4. August 2008 by Aivas47a.

We humbly submit that Rampant Speculation is the friendliest site on the net.  Whether your interests run to computer hardware, or helping save humanity through folding at home, or PC gaming, or home theater, or photography, or current events, or anything else, you are welcome to join our virtual corner bar.  Pull up a stool right here:

http://forums.rampantspeculation.com/

We’re glad you found us.

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10. July 2008 by GBAKMARS.

This political thing is killing me!! So and so endorses so and so,but then behind the scenes says what he really thinks. I am a pastor and I just can’t see myself wanting to cut off anyone’s SLI!! In the compter world that would just be wrong!!

 Issues in Iran?

Hillary can’t get debt relief?

McCain; how does he fair today?

Lots of news and just curious if anyone has any thoughts to share?

I have a bunch but my machine is spread out all over the floor and if I don’t get back up and running and on line soon, I may have my SLI cut off, and it won’t be Jesse doing the job!!! LOL and also ROFL!!

Happy 4th of July just 6 days late!!

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25. June 2008 by GBAKMARS.

I just spent some time reading through a forum thread, beginning with Cad’s feelings about his Dell purchase and would he do it again.

I then saw Aivas point out that he would never again buy a Dell Performance machine. Laptop; yes. But from this point on he is a DIY person.

That was quickly disputed, in defense of Dell.

Another then chimed in regarding Aivas’s comment and suggested that saying negative things about Dell could hurt our XPS-Folding contribution.

Aivas then pointed out that we are not a Dell-owned Folding Team. Our folding team has the XPS logo in it, and as Aivas pointed out, that is good PR for Dell. He did go on to say that the Folding team came out of the XPS 700 motherboard customers that had a conflict with Dell and that there are many Rampantspeculation members that were a part of that event. If it had not been for that incident then it is very unlikely that the XPS Folding team would have ever been formed. So, the Folding Team was assembled independent of Dell.  In fact you might say that it was formed “in spite” of Dell.

Aivas also pointed out that there are all kinds of folks on the XPS Folding Team and that you do not have to be a “Dell” person to participate. There are HP people, Gateway, DIY’ers, and even Mac owners!

I have a couple of comments and observations that I want to make here. I am not in any way accusing anyone in this thread of doing anything wrong.

#1 We, at Rampantspeculation.com, do not need to worry about “protecting” Dell. And we do not need to worry that if someone says something negative about Dell they are going to pull their XPS logo. I know from personal experience that Dell “WANTS” to know what they are doing wrong and they are not afraid of criticism. One of the changes that I witnessed internally at Dell, is that because of our motherboard issue, people at Dell became better listeners, more transparent, more willing to admit mistakes, more willing to go public with failures, more willing to take customer suggestions and make a better “customer centered” product. Because of the motherboard event, Dell became a better company. Their products improved. Their blog improved. The forum improved. Customer Care was enhanced. More leaders became aware of what was happening at the customer level.  I saw many very positive “spin offs” that came out of a negative situation. My challenge to Michael Dell was to “admit failure, say, “I’m sorry” to customers, fix the problem, and then TURN THE XPS 700 MOTHERBOARD FAILURE INTO ONE OF DELL’S GREATEST SUCCESS STORIES. 

#2  By helping Dell, we helped the customer.  My goal throughout the motherboard incident was to find help for the customer and I chose to do that by helping Dell become a better “customer centric” corporation, and by so doing, the customer would find the help that they were looking for. From the top down, Dell listened and changes were made. Many changes were made, and they didn’t only produce good things for the XPS 700 customers; they produced positive changes for customers all around the world that are buying all kinds of Dell products.  Dell sent a video to all of its employees, sharing with them, what I had learned from the XPS 700 experience, and what Dell could do to become a better customer-caring corporation. (I’ve actually had Dell employees say to me, “Hey, you are the guy in that video Dell sent to employees!”) Our efforts impacted some 80,000 employees. World-wide Dell was working at becoming a better company because of the criticism that was shared by many of us here at Rampantspeculation.  So I want to go on record that although we are not a Dell Forum, we are a group of people that are interested in having a healthy and caring partnership with Dell. If someone here wants to criticize Dell that is ok, because I know that it will produce good things for future Dell customers. I also know that and if the customers don’t speak up, the company doesn’t improve or change, and in this competitive market, a corporation would be foolish to turn their ear away from the voice of an outspoken and knowledgeable PC user.  And for the record, Aivas is one of those types of PC users. A PC company would be foolish to not listen to his input.  Back in the beginning, when our motherboard issue started, there was no one that was as helpful to Dell as Aivas was. He made a multitude of suggestions to the DCF “Improve the next generation XPS” suggestion thread. He worked hard at trying to improve Dell. Unfortunately for Aivas, the thread got dropped and his suggestions never showed up in the next generation. But because of his involvement with our motherboard efforts Dell is a better company. Aivas has never been a “Dell Basher”, and that is one thing that we don’t promote her.

#3  I personally am committed to helping Dell become a better corporation. I have met enough leaders inside the company, from Michael Dell to Glen Robson and Bob Pearson, from Neil Hand and Dick Hunter to Lionel Menchaca, ChrisM, and others, which I believe make it worth my time and effort to continue to invest my energies to help Dell care for its customers.  Several of the leaders that I have been able to work with, I have developed a great deal of respect for and I simply want to help them be more successful at what they do. I know it can sound strange, but sometimes you just want to help someone improve because you care about them. When I met with Michael Dell, I found myself not feeling separated from him by power or money. I simply enjoyed my time with him. I trusted him and I felt that he wanted to know what I thought and what my ideas were. I walked out of that meeting caring about him as a person and not a position. I was not at all impressed by his title, power, or riches. I was impressed with Michael Dell the person that is much like me in many ways.  I made a decision in that moment to do what I could to care for him and the work that he is involved in. I believe that I can help him understand and care for customers, because I am a real live customer and I have had the rare opportunity to see it all from both sides. If I didn’t trust Michael and some of these other leaders, and if didn’t genuinely care about them, then I wouldn’t be making this investment.

#4  I also believe that we are in serious trouble here in the USA. Corporations are not trusted. People feel that they are not heard or listened to by “big business”. It is rare to find a customer that “believes in Corporate America”. More and more people are buying from other countries because of the negative reputation of American companies, products, and customer care, and I have a burden to try and make some investment to help change some of this.  I have worked with Dell and I personally saw firsthand, the “failure turned into success”. I had the listening ear of a CEO and Board Chairman, and watched VP’s and engineers take notes with every intention of taking to heart the concerns and cares of many of the folks here at Rampantspeculation. I hold out great hope for Dell’s future and believe that we here at Rampantspeculation can provide assistance, even if it is in the negative form that Aivas has just recently shared.

#5  I would like to see Rampantspeculation and Dell have a long-term mutually helpful relationship. I would like to see people come to Rampantspeculation and get good solid advice about how to fix and repair Dell computers as well as improve them. I would like Rampantspeculation.com be another place, not a substitute for DCF, for people to come and hang out with others that don’t own Dells. I would like to see this site promote the good things that Dell is doing, and to share the ideas that would make Dell a better PC company. I would like to have Dell reps like Bill, feel that they can come to our site and glean important ideas, and share with us new innovation that Dell is coming out with. 

And in the other direction, I would like to see RampantSpeculation.com members visit the Dell Community Forum, IdeaStorm, and other Dell sites, and provide valuable positive and negative feedback that will strengthen Dell and make it a better company.

#6  I want the RS/XPS Folding Team relationship to grow faster than it has ever grown before. I want as many Dell XPS owners as possible to become a part of the folding team. I believe that together we here at RampantSpeculation.com along with Dell XPS can produce the world’s strongest folding team ever! I am very supportive of having the logo have XPS in it. That is something that we should protect and be privileged to have. The goal has to be kept before us. We are building a folding team so that sick kids and adults can get some relief and help, and maybe even some lives saved. I would love to see a logo with RS and XPS folding hands together in a RS-XPS Folding Team. 

#7  One of the great spin offs of the XPS 700 motherboard event was the formation of the XPS folding team. This never would have happened if Michael Dell and his leaders hadn’t of gotten involved and provide a wonderful solution that benefited XPS 700 owners- worldwide.  This Team is a prime example of how Michael Dell took the challenge and dared to turn “Failure Into Success”. If only more companies had the guts!

#8 Dell is now moving into China. In fact, I have been in contact with many of my Chinese friends that I grew very close to during my 17 years of work over there, and have asked them for input on how Dell might be more effective in selling their computers and caring for a culturally different kind of customer that most Americans would not understand. I have even worked on developing some slogans that would “captivate” the Chinese eye when they saw the advertisement.  I would love to see us tap into the “Folding Potential” in the same way that Dell is trying to tap into the “Buying Potential” of such a large population.

I see exciting things down the road for RampantSpeculation.com and Dell together!

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25. June 2008 by GBAKMARS.

I am back in action!!! Well almost!! Monday, I installed air-conditioning in my “Computer Room”, which we used to call the family study!! What a pain putting an 8000 BTU portable unit in a six foot upright crank open window. 

My design is patentable! Aivas, I want to hire you! The guy at Lowes said that people all the time ask how they can set up a system with this kind of window and he said, “I tell them it isn’t possible. You have to buy an internal standup unit that drains into the floor and sends a exhaust fan out the window.”  I told him, you don’t know the kind of determination of the people that we have at Rampantspeculation, when it comes to cooling our computers!!

When I start taking pictures of my unit that I owe a few people here, I will include the AC set up as well. Maybe some of you are facing the same thing. It is awesome to shut my study door (computer room door!), and sit in a nice cool room during the heat of summer. Before, my PC would really heat things up and I would have to run central air just for one room! Did not make the wife happy!! “That computer is costing us a fortune!” She’s got that right!

My next latest move is that I am selling my Areca 1210 Raid Controller along with 4 x 150 GB Raptors! No, Aivas, I am not giving up Raid!!   I am moving up to the new Areca 1222 which supports 8 hard drives and runs SATA and SAS. It has the newest Intel Processor and it will allow me to run 15,000 rpm drives!!! Anything to push my score closer to Aivas’s!! LOL Actually, for some strange reason 4 new 300 GB Velociraptors showed up at my front door and for the life of me I can’t figure out who ordered them!

So I will be setting up a 4 x 300 Raid 0 on this new card and then running my other hard drives off of it. It also has an external port so I could run my external Sata drives off of it as well.  I may break down and get two Cheetahs and run my OS off of those in a Raid 0!!!  

I am still waiting on my Step-Up GTX 280’s from Evga as I have now moved from #209 to #159. I sent a letter to three of the top leaders at Evga providing them with some helpful suggestions to improve their step up program. Things like cross-shipping, reasonable shipping rates, availability of wider range of step up selection, were suggested. The way it is now, I will have about a 10 day to 2 week turn around per card. I will have to do one card at a time so my machine won’t go two weeks without a graphics card……

CoolIT is re-plumbing me a new Boreas with the CPU Block for my QX9770 and two Blocks for the GTX 280 cards. I will then send my unit back!! This outfit has been amazing. They have even run special tests on the unit to see how they can improve the cooling for the “warmer” QX9770.

Lian Li is sending me a new motherboard tray over night air and not charging me for shipping. My first one had a crease in it and I used it anyway, and now that I am “rebuilding” I thought I would just go ahead and buy a new one. I contacted Performance PCs and they never responded so I called Lian Li in California. I talked with a Taiwanese gal. I spoke Chinese with her and she was so awesome that she said she would just charge me a $15 handling fee and give me free next day shipping!!! She wanted to give me the board free, but I said I should pay something as I didn’t report it when I got the Armour Case 2 months ago.

I bought the Areca 1222 from PC Pit Stop. I got the card, a battery backup module (in the event of power loss any unwritten info will be store in the Raid Card), and a front slot Control Panel. From that I can make adjustments using the LED readout of performance. The battery took them an extra day to get so they sent me my order “over night” for FREE!!

So a Big Two Thumbs up for Lian Li and CoolIT and PC Pit Stop!!!   I am extremely impressed with their care and service. All three of these companies went out of their way to make me as a customer feel valued!! Remember that phrase, “We value you as a customer.”?  Well, I like to point companies that actually do what they say! These companies deserve some recognition for such great service.

So as soon as Evga gets me my two GTX 280 cards, and PG shows me how to overclock them to 700 Mhz, then I will be set for at least 3 months!!! Just kidding!! This is just too much fun! I am going to sit back and watch the first generations of the next Intel CPU, Nehalem, be tested by Aivas. I will be content to run my Evga 790i Ultra with 8 GB of Patriots Vipor DDR3 C7 Ram, and listen to my Creative Elite Sound, while watching a Blue-Ray on my LG Blue-Ray DVD burner!!

This computer hobby is really not that expensive!  Now I am rolling on the floor laughing! (Crying)

But one final note that redeems all of this “craziness”;  I have joined the RampantSpeculation/XPS Folding team and have so far turned in 6 work units. I had a break in the action while out of town and will soon be moving up to the SMP folding, which will really crank out the work units. Please, even you haven’t done any folding or would like to learn what it is and how you can use your computer to help in a wonderful cause to find cures for awful diseases check out this link on our forum inside.

http://forums.rampantspeculation.com/viewforum.php?f=21

My next blog post will be about the new house I had to buy to handle my computer set up!!

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13. June 2008 by GBAKMARS.

If there was ever a Newscaster that I admired and trusted, it was Tim Russert. As I am sure you are aware, he died tonight of some kind of heart complication. In the media we will hear mainly from those that were close to him personally, other media co-workers, people in the business, and of course politicians. I doubt that we will hear or see much testimony from people like you and me, the ones that he really wanted to serve. So this is just a small, but heartfelt statement from someone that didn’t know Tim personally, but trusted his journalism, was impressed with his emphasis on things that were important like God, family, friends, and us. This is a thank you to his family for providing us with years of the kind of journalism that we can be proud of. Not all of us may agree with everything that he said, or all that he stood for, but I am sure most will agree he lived a life of service, concerned about the bigger and longer lasting things.

We often go through life, especially in America, that we are “owed” 78 years. But no one ever made such a guarantee. We can hope for a long life, but I believe that what is more important than years is what we do with the gifts God has given us. With the passing of Tim Russert, I find myself, tonight, reflecting on the last years of my life. I am 53. What would  I want to be known for if my life came to an unexpected end?

If we are not careful  we can find ourselves chasing  the illusion that if we are successful and financially secure, then life will be grand. It just is not true statement. It isn’t a guarantee.  I met with a very wealthy man two years ago and while driving to that meeting the thought hit me, as I wondered what his life might be like, that I am one very blessed person. I realized that because I didn’t have great wealth, I had found joy in places that wealth may have never of taken me to. I wouldn’t trade all that God has provided me with for the position and/or wealth of another. I am not saying you can’t have both. Of course you can. But when you have wealth and position, the issue of living a life  of trust and faith just doesn’t seem to come along quite as easily. When we are financially secure and the the food is before us on the table it becomes easier to forget who really put it there. From what I saw and heard about Tim Russert, it appeared that he never forgot what was truly important. 

My wife and I have often said to each other that the happiest days of our lives were when we didn’t know how the next bill was going to be paid. It was in those times that we kneeled down with our children and asked God to take care of us. And when he did, the smile and joy on the faces of my four daughters was “pricelesss”. Most of what we do here will not be going with us, and the question has to be asked by the wise person, “Am I investing or spending my life?” Where does my joy and security in this life come from?

It is like the man that showed up at the gates of heaven with all his gold, and God said to him, “Son, why did you bring all of this “pavement” with you?”

 To his family, our prayers are there for you.  These are the prayers from the ones that Tim served week after week, but may have never known how much we appreciated him; thank you  for sharing him with us. You have much to be proud of. Some lives out there that he touched may very well change the world and no one will ever know that Tim Russert played an important role in the better world that those people help make. Thank you for giving us a life that modeled so much of what we need in our country today.

Life is short, and even Tim’s death will serve a purpose in my life. Tonight it is causing me to ponder once again, what am I on this earth to do? Who can I help? What eternal investments can I make while I still have the time? I’m betting Tim asked himself these kind of questions. We all should. Don’t you think?  I know that while I was driving to that meeting a couple of years ago, I couldn’t help but think how I might make the life of a rich and successful man  “richer.”  It is an ironic thought, but it really is the one reality, that none of us will be able to escape; our days here are numbered and the rich, in the end, may discover that they were poor, and the poor that they were rich beyond measure.

A favorite quote of mine is from a man named Jim Elliot. A movie was made a couple of years ago called “The End of the Spear” and it was built around this man’s dream. Jim Elliot wrote,”He is no fool that gives what he can not keep, to gain what he can not earn.”

It is in asking these kind of questions from ourselves that helps RS team members here, fold for the Stanford Folding Project; and even go out and buy 16 more machines to make an even greater folding investment!! They are thinking about investing in the needs of others and that makes each one rich in the best kind of way!

I love the folks here at RampantSpeculation. I have always gotten the feeling that many do spend time wrestling with the issues that are eternal and will impact and help others. You see it every day in the way people care about each other’s concerns.

Our prayers go out for the friends and family of Tim Russert. He helped shape the way many people view their lives, including me and others here at RampantSpeculation.com. I pray tonight that each of us will be changed a little bit because of a life that appeared to have ended, “Early”. What we call  ”early” may have been God’s, “You have done a great job! Welcome home.”

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11. June 2008 by GBAKMARS.

On Sunday afternoon a severe line of thunderstorms with tornados streaked through the north side of Detroit. Having a battery backup/surge protector to help with shutdown is a nice thing, but it didn’t do much for the next four days, while we were without power! When my wife, 4 daughters, and I lived in Asia we often had long spells without power. A typhoon was a guaranteed 4-7 day loss! Back then we relied on snail mail for communication and almost all work was non-computer related. For most people in the world that go through great tragedy, such as the recent quake victoms in China or the Tsunami in Southeast Asia that killed hundreds of thousands, computers were not a part of the equation. Most of our friends in Nepal don’t have electricity for a light bulb, let alone a computer or the internet. Many people’s daily lives around the globe made my last 4 days look absolutely wonderful. We still had running water, toilets, a neighbor’s generator to run our fridge, batteries, flashlights, and a car to get into a drive to an airconditioned school.

These past 4 days left me out of touch with my friends at RampantSpeculation.com, but they were wonderful reminders of how easy my life is.

How would your life be impacted if your computer was taken away from you for a year? Now there is a thought to ponder. What would you do? How would your life change?

It is nice to be back and on a keyboard, but I was glad to have the time to reflect about those that might need some help- from me? Or you?

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6. June 2008 by GBAKMARS.

There has been a lot going on in the world these past several months. For sure there is a lot of technological change on the verge of release. If you were to share what kind of topics you would like to see raised here on the blog, what would you suggest? I am very interested in hearing the direction that you would like to see the blog go. I am also interested in hearing personally from those that have a passion to express some concerns in a blog format. Rather than share what you don’t want, try and share what you would like to see and let’s see where it takes us. The forum is full of fantastic ideas, opinions, and activities. I want to bring some of that to the front page. Hope to get some comments. Thanks all!!

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