Here I was thinking that Google was the most awesome thing since pancakes, but no sir. Have I been disappointed lately! After moving my personal domain name to google apps I’ve had many positive experiences, but a few dark clouds have certainly settled as well.
Google plus
Just for the record… I have a Facebook account, but I only created it recently and to be honest I’m not a big fan of Facebook. I rarely use it and I really don’t care with most of the updates. I do have something I would like to share from time to time, but I would prefer to share it with a select few instead of every single one on my friends list. I’m also tired of distant colleagues from 10 years ago wanting to connect and be ”friends”. Don’t get me wrong I don’t mind connecting with them, but I would like to put them in the distance compared to my closer friends or my family. As a result I don’t answer their requests.
Google plus comes to the rescue. First of all it’s not Facebook. Yeah! Second it has those circles that are exactly what I’m looking for. Only one problem – one HUGE one! I can’t sign up because I have Google Apps. How crappy is that? There are other beta products available to Google apps, so why not Google Plus? Furthermore we have no timeframe. It could take weeks or months (more likely). Heck, it could take years or never happen. I must admit I dislike Google for this particular choice.
Youtube
Second there is my Youtube access. Unfortunately I was stupid enough to be honest when I signed up for Google Apps. I told them the real country I live in (Denmark). Now, none of my Google Apps users can use their login to sign into Google. I even lost access to my current Youtube account because the email used to sign up had been moved to Google Apps. It took hell to have the Youtube account moved to another non-google-apps gmail account. Now I have to sign in and out all the time. When I try to use my Google Apps account in Youtube I’m told ”that it is not available in my country”. What a load of bullshit. If I choose a different country (like the UK) when I sign up for Google Apps (I tried with another domain name), then I have no problem using Youtube with a Google Apps account. I really don’t get it. Why can’t google give me Youtube access just because I state that I’m from Denmark?
Worse is the fact that I can’t change my country unless I delete everything and sign up again after approx. a week (because they have to purge the Google Apps settings first). I wish I had known so I could enter a false country.
Closing argument
I use the free version of Google Apps, so of course I can’t complain, but it still sucks that everyone else can have all the goodies, when I can’t – just because I signed up for Google Apps. Previously I was considering paying for Google Apps, but not anymore. Unless they fix the above mentioned problems I’m not handing over a single dollar to them.
Wake the fuck up Google!!! You have thousands of developers at your disposal. Put them to work and fix this!
Going green
I've recently swapped my old server in the attic for a brand new Intel D510MO setup and wanted to share the experience. Since these are green times and electricity is damn expensive here in Denmark I decided that it was time to go green. Some years ago I ran my server on a Via mini-itx board back when they first showed up. I remember it being quite slow, but doable. After a year or so I went for an AMD64 3500 setup, which I underclocked to save power. Still with two hard disks it used around 100 watts an hour, which is somewhere along 870 Kwh a year - in Denmark that amounts to 1500 Dkkr or roughly 300 dollars a year.
Queue the Intel D510MO
Then one day I stumbled upon this board in the news. The Intel D510MO. With a dual core 1,66 Ghz brand new CPU and everything you would need for a server rig, all built into a tiny motherboard in the mini-itx form factor. Reviews were quite good, power consumption almost rediculously low and the price equally so. I had seveal disks laying around and some DDR2 memory as well. All I needed was the board. Since my old server casing was a huge pile of iron I went for a small footprint instead and ordered the M350 and an external PSU to go.
The M350 casing only takes up 6.2 cm (H) x 19.2 cm (W) x 21 cm (D) which is damn small. Inside you can fit the motherboard, a 2.5" harddisk and a small fan.
You can check out more images here: http://www.mini-itx.com/store/?c=54
For power I added the picoPSU90 with a 80 watt universal AC/DC adapter.
The Intel D510MO uses so little power that it's passively cooled. If you threw in an SSD disk you would make a completely silent rig - how sweet would that be? I ended up installing a small fan to keep the air flowing inside the case. Since my attic runs quite hot in the summer I thought it was better to be safe than sorry. Besides since it's sitting up there all alone, noise from the fan won't bother anyone (you should have heard the old server :-)
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