The good, the bad, and the brain-dead
Good:
So Katte's cats are getting settled and no longer try to sandpaper my lips when I sleep. Part of it might be that the nights are getting colder, so they just snuggle between us at night. The whole household is squished into a queen-sized bed. It's kind of nice; domestic, even. What did I think was so great about living alone?
Bad:
We will not be going to Denver in September. The company needs both brideofsatan23 and I for the Senior Technology Expo which happens to fall on the exact days we had scheduled to leave. We might try for another weekend before the snow starts falling, but for now all plans are off. Sigh.
Brain-dead:
I tested an LSI Logic SATA RAID controller the other day. The controller actually has two different BIOS setup interfaces that do essentially the same thing. One is graphical, the other a menu-based text interface. Why two different interfaces? Because the text one is such a steaming pile of garbage. It is utterly incomprehensible. I understand how to configure RAID arrays. I have used numerous different SCSI and ATA RAID cards. I understand all of the arcane terminology. But I could not make heads nor tails of LSI's text interface. Half of the options, when I selected them, said something to the effect of "This option is not available for this card" or "There are no items in this submenu." By pure luck, I configured the array I wanted, although I didn't know that I had until I booted into Windows and closely examined the devices in Device Manager. The graphical interface wasn't much better: there was no clear hierarchy of windows; the images on icons had no apparent relation to what the icons represented; and it was just as unclear how to set up an array, which is the entire fscking point of the BIOS setup utility in the first place.
How do companies like that manage to produce such junk and still stay in business? The only company that comes close to getting it right is Promise, the guys who make "toy" RAID controllers. The big guys should study toys a little more closely.
So Katte's cats are getting settled and no longer try to sandpaper my lips when I sleep. Part of it might be that the nights are getting colder, so they just snuggle between us at night. The whole household is squished into a queen-sized bed. It's kind of nice; domestic, even. What did I think was so great about living alone?
Bad:
We will not be going to Denver in September. The company needs both brideofsatan23 and I for the Senior Technology Expo which happens to fall on the exact days we had scheduled to leave. We might try for another weekend before the snow starts falling, but for now all plans are off. Sigh.
Brain-dead:
I tested an LSI Logic SATA RAID controller the other day. The controller actually has two different BIOS setup interfaces that do essentially the same thing. One is graphical, the other a menu-based text interface. Why two different interfaces? Because the text one is such a steaming pile of garbage. It is utterly incomprehensible. I understand how to configure RAID arrays. I have used numerous different SCSI and ATA RAID cards. I understand all of the arcane terminology. But I could not make heads nor tails of LSI's text interface. Half of the options, when I selected them, said something to the effect of "This option is not available for this card" or "There are no items in this submenu." By pure luck, I configured the array I wanted, although I didn't know that I had until I booted into Windows and closely examined the devices in Device Manager. The graphical interface wasn't much better: there was no clear hierarchy of windows; the images on icons had no apparent relation to what the icons represented; and it was just as unclear how to set up an array, which is the entire fscking point of the BIOS setup utility in the first place.
How do companies like that manage to produce such junk and still stay in business? The only company that comes close to getting it right is Promise, the guys who make "toy" RAID controllers. The big guys should study toys a little more closely.