Relaxing at Indian Springs Resort & Spa in Calistoga

We arrived at Calistoga's Indian Springs Resort & Spa late in the evening, around 11:15 p.m.

Given the light traffic, the evening drive was not very exhausting. Luckily, we had just enough time to dip in the hot thermal pool of Indian Springs.

Saturday, October 19, 2013

The next day, we got up early and went for a morning swim at the thermal pool. The morning was gorgeous, and we enjoyed the warm water. It's so relaxing to float around in the naturally heated pool.

When we finished relaxing, we returned to our suite to change for breakfast. We drove to our favorite restaurant, Solbar, less than a mile away.

I ordered my favorite Lemon-Ricotta Pancakes with Blueberry Syrup. I swear the drive to Calistoga is worth it just for these beauties!

Inna ordered the "Bodega Bay" special, which was also delicious.

After breakfast, we decided to ride a nice bike to Sterling Vineyards. Here is a short video of our bike ride there:

Sterling Vineyards looked quite busy - and they have a ramp to the top of the mountain for a nice overlook, but we decided against going up.

We had a wonderful, relaxing stay at Indian Springs Resort and Spa, nd hope to be back there again.

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Anniversary Dinner at the Plumed Horse

Today, we decided to have our 12th Wedding Anniversary dinner at the Plumed Horse in Saratoga.
We usually prefer to go to Manresa, but it was unavailable for our special day.

We ordered the "Chef's Autumn Tasting Menu," which was delicious! This is now Inna's favorite restaurant in the San Francisco Bay Area.

This little appetizer trifle was the Chef's opening number.

The first dish is "Maine Lobster with California Caviar." It was very nice.

The next dish was a soup.

The Black Pepper and Parmesan soufflé was so delicious! It was the best dish ever! We would get back for this dish! It's considered the signature dish for Plumed Horse.

The "Sonoma Rabbit" was quite delicious.

The "Filet of Beef Tenderloin" was soft and delicious.

The beef was so tender and juicy!

The first of 3 desserts was a cookie with some ice cream.

The next dessert was also delicious. It's the best ice cream we've ever tried.

The third and final dessert was Valrhona chocolate with raspberries.

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Review: Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike (Berkeley Rep)

Today, we saw Berkeley Rep's production of "Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike."
The play was exciting but not super entertaining.

SFGate has an interesting review of the play here.

Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike

Written by Christopher Durang
Directed by Richard E.T. White
Limited Season · Roda Theatre
September 20–October 25, 2013

Winner of the 2013 Tony Award for Best Play!

Running time: 2 hours and 45 minutes, including one 15 minute intermission

Christopher Durang—Obie Award winner of such rollicking comedies asSister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You and The Marriage of Bette & Boo—turns Chekhov on his head in this witty and incisive new farce for our modern hyperconnected world. In bucolic Bucks County, PA, Vanya and Sonia have frittered their lives away in their family’s farmhouse full of regret, angst and the alarmingly ambiguous prophecies of their addled housecleaner Cassandra. Enter their sister, self-absorbed movie star Masha, with her prized 20-something boy toy Spike, and the stage is set for an absurd weekend of general hilarity and global warming. This year’s Broadway sensation, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike delights audiences with its abundant comic twists while paying loving homage to Chekhov’s classic themes of loss and longing.

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Review: Apple iMac 27

Today, we purchased an Apple iMac 27 (2013+) to replace our Dell XPS One 2710 (which had problems with WiFi connectivity).

In comparison to Dell, Apple's iMac has some interesting differences:

Advantages of iMac 27

• iMac is much slimmer and much better looking
• iMac is much quieter, and I never heard the fan going off (Dell's fan is pretty loud)
• iMac has a much faster graphics chip (Nvidia 755m vs 640m)
• iMac has a better mouse and keyboard
• iMac supports the latest Wi-Fi (AC vs. 802.11a/b/g on Dell). Dell's Wifi was super slow.
• iMac can dual-boot OS X or Windows 7 using Boot Camp
• OS X is much better than Windows 8

Advantages of Dell XPS One

• Dell's screen has a much wider gamut and looks much better than the iMac's
• Dell has much better speakers and sound quality
• Dell has a CD/DVD drive for watching DVDs
• Dell has a much faster SSD (Crucial 256 mSATA)
• Dell dual boots Windows 7 or Windows 8
• Dell had a larger hard disk (2TB vs 1TB)
• Dell is more accessible to service and upgrade (most parts are easily removable and replaceable)
• Dell has a more extended warranty of 3 years, with on-site home service and 24/7 phone support.

After some time, I decided to return the iMac (it was within its 14-day return period) because I wanted an iMac with the PCIe SSD drive - not the 7,200 rpm hard disk. Also, I was not happy with the color quality of the Apple display - I thought that both Dell's XPS One and my HP ZR30w monitors were far superior. With an iMac, one is stuck with whatever display one gets.

An iMac is completely un-upgradeable - one cannot change the hard disk, add an SSD, or add additional memory. I like to be able to upgrade or replace parts as needed.

I decided to get an upgraded iMac with a 3.4 GHz i5 processor, Nvidia GTX 775 graphics, and a PCIe 256GB SSD instead of the 1TB hard disk.

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Review: Dell XPS One 2710

About a month ago, I purchased a refurbished Dell XPS One 2710 all-in-one desktop Windows 8 PC from Costco.com (online) - to replace my 7-year-old Apple iMac.

The Dell desktop PC arrived quickly and booted just fine. I really disliked Windows 8 and decided to install Windows 7. I ordered a Crucial M4 mSATA SSD (256GB Flash) and installed it inside the Dell with Windows 7. Now, I could boot either Windows 7 or 8.

The computer has been running great for the past month until two days ago.

Suddenly, the Dell PC started experiencing problems connecting to my Asus RT-66U router for no apparent reason. It would connect, then randomly disconnect, on Windows 7 and Windows 8.

I contacted Dell support, and after 30 minutes of analysis, the technician requested that a new Dell DW1703 wireless card be sent to me to correct this issue. A Unisys repairman came in the next day and replaced my  DW1703 wireless card. However, the repair did not fix the problem, and the PC still has intermittent connectivity.

Another Dell representative called me on Friday morning to ask about the Wireless repair, and I explained that no progress had been made. We tried a lot of things for over 90 minutes without any resolution. How many times can one install and reinstall drivers?

Now, I need to decide whether to purchase another PCIe wireless card and install it to see if this solves the issue, or return the computer to Costco and buy another iMac.

I finally decided that I had had enough debug time with Dell. The iMac seemed too tempting. I decided to return the Dell XPS One to Costco.

Today, I packed it and returned it to Costco. Now, I need to see which iMac is the most suitable replacement.

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Kayaking on Donner Lake

Today, we decided to visit Truckee and the nearby Donner Lake to enjoy the last remnants of late summer at Lake Tahoe. The day was sunny and warm but became overcast in the afternoon, with a light shower.

The beach around Donner Lake was nearly empty, and few people were around.

Alex and Sasha did a few rounds of kayaking on Donner Lake. The water was cold, but they did not mind and had a lot of fun.

Here is a short video of their kayaking:

Inna and Alla also got to try out the ocean. They got caught in a light shower on the lake but didn't mind. Inna went swimming in the cold lake afterward.

We went for a short hike around the lake, covering the flat ground with many pines.

The trail was not asphalted, so Alex could not ride his scooter.

After the hike, we returned to our residence for dinner.

Eggs sunny side up, coming right up.

Alex, little Sasha, and Liza enjoyed the hot tub.

Sunday, September 14, 2013

We decided to try mountain biking from Squaw Valley to Lake Tahoe along the nearby paved bike path. The path follows the Truckee River, and we enjoyed the beautiful Lake Tahoe National Forest.

A few people were rafting down the Truckee River. It seemed shallow in places.

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Review: LSI MegaRAID

With thousands of photos stored on my server, I needed more speed in Adobe Lightroom, Adobe Photoshop, and Sony Vegas.

Previously, I ran software RAID-5 with 6 Hitachi 4TB hard disks, yielding 18TB of usable capacity. Disk performance was quite decent for reads - 380-500 MB/sec, but relatively poor for writes (as most software raid servers are) at 70 MB/sec using ATTO benchmarks. This made Lightroom's photo editing relatively slow and painful.

I tried to speed up the system by using a Samsung 840 500GB SSD as my boot drive (running Windows x64 Ultimate), which was initially hooked up to a Marvell SATA port on my Asus P8Z68-V Pro motherboard. The Marvel controller was performing poorly, as I was seeing 330MB/sec reads and 220 MB/sec writes. When I moved the Samsung 840 SSD to Intel's SATA3/6 Gbps ports, bandwidth increased to 550MB/sec for reads and 340 MB/sec for writes (almost 50-100% improvement!

I decided to try a hardware RAID card to increase the speed of the Intel software RAID-5. After looking around, I found that LSI MegaRAID 9260-8i was highly rated but a bit expensive (around $470 on Newegg.com). This was too expensive, so I decided to see what was available on eBay. A few people recommended looking for a used RAID card from an older server.

I found a seller listing a Dell OEM LSI 9260-8i for $250 (new). This sounded like a good deal, so I purchased the card. I received the card rather quickly, but it took a long time to figure out how to get it to work. First, it would not boot from my motherboard's second PCI Express 2.0 x16 slot (the first occupied by the Zotac GTX 570 Graphics card). Next, I tried the 3rd PCI Express 2.0 x16 slot, and the LSI BIOS popped up. I was excited until I realized this slot only ran at 1x speed (shared with 2 other PCIe 1x slots, a USB controller, and other devices).

I decided to update the firmware on the LSI. However, when running MegaCLI to burn the firmware, it complained about firmware corruption. What the heck! I found it on a bulletin board. I had to install an intermediate firmware release first, then install the latest release. It worked! But what a pain! LSI does not do an excellent job of testing its products.

The LSI's WebBios was impossible to use as my mouse control was unstable. However, I could use MegaCLI commands to do the same thing. So, using quite cryptic commands, I initialized my array (taking over 10 hours).

I decided that if I could not get the LSI Raid card to work in an x16 slot, I would return it. But how? I decided to try it again - I would move the Zotac GTX 570 to the 2nd PCIe 2.0 x16 slot and use the main x16 2.0 slot for the LSI 9260-8i controller. It worked! This had to be one of the more painful RAID installations for me. I can't believe I had to go through the steps to get this to work!

After initializing the disk array, I tried formatting the volume, but Windows x64 reported Format Failure each time. I tried a quick format and a standard format - all failed. I was getting quite frustrated!

I called LSI Technical Support for help, but hung up after waiting on hold for 30 minutes.

Finally, I realized that 4TB drives were not supported by "Basic" disks in Windows. I needed to set the disk array up as a "Dynamic" volume, not a "Basic" volume. Once I converted the array to Dynamic, the quick format worked beautifully.

Computer Configuration

• Intel i7-2600K CPU at 3.4GHz
• ASUS P8Z68-V Pro Motherboard with BIOS 3402
• Crucial Ballistix 16GB (8GBx2) DDR3-1600
• Samsung 840 SSD (500Gbyte) connected to SATA1 of Intel (6Gbps) <-boot drive
• Seagate 1TB ST31999524AS hard disk connected to SATA2 of Intel (6Gbps)
• Dell LSI MegaRaid 9260-8i card in PCIe 2.0 slot 1(running at 8x 2.0 mode)
• 6x Hitachi 4TB Hard Drives connected to the LSI MegaRaid
• Zotac Amp! GeForce GTX 570 Video Card in PCIe 2.0 slot 2 (running at 8x 2.0 mode)
• ASUS Xonar Essence STX in PCIe x1 slot
• Blu-Ray Drive connected to SATA3 (1.5Gbps)
• HP ZR30w 30" Monitor at 2560x1600
• SIIG USB Keyboard
• Logitech MX518 mouse
• 800W Power Supply
• Antec Titan Server Case
• Windows 7 x64 Ultimate

Exact Install Procedure of the LSI MegaRaid 9260-8i
1. Set up the ASUS BIOS in preparation for the LSI MegaRaid 9260-8i
2. Install LSI MegaRaid 9260-8i in PCIe_1 2.0 x16 slot (main slot)
3. Install GTX570 Graphics card in PCIe_2 2.0 x16 slot
4. Boot the system analog in as Administrator

• With the LSI card present, you may no longer be able to change settings in your BIOS because the LSI BIOS corrupts USB mouse behavior.
• You do not need to get into WebBIOS (unless you need to boot from the array). WebBIOS requires a PS/2 mouse, but you can do all the same functions in the MegaCLI command line in Windows.

5. Install the LSI MegaRAID's latest software driver

• Download the latest LSI MegaRaid software driver.
• Update the driver (Control Panel->Device Manager->Storage Controls->Properties->Driver Update (point the driver directory)

6. Install the firmware update using MegaCLI

• Download and install the SI MegaCLI software
• Open a Windows command line interpreter in Administrator Mode
• cd into the LSI MegaCLI install folder
• Do the following commands (see the following guide for more help on MegaCLI):

C:\Users\Admin> megacli64 -adpfwflash -f mr2108.rom -a0

• If the firmware succeeded, great, you're done. If you get a message about disk corruption, you have ancient firmware and may need to first flash an intermediate firmware file 
• Reboot the PC and verify the new version
• Note that a reboot is slow; don't give up hope

7. Create a RAID-5 array using either MegaRAID Storage Manager or MegaCLI

Let's assume we have a server with one MegaRAID SAS card. The first one is already set up, but we have just plugged a disk bay on the second card.

List physical disks on the second card (only print enclosure and slot numbers):

C:\Users\Admin\CLI> megacli64 -PDlist -a0 
Enclosure Device ID: 0
Slot Number: 0
Enclosure Device ID: 0
Slot Number: 1
Enclosure Device ID: 0
Slot Number: 2
Enclosure Device ID: 0
Slot Number: 3
Enclosure Device ID: 0
Slot Number: 4
Enclosure Device ID: 0
Slot Number: 5
Enclosure Device ID: 0
Slot Number: 6

Now we have all the enclosures and slot numbers. Let's create the new array:

C:\Users\Admin\CLI>  megacli64 -CfgLdAdd -r5 [0:0,0:1,0:2,0:3,0:4,0:5,0:6] -a0

Adapter 0: Created VD 0

Adapter 0: Configured the Adapter!!

Exit Code: 0x00

Read Cache, Write Cache, ReadAhead, and Battery

A quick section about performance tuning...

Let's enable Read Cache and always cache data:

C:\Users\Admin\CLI>  megacli64 -LDSetProp -Cached -LAll -aAll

Set Cache Policy to Cached on Adapter 0, VD 0 (target id: 0) success

Enable disks' cache:

C:\Users\Admin\CLI> megacli64 -LDSetProp EnDskCache -LAll -aAll

Set Disk Cache Policy to Enabled on Adapter 0, VD 0 (target id: 0) success

8. Once the array has initialized, you can format the disk and start using it:

• Open Control Panel->Administrative Tools->Computer Management->Disk Management
• Click on Disk Management and select the disk array
• Right-click on the disk and select Convert to Dynamic Disk 
• Click on the disk itself and select Format
• Choose NTFS, 8192, Quick Format, and press OK

The quick format is fast, and you should be able to use the disk immediately.

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Purchasing an Audi Q5 2.0T from Audi of Stevens Creek

Today, I made an appointment to purchase my leased 2011 Audi Q5 2.0T sports utility vehicle at Audi of Stevens Creek. As my 3-year lease was expiring, I decided that the value of my car was much greater than the lease-purchase price.

When I arrived at 12:00 p.m. for my appointment, I planned to drop off the check, sign some paperwork, and be on my way. Most of my other used vehicles were purchased this way (Mini Cooper S, Toyota Sienna XLE), and the whole process was relatively fast at most dealerships.

Audi of Stevens Creek had only one finance person, and he was working with another customer. No one else could print the forms. So I waited and waited.

I was getting ready to leave when another person finally showed up and printed the forms. Even though I was paying cash, I needed to go through a mandatory credit check! So, this ordinarily 10-minute process of signing forms took over 90 minutes!

Even though I paid by check, Audi did not cash my check for about a week, delaying my DMV registration.

I finally received my title and registration about 3 months later.

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Review: Watching Elysium

Today, we watched Elysium at the local AMC Saratoga Movie Theater.

The movie had an interesting take on the future, where all the rich people live off the Earth, on the space station "Elysium," and all the poor, wretched souls live on Earth, suffering from poor health care, crime, and unemployment.

The movie was enjoyable but not profound, and did not develop characters well. However, I still enjoyed it, and it's worth watching at least once.

IMDb has an interesting write-up.

Set in the year 2154, where the very wealthy live on a man-made space station while the rest of the population resides on a ruined Earth, a man takes on a mission that could bring equality to the polarized worlds.

In the year 2154 two classes of people exist: the very wealthy who live on a pristine man-made space station called Elysium, and the rest, who live on an overpopulated, ruined Earth. Secretary Rhodes, a government official, will stop at nothing to enforce anti-immigration laws and preserve the luxurious lifestyle of the citizens of Elysium. That doesn't stop the people of Earth from trying to get in, by any means they can. When unlucky Max is backed into a corner, he agrees to take on a daunting mission that if successful will not only save his life, but could bring equality to these polarized worlds. 

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