Minor System Upgrade
I was forced to upgrade one of my systems this week because the motherboard (or CPU) died. Rather than mess around trying to figure out which specific component was impacted, I ran over to NewEgg (virtually, of course), and picked up a new AMD Sempron 3400+ CPU and a Gigabyte Socket 754 motherboard for cheap to replace the previous Athlon 2500+ CPU and Socket-A motherboard that the system had been sporting. I'll test the motherboard out more rigorously in a few weeks.
The system actually died on me a few weeks back, but luckily, it was only my former desktop system, so there wasn't really any urgency to get it fixed at the time. My wife is probably happier with the briefly lowered electricity bill... 
For just a second, I was actually contemplating going all out and getting a dual-core CPU and associated motherboard, but that would have required getting new RAM, SATA hard drives, a PCI-X video card, and probably a bigger power supply. Bah! My wallet is happier with the current choice (I paid less than $140), and this box will be repurposed as my new Security/Monitoring server, and I'll get to rebuild on of the older ones for more reasonable duty. Even as I speak (er.. write), I'm installing Windows 2003 R2 on the box. (Thank you, Microsoft, for the Action Pack subscription!)
As I've previously mentioned, I hate upgrades that waste parts, and so I avoided the temptation to do that on this occasion. I do, however, need to get myself another workstation that I can go 64-bit on. I missed the opportunity to do it when I obtained my current dual-core system, and I really don't feel like incurring a whole lot of downtime to transfer my apps, rebuild it again, then transfer the apps back. Better to do that with a swap-grade. I also need to get my wife a new laptop, as the old one is dragging. Once I get her apps transferred to a newer model, I can rebuilt the current one to get rid of the 4+ years of accumulated junk and let my daughter use it for her homework.
For now, I have some server apps to install/upgrade...
About Logik!
Andrew S. Baker aka ASB aka Logik!
Andrew is an accomplished, hands-on IT Executive with a solid track record of providing timely and cost-effective business solutions using technology. With over 16 years experience in Information Technology, he has proven to be effective both as a Team Leader and as an individual contributor in designing, deploying, securing and maintaining enterprise networks.
His personal interests include Astronomy, Basketball, Bible Study, Chess, Comics, Computers,
Family Life Ministries, Reading and Strategy/Role Playing games...
Some of his contributions include several whitepapers on technology and Information Security, the UltraTech Knowledgebase, various postings to technology mailing lists and forums, active participation on LinkedIn Answers, along with a number of interviews for articles published in industry magazines.
A condensed version of
Andrew's current resume is available here.