Tech

Recently, I have been having a lot of problems with my Envision EN-775E 17″ monitor. I had loaded the correct drivers but still the monitor was not working properly occasionally. Some of the problems I faced were:
– Monitor used to fail completely while using certain programs like OutlookExpress and PhotoShop. I used to get a blue screen and had to restart the computer. Later I would get the message that there is a problem with the monitor driver.
– Green vertical stripes on monitor while watching a video. This problem was usually solved by restarting the computer.
– The computer used to become pretty slow. I thought this was strange since I had installed a new hard drive and also reinstalled Windows.
Whenever I used to get the above problems, I used to go to Settings > Control Panel > Display > Settings > Advanced > Troubleshoot and decrease the Hardware Acceleration. The monitor used to work properly when I kept it at level 4. (Taking levels as: None,1,2,3,4,5,6,Full).
Today, the monitor crashed again while I was using OutlookExpress (the hardware acceleration was at level 3). So, I decided that I had enough and switched the monitors of my Linux and my Windows machines (the Envision EN-775E was originally attached to the Windows machine). So now, my Dell Trinitron UltraScan D1025HTX is attached to my Windows machine. It is working great. The screen is much clearer and better (even though the monitor is couple of years old) and the machine is much faster even with memory intensive applications. So, I guess the previous slowness problem was due to the Envision EN-775E monitor).
Bottom line is: The Envision EN-775E looks great but is buggy. Better go for some other monitor if you can avoid it.

Bought a Western Digital 120 gb harddrive (Model No: WDC WD1200JBRTL) today for $69.99 (after $50 rebate) from Circuit City, East Towne Mall. I think it is a good deal. Have not installed it yet. Maybe, I will install it tomorrow. After installing, I will post again with updates about the installation and the performance of the drive. btw, I am posting this message from Studio 10 of the UT Library Media Center. And I am using Safari on Mac.

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Update (Sep 2 2004): Since this page is getting lots of hits, I have decided to summarize the information from the comments below.
– SMS to reliance mobile phones can be sent from the internet using www.smscountry.com . But it is a paid service.
– SMS can be sent to reliance mobile phones using the format 91+mobile_number@ri.irisme.net .But the email has to be sent as an email message from a mobile phone. The message will not be delivered if it is sent from a normal email account.
– Direct SMS from US mobile phones to reliance mobile phones in India does not work in most cases.

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Original Post (Mar 9 2004): For the past few days, I have trying to figure out a way to send SMS to Reliance mobile phones in India. Finally succeeded today.
SMS can be sent to Reliance mobile phones using the service from SmsCountry. It is a paid service. Outgoing SMS is charged 3.2 cents (Rs 1.49) per SMS. Incoming SMS is free. A useful feature is that message notification can also be received at a specified email id. I have set it up such that the email id is that of my cellphone. So, when someone sends an SMS to me through SmsCountry, it goes to the SmsCountry Inbox and also to my cellphone. So, it is like sending an international SMS from India at local SMS rates.
Rediff Mobile (i.e. upgrading your basic rediffmail account) is also good for sending SMS to mobile phones in India. However it does not work for Reliance mobile phones.
Rediff SMS2India does not work for Reliance mobile phones. In fact, it did not work for most mobile phones I tried to send SMS to.
Strange, but I am able to send SMS from my Cingular mobile phone to Reliance mobile phones in Calcutta but not in Delhi.

UTK-CS home areas have quotas from today. I was highly over quota and and had to spend a lot of time backing up by data and deleting the unused files.
Also learnt that the UNIX command for deleting a non-empty folder is
UNIX> \rm -fr dir_name
-f option for force.
-r option for recursive.
Cooked Chole today after many many days.

ORNL Trip organized by ACM@UTK.
Started at 1:30 PM. Reached ORNL at around 2:30 PM. There were some minor problems but finally we got to see the tour. We were taken to the Center for Computational Sciences at ORNL.
Saw 3 Supercomputers there —
Phoenix (20th fastest Supercomputer in the World)
Cheetah (28th fastest)
Eagle
After that, we saw the Visualization Lab. It was a really unique experience.
The trip was just GREAT! Thanks to ACM!
p.s. Related Link: Top 500 Supercomputers List (as of Nov 2003)

Installed Lotus Notes client. Could not login into the UTIA network initially because I did not have the user.id file. Emailed Dr. Dearden and he emailed my user.id file to me almost immediately. Tried again with the new user.id file and it is working properly. Tested notes-encypted messages but they can’t be read in Outlook Express. Changed display name and also tried to connect to UT Lotus Notes server. For some reason, I am not able to view the UT database.