This page serves two purposes:

1. This is a tool I use to track my projects, time, progress, and keep a log.
2. Anyone else who needs to track my projects can as well.  (As long as they remember that it is a general purpose tool used for more than just work.)

If you need to get in touch with me, you can email me or call me at 755-2456.

See Tom...  See Tom Work...  Work Tom Work...

My Status Page has been hit:   This many times since its inception.

«««««««Project Listing»»»»»»»

Current Work Projects:

• QAing the Office 2000 Engine - Nivo International
• QAing the Certification Process - Nivo International

Current Personal Tech Projects:

• Construction of a new home work station
• Getting my web page updates uploaded
• Setup a BSD Box
• Setup a Linux Box
• Troubleshooting/Upgrading:  Sharon's Computer, Alec's Computer, and my Aunt Sue's Computer

Personal Stuff:

• Getting Married
• ENJOYING THE HELL OUT OF LIFE!  (ha)

Time Allocation/Completion Table:

Work Time Table reflects a 45-70 hour work week.  The time stats are a rough average.  Actual time spent on projects varies from day to day.  Percentages are an estimation and subject to change in either direction.  (For instance, if I get more loaded onto a project...)

Work Projects	Time Allocation:	Completion Percentage:
QAing the Office 2000 Engine - Nivo International	95%	it's a vicious cycle
QAing the Certification Process - Nivo International	5%	6%
Legend:  Green=Active Attention  Blue=Medium Attention Yellow=Low Attention  Red=Very Minimal Attention		= 100% =

Personal Tech Projects reflects the few hours I have in the week that I'm NOT spending with Mysti.  (This table is pathetic.  I really need to just stop sleeping at nights.)

Personal Tech Projects	Time Allocation:	Completion Percentage:
Construction of a new home work station	85%	91%
Getting my web page updates uploaded	15%	Ongoing
Setup a BSD Box	0%	0%
Setup a Linux Box	0%	0%
Re-build my work area	0%	0%
Legend:  Green=Active Attention  Blue=Medium Attention Yellow=Low Attention  Red=Very Minimal Attention		= 100% =

«««««««Details»»»»»»»

 -Work Projects-

QA Stuff:

Nivo has me slated to give the following a good work over:

• The Office 2000 Engine - Almost outa time
• The Certification Process - Priority One

I'm building documentation and things like that for the Cert stuff.  I also have to get a test environment or I'll be up a creek without a turbine.  Hopefully, all of this will start coming together soon and my life will get much easier.

For the Engine stuff, I'm working on a checklist for Val.

 -Personal Tech Projects-

Construction of new workstation:

IT LIVES!  My power machine is finally alive.  Woo Hoo!  It has been named BALTHAZAR (super computer from NGE).  Here's the final specs:

CPU	T-Bird 1333Mhz (1500 Mhz!  Stable.  WOO HOO!  11 x 136FSB.  274FSB DDR.)  54 Degrees C.
HSF	Thermal Engine HSF (CPU Cooler.  As seen on [H]ard|OCP.)  The best, mid grade air cooling solution available.  Except it's loud as all hell.  Good thing this baby's going in the closet.
MoBo	Abit KT7 RAID MoBo.  (Not the best, but cheap and very overclockable.  My first choice would be an Asus with an Escalade PCI RAID controller.)
Hard Drives	4 IBM Deskstar 7200 RPM Hard Drives in a RAID 0 array.  (No more IDE bandwidth issues!  Photoshop should open as fast as Notepad.  Woo Hoo!)  117 GB of RAID 0 Lovin'.
Case	A 'Cube' Case.  A little linkage, govnor?   Modified to promote more air flow.
Cooling	3x 80mm 2400RPM fans.  (very quiet)  <--Soon to be changed to slightly more powerful fans or water cooling.
NIC	Generic 10/100 PCI Ethernet Card
Sound	SB Pro 128
Video	GForce II MX  (Unreal Runs at 1280 x 1024 16bit color, high detail, >32 frames per second.)
CD-Rom	Some old 48x from my old K6.  (I can upgrade later.)
CD-Burner	4x HP Burner from my K6.  (Good enough for me.)
Modem	Hell no.
Power	350 Watt Sparkle Power supply.  (Little known fact that a high quality power supply helps in the overclocking process.  Now I just need a surge suppressor.)
RAM	3x 256 MB sticks.  (for a grand total of 768 MB of RAM!)

Thursday (5-10-01) I've got it all up and running.  1500 Mhz stable.  To start out, it was peaking at 57 Degrees C under a constant CPU load.  That's a bit to hot for my taste (55-59 is in the yellow).  I duck taped all the air leaks to force more air past the CPU.  (There's no exhaust fan by the CPU yet.)  That helped a little.  I also dropped the core voltage a notch and that took a few more degrees off the top.  It's running at around 54 Degrees peak now.  (Idles around 51 or 52.)  I ran Unreal Tournament and cranked the resolution up higher than I'd ever seen it cranked before.  1280x1024, 16 bit color, high texture definition on world and skins, lighting and shadows on, etc, etc, etc...  The only thing that wasn't maxed was the color depth.  (My monitor only supports 1280x1024.  My computer might actually be able to go higher.  I'll find out when I get a better monitor.)  At this point, I could sniper pretty well without zooming in.  Everything was crisp, detailed, smooth, and nice looking.  I could see the look of terror on the bot's face just before it's head exploded, even from the opposite end of the arena.  It made game play much nicer.  I played Deck 16 and Morpheus for about 6 hours (over the course of 2 days).  Now I just need to get Photoshop on there.  (And litestep.)  Things will be much easier when I get DSL hooked up.  I'm still not sure which Litestep theme is worthy of Balthizar.  I may just have to make my own.

Saturday (5-5-2001) I spent about 2 hours in my drive way with a dremil 'improving' my case.  I've carved out the 3 fan holes and stuck wire grills on the back 2.  (Less in the way of air flow.)  Then I spent about 4 hours assembling this beast.  I put the case fans in (with rubber spacers to reduce noise).  Put the CPU/HSF on the MoBo, along with ram.  Stuck that in there.  Put all 5 hard drives in (4 on RAID, 1 as redundancy.)  Put in the Burner, CD-Rom, and Floppy.  Ran wires like a mad man.  Freaked out when it stopped booting...  It mysteriously fixed itself (and has been fine since).  Overclocked it to 1450Mhz with no problem.  Clocked it back down to default speed to install Win2k Advanced Server.

I've spit the RAID array like this:

6 GB - Win2K (OS Only Partition)
2 GB - Win2K Swap (Page file sits here)
1 GB - Photoshop Scratch (empty scratch space)
86 GB - Programs and Files (put your games here)
21 GB - Unpartitioned (BSD and Linux will go here)

Total Space is roughly 118 GB!  (That's not TO impressive, but the drive access time is freaking fast!)

As soon as I have Win2k all up and happy, (no drivers right now) I'll put a temperature monitor on it along with SETI@HOME.  Then the real fun begins.  At that point I can start tinkering with the FSB and Multiplier and see just how fast this little TBird can go.  (I'll use Seti to stress test the CPU for stability and temperature peeks.  I'll use the temperature monitor to make sure things don't get to hot.)  My goal is to get it running stable at 1500 Mhz.  (A very lofty goal.)  And it has to be under 54 degrees Celsius.  I'm going to shoot for a high FSB (more bus bandwidth) and probably put the core voltage somewhere in the mid .8 Volts...  I'll post my results when I'm done.  The one downside to all this is, I have no internet connection at the new place...  Bummer.

Getting my web page updates uploaded:

Well...  Free time is hard to come by these days and my web page is on the back burner for now.  I have plans to create a new, prettier layout for it in the near future, once I'm done playing with Balthazar.  :)  I'll keep you posted, my friend.

Everything Else:

What can I say except 'zero free time'.