Are you volunteering to do the graphic design? If so, or you can find me someone who can, we'll do it.

I want a coffee mug and a sticker or seven.

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Executive Director GPU Users Group Inc. -
brad@gpuug.org

I flippin LOVE photoshop

:)

Sure I volunteer ^^
Mebbe we can have a community wide image design party so there is plenty of interesting diversity considering there is like 250 things for people
to choose from ^^

Here is a sample of some stuff I have done in the past for other people just cos I wanted to. First two are for the people at Red vs. Blue forums... don't know if they still use them, its been a looooong time since I been there.




I made an image for the game company I used to spend so much of my money in lol
It is a game from South Korea called Luminary (formerly GoonZu, it is a socioeconomical/political based game that got way too greedy as of late but I still play, just don't spend munny) I rooted around and found an old image from years n years ago and remade it. Imagine the original aLOT more purple than it is now :)

made a poster for a contest a few years ago for them too.

signature I made when I visited the aeria forums for lumi and helped out their GM's who weren't familiar with various tonnes of bugs the game has


The last was really fun because there were parts of the image missing:

after I got it in photoshop ^^ Looks totally different, cool and slightly wow lol


Making stuff for S@H will be awesome to say the least, because I totally believe in what is being done and whatever I can do to help, I will :D

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I has a MiniCity :)
http://en-ki-du.myminicity.com

Eric asked us for a new GPU for his shuttle so he could begin work on some GPU centric programming.

We've purchased http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130632 for him using preexisting funds.

You can track this purchase by visiting http://www.gpuug.org/purchases

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Executive Director GPU Users Group Inc. -
brad@gpuug.org

This card is $39.99 after rebate at circuitcity

edit: also compusa and tigerdirect. All three seem to be run by tigerdirect now.

edit2: I found these with the 'InvisibleHand' addon for firefox, it is pretty good at finding the lowest prices for things like this.

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Quick bit of news:

1. One of the shuttles we provided the lab was being used as a desktop/web hosting machine and for some reason the software keeps causing it to crash every few hours. Not sure why yet, but I sincerely doubt it's hardware related given the machine is all of a monthish old.

2. Synergy's going through hard drives like it's cool. Matt asked us to replace them which we'll get to next week during the outage once we get specs in hand.

3. 3 of 5 HD transport cases have been delivered to the lab as of today. These were 1 donated by Ben at NKOL and 2 from our fundraiser. The remaining 2 donated by Speedbump and DiLLiGaS are still on backorder but should ship any day. I'll follow up with tracking on those on our website as they ship.

4. Eric's GPU has shipped and should be there next week.

5. We're in a holding pattern for our big project we had planned due to time constraints. After the test node is put through its paces I'm hoping we'll pick back up and raise funds for the remaining nodes and peripherals.

6. The holdup in PaddyM's implementation has to do with the time required to download data from the JBOD drives from Paddy's side that were used to bring back GBT data. Apparently the drives came back with more data than expected and as a result the downloading of that data is taking a while. More on this as it comes.

That's all I've got for now guys, thanks.

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Executive Director GPU Users Group Inc. -
brad@gpuug.org

More news:

1. Eric got in touch today and confirmed delivery of the cases. I'm hoping they will get them pressed into service with the next shipment. Will let you guys know how they test out.

2. Thinman bit the dust today. I've been in touch w/ Eric to see if we can replace Thinman with either a similar (yet upgraded) version or if we can build something beefy which will run the web services while affording the opportunity to assign computational data tasks (think Synergy).

3. A few other systems took a bit of a hit today but apparently nothing serious which is great.

4. Lastly we're still raising funds for our 20 transport HD's. Currently SETI has only around 50 total transport drives for the project and I'd like to help fix that. Please help us out if you're able by visiting http://www.gpuug.org/catalog

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Executive Director GPU Users Group Inc. -
brad@gpuug.org

Sounds like they could use more UPS's at the lab more than anything else.

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Sounds like they could use more UPS's at the lab more than anything else.

More UPS's and/or software to gracefully shutdown their systems when the UPS batteries get low.

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SETI@home classic workunits: 93,865 CPU time: 863,447 hours
Join the [url=http://tinyurl.com/8y46zvu]BP6/VP6 User Group[

Sounds like they could use more UPS's at the lab more than anything else.

More UPS's and/or software to gracefully shutdown their systems when the UPS batteries get low.

I've floated the idea of UPS's and similar to the lab this morning. If they bite we'll make that a top priority.

Turns out the power issues fried hardware components in our two new workstations as well. We'll be replacing the damaged components soonest as well.

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Executive Director GPU Users Group Inc. -
brad@gpuug.org

Related news:

1. The lab has asked for 6 workstation UPS systems to protect their desktop setups. I've got to do a bit of research to see what systems are the best bang for our donor's buck but once we get that sorted we'll get a fundraiser set up.

2. Synergy lost 2 drives last week. As a result the lab has asked us to replace these drives which are Seagate ST31000424SS models. The total came out to $396.78 shipped w/ tax which has left our general fund a bit depleted. As a note we use our general fund for small (cost wise) but quickly needed items for the lab. In the past we've used this to purchase everything from GPU's to replacement JBODs to batteries for RAIDs and similar. The flexibility the general fund allows us is brilliant and I'm sure appreciated by the Lab.

If you'd like to help us fund quickly needed purchases like these in the future, please consider a donation to our general fund by visiting http://www.gpuug.org/catalog.

3. The lab has also asked us for power strips with a large surge protection factor as they've systematically had their current strips fail in the recent weeks. Once we sort out what items we need, we'll bundle these into the UPS fundraiser.

4. The lab is having a general meeting tomorrow from which I'm sure we'll get a few more items to provide. More on this later.

Thanks everyone.

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Executive Director GPU Users Group Inc. -
brad@gpuug.org

The lab has also asked us for power strips with a large surge protection factor as they've systematically had their current strips fail in the recent weeks. Once we sort out what items we need, we'll bundle these into the UPS fundraiser.

After 15+ years in the repair industry i can honestly say they are a waste of money. They do give some protection in some circumstances, but for noisy unstable power supply problems the only effective proection is a power conditioner.
Unfortunately, they're not cheap.

Even half decent UPS units provide reasonsble filtering & buck/boost for voltage variations. The best sort of UPS is what they call double conversion these days- the load is never connected to the mains power, it is always running from the battery- the mains just charges the battery. If the power goes out, there is no switch over time, mains voltage fluctuations have no effect, nor does line noise or surges.
But they tend to cost considerably more than a basic standby UPS.

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Grant
Darwin NT

The lab has also asked us for power strips with a large surge protection factor as they've systematically had their current strips fail in the recent weeks. Once we sort out what items we need, we'll bundle these into the UPS fundraiser.

After 15+ years in the repair industry i can honestly say they are a waste of money. They do give some protection in some circumstances, but for noisy unstable power supply problems the only effective proection is a power conditioner.
Unfortunately, they're not cheap.

Even half decent UPS units provide reasonsble filtering & buck/boost for voltage variations. The best sort of UPS is what they call double conversion these days- the load is never connected to the mains power, it is always running from the battery- the mains just charges the battery. If the power goes out, there is no switch over time, mains voltage fluctuations have no effect, nor does line noise or surges.
But they tend to cost considerably more than a basic standby UPS.

If one only wants power filtering and regulation, Sola used to make (and perhaps still does) a good series of transformers that would regulate voltage and shunt a bit of the spikes and noise.

Now this all comes down to what one is willing to spend on the effort.

A good UPS just keeps the power up and has software that instruct the server to shut down before impending doom.

Better UPSs do that, and also regulate and filter what is coming into the PSUs of the 'protected' servers to a significant degree.

The best are called 'online UPSs'. Or continuous conversion UPSs......
They are expensive, but the server never touches the line.
The AC incoming line is always converted to DC, also charging the batteries, and there is always a conversion from DC to AC. Which runs the load.

There is also a difference between 'true sine wave' UPS's and sinusoidial or even square wave UPSs.......

Some, when converting DC back to AC, chop the waveform into a square wave, hoping that the PSU will understand and convert it back to smooth DC..

The best ones actually recreate a sine wave form.

Just want to make you aware that not all UPSs are created equally.

The cheapies, which present a square wave to the PSU, are not good sometimes.

The other matter is the length of hold up time, which usually depends on the amount of battery amp hours on line.

I have a couple of good backups, but I fear that due to their age, the backup time is way down, due to the age of the batteries.

Batteries in UPS systems are generally limited to a lifespan of about 5 years, if the charging systems in the UPS are up to par.
So, after a few years, all bets are off, unless the lead acid or gel cel batteries are replaced.

That could be the reason why some of the UPSs in the Seti system which are in place are no longer up to par.

And, sometimes, replacing the batteries can be as costly as replacing the whole UPS.

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"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

For my own personal system I have a 2-box protection system on my incoming power. First a power strip with power conditioning & very high surge suppression, then the UPS with additional power conditioning and voltage regulation draws power from the power strip.

I get about 1-2 power outages per month where I am due to some aging electrical infrastructure insufficient for the needs of the new communities built in the last decade. Neither of my machines has ever hiccupped in the 2.5 years I've lived here, unless you count the death throes of a 5-year-old system that lived it's first 4 years of existence with me when I was a smoker. Taking that thing apart and smelling the tar and crud buildup and the reek of smoke and ash was pretty eye-opening. I'm amazed the old system lasted as long as it did with all that stuff inside the power supply.

I'm not sure how this would crossover to server systems, but we may want to put line conditioning and surge suppression in separate units from voltage regulation and battery backup. My understanding is that power conditioning and surge suppression hardware is a lot longer lasting than voltage regulation and battery backup hardware, meaning that if we get some all-in-1 unit, the entire thing might need to be replaced when half of it is still working fine.

We're going to start with:
6 workstation UPS systems
5 power strips

Basically we're trying to protect their workstation systems. Before folks start up on how we're not buying the most super awesome UPS systems, remember that their workstations are utilizing either a shuttle PC (Eric, Matt, Jeff, Lab machine, Dan) or a laptop (David, Andrew) along with a monitor or two and that's it. We're trying to simply provide a smoother power source that will result in less fried equipment.

Here's the hardware we're looking at:

http://www.apc.com/products/resource/include/techspec_index.cfm?base_sku=BR1000G&total_watts=200 QTY 6

http://www.apc.com/products/family/index.cfm?id=219 QTY 5

I should hear back on server UPS systems here soon. These may be beyond our ability to fund however there's no reason why we can't help them write grants/proposals and beg for hardware donations from manufacturers and retailers.

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Executive Director GPU Users Group Inc. -
brad@gpuug.org

We're going to start with:
6 workstation UPS systems
5 power strips

Basically we're trying to protect their workstation systems. Before folks start up on how we're not buying the most super awesome UPS systems, remember that their workstations are utilizing either a shuttle PC (Eric, Matt, Jeff, Lab machine, Dan) or a laptop (David, Andrew) along with a monitor or two and that's it. We're trying to simply provide a smoother power source that will result in less fried equipment.

Here's the hardware we're looking at:

http://www.apc.com/products/resource/include/techspec_index.cfm?base_sku=BR1000G&total_watts=200 QTY 6

http://www.apc.com/products/family/index.cfm?id=219 QTY 5

I should hear back on server UPS systems here soon. These may be beyond our ability to fund however there's no reason why we can't help them write grants/proposals and beg for hardware donations from manufacturers and retailers.

I have a version of the 1300va model of that UPS. Mine is something along the lines of 3 or 4 years old now. The only fault I can give it is that it underestimates the battery time remaining. Perhaps a F/W issue with my older model.

At work I just purchased 2 Smart-UPS X 1500va units to add to an older 1500va model we already had. The non-extended run time versions are much cheaper. Not sure if they like a few large UPS's or several smaller ones, but managed PDU's, AP7900 or AP7931, could be something they would be interested in as well.

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SETI@home classic workunits: 93,865 CPU time: 863,447 hours
Join the [url=http://tinyurl.com/8y46zvu]BP6/VP6 User Group[

New Fundraiser

This fundraiser will supply 6 UPS systems as well as 5 high surge capacity power strips for the SETI @ Home lab. The UPS systems are designed to protect the S&H workstations which currently have no UPS protection.

The lab has requested these items in light of the recent power issues we've seen. These power issues have damaged our two donated workstations as well as caused several old surge protectors to fail.

To donate to this fundraiser please visit http://www.gpuug.org/content/setihome-apc-back-ups-pro-1000-ups

____________________________________________________

Specifics:

This fundraiser will supply the following:

QTY 6: http://www.apc.com/products/resource/include/techspec_index.cfm?base_sku=BR1000G&total_watts=200 APC 1000 UPS system.

QTY 5: http://www.apc.com/products/family/index.cfm?id=219 APC Surge Protectors.

Total cost: $1062.00

____________________________________________________

Few quick notes:

1. Sign up for our twitter account which puts out instant notifications of changes on our website (purchases, new fundraisers, newsletters and similar). http://www.twitter.com/gpuug

You can also follow me if you're very bored http://www.twitter.com/bdeauman

2. Be sure to sign up for our newsletter by visiting http://www.gpuug.org. You can sign up right on our main page on the left side of your screen.

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Executive Director GPU Users Group Inc. -
brad@gpuug.org

You might try http://www.apc.com. They carry a variety of UPS units for workstations along with rack mounted units for a server closet.

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I'm a bit confused here. There is an option to pay with Paypal, but I still have to add all the personal information about me in order to process a transaction? That's sortof the reason why I use Paypal, so I don't spread my personal information all over the place.

I understand asking about my username, but why my name and address and whatnot for Paypal payments?

I'm a bit confused here. There is an option to pay with Paypal, but I still have to add all the personal information about me in order to process a transaction? That's sortof the reason why I use Paypal, so I don't spread my personal information all over the place.

I understand asking about my username, but why my name and address and whatnot for Paypal payments?

As we're a registered non-profit organization, we have to retain some records of the transaction's origins for our 501c3 reporting.

With that said your donation info is encrypted and we store no credit card transaction info what so ever. Further we will never distribute your personal information in any form at any time.

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Executive Director GPU Users Group Inc. -
brad@gpuug.org

We're still raising funds for our UPS systems as well as the 20 transport HD fundraiser.

Please donate if you're able by visiting http://www.gpuug.org/catalog

I'll beg if need be, I'm not above that.

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Executive Director GPU Users Group Inc. -
brad@gpuug.org