratio.

Windows Live CD ??? Really?

A computer was brought to me that was so infested with viruses that I was unable to install programs. Like, antivirus programs...which really needed to be on there BEFORE I got it. Actually I think Symantec's was on there...useful...no really.

I knew the only course of action was to re-install. And on this machine that's a very simple task. It's a Dell with an auto restore partition. Sets it back like you got it from the factory.

Since I knew I would be restoring anyway, I decided to experiment a bit.
I should say this could have all been done using a KNOPPIX LiveCD/LiveDVD. But I was in an experimental frame of mind...not that kind of experimental, perv.

I used BartPE to create a Windows LiveCD. I've used dozens of LiveCDs in the past...all Linux based. I was intrigued to make a Windows LiveCD.
With BartPE you can add/enable plugins. So I added ClamWin, a Windows antivirus program based on ClamAV. Seems like I also had to enable the Ram Disk plugin

After going through a couple menus and steps, and I mean a couple, it was dead easy, I had myself a Windows LiveCD. I still have it in fact, it's over there *I'm pointing to it*.

I put this in said computer, and booted. It worked flawlessly (which surprised the hell out of me tbqh.)

First thing I did was backup "Documents and Settings" off the computer's C: drive. As far as I could tell, that's where they kept everything. This gets everything off the Desktop, Favorites, My Documents, etc.

After the backup, I ran ClamWin. It failed, YAY, end of story!! No, no there's more.

After a bit of RTFM'ing and finagling with it, I got it to run. Turns out there wasn't enough space on the RAM disk, created by the LiveCD, to use the virus definitions.

ClamAV found 908 "infections" and quarantined them to a place of my choosing. Quarantined is really the wrong word for this, but it seems to be the industry lingo. I'm quite certain that after 40 days of isolation I'm not going to let those nasty little things back into the system. I much prefer "exiled" or "isolated" or "banishment". All the quotation marks were really quite unnecessary, but I'm leaving them.

After rebooting to the hard drive, I could then install programs...like...oh, I dunno, SUPERAntiSpyware, Malware, and AVG. All are top notch utilities IMHO.

To wrap up this story, after many, many hours of scanning and rebooting (and forgetting about it), I went from 3600+ infections to 1500+, to 500+, to 40+, then it seemed to level out at 17. Pretty nasty rootkits on there.

This was more a proof of concept scenario. Like I said, I knew I would have to re-image the drive, I just wanted to see how far I could get.

At one point, I nearly wiped the whole thing and put Ubuntu on it. It's the computer of a co-worker's kids. And there was nothing installed that Linux wouldn't do...and it would do it without viruses I might add.

FIRST

Woohoo!!

First!!