Text and photo ©2012 Phil Combs. All rights reserved.

I’ve been a writer for most of my life. I started writing fiction when I was a kid in grade school and continued right through college. I ended up with a B.A. in English and was one of the first in the English program to get a Certificate of Professional Writing. I went into tech writing for ten years before moving into computers and technical support where I now labor. I’ve published a few tech articles in the now-defunct Amazing Computing for the Commodore Amiga as well as the maker periodical Nuts & Volts. My love of writing (and my missing the work in my field of accreditation) eventually led to the blog you’re reading today.

Part of the reason I’ve been distracted from writing over the years is my love of all things technical. All that tinkering takes time away from the keyboard. So imagine my excitement when I got word of an opportunity to indulge in two of my favorite activities—and one would make it directly possible to benefit from the other!

InfoComm is an enormous audiovisual trade show that’s held annually in the U.S., and alternately in two locations. This year its back in my favorite “OMG did you see that?” towns: Las Vegas. I was going in 2010 and my employer was footing the bill, but the discovery of my clogged LAD artery had me in the operating room the day I was scheduled to leave on the trip. Last year my employer told me that my “job responsibilities have changed” and so they couldn’t justify sending me. (I am still heavily involved with technology; go figure.)  Now they simply claim abject poverty so any out of state business travel is off the table. I found out that there would be a drawing this year from the pool of early InfoComm registrants for an all-expense-paid trip to the show (less food and gratuities), so I pre-registered at no cost anyway. The deadline came and went and I lost that one so I put my InfoComm hopes away.

Then I received an email from the show announcing a poetry contest. The prize would be the same—an all-expense-paid trip to the show. This wasn’t simply a game of chance but a competition of skill. And, it was something I knew and had a genuine shot at winning! I rubbed my hands together, dug out my sharpest quill (used only for the most personal of my work) as well as a stack of parchment and prepared my contest entry.  The steps I followed here should be used for any competitive work where there is some creativity involved. College prepared me for some of this and the rest I learned along the way.

1)      Examine the contest rules carefully.  In this case I was tasked to write an “acrostic” poem. In this form the first letter of every line will spell a word. The three choices of words were “InfoComm,” “Las Vegas” and “audiovisual.” The given example seemed thrown together and didn’t have lot of meat to it (as an example should be), so I followed some links and learned far more about acrostics than I ever wanted to know. I also noted the submittal deadline and that there was a “one entry per person” limitation. On the official entry form they provided a checkbox for my agreement to “all of the Contest Official Terms and Conditions as outlined on www.infocommshow.org and other related links.” Going to the main link uncovered no such rules or related links, so I made some safe assumptions from other contests I’ve entered.

• My contest entry becomes the property of InfoComm International. This means the contest promoter can use the entry in any way they wish without further compensation to me. This is pretty standard stuff.

• The contest promoter isn’t responsible for late, lost, illegible, stolen, or misdirected entries.

The main thing to remember is that, in most states, contests are strictly regulated to ensure fairness. Failure by an organization to thoroughly ensure that the contest is properly and fairly conducted can open them up to all manner of legal problems. You can be reasonably assured that, unless the company’s management are complete morons, they’ve covered themselves and your entry will be fairly handled.

2)      Research your subject.  A visit to the show’s website revealed the show’s theme this year (‘Communications Intensified”) as well as the various dimensions of the event. InfoComm prides itself on training and certification opportunities for its membership and attendees, as well as the ability to network with others in the field. It offers tours of local facilities to showcase the latest technology as well as how particular problems are solved. Its show floor is unparalleled, with hundreds of exhibitors as well as dedicated pavilions for specific areas such as audio and digital signage. They offer information for attendees for local sights and give suggestions for off-hours activities and networking. I noted these points and resolved to hit as many as I could with my work. In order to provide as much room as possible for the promotional “meat,” I chose the word ‘audiovisual’ to frame my work.

3)      Tailor your work to suit the subject / organization. This should be a no-brainer.  If the sponsor sells shoes, your work should focus on shoes; you wouldn’t extoll the virtues of going barefoot if New Balance  is holding the contest. The contest information said the work would be highlighted on the show blog as well as in the promotional materials, so I kept that in mind. That way the work can get the maximum usage by the contest giver (and exposure for you and your labor).

4)      Add some flourish and style to make it your own. Only one out of three word choices were necessary to frame the poem. I used one for the acrostic component and mentioned the other two within the poem itself. Mentioning the show’s theme within the poem also seemed to be a “can’t miss.”

5)      Follow the submission guidelines to ensure your entry is accepted. I submitted mine in an email to the provided address on Friday afternoon; the deadline was the following Monday at 5 p.m. EST. I received an immediate “out of office” robo-response so that told me my entry was received.

Given the above points I crafted what I considered to be a noble effort that met the intent and stated rules of the contest. I offer my contest submission for your consideration:

All that you need, everything you seek
Unified in one place in the space of a week.
Dazzling new tech, ideas and connections
Inspire Communications Intensified in brand-new directions.
Organized tours showcase real-world solutions
Vendors display products for your institutions.
Intensive training, seminars, and courses provides
So much for an upgrade to your bona fides.
Unique opportunities await—so won’t you go
And get an advantage over others you know?
Las Vegas is the place and INFOCOMM’s the show.

It’s obviously not fine literature but it hits the high points and, I think, makes a damn fine promotional piece for the event. It can also be reused for multiple shows by changing the third and fourth lines (for the show theme) and the destination city in the last line. I worried a lot because I’m not the world’s best poet but soon realized that I didn’t have to be. I just needed to be the best poet of all the contest participants.

It’s difficult to create anything, even something like this that many would consider as a ‘throwaway’, without some pride and the confidence that it will be a winner. I waited well over a week for the contest results and tried not to pre-plan how I’d spend my off-time (but I had ideas!). The day of the contest announcement found me on pins and needles. Time dragged by with no email announcement and no posting on the show blog. Finally in late morning there was a blog posting, and guess what?

I didn’t win. But after reading the winning submission I was nonplussed. I won’t reprint the winning poem as it is someone else’s work but you can read it here. The anointed work used romantic, picturesque language and entreated the muse Calliope for her favor to win–with passing mentions of the show’s various aspects. In percentages, nearly 50% of the winning poem had little to do with InfoComm. With that being said I won’t cast aspersions on the winner’s work–the poem itself is nicely crafted and is certainly a fine example of the art. By my understanding of this contest’s intent, however, it just doesn’t have the characteristics of what a winning entry should have been.

There isn’t a way to tackle this subject without it sounding like sour grapes. I’ll admit there are indeed sour grapes on my part, but I’ll use the definition given by the late comedian George Carlin from his book Brain Droppings. Mr. Carlin said the term meant the “rationalization of failure to attain a desired end. … It doesn’t deal with jealousy or sore losing.” In that spirit I will take some educated guesses as to why my entry bombed out by adding the following corollaries and conclusion to my points above.

1a)  Ensure the contest rules are explicitly spelled out.  In this case the given contest rules were sparse. Expanded rules were either not available (or easily discoverable) on the event’s website as promised on the entry form. Ideally these rules would have defined a number of things, including…

•  The number of people judging the entries and their qualifications. In the photo contests sponsored by manufacturers that are advertised in publications like Popular Photography there are panels of judges from different aspects of the industry. Some of them are usually other photographers, some are publishers, and some are manufacturer’s reps. This insures a wider gamut of eyes looking at the entries and minimizes bias. This is crucial in efforts where creative works are judged since personal tastes are subjective.

• The criteria under which the work will be judged. In this case the form was spelled out (acrostic poem) and there was an implied requirement that the poem should somehow relate to the show. There was a statement that “the more creative the better” but beyond that everything was open to interpretation.

• A methodology for revealing the total number of entries in the pool. Game-of-chance contests base chances of winning on the number of entries received, but since it was skill-driven a method of disclosing the number of entries should have been defined. To be fair to all the participants, you need to tell them how much competition they faced.

2a)  Know something about the qualifications of those on the judging panel. This is as simple (in the photo contest example) as reading the bios of the judges. Someone who works with creative writing every day is looking for one thing; a director of corporate marketing should be looking for something completely different. Knowing this information in advance will help you properly tailor your work.

3a and 4a)  Don’t expect that your method of expressing information about the organization will be acceptable. It could be killer ad copy, a catchy jingle or a modern take on Paradise Lost, but if it doesn’t fit with the organization’s image and message you’re wasting your time. This organization deals with technology, problem-solving and trade education, so it seemed that a more fact-related approach was warranted. Who knew they were given to the Classics?

I gave considerable thought to this situation and sent an email to the Public Relations manager at InfoComm who handled the contest entries. I was polite but asked the following three questions:

a)      How big was the entry pool?
b)      How many people were on the judging panel?
c)      Of the total number on the judging panel, what was the male/female ratio?

(That last question could be considered sexist, but I’ve seen though my coursework that males and females generally look for different things in their poetry.) I realize this is a busy time for the organization since they’re prepping for the show, but as of the time of this posting my questions remain unanswered. Given the outcome of the contest and the points I’ve raised above I offer the following conclusions:

1: The contest was hastily slapped together and executed. This can be exemplified by the sparsely-given rules and the lack of expanded rules on their website and leads to the second conclusion, which is…

2: There was little to no interdepartmental communication within the organization about the contest. If there were comprehensive rules, the web team either didn’t receive them or they failed to link to them in an easily-accessible way. This could also mean that the legal department didn’t see or clear the contest, which could open them up to litigation if any of the other contestants took issue with the results. The apparent lack of communication also indicates that…

3:  There was no panel of judges, and if there was, there wasn’t a representative from Marketing. I can’t believe that anyone with a marketing mindset would vote for the winning entry. There simply wasn’t enough show-related promotional content in the chosen work. Most likely one person was the sole judge—someone with a soft spot for this type of poetry.

I don’t expect that my entry was the only one that was more on-point with the show’s intended message. This contest was inherently flawed by its design. The organization, if challenged, could simply claim its determination of the winner was fair without providing proof of their assertion and that would be the end of it. But conducting your business in that manner is detrimental to the goodwill and image of your organization. Who takes any entity at their word anymore with the debacles we’ve seen by Wall Street and our own government? Given what transpired here the only lesson to carry away is this one: You can go hunting and be loaded for bear but if you’re working blind you’ll never know whether you’ll hit your mark.

If I had a do-over I think I’d just buy some lottery tickets and try winning enough to pay for the trip. Either that or I’d spend most of my poem appealing to Euterpe and let sibling rivalry determine the contest’s outcome.

UPDATE 5/26/2012:  I received an email from Betsy Jaffe, Director of Public Relations for InfoComm International after my original posting. She directly addressed some of my concerns, and I will selectively quote from her email:

“It was a very popular contest, with more than 100 qualified entries.  The five-person judging panel had a difficult time choosing a clear winner because of the large number of excellent entries. The panel included representatives from the marketing and expositions department, and contained both male and female judges. Each poem was ranked on a scale of one through five. A sixth tie-breaking judge was identified in advance.
…
While I know that it must be terribly disappointing not to win this time, know that poetry is a subjective art and reasonable people can reach different conclusions.
…
It was our plan to run a “Best of the Rest” posts (sic) with some of our other favorite entries.  Since you seem angry, I am not sure if it is okay for us to feature your poem.  Kind regards, Betsy”

My response, also selectively quoted:

“I understand that the art of writing is subjective as I’d mentioned in my posting. It just didn’t seem to me that the chosen work hit the mark. Not having information about some of the contest particulars was frustrating. But since you’ve provided that information it helps me to feel that the contest was, indeed, more balanced than I’d believed. I wanted to express my confusion over the results, not anger for failing to win.”  I also gave my permission to run my contest entry if they chose to do so.

I stand corrected in my conclusions, but the tips I gave above are still valid. Any writer entering a contest should carefully prepare and gather as much information as possible before expending their creative effort.

And given that there were five members on this judging panel, I still think I should’ve entreated Euterpe.

I’ve been a diabetic for nearly twenty years; at least, that’s when I was first diagnosed with this damnable disease. I spent the first 12 years or so in denial. After all, I didn’t feel as if anything was wrong so why should I care about my blood glucose levels? I was given meds by the doctor, which I dutifully took while eating what I damn well pleased and didn’t keep close tabs on my health. The type and variety of meds I was prescribed increased, and insulin was eventually added to the mix. I continued my carefree denial and life was otherwise good.

That all changed on a business trip in the fall of 2003, when I awoke thousands of miles from home with most of the vision obscured in my left eye. I contacted my ophthalmologist and made an appointment for my return. The diagnosis was that the blood vessels in my retina had weakened and begun to leak blood into my eye. After several months when the vision cleared enough, laser surgeries were performed from outside the eye to seal those blood vessels. When I was finally confronted by the effects of diabetes I got religion. I started eating right, tracked my blood glucose, and tried taking better care of myself.

In the nearly nine years since then my body has suffered an ongoing series of indignities. Blood leakage in both eyes eventually led to more laser surgeries and finally two vitrectomies that saved my vision.  I had gastric bypass surgery almost four years ago in an attempt to halt the diabetes in its tracks. It failed to do so but reduced my dependence on meds and made the glucose easier to control. (I also lost 90 pounds.) Several years back I discovered that I’d had minor heart muscle damage when my LAD artery was found to be collapsed in two places and narrowed in another. After two stents and an angioplasty I’d beaten the Widowmaker.  Life was good again, but I always wondered what was lying in wait for me.

I found out in March. I returned to my cardiologist when some of my pre-stent symptoms returned. He scheduled a heart cath to see what the problem was. I checked into the hospital with no particular worries—I’d been through this before and it wasn’t a big deal, right? Afterward while I was still groggy the cardiologist talked with me about the results. Both the front and rear arteries to my heart were blocked 90 – 95% at their junctions. He said he was referring me to a heart surgeon for a bypass, and then he quickly bowed out and left me alone with my thoughts. A bypass? Wasn’t that where they cracked your chest wide open and worked directly on the heart? That was the one thing I’d heard about over the years that really made me nervous. The surgeon finally arrived and talked with me about what I’d face. He told me he’d needed the same procedure himself three years earlier. He told me that the first eight days would be rough but things would quickly get better. He then said he was back in the O.R. performing surgeries three weeks later.  His staff wanted to schedule the operation for the following week, less than five days away, but I had it scheduled for nearly two weeks out. I had a number of things to do and I needed to do them quickly. They were skeptical but agreed to my timetable.

The first thing I did was to make a will. I’d put it off for years, but after doing it I was finally at peace. I knew that things probably wouldn’t go exactly according to my wishes even with a will, but I’d done my best.  I consulted with several good friends to get things lined up that needed done, and made arrangements to board my dogs for the week or so I’d be in the hospital. And just in case the worst happened, I spent some time writing a statement I’d want read aloud at my funeral and even picked out some music for the ceremony.  Did I ever mention there are times I can be anal-retentive?

I spent time having a number of tests done before my admittal to the hospital, and checked in on Thursday for my 7 a.m. surgery the next morning, on Good Friday. You read that right—and these circumstances led to several good one liners from friends and co-workers about that one.

“Good Friday? You know what happened to Jesus!”

“Just don’t let them spread your arms out when they get you on the table.”

“Let’s hope the surgeon’s sober at 7 a.m. that morning.”

I added to the last one, “And that his Tourette’s is under control.” This is a good place to mention how important it is to keep a sense of humor when you’re faced with serious situations. Mine tends toward Black Comedy, with a good sense of the morbid thrown in, but whatever your style you should always try to find the lighter side.

Good Friday 2012, 5:20 a.m. I’d managed to sleep fairly well and was awakened for my prep. Soon I was wheeled down to the surgery waiting room where I was joined briefly by my friends Jim and Dawn. I’d already been given a sedative and I was a bit anxious—where was the surgeon? I’d talked with the anesthesiologist and a number of nurses but really wanted to see the guy with the knife. He finally came in and we talked briefly (I guess; I was already half-sedated and I don’t remember much of it). After Jim took a picture of me in the bed with both thumbs raised high, I was wheeled into surgery.

What followed was nearly two days of “blurry.” I knew that I’d have a breathing tube shoved down my throat and that concerned me. I have a horrible gag reflex and could see myself being very uncomfortable. A nurse had told me not to worry. “You’ll be hooked up to all kinds of sensors. They’ll know if something’s wrong. If you move in bed they’ll know, and they’ll be watching you closely for the first twenty-four hours.” And so I awoke after surgery, arms strapped down and unable to open my eyes, with a tube down my throat. I heard a reassuring male voice and I clacked my teeth against the tube.

“You want some ice? I’m sorry but you can’t have any just yet because of the tube.” I could move my legs, so I thrashed them a bit to set off the sensors I’d been told about. Fade out…I was probably given more morphine. I awakened later, same drill. Clacked my teeth, was told no ice, and this time I shook my head back and forth. “Ah, you want the tube out.” I nodded. “I’m sorry, but it has to stay in a bit longer.” I thrashed my legs a little, faded out. The next thing I remember was a voice saying, “I’m pulling the tube, cough while I do it.” I did and the tube was out. I was finally given ice to crunch on, and it was the best thing I’d ever tasted.

The day after the operation I received bad news. A chest X-ray to check on the healing process showed cloudiness where my left lung should have been. I was bleeding internally which was making breathing difficult and painful. The blood needed to be drained off. I was directed to sit on the edge of the bed with my head and arms thrown over the tray table. I was first given more morphine, and then an aspirating needle was inserted through my back into my chest cavity. The effort was unsuccessful so we went to the next step.  The doctor administered a “nerve block” as the area where they would insert the tube had lots of nerves in it. Then he cut a hole in my side and inserted a tube between two ribs into my chest cavity. I’m told that a liter and a half of blood came out, and I think a lot of it ended up on the bed. He kept telling me I’d feel a lot better when the blood was drained off, but instead of relief I got new pain from the end of the tube being inside my chest cavity. It eased after a bit but bothered me a lot depending on how I positioned myself.

The next day I was transferred to a “step down” unit, or a room in a regular part of the hospital with less than one-on-one attention. At least the room was a single, and the door could be closed to block out some of the noise. You see, outside the room was a door to an adjoining hallway, which led to a wing that was undergoing construction. There was a constant banging from that door as well as a constant flow of noise and chatter from the floor itself.

That constant flow of noise coupled with the near-constant morphine injections created what I call “morphine nightmares.” Imagine this: you have a recording device (computer, digital audio recorder, whatever) that has a capacity of five seconds. You start recording and, when the five-second limit is reached, recording stops and the audio plays back in a loop. Every few loops it records a few more seconds of fresh audio, replacing part of the audio you’ve been listening to with new sounds. Meanwhile you’re left nodding in-and-out of consciousness while listening to this symphony of noise in your head. Oh, and you feel nauseous from the morphine. I mentioned the nausea to a nurse who told me she could give me something for the nausea, but they could only give it every eight hours while they administered the morphine every six hours. So there’s a built-in period where you’ll feel sick no matter what you do. Fortunately after a few days the morphine became less necessary and finally stopped altogether. What blew me away was the realization that there are some people who pay big money to achieve this type of high illegally. I now know I’d never be a druggie. I believe I’m allergic to them. In fact, when I left the hospital I was given a prescription for Percocet and I shredded it.

For the past few weeks I’ve been recuperating at home. I had some visits both in-hospital and at home from friends and co-workers who also brought food to my home so I wouldn’t have to cook. I started a course of cardiac rehab, where you exercise under medical supervision and a heart monitor. My biggest problem has been fatigue. In the beginning I got winded fairly easily and had to fight for air. It’s slowly getting better but it will be a few weeks before I can go back to work.  It’s given me lots of quality time with the dogs and enabled me to write. In all, it’s not the kind of spring break I’d have chosen for myself but I’m thankful for the time to slow down and appreciate life. A now-retired co-worker and friend left this message on my Facebook page: “Good to know you got through the surgery good. You get a new future.” That was a heavy thought…and I’ve had some time to figure out the implications. I’ve just had another birthday and I almost didn’t make it. I’m thankful I listened to what my body was telling me–and I’d encourage every reader of this blog to spend more time listening to your bodies. Someday that time spent might save your life.

This Protestor Must Be A Computer Geek. --from skynews.com.au

Mildred: “Hey Johnny, what are you rebelling against?”
Johnny: “Whadda you got?”

-Exchange between two characters from the movie The Wild One, 1953, with Marlon Brando

I’m classified as a late-stage baby boomer, having been born in the late 1950’s. During the decisive and divisive decade of the 1960’s I was a snot-nosed school kid; the most important crisis of my life was when our TV died and it took weeks before Mom could afford to replace a bad tube. (No, not the tube you looked at—one of several tubes inside the box that generated heat and helped make the picture.) The country was embroiled in Vietnam. JFK, MLK and RFK were assassinated, and the civil rights movement was in full swing. Back then it was common for young people to stage protest marches, sit-ins, and acts of civil disobedience to make a point about something. The war, equal rights, poverty, injustice, or political misconduct—it didn’t matter. Everything seemed fair game and it was all done to a rocking soundtrack. The evening news was filled with stark images: soldiers on the front lines; water cannons deployed against civil rights marchers, and students shot by National Guardsmen at Bowling Green University in Ohio. As a kid I soaked it all in but much of it didn’t make sense. The only thing that solidly connected was the certainty that I would be drafted by my Government to fight for them when I turned 18. I didn’t want to die so I prayed every night for the abolishment of the draft, protection for our soldiers, and an end to war. It’s a shame that any kid who hasn’t reached the age of 12 had to pray every night about death and dying but it’s what I did.

Years passed, Vietnam ended, and the draft was abolished for a window of time. America sailed through the disco years and into the prosperity and growth of the eighties. Everything was okey-dokey, at least on the surface. There were societal issues that needed to be dealt with but we were caught up in a capitalistic furor. Go to college, get a great job, make lots of money to buy stuff, and grab a piece of the American dream. I remember reading a magazine article back then by someone decrying the flaccidness of our youth’s resolve to change the world. “No one has a cause to fight for anymore. All they care about is money.” The piece was probably written by an ex-hippie protestnik remembering the golden age of social activism. I remember thinking that, perhaps, that time had passed and the role of the mass protest had become unnecessary. In actuality capitalism and the acquisition of worldly goods lulled us to sleep. Meanwhile a lot of Very Bad Things were going on behind the scenes, and crimes against the citizens of this country went unchecked. Our political process, which was never very clean or honorable, had long ago yielded itself to corruption.

Suddenly we found ourselves in the new millennium and realized that things had gone to Hell. America was attacked in grand Hollywood style on September 11, 2001. We found ourselves involved in multiple wars and losing our individual rights and freedoms on a daily basis in the name of security. Rich corporations received massive tax relief for years in order to “build the job market,” and did just that—for foreign countries. They’d started shipping American jobs overseas to save themselves money in the nineties, but really ramped up their efforts during the past decade.  Many local economies were devastated as towns whose residents supported the steel mill, auto plant, or multinational shipping conglomerate saw those businesses close with no jobs to replace those that were lost. Then we discovered that the financial institutions—the ones the government had failed to properly oversee—had perpetrated several types of shell games using our money and our economy nearly went under, wiping out many families’ finances and future retirement plans.

The citizens of our fine country suddenly found themselves totally screwed by those who were supposed to represent and protect them, and helpless when they tried to express their anger. Politicians didn’t seem to listen or care about anything except their own jobs and keeping the ‘other party’ at a disadvantage. Some bright people decided they’d had enough and marched on Wall Street to denounce corporate greed, the lack of jobs, homelessness…in fact, everything that had been repressed for years came rushing out in a torrent.  That movement became “Occupy Wall Street” and gained strength over a few weeks to encompass protests across the country.  Despite the best intentions of these people to have peaceful demonstrations, local police ratcheted up the tension by employing tear gas and pepper spray, then used force to shed blood and hauled hundreds of them away to jail. The protester’s resolve was unbroken. When told they couldn’t use electronic amplification, they created ‘human P.A. systems’ by having crowds loudly repeat what a speaker said for the benefit of all. They set up mobile food kitchens, portable Internet hotspots, bathroom facilities, and extensively used social networks to organize the faithful. There’s no doubt that they’re determined and dedicated to their goal of making the voice of the people heard.

But many people are asking: “If everyone’s shouting different things, can they really make a difference?”  Part of the problem is that we’ve been silent for so long that a lot of things have turned sour. And, unfortunately, many of those things are inter-related. People can’t get needed assistance after natural disasters because funds were bled dry by numerous calamities this year, and the cost of ongoing warfare in multiple theaters of combat as well as a divided Congress hampers their replenishment.  The job market sucks because the economy nearly collapsed from the corruption of Wall Street insiders who weren’t properly overseen by the government due to its own corruption and incompetence.  Got that? How can you attack any one of those points without attacking the others? How can you fix jobs without fixing the economy, and how can you fix the economy if the government can’t be trusted to ensure that the companies manipulating the economy are honest? It’s a rabbit hole that Alice couldn’t tackle without major chemical assistance.

The other problem is that our fledgling young protesters don’t seem to know how to affect social changes of this magnitude, any more than the youth of the sixties did when they began their journey. Back then they had to flex their muscles, find their voice, and experiment to find the best way(s) to express their views. Today’s youth are no different. They’re like Neo who, after being freed from his pod in The Matrix asks Morpheus, “Why do my eyes hurt?”

His answer was simple: “You’ve never used them before.”

The Occupy movement is in the chrysalis stage—it’s well on its way to becoming a mature force to reckon with. For now it’s stretching, flexing, reaching out to test the capabilities and power within its grasp. The list of its demands seems way too broad and unfocused but they’re quickly learning to prioritize. The ways of the original sixties protestniks are well documented—both good and bad—and widely available through the web, and you can bet they’re soaking in everything they can learn.

As of this writing things have quieted. Occasional protests sporadically occur but as winter settles in the Occupiers appear to have lost their will to fight.  Appearances are deceiving. Kalle Lasn, who conceived Occupy Wall Street, was quoted in Rolling Stone’s January 5, 2012 issue as saying, “The first phase was wonderful, it was leaderless, it was demandless, it inspired millions of young people to get politically engaged. Now we’re moving into another phase. … But the really interesting stuff will start happening next spring.” For these tech- and internet-savvy protesters I’m sure it will be a busy winter as they research, plan, and organize for next year.

I’m happy that people are finally getting off their butts and making their voices heard. We’ve all witnessed the changes that began with the so-called “Arab spring” and I’m sure many are drawing inspiration from the Middle East events of the past year. However, the government has heard the voices of its citizens in the past year and, to be honest, I’m not sure they care. Congress seems fixated on fiddling while the country figuratively burns. Not even the Republican candidates for next year’s election seem to get it. Newt Gingrich’s statement during a recent debate was particularly telling:

“All the Occupy movement starts with the premise that we all owe them everything. They take over a public park they didn’t pay for. To go nearby to use bathrooms they didn’t pay for. To beg for food from places they don’t want to pay for.  To obstruct those who are going to work to pay the taxes to sustain the bathrooms and to sustain the park, so they can self-righteously explain that they are the paragons of virtue to which we owe everything. Now that is a pretty good symptom of how much the left has collapsed as a moral system in this country, and why you need to reassert something as simple as saying to them “Go get a job, right after you take a bath.””

Never mind that the Occupiers are meeting on public property for which they were paying their share with their tax money when they had jobs, or that the message wasn’t “You owe us jobs” but “You owe us accountability for your screw-ups and you’re obligated to responsibly manage our country and our assets.”  Gingrich’s response is similar in spirit to that of Chinese Emperor Hui of Jin, recounted in the Zizhi Tongjian. When the Emperor was told that his subjects didn’t have enough rice to eat he replied, “Why don’t they eat meat?”  The protests in the Middle East began peacefully but when the respective governments employed violence against their protesters, those protesters retaliated in kind.

The thing I fear most is the increase of violence on both sides in this country. Some may say, “This is the United States of America; that’ll never happen.” I don’t think there’s another way this can play out, especially when our Government simply refuses to get the point. If non-violence doesn’t work escalation is the logical result. Violence has become an integral part of the overseas protests, just as it did here in the sixties. People aren’t stupid and they realize that terrorist methods get an immediate response. One or two nutjobs operating completely outside the actual movement could kick the whole thing off while using the movement as a cover. Everything quickly escalates and gets ugly; bloodshed on our own soil becomes rampant; protestors and their sympathizers get branded as domestic terrorists. Then if President Obama signs the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 as he’s promised to do, the Government could “go Guantanamo” on anyone it brands as a domestic terrorist and can make them disappear without a trace.

The anger and frustration in the air seems physical, palpable; it’s as though you could grab a handful if you simply reached for it. Perhaps things will settle down over the winter, or maybe they’ll boil over as the buffoons in Washington continue playing their brinksmanship games.  All I know is this: 2012 will prove to be a most interesting year. I’m grabbing a good seat right now to enjoy the show—how about you?

Then HP announced they’d make a second and final run of these. It seems their decision to axe the platform greatly P.O.’d their strategic partners (suppliers), who’d invested a lot of money in making parts for the things. Aha! My second chance would arrive in the first part of November! I readied myself for the hunt…only to be disappointed again. This time HP’s retail partners decided to make some extra money. Most retailers like Best Buy, CompUSA and TigerDirect are either selling the tablets for double the sale price ($299) or selling them for the ‘real’ clearance price if you buy another HP computer or laptop at the same time. I call B.S. on this practice and hope it bombs. Who in their right mind would buy one of these for more than the original clearance price?

The problem for me is that I still have these app ideas I’d like to try. About a week ago I heard about a special HP program for WebOS developers…they were allowing people (and companies) who signed up for their developer program to buy up to two of the Touchpads for $149 each. Some undisclosed number of entities will be chosen to get “right to purchase” coupons that must be used by the end of November. I’ve signed up for the program (whose application deadline is 11/18) and am crossing my fingers. I want to make my apps available free, so some of the information requested on signup was off-putting (I suppose they assume only corporations who plan on making mucho bucks will apply). If I can get these, great–and if not, I suppose I’ll try developing my ideas for Android. We shall see…

I’ve been an Apple observer for as many years as I’ve been in IT support. I haven’t always purchased or used their products. In the early days my first computer was a TRS-80 Model I. I moved up to a Commodore 64, and then moved to a Commodore 128 before jumping to the IBM PC-clone platform. Apple was a ‘bit’ player in those early days (pun intended) but the Apple II and III didn’t appeal to me for some reason. For the longest time I mocked the fledgling IBM PC when I had my C-128 (“The 128 has everything built-in—it all costs extra on the PC!”) After a while I came around to the idea that this was actually a Good Thing, especially after leaving college and realizing the PC was the platform that businesses used. How times change!

Some History, and an Attitude Change

Apple always had the cachet of being different. The idea of a WIMP (windows, icons, mouse pointer) interface was a game changer, and Micro$oft realized it when they saw Apple’s implementation of Xerox PARC’s interface and copied it themselves. Over the years the Mac’s interface underwent constant tweaking and improvements, and despite Micro$oft’s best efforts to duplicate its usability their implementation still lacked the grace of Apple’s interface. As a PC wonk I often failed to see the good of MacOS. Things were just, well, too different. There was no command prompt in MacOS, no easy way to get past the OS if you needed to do something that the windowing interface wouldn’t allow. When I had to support a Mac user I dreaded it. Apple’s way was so difficult that, for me, what would take a few minutes to fix in DOS/Windows would often take several hours in MacOS.  My very negative experience with MacOS and a messaging server package at the local PBS station (detailed in an earlier posting) didn’t help my perceptions of the platform.

Then I started working at a local university. Several users in my department had desktop Macs; in addition some of our electronic classrooms had Macs alongside PCs with a switching arrangement for the two platforms. I gradually became used to them and, as I started imaging PCs and Macs (which were, by this time, on OS X) I grew to appreciate the ease with which Macs could be imaged and those images deployed to any number of identical machines. While Micro$oft insisted on tying its OS so tightly to the hardware that an image made on one PC wouldn’t work on another if it had a different video card, you could simply image the most powerful Mac in your fleet and use that image on lesser equipped machines. That is, as long as the CPUs for those machines were in the same class–an image for a G5 wouldn’t work on a G4. Windows has improved over the years, but it still requires some black magic to make things happen across platforms.  I ended up purchasing my first Mac, a G4 machine with such radical styling that some in the computer press called it the iTit, when they were surplused by the university. I ended up with three of these (hey, the price was right) with the intent of using them to display images in my home as Objets d’Art. Although I’d finally gone to the “dark side” my main home computers continued to be PCs.

The iMac G4, affectionately known as the "iTit."

Apple Forges New Territory

Meanwhile Apple branched out into consumer electronics and, in turn, set the music and telecom industries on their ears with the introductions of the iPod and iPhone. I never bought into either platform and only ended up with an iPod Mini because I won it. It’s still a neat device, but I hate the restrictiveness of iTunes, Apple’s digital rights management, and their limited codec support. When the time came to get a smartphone I went Android. Then in 2010 Apple introduced the iPad. I had wanted some type of tablet PC that would allow me to view PDFs since I discovered newsgroups and the large amount of free reading materials there. This device seemed to fit the bill, but I was still put off by iTunes. I waited until after the iPad 2 was released and still hoped for an Android tablet. Android’s developers and the device manufacturers couldn’t seem to get their acts together, and a viable iPad competitor wasn’t predicted to become available until 2012.

The Apple Advantage

I bit the bullet this past spring, drank Apple’s Kool-Aid and bought a closeout iPad 1 with 3G and 64GB of RAM. I’d read about the available apps and liked the idea of connecting USB peripherals through a backdoor method using the Camera Connection Kit. There were USB microphones and recording gear that could be harnessed to the iPad this way, making high-quality portable recording and editing an option that intrigued me. The ability to hook a wired keyboard into the iPad was the clincher.

Almost two years ago my department was dismantled by the university’s administration, and our varying areas of expertise were moved into other departments. The task of classroom technology support moved to the campus IT department. Their mantra of “We do IT faster, better, and cheaper” dictated slashing support costs a number of ways. One major change was to begin the elimination of dual PCs and Macs in classroom podiums by replacing them with dual-boot Mac Minis. When my department was responsible for classroom support we’d looked at doing the same thing but couldn’t come to a consensus. We rack-mounted our podium electronics for installation convenience and theft prevention. Small rack-mount server chassis PCs were used in the beginning and eventually changed to desktop PCs secured to rack shelves by inaccessible bolts. In the rooms with PCs and Macs we bolted the aluminum-cased boat-anchor Macs vertically to rack shelves and secured the cabling out of user’s reach. Those Macs were overkill for the classrooms but we needed user-accessible power switches. Apple’s decision to put the power switch on the Mini’s backside meant that we continued putting sub-$1000 PCs in the classrooms alongside Macs that cost twice as much. Dual-booting wasn’t a possibility until Apple changed to the Wintel architecture and even then the IT folks (to whose guidance we deferred as they set campus computing standards) said dual-booting was a kludge and extremely difficult to image. They worked out the problems over the course of a few years and, by the time they assumed classroom support, felt comfortable enough to convert the classrooms to a single dual-boot machine.

Securing Mac Minis in public environments was a challenge before several companies introduced different mounting options. The IT crew found several that allowed rack mounting but those were deemed too expensive. They settled on a design that allowed secure mounting of the Minis to tabletops. This past summer the IT department replaced 38 of the 120-odd classroom in-podium PC/Macs with podium top-mounted dual-boot Mac Minis. This seemed to be a good move that would eventually bring Mac capabilities to all campus classrooms while saving money.

The IT folks also maintain a pool of short-term checkout laptops. After using PC laptops for years they began replacing them with dual-boot MacBooks. My department replaced its PC-only laptops with dual-boot Macbooks three years ago, which allow us to teach workshops involving either PC- or Mac-based software.  Apple came out the winner with our institution in a number of ways once the OS-specific wall was destroyed. I even considered replacing my desktop PC with a dual-boot Mac when the time came to upgrade.

Customer Needs vs. Jobs’s Vision of the Future

Apple performed an upgrade to iOS last spring that rendered most iPad Camera Connection Kit-attachable USB peripherals useless except for solid-state memory devices. Now when plugging in most USB devices the user is presented with a dialog box that reads “This device draws too much power” even with peripherals that worked before the ‘upgrade.’ Online forums lit up with user complaints, and people who’d purchased the connection kits were returning them to Apple as broken, getting surprised looks from the geniuses at the Apple Stores. It turns out that you can still use those peripherals, but only if you connect them using powered USB hubs. The iPad is all about portability–what’s portable about having to connect extra stuff through another box that requires AC power? There’s only one company that I knew of who made a battery-powered USB hub but it’s long discontinued. Some forum posts I’ve read claim that you can hook up devices through hubs without using AC power if the hub identifies itself to the iPad as a powered USB device. This would apply to those hubs that have an optional AC power port but aren’t always sold with the adapter. I’ve gone through a half-dozen models of these during testing and have yet to find one that eliminates the need for an external power supply. Even if a user finds a hub that will work, they’ll have a nasty-looking kludge with an extra box to juggle.

After our IT crew committed themselves to the Mac Mini conversion Apple revamped their product line and eliminated the Mini’s optical drive. Further purchases for classroom conversions will now have to include some flavor of external CD/DVD drive along with some way to secure the thing to the podium tops. Even when those drives are secured they will have highly-fragile trays, unlike the slot-loading drives in the Mac Minis. This means that equipment maintenance costs just went up as well. “But,” I hear some of you saying, “What about the cloud? Users don’t need optical drives anymore! They’re so last-century! Besides, hasn’t everyone changed to USB drives by now?” Not in the educational environment.  Instructors still get presentation materials through textbook publishers who often use DVD-ROMs as the distribution media. Instructors also want to play DVDs and music CDs in their classrooms.

Apple also decided to eliminate the MacBook from the consumer product line, and though institutional education customers can still buy them, they eliminated user-replaceable batteries. When checking out laptops to various borrowers throughout the day, you have to be able to put freshly-charged batteries in them. Removing a high-demand circulating item just because it needs charged cuts down on resource availability and is a deal-killing issue. As a result the IT department has decided to run the current MacBooks until they die, at which time they’ll go back to PCs. As for those classroom machines, well…the jury’s still out, but it doesn’t look likely that they’ll go back to installing Mac towers. Perhaps we’ll finally become a PC-only campus except for special-purpose labs.

Apple’s never been afraid to orphan their users in their march toward the future. In the early Mac days new models came out every six months, so whenever you bought your Mac you could be sure that it would soon be outdated. When the changeover to OS X occurred they supported OS 9 applications for a little while but soon stopped. A few years after the introduction of Intel-based Macs Apple dropped their PowerPC support. Many of those PowerPC-based CPUs would still be powerful enough to be used today if development for that branch of the OS hadn’t halted. By contrast, take any old PC-compatible software and try to run it on today’s hardware. Unless that software was timing-dependent (tied to the CPU speed for proper operation) or depended on hardware features that are no longer available it will still run. Apple would argue that’s been IBM / Intel / Microsoft’s problem—platform advancement is held hostage by user’s demands to support “legacy” systems and software. Perhaps that’s true; however, except for a few features like FireWire what innovations made Apple’s computers so “revolutionary” that they simply blew the PC away? Even those Apple-exclusive features eventually migrated to the PC, and Apple has remained a minority player in the computer field. Marching forward isn’t a bad thing, but ignoring your customer’s needs and wants certainly is. Apple’s traditionally sucked at listening to customers and accepting criticism.  Ask anyone who’s had their Apple support forum posts deleted because their opinions or complaints were deemed, in some way or other, as ‘offensive’ to the company. The only way they listened was when a lawsuit was filed, as in the case of defective LCD screens a few years ago. They’ve never depended on focus groups as Steve Jobs trusted his instincts.

Where Apple made revolutionary changes to the consumer electronics industry and people’s lifestyles has been in consumer media. The iPod changed the portable music player market and iTunes revolutionized how people buy their entertainment. The iPad has been a runaway success, so much so that the competition is still trying to play catch-up. Electronic gadget consumers expect rapid innovation and obsolescence so Apple’s orphaning tactics might not irritate those customers as much as the users of its computers. However, there’s one thing they absolutely mustn’t do, something I’ve learned through years of supporting faculty members. I call it Combs’s Maxim: A company must not remove functionality from an already-released product, even when that functionality isn’t expressly noted, marketed or endorsed. The USB connectivity issue I mentioned with the iPad is a great example of this—Apple not only left users high-and-dry with no good reason or explanation for their actions, but also violated the trust of the companies that market add-on products for the iPad. Sure, those companies should’ve used the official iPad docking port for connectivity but that limits sales of their hardware only to iDevice users. A USB peripheral can also be sold to work on other platforms.  Sony pulled the same trick with its Playstation 3 when they removed the ability to run Linux on the box, a move which angered users and spawned a class-action lawsuit.

It’s Time for a New Apple

Apple was recently announced as the world’s largest company, beating out Exxon Mobil. Their sales figures are phenomenal, and their liquidity is formidable. They can do anything they want and buy about any other company they want. If they want to continue pushing the envelope and forming the future of media more power to them–someone has to be the innovator. But pissing off your present customers will ensure they’ll no longer be your future customers—and you’ll be left alone in the future you tried to create.

I used to say that Sony made products that were 90% perfect in the market niche where 80% of consumers lived. I bought their stereo and home theater gear exclusively because they would work together with a single remote control. The products were of good quality and sounded good, but other manufacturers had similar products with more and newer features (number of inputs, audio processing modes, et cetera) at the same price point. Getting those features on a Sony added several hundred dollars to their cost. I finally abandoned them when I bought my Onkyo pre/pro and haven’t looked back.

I started writing this piece several weeks before the passing of Steve Jobs on October 5^th. I believe that many of the nits I’ve picked have belonged exclusively to Mr. Jobs and his instincts. Under his guidance Apple seemed more Sony-like to me—they made great products that were hamstrung in some frustrating ways. I’d written the following point more crudely in earlier drafts but it still bears expression: With Steve Jobs gone, it’s high time that Apple goes the extra 10% and shakes off their self-imposed limitations. They must listen to their customers, especially in the markets like education where they’ve traditionally dominated. In this economy customers cannot, and will not, invest in short-lived products with unrealistic limitations on their capabilities. Smart consumers invest their money in technologies with upgrade paths and long lives, and anyone spending money without those points in mind is either a fool or won’t stay financially liquid for long.

I want Apple to be around for a long time, but in a post-Jobs future they must change and improve to ensure their longevity. Let’s all hope they recognize the need for it, and have the courage to do so.

I eventually landed a SnapServer 4100, a nice little 1U-high rack mountable box that could expand to give me just over 360GB of RAID-5 storage.  The on-board chipset could theoretically handle drives larger than 127GB, but a glitch in the OS meant that the proper driver to enable the chipset was missing. The OS could theoretically be modified to accept the larger drives but the manufacturer would have to do it—and they had no incentive to steal sales away from their newer, larger-capacity servers. Many people on the ProCooling forums have spent time analyzing and bemoaning the situation but none of them apparently have the chops to dump and disassemble the OS, then patch and recompile it for the benefit of all. (That includes myself, though I’ve often thought about poking around to see what I could do.)

UPDATE 8-26-2011: Phoenix32 and Terry Kennedy over at Procooling clarified what the issue was, despite some contradictory information they got from the people at SnapAppliance several years ago. The SnapServer 4100 used a different ‘Promise’ controller chip than other models at the time. Snap engineers did not believe it could handle LBA48 disks, meaning drives larger than 127GB. Depending on who you talked to, two changes needed to be made: one to the machine’s BIOS, and one to the OS to add the appropriate driver.  Add to that the server’s insufficient RAM expandability (which comes into play when the server recovers from a disk error) as well as the unwillingness of SnapAppliance to take sales away from their other units, and people decided it wasn’t worth the expenditure of their time and effort . Thanks, guys, for the information.

I gave up on going that route when I determined that the total expandability of the unit even with such a patch would only be 1 terabyte. I wanted more, much more—ideally I want a RAIDzilla, but I don’t think I’d ever use that much disk space.

I set my sights on piecing together a suitable server. I found a place selling surplus Intel SE7501WV2 motherboards and bought one. It’s more than powerful enough to be the heart of a NAS—it has dual Xeon 3.1 GHz processors, takes up to 12GB RAM, and comes with dual gigabit Ethernet ports. It also features a PCI-X high performance expansion bus that will accept a hardware RAID card. The board has on-board RAID support and originally came in two versions, one with SCSI RAID and the other with IDE RAID.  Mine supports SCSI RAID but I knew I wouldn’t use it as the drives are too expensive and available drive sizes are too limited.  At first I thought I’d get a generic multi-disk server chassis but realized I really needed the chassis designed for the board. I purchased a used Intel SR2300 from eBay and thought I was in business. It offers seven hot-swap disk bays and dual redundant power supplies. The hot-swap bays and backplane are SCSI to match the motherboard. I had the basic framework to build a server, but the supported drive type was incorrect. I was determined to make it work. Somehow.

 Inspiration Strikes!

I surfed the net hoping to find some conversion info. I just knew that someone else had to have travelled this territory before me and I was right. Mark Hoekstra’s GeekTechnique site detailed how he shoehorned some IDE drives into the chassis while leaving the SCSI backplane intact.  After chewing over the possibilities I decided I could convert the SCSI bays to accept SATA drives. I’d cut the SCSI connectors off the backplane and glue some combined SATA/power connectors onto the circuit board.  The connectors would include attached cables that would plug into a SATA RAID controller.  Power cables would be plugged into some sort of daisy-chain configuration and then go into the power supply. If I was careful I could keep the front panel connections that go through the backplane, as well as keep the combined floppy/CD-ROM drive assembly working. I was getting more excited as I began planning the mods.

After spending time in research I knew that I’d be losing some capabilities. The Intel chassis/motherboard combo’s hot-swap system can detect bad drives and cut their power to allow for a swap without taking the server down. An error status LED for that drive will light to indicate which drive needs to be exchanged. My version would require a power-down to exchange a drive. Ultimately that’s not a big deal as my server use isn’t mission-critical; I can afford a little downtime.

I decided to keep the original backplane as it was and modify a second backplane. Should I ever decide to get rid of the unit I want to provide the original accessories. (Not that anyone would want to go backward, mind you, but still…).  I visited eBay and purchased an identical backplane to hack on for $15.00 plus shipping.  While I was shopping I also purchased another empty drive carrier. The floppy/CD-ROM assembly could be removed after software installation and another drive put in its place, giving a total of seven drives in the array. I could also mount an eighth drive into the SCSI tape drive bay by using the filler tray. My goal for using the swappable drive bays was maintainability, NOT hot-swapability; if a drive goes bad I don’t want to disassemble the server to change it. Using the tape drive tray for another drive puts me right back to server disassembly, so eventually I’ll end up putting a USB-driven LCD status display in that bay.

The Roadmap

Since I’m using the existing backplane as a connector mounting plate the existing SCSI connectors had to go. To make the wiring neat I decided to tap the power off the board’s existing power jack, and run bus wires for each voltage and ground. This would allow me to clip the power wires short and tie them fairly close to the connectors. The SATA cables would be draped along the middle of the board in an effort to keep the existing cooling pass-throughs as open as possible. I knew that I’d lose some air-handling volume because the wiring had to pass from the board’s front side to the back through those holes.  However, since the drives I planned to use were more power-efficient and ran cooler by design the loss of air handling capacity shouldn’t be too big a problem.

Locating Parts

The biggest problem was in finding the appropriate drive power/data connectors. I installed a hard drive in one of the swappable bays and measured the amount of space between the drive’s back edge and the backplane. It worked out to be .35”. I needed a connector assembly whose body measured slightly less than that thickness. StarTech had a good candidate, but according to the technical drawings they sent me it was too thick. Several other manufacturers had similar products but they were also too thick.

Then I found CPUStuff.com.  They had two versions of the cable I needed, a ‘left angle’ version (part number 22SATAL) and a ‘right angle’ version (part number 22SATARS). Both of these have a straight data connector that will pass through the backplane’s cooling slots. The engineering drawings on their product pages told me they would fit on the board with approximately .066” left to fill. Perfect! I’d attach a shim to the connector’s back to fill part of the space and let the glue fill the rest.  Each assembly had a half-meter data cable which would work for all but one of the drive bays.  I ordered the number of cables I required plus a couple extra, and a SATA cable extender to stretch that one cable to the correct length.

I went back to eBay and found a used 3Ware 9550SX-8 RAID controller with a PCI-X bus. The card can handle a maximum size of 2-terabytes per drive, and came with a backup battery assembly for the card’s cache RAM. I also ordered four hard drives to start. I chose the Hitachi DeskStar 5K3000 HDS5C3020ALA632 (0F12117), which is a 2-terabyte SATA 6.0Gb/s unit with 32MB of cache. It employs “Coolspin” technology which means its speed varies between 5300 and 5900 RPM, and theoretically keeps the drive running cooler. Although the drive is capable of higher throughput than the card, its backward-compatible and if I decide to upgrade later I’m not limited by the drive’s speed.

Getting Down To It: Removing the SCSI Connectors

At first I tried desoldering one of the seven connectors. Each one has 80 pins, and as you can imagine the going was slow. I tried applying ChipQuick to a connector’s pins in an effort to lower the solder’s melting point, then applied heat from a hot air gun. The connector wouldn’t budge. If I’d had a hot air rework station things might have gone better, but lacking that tool, I used a Dremel cut-off wheel and removed each connector in two passes, shown in Picture 1.

Picture 1. First pass at removing the SCSI connectors.

After this step I used flush cutters to clip the remaining plastic and pins from the connector side, then used the cutters on the reverse side to eliminate the sharp points. After this I tried once again to desolder a few pins to empty the holes; unfortunately the going was still too slow. I ended up using a Dremel grinding wheel to carefully level each pin even with the PC board. This makes the conductive pad larger if you don’t grind long enough; if you grind too much you go deeper and can sever or short PC traces. I realized that the connectors would need to be glued onto the board where other surface-mounted components were already attached. I surmised that they could be safely removed since they were adjacent to the connectors and probably related to the connector’s functionality so I unsoldered them.  After this step I cleaned the board of any debris, then plugged it into the server and did a power-on smoke test. No magic smoke escaped so I went to the next step.

Picture 2. SCSI connectors off, some components removed, vent holes enlarged.

Attaching the New SATA Connectors

I held a data connector against one of the backplane’s air holes and realized I’d need to enlarge the holes just a bit to allow the connectors to pass through.  A Dremel cutting tool made this a quick job, and the result is also shown in Picture 2. Next I had to make the connector shims, and I’d purchased some .060” styrene plastic stock at a hobby store for that purpose. I measured a connector’s back side to determine the necessary shim size, and then marked the styrene stock with pencil with those measurements.  I used a sharp new razor knife to slice the styrene on a cutting mat. After trimming the edges to eliminate the ridge that formed after each cut, I mixed a quantity of JB Weld and applied a coating to the back side of a power/data connector. After pressing the styrene into the glue I clamped the assembly for eighteen hours and allowed the glue to fully cure.

Picture 3. Clamping the shim and connector while the glue dries.

Picture 4. Finished connector / shim assembly.

Next, I pressed the connector onto a drive (which I’d already mounted into a hot-swap tray), spread a good quantity of JB Weld onto the back of the shim and mounted the drive into a drive bay. I had to carefully manage the cables from the connectors in order to prevent damage and avoid getting glue onto them.  After waiting the requisite eighteen hours I carefully removed the drive from the bay. I knew the glue bond was solid when I watched the backplane flex a bit when removing the drive! This backplane is around 3/64” thick, so flexing it is a feat. (I should also mention that you don’t want to swap drives often because the connectors aren’t designed for that.)

Picture 5. A connector, glued onto the backplane.

I moved on to the next connector and repeated the process until all seven were done.  I left the wiring loose on the front side of the board while I moved on to the power bus lines.

Laying the Power Bus Lines

I sketched a general layout for where each power bus and the ground bus would go. I’d need two power busses: a +5 volt DC supply for the drive electronics, and a +12 volt DC supply for the drive motors. There were two +12 volt lines going to the board’s power connector since that current draw was so large, so that meant I’d need to run two +12 volt bus wires and divide the drive load between them. There were also two ground wires going to the power connector. I asked an electrical engineer friend if I needed to run two ground busses as well; in his opinion it wasn’t necessary. That made a total of four bus wires to place. I purchased some 14-gauge solid, insulated conductor wire for the busses. I wanted to keep the wire colors the same for consistency, but could only purchase red, black, and white wire. I solved the problem by placing yellow heat-shrink tubing over the white wire.

I envisioned that each line would stretch the width of the backplane and have pre-formed ‘dips’ in them.  These dips would allow the line to stand above the backplane to prevent shorts between the bus and any components on the backplane, while allowing wires to be routed underneath them. One end would be fed through a drive vent hole and soldered to the board’s power supply connector. The bus would be glued to the backplane with JB Weld to secure it by putting glue over the preformed ‘dips’ as well as at each end. Gluing the busses at the power connector end is important as the power connector stubs I soldered to are very short; gluing the wires at that end takes stress off the solder connection.

After measuring and cutting each wire, I started by bending the power supply end of a +12 volt line until the wire lay properly in place over its solder point. I then figured out where I wanted each ‘dip’ and bent it into each wire.  After I felt satisfied that the wire was formed the way I wanted it, I marked the jacket where I’d remove a small bit of insulation to create space to solder the drive power wires. A razor knife removed those small bits of insulation, and afterward I tinned each section to allow easier soldering.

Picture 6. A formed 12-volt bus wire.

Picture 7. Close-up of 12-volt bus wire end.

I mixed a quantity of JB Weld and applied it to each bus wire’s ‘dip.’ I carefully placed the first wire and attached it with tape until the glue dried, then moved on to the next until they were all attached. You’ll notice that the glue points are sloppy. This is a consequence of applying glue with the shaft of a cotton swab minus the cotton tip. It’s difficult to be neat when using that method. Picture 8 shows the completed bus lines with the drive connections soldered on.

Picture 8. Bus wires glued in place with drive power wires attached.

The final step was to solder the connector end and verify the connections with a volt-ohm-meter. The final touch was to cut some small pads out of sheet rubber I bought from eBay and glue them to the backplane under each solder point.  Contact cement was used to hold each pad in place.

Organizing the Drive Power Wires

I clipped the power connectors off each SATA power cable and fed the wires through the vent holes before feeding the data cables through. I fed the power wires to the places I would attach them and then clipped them a bit longer than needed. After stripping 1/8” of insulation from each wire it was soldered into place. Black RTV silicone was applied over the power connections to insulate them from accidental shorts.

Picture 9. Bus wires soldered on and glued at power connector.

To organize the SATA cables themselves, I resorted to trimming some self-adhesive 1” square cable mounting pads with a Dremel as shown in Picture 11. I carefully peeled the double-stick tape off the back side of two pads and applied JB Weld to glue them onto the backplane. I arranged the SATA cables to lay down the center of the board as a bundle and secured them with cable ties. Keeping the profile of these cables as low as possible is important as there are three powerful case fans about an inch behind the backplane. You don’t want to stop the fans from working (or allow them to chop up your cables). I re-installed the backplane into the chassis, then test-fitted the fans to ensure I had the proper clearance.

Picture 11. Wire tie attachment pads. Unmodified pad is on the left.

Picture 12. SATA cables dressed and tied in place.

LED There Be Light!

After doing all of this surgery I realized I’d forgotten one little detail.  The 3Ware 9550SX-8 card has eight dual-pin connections for attaching drive LEDs. I wanted blinking lights! I posted to an Intel communities forum to see if anyone knew where I could get a schematic for the backplane. I thought I could use the existing surface mount LEDs for each drive and I was correct. Forum member Doc_SilverCreek  in the forum gave me the following information:

“Sounds like a heck of a project.  The LEDs are duel  (sic)/ bi colored LED packages hence the 4 legs. Pins 3 & 4 go to a 150 ohm pull up to Vcc. LED’s Pins 1 is the fault LED via an inverter (U3 & U5) and the back plane EPM7064 power driver controller (which likely is not working in your project). LED’s pin 2 in the activitive (sic) LED which runs directly to Pin 77 in the SCSI connector for each slot.  Hope this helps.”

So I knew where the LEDs were connected, but how could I connect them to the card yet make it easy to remove the backplane? My idea was to run wires from one side of each LED pair in a drive location to a walled ribbon connector socket glued onto the backside of the board. I’d have to remove the single remaining SCSI connector, seen in the upper-right corner of Picture 12, to make room for a cable connector. I’d also need to create a cable with a ribbon connector plug on one end to dual pin connectors on the other. I found the dual-pin connectors at DigiKey—these are commonly used in PC cases for front panel switches and LEDs. I could’ve recycled some of those but decided it was more trouble than it was worth. Spending under ten dollars for these connectors was definitely the right decision. Since these are non-polarized I could easily flip them if the drive LEDs don’t work when they’re first plugged in.

Picture 13. The SATA card-to-backplane connecting cable.

Since the LEDs are normally connected though 150-ohm resistors to the backplane’s 3.3 volt supply, I guessed the resistor was being used for protection as a current limiter. I wanted to leave those in place. I’d need to solder one end of each wire pair to one end of an LED, and the other wire to the far end of the corresponding resistor. The problem: it was necessary to cut the PC board traces at each end of the LED as well as each end of the resistor to completely isolate the components from the board’s 3.3-volt supply and prevent that voltage from reaching the controller card. I cut the traces with a razor knife, then reconnected the resistor and LED with a piece of 30-gauge wire-wrap wire. After soldering each LED wire lead in place I used a bit of hot glue to tack them down and fed them to the ribbon cable connector. After soldering each pair I mounted the backplane into the chassis and used my volt-ohm-meter to measure the two pins from each LED/resistor and make sure there was 0 volts across them.

Picture 14. LED connecting wires tack-soldered in place.

Picture 15. LED connector glued to backplane.

Picture 16. LED backplane connector viewed from top. Last 2 pins on left not used.

Picture 17. SATA controller-to-backplane cable attached and threaded in place.

The board was complete! All that remained was to install hard drives and load OpenFiler, which I’ll document in a future blog post.

Things I’d Do Differently Now

This project involved a lot of experimentation, from removing connectors to laying bus lines and LED cables. Everything’s functional but not as neat as I like things to be. Knowing what I do now, here’s what I’d do differently if I were tackling this again.

1) Buy a hot air rework station.  It would be much easier to remove those stupid connectors with one of these babies. While I was at it, I’d remove as many other IC chips and components as I could to make running the bus wires easier and reduce the backplane’s current draw. That part would have to be done very carefully if I wanted to keep the seventh slot open for the CD/floppy drive. I wouldn’t want to remove any parts necessary for those and the front panel switches/LEDs to function.

2) Lay the LED wires first. There are a lot fewer of these and they’re more flexible in their placement. I could use insulated 30-gauge wire wrap wire and pass them from front-to-back of the board by using the (now empty) SCSI connector holes.

3) Use a syringe to apply the bus wire glue. I’d mix a good amount of the JB Weld and put it into a syringe (minus the needle, of course).  I’d have to attach them all at once before the glue hardened in the syringe.

Who knows? Maybe I’ll tackle version 2 this upcoming Winter with the goal of making it functional AND pretty…

A Thanks and Tribute

I would have loved to share the success of this project with Mark Hoekstra, but unfortunately Mark passed away on September 30, 2008 at the young age of 34. I’d like to think that he’d be proud to have inspired another modder to take his accomplishment to the next level. Without the inspiration he provided I wouldn’t have gone this far. Thanks, man—I hope to meet you someday on the other side, wherever that may be.

When I hooked the tuner up to my office stereo I was impressed by the unit’s look and feel during use, but its sound left me dry.  There was limited treble and the bass, while there, lacked any kind of punch. A quick online search yielded many forum posts complaining about the same issue. Supposedly the optical output yielded normal-sounding audio, but two of my amps only have analog inputs. I listened to the tuner occasionally for several weeks but found that I couldn’t listen long due to its lifeless sound. I had a hunch that the analog outputs had the wrong resistor/capacitor combination on the driver for the analog jacks, so I spent time searching in vain for a schematic for the unit. I had resigned myself to the prospect of having to reverse-engineer the circuit’s audio stage when I finally stumbled across a web forum post by user ‘vintageaudioexchange’ at the AudioAsylum forum. This promised to be a simple swap that would yield immediate improvement, so I ordered three of the Burr-Brown OPA2604AP chips from Digi-Key.  The post’s author claims the part cost him around fifty cents—I’d like to know where he got his op-amps. Digi-Key charges over $5.00 each for these little buggers.

Last weekend I decided to open up one of the tuners and try the mod. As you can see in Photo 1, the unit is what’s fondly called a ‘gutless wonder.’

Photo 1. The Gutless Wonder Exposed.

The power supply is hidden beneath a metal box for shielding; the board to the box’s right holds the op-amp to be changed, shown circled in Photo 2.

Photo 2. The Chip In Question.

The stock op-amp is a JRE 4558, a low-dollar part that’s used to good effect in many products. Not so here!  I unsoldered the chip and tried to install a machine-pin DIP-8 socket. Unfortunately the row-to-row hole spacing is too far apart to use the better socket, so I installed a common, cheaper friction-fit socket before inserting the chip. While I was at it I re-touched the solder joints for the antenna inputs. The circuit board-mounted RF coax jack was the cheapest part I’d ever seen and was not attached to the back panel with the customary nut and washer. The panel hole is bigger than the jack itself although the jack is not centered in the hole. This creates a problem when a standard coaxial antenna cable hangs off the unit’s backside– the jacks’ bracket tends to bend. The jack can be seen in Photo 3.

Photo 3. 'Stock' antenna jack mount. Note the space showing poor alignment.

Mounting a jack from the chassis in this manner is typically done to isolate the jack’s ground from the unit’s power and data ground connections.  However, unless the cable is light and the user carefully attaches and removes that cable you get a mechanically unsound connection.  Even if the jack is of higher quality the stress point is still moved to the PC board itself, which in my opinion is a poor idea.  I tested with a volt-ohm-meter and found all grounds to be tied together. I scoured my “hell box” and found some appropriately-sized nuts and washers, shown in Photo 4.

Photo 4. Aw, Nuts (and washers)!

Since the PC board is mounted a short distance from the back panel, it would take two nuts to make a solid mount.  One of the nuts needed to be thicker than the other; this one would go on first and be screwed against the jack’s bracket. This filled the space between the jack and back panel.  (I could also have used a thinner nut and screwed it back off the jack to the point where it touched the inside of the case’s back panel.)  Washers were another story. The hole in the unit’s back was bigger than a standard washer for that size of connector. I found a few larger washers with solder tabs and used tin snips to cut the tabs off to make them appear like standard washers. The modified washer then went onto the connector from the outside of the back panel before attaching the second nut. This yielded a solid connection that protects the jack in case the cable gets jerked or pulled.

After re-connecting the unit I crossed my fingers and powered it up. While doing my research I’d found another thread where people were discussing op-amp swaps in audio equipment, and a poster cautioned that the resistor/capacitor filter values for the new op-amp might need adjustment since the new chip’s bandwidth exceeds the specs of the old part. I can report that this was unnecessary. There is a significant improvement to the sound—better high-end, improved low-end, and the sound is less fatiguing for extended listening. The original poster said he’s not the type to claim the difference “was like a blanket was lifted from the speakers,” but I will. The difference is that noticeable. I can now happily listen to my new acquisitions without constantly be bugged about their sound quality.

Additionally, I read that Best Buy sold a similar unit under the “Insignia” brand, the NS-HDTUNE. This tuner is reputed to have the same internal circuitry, so the op-amp swap should work on this tuner as well. These are still available as of today on the Best Buy website as an “outlet” item for $79.95; they won’t last long at that price.

I should also mention that, contrary to the logical extension that the “HD” in HD Radio stands for ‘High Definition” as it does in HDTV, it does not. It stands for “Hybrid Digital,” which is a trademark of its progenitor iBiquity Digital Corporation. A brief history of the format’s development can be found  here.

Even with the wonderful information-gathering capability of the Internet the name of this song eluded me. I asked a number of radio people if they recalled the song or could name it, but always got a blank stare or a negative response to my email queries.  I thought I remembered that the song came out in the mid-to-late 1960′s but, as it turned out, I was off by a few years.

While researching another recording artist today I found a Wikipedia article called “List of 1970s one-hit wonders in the United States.” There under the year 1971 was a song called “D.O.A.” by Bloodrock. Something clicked, and after reading the entry on Bloodrock I thought I had the right song but was still unsure.

Don't listen. You'll regret it. Really.

I went to YouTube and there it was…all 8 minutes and 30 seconds of it, in all its depressing glory. You can find it here.  A warning before you click the link: you will probably be depressed after listening to it.  Really, really depressed. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Why was this worthy of a blog post? I’d asked so many people about this and, since no one seemed to remember it, I began to think I was losing it. I’ve finally found the answer, and I’m so happy. At least, I was happy until I listened to the damn thing again.

So is this the most depressing song ever, or do you have another candidate? Feel free to post a comment and pass along your recommendation(s).

The trial finally concluded with verdicts of “not guilty” for each of the three counts; the only things that could be pinned to Casey were four counts of lying to the police. She was sentenced to four years, one year on each count, from which her time served was subtracted as well as the traditional “time off for good behavior.” The net result was that Casey was released a little over a week later.

Two weekends ago she was released. The press camped out at the jail to cover every exciting detail of her ex-perp walk. The end result was a quick trip by Casey from the jail to a waiting SUV, wearing a serious face until she got into the vehicle. A reporter got a picture of her as she entered wearing a smile of relief; afterward she was driven off. A news chopper tried unsuccessfully to follow her but was given the slip in the darkness. The release of her smiling image set the dogs off again, with all manner of regular folk and the media commenting nastily on why she was smiling and how sick they all felt at her seeming happiness.

Casey shows her patriotism before her world caved in.

You’d think it was all over, and could be forgiven for thinking so if you were a rational person. The news channels kept replaying the same thirty-seconds of Casey leaving the jail ad nauseaum the following day, with CNN’s reporters staying on-scene for hours after the non-event all the while discussing…what? The same few facts, conjecture, et cetera. As of today literally EVERYBODY is playing Where’s Waldo? and trying to find out where Casey went to.

My message to all the news outlets: STFU and move on!

Having said that, let me state the obvious: I think Caylee’s story was a tragedy. However, the public was not made privy to the details of the case; twelve jurors were. It was their job to decide whether or not the woman was guilty of murder beyond a reasonable doubt. Heard that before? It’s one of the basic tenets of our judicial system in this country. Given the evidence that was presented to them, they concluded that there wasn’t enough tangible evidence to lock her away or take her life. Despite her trial by media in which the woman was summarily condemned, the courts found her not guilty of the charges.

It’s all over now. Justice may not have been served by the legal system (at least according to all the armchair lawyers) but that’s how it goes in this country. Her life from this point forward, if you could call it that, will not be easy. She’ll be constantly recognized wherever she goes, and will not live a peaceful existence as if nothing ever happened. She’ll probably be spit upon, personally attacked, harassed and worse.  She’ll be lucky if some nutjob with a retribution complex doesn’t kill her in the first year of her freedom. She’ll be practically unemployable, at least in any capacity where she deals with the public.  She alienated her family (and probably most of her friends) so she’ll lead an isolated existence. Most, if not all, of these points could still be applied to her if she’d been given life in prison; the future she now faces in many ways is more unbearable than prison.

Let’s let this woman and the particulars of her case fade into the past and move on, shall we? The best we can hope for, if she was truly guilty, is a fate similar to OJ Simpson’s. Karma’s a bitch, and maybe she’ll end up in prison for something completely unrelated. Like it or not that may be the best that society’s collective rage can hope for.

Dayton radio has sucked hard for years.  Variety was sorely lacking; we have several country stations, an ‘album rock’ station that has been running the same format (with almost the same songs) since the seventies, an easy listening/contemporary station, several talk radio stations, and a few stations that play newer alt and hard rock. Oh, and the urban (read: rap) stations. It seemed that most of the stations were owned by Clear Channel, and they had severely limited playlists.   It’s for this reason that I can’t stand to listen to Cheap Trick, the Eagles, or Pat Benetar anymore.  It’s absolutely incredible that these bands and artists lasted as long as they did but only had one hit song apiece (at least according to Clear Channel.)

In November 2007 a local radio station changed it’s format and mantra to “We play anything.” Fly 92.9 started off great and played a lot of the radio mainstays, but many times a day would pull a song out of rock and roll heaven that hadn’t seen a turntable in years. You could count on being pleasantly surprised more often than not, and they breathed life into Dayton radio. At least on one end of the broadcast band.

Over the past couple of years, however, they’ve started slacking off. They don’t pull the moldy oldies out of the vaults like they used to. And more often that not they’ll play a song you’ve heard way too many times and say something like, “Betcha didn’t think we’d play this one today.”  Uh-huh. I really didn’t–after all, you already played it several times this past week, most recently yesterday afternoon…

So I’ve been getting more tweaked off when I hear their “We play anything” slogan. Will they really play anything?  What two pieces of music would be so unlikely for them to play and so stylistically different that airing them would validate their insipid marketing scheme? An idea occurred to me, so I visited their web page and submitted the following feedback (the wording’s not exact as I foolishly didn’t keep a copy for myself):  “I like your station but I am tired of your false advertising. You can’t truly say “We play anything” until you’ve played “Shaving Cream” by Benny Bell followed by Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture” during your peak daily listening hours. Oh, and if you did ever do that, I’d appreciate an email “heads up” to be sure I’ll be listening.”

Several hours later I received an email reply from program director Brad Waldo.  It read, and I’m quoting here, “I appreciate where you are coming from. We do not equate the ability to, and behavior of, “playing anything”, to the necessity of playing everything.  Thanks for listening. And if I do decide to do that segue, I will definitely send you an email to clue you in!”

Weasel-word marketing strikes again. Yes, we can play anything but we don’t see a need to play everything. But if you don’t play at least some oddball, totally incongruous pieces once in a while, can you truthfully state that you play anything? I haven’t heard “Shaving Cream” on local radio since the early eighties, and the only station that would’ve played the “1812 Overture” changed to country back in 1989. (For the sake of argument here I’m not counting the public radio stations. Their programming is so eclectic that it’s hard to tell what they’re playing when they’re playing it.)

In the meanwhile I’ve been listening to a new station. One of the longtime local country stations changed formats in March to become “Click 101-5,” a new ‘adult contemporary’ station. Their mix of songs is pleasing (for now)…we’ll see how long they remain fresh and relevant.