aaron c beals

for a while now, my t42 thinkpad has had issues with the chassis fan — it turns on at the slightest hint of continuous CPU utilization, eventually kicking into a “high gear” mode that involves mind-numbing whirring with an occasional pulse. i’m still working on manual control of the fan, which is normally handled by the BIOS, via an open-source fan control utility. in the short-term, what i needed to do was to hunt down the source of the CPU utilization.

first stop: process explorer, available from SysInternals. from this tool, i was able to determine that the at-fault svchost.exe was tied to the “HP Network Devices Support” service. the service apparently has a bug that HP hasn’t yet fixed. the service doesn’t do much other than locate your networked printer on a DHCP network. ideally, i’d be able to lock the IP address of the printer, but my newer router doesn’t let me do that the way my old Netgear did. so for now, i’ve made the service “Manual” and will turn it on only as needed. result:CPU utilization returned to normal and the fan died down.

next: better management of power and clock settings. in my search for a fan-control utility, i stumbled upon this gem: Notebook Hardware Control. i know that the domain name seems a tad sketchy, but the software does everything promised, with minimal overhead. NHC allows you to track and set clock speeds, power saving modes, and internal temperatures. if you have a laptop, i highly recommend installing NHC and giving it a try.

just in this morning: Microsoft made an unsolicited bid for Yahoo! at a $31/share price premium over last night’s market price. apparently talks of this nature have been going on for a while, but to see something like this go down (and not have Yahoo! immediately throw it back in the face of M$) is astounding.

so let’s say that it does happen. there are so many questions. what will Google’s response be? will they finally purchase a big enterprise shop (my buddy Rob pointed me to this list, which is conspicuously missing enterprise companies/products)? will M$ keep both the hotmail and Yahoo! mail interfaces as separate entities, or merge them while keeping people’s addy’s the same? whose search will win? will Yahoo!’s impressive fantasy sports leagues die a miserable death in the no-fun offices of Redmond?

during the course of my recent investigation into the local startup scene, i came across FlyLite, a non-traditional software(ish) startup. their value prop is simple: flying with luggage is a pain in the neck, so eliminate the luggage and have what you need waiting for you.

to start, you send them a suitcase full of all the things (clothes, toiletries, etc) that you might need on a business trip. they inventory your things and make the list accessible via a web interface. before a trip, you select all the items you plan to use, and they pack up the suitcase and have it waiting in your hotel room. when you’re done, pack it back up and send it off again (they pick it up). as far as i can tell, they even launder your clothes.

i think it would take a rather heavy frequent flier lifestyle to justify this sort of service, but it certainly promises to make your life easier. though i guess your clients may wonder why you dress the same way every time you visit…