This is the weather report for today in Miami - It's a good thing that I don't depend on electricity for my job. Or work with sensitive equipment that could be easily fried by a power surge. Or be without a job if my laptop were zapped.Wait a moment - all of those things are true!
We do have surge protectors on every important outlet (would it help to plug a surge protector into a surge protector? Twice the protection, no? No?) but I'd be happier with a few heavy duty UPS units - or even better, enough of them to run my laptop for up to eight hours, (my laptop battery lasts about an hour and half) in case there's an all-day storm. But what are the chances of that?
It happens about twice a week, it turns out.
I have two computers running side by side - My laptop, which I use to do my testing, and a crappy old Win98 box that I use to type out notes and do the actual bug writing with. It's a huge pain and a timewaster to jot everything down on paper, just to type it in again.
To avoid using two keyboards and two mice, I bought a KVM switch which has worked out pretty well. I use a separate monitor, just so I can watch the game as I type the notes - it makes stepping out a bug a lot easier.
I'd like to recommend the KVM switch I bought, the USB/USB (F1DG102U) - I was worried that using a Win98 system as one of the PCs would cause problems, but it's worked great. I've had it a week, and no problems at all. There's this ever so cute little button that you use to switch between PCs (some KVM switches use shortcuts on the keyboard, but I wanted to make sure this software wasn't interfering with the game testing).
The actual switching process takes about 5 seconds, once you hit the button. It seems like forever sometimes, but it's 5 seconds - so it's not designed for very rapidly jumping back and forth. You learn to adjust to the lag time.
That sucks. I mean, really.
ReplyDeleteUPS's rule. I never thought about getting one until a power surge (and frequent brownouts) fried several components (including a hard drive) in a previous PC I had. They aren't too expensive, and are totally worth it for piece of mind and safety of hardware.
ReplyDeleteKVM's rule, too, though I've never found one that was perfect. The few I've had have always had one or two slight annoyances that no one online seems to talk about, and the one I have now advertises some features that turn out are only applicable if you use it in a certain way.
Anyway, I dig having one, and the lag does suck, but I think that's because it takes that long for a PC to recognize a new USB device. I think the PS/2 ones are nearly instantaneous (but who is still using PS/2 stuff?)
Sorry, I think I may have gotten geek everywhere.
I'm using a PS/2 keyboard. Bit of a glitch with XP where my USB keyboard would frequently stop responding, not get detected at startup.
ReplyDeleteAfter a few hours tweaking my USB hub settings, I simply plugged in my old PS/2 keyboard. Worked like a charm ever since.
Oh, and as well as surge supressors, speaking from experience, it's a really good idea to unplug your modem phone cable during a thunderstorm. Even though my computer was turned off, my modem got completely fried...and it was onboard, and because that computer was ex-rental, the BIOS was locked and refused to recognise ANY new hardware.
That was a bit of a bitch, I can tell you.
Oh yes - I unplug everything - I make sure there's nothing to link the PC and the outside world. I'm being really paranoid about it, but it's the only way to be sure.
ReplyDeleteGood thinking- I'm not sure I could handle Paulius not having a computer again.
ReplyDeleteTwice in one year?
I DON'T THINK SO!!!!!