You may be looking in the “Startup” tab of MSCONFIG. This is an excellent resource (For the uninitiated, click Start > Run > msconfig). The only item placed here by default reads “Microsoft Windows Operating System”. Anything else is part of a third-party application you have installed, and it’s probably an update checker that has no business running on your system. It could even be spyware.

I even have the Windows OS item unchecked on my system, as they did a bad job of explaining what it does; and I have had no negative side effects. I suggest unchecking them one at a time and seeing if anything breaks. Your system will boot faster and run more smoothly. You can always go back to msconfig and re-enable them.

What do I have in my MSCONFIG? Management apps for my webcam, Synergy (Which connects me to the server’s monitor under the cameras… Yeah that’s what I’m looking at.), Bluetooth driver, a multi-monitor management app called Ultramon, and a bandwidth monitoring applet. Nothing else has any business starting with my OS.

But what about services?

Here are the services I have elected to allow an automatic start on my Vista SP1 box:

Application Experience
Application Host Helper Service
Base Filtering Engine
COM+ Event System
Computer Browser
Cryptographic Services
DCOM Server Process Launcher
Desktop Window Manager Session Manager (graphic session management management)
DHCP Client
Diagnostic Policy Service
Distributed Link Tracking Client
DNS Client
Group Policy Client
Human Interface Device Access
IKE and AuthIP IPsec Keying Modules
IP Helper
IPsec Policy Agent
Multimedia Class Scheduler
Net.Pipe Listener Adapter
Net.Tcp Listener Adapter
Network List Service
Network Location Awareness
Network Store Interface Service
Plug and Play
Program Compatibility Assistant Service
ReadyBoost
Remote Procedure Call (RPC)
Secondary Logon
Security Accounts Manager
Security Center
Server
Shell Hardware Detection
Simple TCP/IP Services
Software Licensing
Superfetch
System Event Notification Service
Task Scheduler
TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper
Terminal Sevices
Themes
UPnP Device Host
User Profile Service
WebClient
Windows Audio
Windows Audio Endpoint Builder
Windows Driver Foundation
Windows Event Log
Windows Image Acquisition
Windows Time
Workstation

I allow these services to run Automatic (Delayed Start):
TPM Base Service
Background Intelligent Transfer Service
KtmRm for Distributed Transaction Coordinator
Windows Update

All other services are set to “Manual” or “Disabled”. Those are my recommendations, so you can stop Googling; there’s your answer.

The first thing I did was play Call of Duty 4 at higher settings. It felt smooth, but this test was hardly practical as I had never really seen it lag. So I just wrote the CoD4 Review and moved on to greater things.

I sat for a moment and tried to think of the most poorly-performing game I could think of, and it hit me: Supreme Commander. The obvious ripoff of Total Annhiliation, right down to the bugs. It seemed obvious to me upon the first play of SupCom that the testers must have been using computers that don’t exist yet; otherwise it never would have made it to the shelves with its framerates in large battles.

So I played Supreme Commander for a couple hours today, watching my task manager in hopes of seeing a performance increase. Sure enough, the large battles are still laggy. Why? One obvious reason is that it was only using one core. A game like Supreme Commander really needs to be multi-processor aware; alas, it is not. Bah.

I’d run benchmarks, but then I’d have to put the old Core 2 Duo dual-core CPU back in to compare; and these stock LGA775 heatsinks are a pain to remove and install. Besides, 3DMarks and Photoshop filter times don’t really apply to my kind of workload.

I did at least find out one cool little info nugget: When you set the affinity of a process from the Task Manager, it remembers your setting when you close and re-open the process. I hadn’t noticed that on the Core 2 Duo. So now I have all system processes running on Core 3 and all normally-open applications running on Core 2. That leaves Cores 0 and 1 totally free for when I want to do some serious number-crunching, gaming, or generally running anything that isn’t multi-processor aware. I’ll probably set Winamp to core 2.

This review will be split into these sections:
Storyline
Gameplay
Graphics
Performance

Storyline:
The story opens with a scene in which you must land on a ship in the north Pacific, kill a bunch of bad guys, and retrieve a document. Toward the end of the opening scene, the ship gets hit by a missile and begins to capsize. You must escape to the helicopter while navigating a complex maze which is in the process of flipping over, all the while dodging obstacles of the destructible environment. When you jump off the ship, you nearly miss the helicopter; but a teammate grabs you and pulls you aboard.

The game then cuts to the opening sequence, in which you follow the President of BombedOutistan from his own first-person perspective. He is being driven to the site of his execution in a realistic representation of what appears to be an ‘89 Toyota Corolla. The scene lasts a few minutes and is used to give you a moment to admire the graphics without having to worry about getting shot; all the while the credits are rolling. I hate opening sequences you can’t skip.

Of course, the leader of some third-world country just got shot on TV, so the USMC and SAS can’t stand by and do nothing. So the Intelligence people found out who ordered the execution, a guy named Al-Asad, and send you in to kill him. The next scene opens with a series of helicopters oddly reminiscent of Apocalypse Now — I could almost hear Ride of the Valkyries playing in the background. Eventually you rappel from the helicopters and make your way to the building where you think the target is hiding. Alas, it was just a bunch of minions in need of fragging. So you head out and learn he’s in the TV station.

Dozens of good guys swarm the TV station, but in piddly waves of five or six; each wave waits for the previous wave to die before going in. Wave after wave of good guys battle wave after wave of bad guys, and eventually you manage to make it to the roof. You have a moment for some gratuitous sniping and move to the broadcast room, only to find it empty. The broadcast was a recording. Then you learn from CNN that Al-Asad Muhammed McGenericTerrorist is preparing to make his last stand in the Capitol City of WeAreSoPooristan, and they’re dug in deep.

So you’d think the next mission involves attacking Al-Asad in the capitol, right? Nope; you have to save some tank that’s under attack, and has nothing to do with the plot. You have to blow up three tanks and kill a few hundred bad guys to continue the story. During your egress, your helicopter gets shot down by a SAM two miles south of Waypoint 5. As you might suspect, your next mission is simply to shoot bad guys until you can pick up another ride. Then once again, for totally non-plot-related reasons, you get to my favorite mission: The AC-130 Spectre Gunship.

Your task as a temporary Aerial Gunner is simply to kill bad guys; but if you stick to the mission, you won’t have as much fun. What you have to do is to kill time by blowing up nearby buildings with the 120mm cannon. You can’t blow up the church because of the Law of Armed Conflict, despite the fact that hiding legitimate targets in the church makes the church a legal target. Their military advisor messed up on this one.

Somewhere along the line, the big voice on the radio finds out that Al-Asad has a nuke. You are dispatched to locate and retrieve it, but the mission just ends up being more shooting bad guys. On your way out, a neighboring helicopter is shot down and you have to retrieve the pilot. There are so many bad guys, you can’t possibly kill them and get the pilot within your 90 second window (90 seconds until the nuke goes off. How they found that out, who knows?); so you have to sprint to the pilot, pick her up, and run back to the helicopter. Your teammates take care of the Tango’s (terrorists / generic arabs). Of course, the effort ends up in vain…

… As your groups depart in the helicopters, you’re standing in the back of yours, shooting bad guys on the ground, when the nuke goes off directly in view. There is an obvious color bias to orange for a while, and you start seeing the helicopters behind you get hit by the shockwave, one by one. Then they delay a second and blow up. One after another, and eventually the one directly behind you gets hit. Guess who’s next?

Sure enough, yours gets hit and crashes. You recover from the impact just long enough to see the mushroom cloud off in the green distance and die a dishonorable death. Thus ends Chapter 1.The remainder of the game is pretty much a whole lot more shooting at people. There are no more fun Gunship missions. I guess the point I’m trying to make here is that despite all the diversions and mini-games, the overall story is convincing and immersive.

Gameplay:
Bullets go through walls. Bad guys raise their guns over their heads and shoot sideways like in the movies. The physics are realistic. The gameplay is freaking awesome. As someone who has never been in urban combat, it seems convincing enough to me. The Arcade Mode, accessible after beating the game, is fun and exciting, while giving you a chance to continually compete with yourself for a higher score. See if you can beat my high score on “Fire from Above”: 1,670,000 points.

Graphics:
COD4 has brought us one step closer to participating in a movie. That is to say, the realtime in-game graphics look better than CGI movies that took months to render with a thousand computers. We are very close now to games that look photorealistic.

Performance:
I played this game on two configurations, because I upgraded my CPU in the middle of my evaluation. You know how these things go. My system isn’t tuned for incredible framerates or awesome detail, but it does a really good job for the hardware I have.

System:
Intel Core 2 Duo (Previously) / Core 2 Quad Q6600 “Kentsfield” (As of 12/27/2007)
The awesomest out-of-stock mobo: EVGA 680i
2GB Corsair XMS2
3x Sapphire ATI Radeon X1650 Pro / 512MB

I play in 1280×1024 at 2x FSAA and 2x Ansiotropic Filtering, with all other options turned up to full. I haven’t Frapsed it, and don’t know how to get a framerate counter in COD4, but I can tell you I’m getting more than 30FPS… And 30 Frames per Second should be enough for anyone. The performance is great.

Pros:
- Immersive gameplay
- Awesome graphics
- Great performance
- A good way to vent frustration toward real people you can’t shoot
- Frequent auto-saves

Cons:
- You don’t get to pick your weapons before you leave; but you can switch to enemy weapons as they drop
- You never get enough ammo.
- No manual saves
- Doesn’t cause free money to rain down from the skies

Summary:
COD4 is an overall great game, and redeems the horrible aspects of COD 1 through 3. It provided everything it promised, and hours of entertainment. It continues to be entertaining after you beat the game, which is a sadly uncommon aspect of modern games. I award the game a 95% and 5,000 arbitrary Cool Points. Go buy it today.

The CPU features dual 128KB L1 caches and dual 4MB L2 caches and twice as many cores as its predecessor. Additionally, it runs on a shiny-new 65nm process. By “Now aging”, of course, I mean 45nm chips will be in the market soon. Those of you in the know will know that the fabrication process refers to how far apart the on-die circuit pathways are. For example, my old Athalon XP 3200+ CPU runs a .13 micron process (130 nanometers). Smaller processes mean less heat and more circuit traces that can be crammed into the same space.

Newegg has 940 reviews of the chip on their official Quad Core Q6600 Kentsfield product page, and 89% of them (837 people) rated it 5/5. But I didn’t buy it at Newegg.

Some of you may have dugg that CompUSA is going out of business; thus, everything in the store is 10-50% off. I got mine for $250, had it immediately, and didn’t have to pay shipping or worry about UPS’s infamous foot holes.

That’s right, folks, you heard it here first, even before Slashdot: CompUSA is going out of business and has slashed its prices.

I managed to coaerse the driver of the pickup at the next pump to give me a jump start, and drove straight to the AutoZone near home. New symptoms abound during the trip across town. I was hoping it just needed a new battery until the new symptoms began to manifest.

The car has always had problems with performance. I mean, it’s a sports car with a 0-60 of 15 seconds, for crying out loud! It was much worse this time, with all the sputtering and stalling you can imagine. I had to let it stall, drop it back into gear, and feather the gas while deploying the E-brake at red lights just to keep it from dying on the way.

Every time I’d apply an electrical appliance, such as the power windows, the engine would lose a noticable amount of performance. The CD player, which doesn’t have an “Off” switch, spit out its CD a few times.

I managed to limp my way to AutoZone. Just as I pulled into my parking space, the engine died one last time and the car beeped at me seven times. You know the beep; it’s the “Put your seat belt on, idiot” beep. I figured I’d ask the friendly AutoZone people about it while I was there.

Sure enough, my battery was totally dead. Installing a $75 replacement with 775 cold cranking amps immediately corrected the power problems. I had them do a second test after installing the new battery, while the engine was running. Sure enough, the alternator wasn’t charging - Even at 4000 RPM. With the engine running, the battery had a net output of 12.25V, where their clerks claim it should be 12.5V. So I had them price me up a new alternator.

At $104.99, the estimate was cheaper than I expected; and they estimate iit would take a mechanic 2-3 hours to replace. So my math says I should be able to get it replaced for a total of no more than $300. Obviously, the hundred bucks is after the core deposit return for the old alternator; but obviously I can’t return that until after I have it replaced.

The part that bothers me is that I don’t know when the alternator totally died. It’s been on its last leg since I first bought the car. At night, I could easily detect the electrical system alternating between full and about half power every second or two. The effect was so substantial that the resulting flash of the headlamps resembled that of a police cruiser in code-3 pursuit.

So I’ll probably end up having the alternator work done next weekend.

It became evident while I was there that I needed some additional supplies… So I got an emergency jumper kit (Portable battery charger) and a set of jumper cables, just in case of relapse.

I also got a new ice scraper, cuz J broke mine when he sat on it yesterday; and a squeegee to clear the snow and ice scrapings from the car after I scrape it. I also picked up a Haynes manual for the car, as they don’t carry Chilton’s for the 90 Eclipse. I still don’t know what the seven beeps were.

This thing’s becoming a giant money hole.

A user with over 10,000 forum points named Kaushalparik27 was nice enough to translate the code into C# and link back to me. Isn’t it great when people give credit where credit is due? Now that I’ve given credit, here is the C# version of my original post:

using System;
using System.Data;
using System.Configuration;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.Security;
using System.Web.UI;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts;
using System.Web.UI.HtmlControls;
using System.Data.SqlClient;
using System.Data.Sql;
using System.Net;
using System.IO;
public partial class _Default : System.Web.UI.Page
{
    protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        //base.OnLoad(e);
        string url = string.Empty;// Request.QueryString["DownloadUrl"];
        if (url == null || url.Length == 0)
        {
            url = "http://img444.imageshack.us/img444/6228/initialgridsq7.jpg";
        }
        //Initialize the input stream
        HttpWebRequest req = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(url);
        HttpWebResponse resp = (HttpWebResponse)req.GetResponse();
        int bufferSize = 1;
        //Initialize the output stream
        Response.Clear();
        Response.AppendHeader("Content-Disposition:", "attachment; filename=download.jpg");
        Response.AppendHeader("Content-Length", resp.ContentLength.ToString());
        Response.ContentType = "application/download";
        //Populate the output stream
        byte[] ByteBuffer = new byte[bufferSize + 1];
        MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream(ByteBuffer, true);
        Stream rs = req.GetResponse().GetResponseStream();
        byte[] bytes = new byte[bufferSize + 1];
        while (rs.Read(ByteBuffer, 0, ByteBuffer.Length) > 0)
        {
            Response.BinaryWrite(ms.ToArray());
            Response.Flush();
        }
        //Cleanup
        Response.End();
        ms.Close();
        ms.Dispose();
        rs.Dispose();
        ByteBuffer = null;
    }
}

J has been learning some of the newer Microsoft technologies, such as XAML. Part of his ongoing endeavors is a writing Craigslist parser and viewer. Without having to go through the website, he found someone in town who was selling server racks at 10-20% of their retail price.

The seller’s story is that his workplace was throwing them out and he offered to dispose of them free of charge, while possibly profiting off them as part of his other job, moonlighting as a salvager. He seemed like a good enough guy, so I can reasonably assume his story probably checks out.

So I went and viewed the server racks. He had five left (Apparently he had already sold half his stock); each 42U tall. Some had wheels, some had shelves; one even had two large top exhaust fans. I was half tempted to buy out his stock and resell them on eBay for four times as much. Alas, the responsible half of my brain beat the bejeezus out of the fun half.

I ended up buying the smallest one. Still 42U, with wheels; it barely fit in J’s SUV. It came with four sets of slide rails, a KVM switch, and a combo console keyboard/trackball. It took about 20 minutes to load and unload it from the truck; and half an hour to get it up the stairs to the lab.

So we finally got the rack sitting next to the desks. Needless to say, the sites were down for several hours while I racked everything up. I’ve installed all my rackmount hardware properly with square nuts and some very basic power management. By management, of course, I mean two power strips are velcroed to the rear of the rack.

Installed hardware:

• 4U: \\Hive: My file server, web server, media server, SQL server, and FTP server. One of its many duties is to serve this website and several others.
• 2U: 2x 24-port 10/100 Fast Ethernet switches. They have pass-through and software management capabilities, but I don’t know how to use them nor have the software. In the meantime, at least that’s an extra 46 ports at my disposal.
• .5U: 4-way KVM switch
• .5U: Console keyboard/trackball combo

I also put my non-rackable network hardware on top of the KVM: The cable modem, DSL modem, routers (One per WAN connection), and Gigabit switch.

That totals 7U of rackmounted equipment, giving me 35U for future expansion. Yeah, it’s a bit much; I was planning to get a half-size rack until this deal came along. However, for $150, I wasn’t about to turn up this deal. I just wish Compaq’s name wasn’t strewn all about as if it were applied with a shotgun. More images follow.

The part that bothered me the most about this whole fiasco was that I couldn’t replicate the issue in Dev or Test. Only in Production was this issue occuring - The one customer-facing environment; Great.

Then I increased the frequency and verbosity of the logging output. I saw that I was putting valid objects into session, and that they remained there for the duration of the local method. However, when the method exited and its parent method resumed, it couldn’t access those session values. Public variables were being nulled in the same manner. It quickly became evident at this point that all my similar issues were actually one big issue.

So I tried to code around it with some clever tomfoolery - The same basic things every web developer tries in this situation - Basically passing data among publics, session, and hidden fields. Only the hidden fields would retain the value, but they’re only good for text. I can’t store an instantiation of a custom class within a textbox!

After two days of hair-pulling, J suggested I reinstall IIS and the .NET Framework. These were both recent installs on a brand-new server, so I had been leaning away from that eventuality. Alas, I had run out of options.

I reinstalled IIS on the production server. Suddenly the server refused to serve the site at all. Apparently, the page cannot be displayed. Quickly, I leapt into the IIS configuration to discern what had transpired. My SSL certificate was in place, my files were there, and my ISAPI filters were correctly installed and prioritized. In fact, all of the website and application pool settings were correct. Then I had a look at the Web Service Extensions tree node.

When compared to the other environments, I noticed I was missing two extensions: ASP.NET 2.0 and Netegrity (Which we use for authentication). Reinstalling the .NET Framework 2.0, 2.0 SP1, and 3.5 didn’t replace the filter; Fortunately, I was able to locate it with minimal time delay. It was supposed to map to %WINDIR%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\aspnet_isapi.dll.

Alas, Netegrity was still without extension pointer. Adding the pointer in the same manner and cycling the app pool had no effect, despite the fact that the executable was running. So I looked through the logs and config files. Finally, I discovered the Agent Configuration Wizard, which allowed me to re-enable the agent. After I cycled IIS on the box (to reset the ISAPI filter), the site was finally running again.

My session state was working.

Good thing I left the house at 7:30 - I barely got to work in time. The parking lots are nearly empty and the boss isn’t here yet; I wonder if there’s some kind of snow-day policy nobody told me about?

I seriously question whether the road was plowed or not. It looked like it had been, but another inch fell after the fact. Once I got west of Centennial, it was like no plowing had ever been done and it was simply packed in. I was able to get as high as 30MPH on the way in. We’ll see who’s who and what’s what next week when I get my snow tires.

… So Friday I’m getting studded snow tires. That won’t solve my heating problem, but I’ve discovered if I keep the windows up it gets fairly toasty after 20 minutes or so anyway. Details follow:

Big O Tires
Tire size: 185-75-14
$392.79

So if anyone out there Googles a price for studded snow tires for a 1990 Mitsubishi Eclipse GS, expect to spend four hundred bucks (half what the roommates spent on normal high-mile tires on their SUV - And I hear those can be over a grand!). Then around April or May I have to buy normal tires again since the ones I have now are pretty much done with.

Hopefully there won’t be any of Colorado’s imfamous blizzards this week. Now I just have to focus on getting my lightweight car up and down a steep hill (and my steep driveway) on black ice. At least they’re pretty good about plowing the major streets in Colorado Springs.