Yesterday, I came back into the office to check on a render in progress, and I could smell the CPU burning. One of the cooling fans died, and in spite of my best emergency response efforts, that system is now D-E-D dead. It lost fan for just a minute or so, and literally burned itself up. No open flames, thankfully. But on these high end processors, cooling is NO JOKE.
I have ordered a new one, and will work on repairing the old one (presuming that I can get the necessary parts, and the ROI is sane). The name of the game now is to get back to production capable ASAP, and try to have a backup in having two production systems at the end of all this.
I have selected and ordered a new production system. The new system should be significantly more powerful and faster than the old system. It's not the Threadripper based system that I was aiming for, but we'll get there eventually. This one should give me around 15-20% increase in processing speed, which will be a significant improvement, given that a lot of these programs require 8+ hours just to render the audio, and recording can be just as long or significantly longer.
This time, I ordered a desktop workstation instead of a laptop workstation, which will be much better for cooling and keeping dust and the damned cat hair out of. It will be much easier to monition for fan health, dust and cat hair, and keep clean. Portability will have to take a back seat for a while.
It turned out, during autopsy on the dead computer, that my cat's undercoat had clogged the CPU fans and was responsible for killing the fan. I would never have suspected, given the lengths I went to to keep the area around the computer clean. I pulled enough of his damned undercoat out of the fans to make a new cat! It's amazing that they lasted as long as they did.
However, until the new system comes in and has been set up and backups restored, I am dead in the water for production work. I will be unable to do anything more than forum responses. I expect the new system to arrive in a few days.
I had just finished Directional Reflection Shield 6.5G and was rendering another program when this happened. I am pretty sure I have DRS backed up, since I make it a habit to do a backup after every build. But the work on the other program will be lost.
In any case, that's what's happening at the moment. Please bear with us while we get the new system sorted. And... thank you for being an IML customer. If you all didn't support us with your subscriptions and purchases, we could not do what we are doing. You are greatly appreciated.
Update:
The laptop based production system is not as D-E-D as I thought. After 24 hours unplugged, I turned it on successfully and it boots and allows me to log in. However, the cooling fans are D-E-D, both of them, and that means that even the slightest actual work produces the aroma of roasting processor. Or is that thermal paste?
It's going out for repairs shortly.
The new system was marked as "ships same day", but it has been 2 days since I paid for it and the payment went through, and paid extra for faster shipping... and it has not been shipped yet. Not thrilled with that.
In any case... I am awaiting something that allows me to do production work. I am unable to get DRS 6.5G published on the computer I have access to, and my tentative efforts to do so without fans quickly forced a system shutdown from overheating. So... I am waiting. Glad to have the capital to order another system, and have the warranty cover the repairs on the old production laptop, but...
Waiting and being unable to accomplish anything is not my strong suit.
Well, things are not going as expected. The laptop got shipped out yesterday morning, and will take a few days to arrive, and likely 5-7 days for the repair, and then a few more days for return, presuming nothing goes wrong in the mean time.
The new computer, which was advertised as being "ships the same day", which I paid for on the 27th, and which I was expecting to arrive yesterday or today. But even after a phone call, it has not yet been built, never mind shipped. I am significantly less than pleased, as you can imagine. So much for the month of July.
It now appears that the new computer will be shipped sometime next week, and take 3 business days to arrive after that. Once it does, I have to restore backups and then run it through a 48 hour burn-in process to make sure that it's not going to fail under load. Fortunately, I can use production activities to do that burn-in process.
So things are not progressing as I had expected or intended, and it would appear that I have been the victim of what amounts to false advertising on the shipping of this new computer.
I'm also going to be on vacation for a week during the middle of August, which means that I will have probably a little less than a week of time before that (hopefully) to get work done before we come back around the 20th or 21st. I had DRS finished, just need to calculate usage patterns for that, and I also had Stage 5 just finished, so perhaps that won't be an issue. But I cannot do what I had intended to do, which would have produced another title outside of AAMTS v7, at least not until probably the last week of August.
In spite of all this delay and frustration, I have some interesting things coming down the pipeline for release in the next month or two. There are things that can be done in 6.5G that could not be done before, and this will open the possibilities for certain very advanced options and goals that I have as yet not been able to make much progress on.
I suppose it is unlikely that the new computer will be built on Saturday or Sunday, so it will likely be Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday of next week, and then three days of transit time after that.
I hate waiting and being unable to work, but there is not much I can do about it beyond what has already been done. With any luck, the new computer's speed increase will make up for the delays to some degree. If it can process recording and rendering at the same time with good speed, we may be able to catch up faster than I thought.
There is definitely something going on.
[rant]My laptop cooking fan died from, of all things, my cat's damned undercoat hair being so light and fine that it gets EVERYWHERE, in spite of having a full sized high end HEPA air filter running constantly on high in my office to prevent exactly that issue. I bought a new, very expensive high end system within 4 hours so I could get back to productivity ASAP. The computer's product page said it would be shipped the same day. But apparently that "was a mistake", and they didn't even have it built yet, and it took a week to build because they were waiting on, of all things, cooling fans to be delivered.
To speed things up I "upgraded" the $267 shipping to $349 shipping but that was wasted when they attempted to deliver it 5 hours and 41 minutes before the window of delivery they had quoted me for 3 days, causing me to miss the delivery and lose any benefit that the "upgrade" would have given me. Then today, they delivered the computer, but not the monitor... apparently they didn't bother to load it on the truck. So now I get to sit around waiting here until 9:30 PM on the off chance that they *might* deliver the monitor, and if they don't, it will come on Monday, which gives me not enough time to do or publish ANYTHING before I have to go on vacation.
I haven't even been able to run payroll for last month because I can only access the systems that need to be accessed for that from the production system. Which means I haven't gotten paid yet, and neither have my bills.
This is not looking promising for me being able to relax and have fun on my already-paid-for vacation, which I naturally cannot cancel. It's hard enough to relax and have fun when I don't have a backlog of work left over right before a vacation because I am a workaholic. And given how my last two "vacations" have gone, I think if this one goes like the last two, I am done even trying to go on vacation for a while. Which I do in the first place because it is supposed to allow me to de-compress, rest and prevent burnout.
I am sick of whatever the hell is going on, and the continuous incompetence that is causing it to get worse and worse.
[/rant]
Alright... I have the new system. I am in the process of restoring everything from backup. I'm going to be working as fast as possible to get everything back up and running.
Given how little time I have left, I have to choose one thing to publish before I leave for vacation. I have decided I am also going to do at least one pre-order. I'm going to focus on getting DRS v3 published. That will require me to calculate 2 different usage patterns, so this may not be finished before I leave if the models for some reason do not cooperate.
Pre-order will be for DMSI.
DMSI v6.0-A will be just DMSI.
DMSI v6.0-B will be DMSI with DRS built in.
DMSI v6.0-C will be DMSI with DRS and FRM.
I will make all three available for pre-order. When I get home from vacation, we will be building them in order of what is most requested.
I'm back in the saddle. Let's do this thing!
I am running the first test of the new desktop system. I am rendering the female voice for CM v6.5G in Reaper v7.78. It has a loop length of 30 minutes. I usually have to wait 2 hours 20 minutes for such a render on the laptop. This thing? 60 minutes. That is a PASS. 32 threads running at 99.55% capacity on average at 4.98 GHz on average and 79.3C on average, which is just below the high limit of desirable temperature range for this processor.
And it's running full tilt while allowing me to work on other things at the same time with zero slowdown of the responsiveness of the software or the system.
And the cooling fans, at full tilt, are quieter than the HEPA filter I run to keep the office air clean. This is amazing.
Now I just need to get the custom software we use running on this new system, and we're good to go.
This is very important accurate information for a lot of guys who are specifically seeking a serious relationship with women who are at the high end of the value scale (8-9-10/10). If you want to understand HER psychology and how SHE perceives and experiences things, this is a silver platter loaded with priceless treasure:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UB2aft2vjM
Now working on getting DRS v3 published before the end of working day tomorrow. If I cannot, I'll make it available for purchase without the instructions, and then update that when I get back from vacation, since the instructions is really what's left to figure out.
Alright. Back from a good vacation, the first good one I have had in at least three years. Now I have to hit the ground running, cause there is a LOT to do. Give me a bit to get this all under control.
AAMTS v7 Stage 5 coming shortly.