Nasira

Nasira – A FreeNAS build

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment
Build Log:

Ever since first reading about them, I’ve wanted to set up a NAS in my home. They are a great resource for mass storage — pictures, videos, and backups from the home computers. The trouble is that, until recently, having the capability of building a decent one was financially out of reach. Since the upgrade on Absinthe, however, having the Sabertooth 990FX R2.0 board freed up with its 8-core AMD processor, the project can get started.

The goal of the project, ultimately, is 32TB of storage in mirrored pairs, resulting in 16TB total accessible storage running on FreeNAS. The Sabertooth 990FX R2.0 board can handle 8 SATA connections and 32GB of RAM. And the AMD FX processor lineup supports ECC memory out of the box.

As with every build log, I will be ranting herein to explain some of my choices and philosophies. You can either read through if you’d like — you might learn something along the way — or just scroll through if you’re just here for the pictures.

CPU: AMD FX-8320E
Memory: 2x8GB Crucial DDR3-1600 ECC
Mainboard: ASUS Sabertooth 990FX R2.0
Chassis: PlinkUSA IPC-G3650X 3U
Power supply: Corsair CX750M
Storage: 4TB in 2-drive pairs (32TB raw, 16TB effective)

Storage will be 4TB WD Red drives in mirrored pairs. Initially I’ll start with just one pair since the drives are 150 USD each, then I’ll acquire the additional pairs down the line. One idea I recently discovered that I may take up is mixing brands. This has the benefit of spreading out the risk of drive failures since you’re guaranteed to get drives coming from different lots, though there is always the slight possibility of receiving drives from bad lots. HGST is a brand I’ve seen recommended a bit, though they are more expensive. Seagate is recommended as well, and they tend to be less expensive compared to the WD Red.

As this is a NAS and will be rack mounted, the system will be set up for hot-swap drive bays. Specifically on that, I’m going with two Rosewill hot swap mobile racks that will provide for 4 HDDs in 3 drive bays. I would consider hot swap bays to be a basic requirement of a NAS build depending on how easy it will be for you to remove the drives in question. On a rack system, don’t consider anything but hot swap bays, in my opinion.

wdred
wdred_tray
drive_bays

For cooling the CPU in previous server builds, I’ve turned to Noctua for a quiet but effective CPU cooler. And this time I’ll be doing the same with the Noctua NH-D9L. I’m planning to use a 3U chassis, and Noctua advertises this cooler as being fully compatible with a 3U setup.

noctua1
noctua2

I’ll be starting with 16GB RAM initially. The memory recommendation is 1GB RAM per 1TB of raw storage space, with 8GB being the minimum regardless of storage for FreeNAS. But if you come in under that recommendation — e.g. you have 32TB raw storage but only 16GB RAM — the difference it’ll make to performance and stability will be based entirely on how your NAS is used and the virtual device setup. Others have not adhered strictly to that guideline and been fine. In general, though, the more memory you can throw at this, the better, and I’ll be doubling this to 32GB eventually.

And as the list above shows, I’ll be using ECC RAM as well.

ECC vs non-ECC

So if I’ve opted for ECC RAM, which everyone recommends for FreeNAS, why am I about to discuss ECC vs non-ECC? Well it’s in light of a recent video on Paul’s Hardware in which he builds a NAS using FreeNAS but doesn’t use ECC RAM. In part this is because he used an ITX board with a Sandy Bridge processor. But several pointed out in the comments that he’s not using ECC. Many acted like Paul’s data was moments from destruction for not using ECC RAM.

ECC memory is heavily recommended though not absolutely required. FreeNAS won’t fail to run if you’re not using it, and your data isn’t under any significantly higher relative risk by not using it depending on your use case. Instead ECC memory is heavily recommended for ZFS simply due to what the ZFS file system does in memory. Which is pretty nearly everything. And as ECC memory can recover from some memory issues, whereas non-ECC memory has no recovery capability, ECC is the obviously better choice.

But the whole ECC vs non-ECC discussion is a bit overblown with regard to ZFS and FreeNAS, almost religious in nature. Doomsday scenarios have replaced objective discussion with many overlooking the fact that data corruption can come from many sources, of which memory is only one. And the examples of how memory corruption can propagate on a NAS are also examples of how it can propagate really anywhere.

I’ll repeat what many have said: ECC memory is better, plain and simple. If it wasn’t, or wasn’t significantly better than non-ECC memory in the systems where it is typically employed, it wouldn’t exist because no one would buy it. What’d be the point?

Matt Ahrens, one of the co-founders of the ZFS file system, is often quoted with regard to this: “I would simply say: if you love your data, use ECC RAM. Additionally, use a filesystem that checksums your data, such as ZFS.” Many have interpreted this as meaning that you must use ECC RAM with ZFS, and a basic misunderstanding of grammar and syntax would allow that misinterpretation. He’s saying to use ECC RAM. Separately he’s saying to use ZFS. He is not saying you must use ECC RAM with ZFS.

In fact, he says quite the opposite in the same post I quoted. That doesn’t mean it’s not a good idea to use it. Absolutely it is. But will your NAS crash and burn and fry all your data, including your backups, if you don’t use it? It’s extremely unlikely you’ll get that unlucky. And if that does happen, don’t be so quick to blame your memory before determining if it might have been something else.

Despite what seems to be the prevailing belief when discussing FreeNAS, memory is not the only source of data corruption. And even if you’re using non-ECC RAM, I’d still say it’s unlikely to be the cause of data corruption. Cables can go bad. Poor-quality SATA cables could increase their susceptibility to a phenomenon called “cross talk“. In one of my systems, a 24-pin power extension cable on the power supply went bad, causing symptoms that made me think the power supply itself had gone bad. Connectors on the power supply to the drives could cause problems, including premature drive death. If power delivery to your NAS is substandard, it could wreak havoc. Linus Media Group suffered a major setback with their main storage server after one of the RAID controllers decided to have a hissy fit before they had that system completely backed up.

A NAS should be considered a mission-critical system. And to borrow my father’s phrasing, you don’t muck with your mission-critical systems. And that includes when building them, meaning don’t cut any corners. Regardless of whether you go with ECC or non-ECC memory, it needs to be quality. The power supply should be very well rated for stable power delivery and quality connections (on which Jonny Guru is considered the go-to source for reviews and evaluations). The SATA or SAS data cables should be high quality as well, shielded if possible (such as the 3M 5602 series). You don’t need premium hardware, but you can’t go with the cheapest stuff on the shelf either. Not if you care about your data.

Bottom line, many have used non-ECC memory with FreeNAS for years without a problem. Others haven’t been so lucky. But whether those losses were the result of not using ECC memory has been difficult to pin down. Again, there are many things that can cause data corruption or the appearance of data corruption that aren’t RAM related.

So again, you may not be under any higher relative risk going with non-ECC memory. Your home NAS box is unlikely to see the kind of workloads and exposures to electromagnetic and radio interference common in business and enterprise environments, and it’s those environments where ECC memory is a basic requirement regardless of what the server is doing.

If you can use ECC, go for it. Your system will be more stable in the end, and it’s not hugely expensive — I’ve seen it for under 8 USD/GB. If you can’t, don’t fret too much because you’re not. Just make sure the RAM you do use is quality memory. And whether you’re using ECC or not, test it with MemTest86 before building your system and re-test it periodically. But regardless of whether you’re using ECC RAM, make sure to maintain backups of the critical stuff.

RAID-Z or mirrored

Now why am I going with mirrored pairs instead of buying a bunch of drives and setting them up in either RAID-Z1 or RAID-Z2? Cost, for one. 4TB drives are currently around 150 USD each depending on brand and source. That’s why I opted to start with a pair of drives, and never considered anything else. As I add additional drive pairs, I can expand the pool to include each new pair until I get up to the ultimate goal of 4 pairs of drives.

Using mirrored pairs also allows you to expand your pool with mirrors of different sizes. You can start with a mirror of 1TB drives, then add a 2TB mirrored pair later, and keep adding until you want to replace the smallest pairs in the pool. The benefit here is you get the additional storage capacity immediately. With RAID-Zx, you wouldn’t see the new capacity until you replaced all drives in the pool.

This is ultimately why you should use mirrored pairs in your FreeNAS pool and not RAID-Z. If you are buying all your drives up front and don’t ever see adding more drives, only replacing existing ones, then I suppose RAID-Z2 will work well, but you should really reconsider using RAID-Z for one simple reason: disaster recovery.

A drive cannot be recovered faster than its sequential write speed will allow. The WD Red has an internal transfer speed of around 150 MB/s. That means a rebuild of a single drive will take about 2 hours per TB for writing contiguous data. You can expect about the same for reading data as well.

How long would a rebuild take? On a ZFS mirror, it’ll take only as long as is needed to re-mirror the drive based on used space. It won’t do a sector-by-sector mirror like a RAID controller. So if you have a 4TB mirrored pair but only 1TB on it is occupied, then it’ll only read and mirror that 1TB. If the writes occur parallel to the reads, then the rebuild will go a bit faster. For RAIDZ, however, it still needs to read all data from the array. The lost blocks are either re-calculated parity blocks or data blocks derived from parity. As such, rebuilding the parity and data means it must traverse everything.

So let’s say you have four drives of 4TB each in two mirrored pairs. You have 8TB total effective space. Let’s assume that 4TB is used, and since ZFS stripes data across virtual devices, we’ll presume an even distribution of 2TB to each drive. If you lost one of the drives, the ZFS drivers would only need to read and write that 2TB, meaning probably about 8 to 9 hours to rebuild.

For RAID-Z1 with those four drives, you’ll have 12TB effective space, of which only 4TB will be used. But it’ll have to read 4TB of data and parity to rebuild the lost drive. For RAID-Z2 with those four drives, you’ll have 8TB effective storage, of which 4TB will be used. How much data do you think will need to be read from the remaining three drives? It’ll actually need to read and process 6TB of data and parity since Z2 uses double the parity of Z1. That will slow things down significantly.

Now we could expect that the rebuild will read the data from the RAID-Zx at the same rate it serves that data for clients. But everything I’m finding does not appear to support this idea. One source I did find, however, actually tried to test rebuild times on RAID-Zx compared to mirrored pairs using 1TB drives. And the results were interesting. At 25% capacity, RAID-Z1 with 5 drives or less and RAID-Z2 with 4 drives were similar in rebuild time to a mirrored pair. Once the capacity got to 50%, though, the difference became more significant.

But the other thing that needs to be pointed out: the recovery times likely reflect no activity on the array during recovery. In mirrored pairs, the performance impact of continuing to use the array won’t be nearly as great. With RAID-Zx, the impact on both read performance and the rebuild is substantial due to the parity calculations.

Again, this is why you should go with mirrored pairs, and why I will be using mirrored pairs. Not only is it easier to expand, the fault tolerance is much better simply due to the faster rebuild times. Sure if you lose a mirrored pair you lose the pool, but if you actually build the array correctly (by ensuring the drives in any single pair didn’t come from a single lot), the chance of that happening is relatively low.

But then, nothing replaces a good backup plan.

Reviving an old case yet again

X-CRUISER-BL-1_500
apevia_blue

This old blue Apevia case has seen the rounds a couple times in my build logs. It’s come in handy for a few things, and this time around it’s serving as Nasira’s initial home.

There are a few reasons for this. For one, I don’t have the final 3U chassis selected. I mentioned a model number above, but I’m not entirely sure yet if I’m going to stick with that or go with a different model. The other model I’m considering is the IPC-G3550, also from PlinkUSA. Both have a double set of three 5-1/4″ drive bays, but the second option is slightly shorter — shy of 22″ deep instead of 26″ for the IPC-G3650X — and uses 80mm fans internally instead of 120mm fans to direct internal airflow.

My experience with FreeNAS is also very limited. I was able play with it in VirtualBox, which I highly recommend. But getting it working in a VM is quite different from getting it working on physical hardware, and the latter is what mattered. I wanted to make sure this would run as expected.

I’m sticking with the onboard NIC for now. I’m aware that Realtek NICs aren’t the greatest, and if I feel I need to, I’ll put in an Intel NIC later, or consider it being the start of a 10Gb Ethernet upgrade. On initial build and testing, I noticed that the Gigabit connection can be pretty well saturated on the Sabertooth’s onboard NIC — I was getting transfer speeds hovering around 100MB/s, around the maximum for a Gigabit link — so unless performance noticeably drops when my wife and I are trying to simultaneously access it, I’m likely not going to be putting in a different NIC.

Up front, my primary concern was observing baseline performance with the mainboard and processor, testing the cooling solution, and making sure everything will play nice with the hot swap bays. In other words, I wanted to eliminate as many points of concern as possible.

Initially I also left the FX-8350 in there. I have an FX-8320E, but it’s currently in another server, and I’m not entirely sure if I’m going to pull it. I’ll let the air temperatures in the chassis be the determining factor. For the GPU, I’m using a GT620 I had laying around — another frequent feature of hardware testing when I’m building systems. For the final build, I’m likely going to use something else, like see if I can diagnose and correct the fan problem on one of my Radeon x1650 cards.

With that, a few observations, and some quick reviews on some of the parts selected.

ECC memory. The mainboard was able to detect the ECC memory without a problem, and MemTest86 was also able to detect that the RAM is ECC. On the FreeNAS forums, a rather arrogant user by the moniker Cyberjock has a thread discussing FreeNAS hardware recommendations in which he says this:

AMD’s are a mess so I won’t even try to discuss how you even validate that ECC “functions”. Not that “supporting” ECC RAM is not the same as actually using the ECC feature. Do not be fooled as many have been. You don’t want to be that guy that thinks he’s got ECC and when the RAM goes bad you find out the ECC bits aren’t used.

I’m going to guess that he’s never used AMD hardware for this.

In reading through a lot of the various posts he’s made in which he tries to espouse himself as being an expert with regard to all things FreeNAS and ZFS, I’ve noticed that he seems to never consider anything beyond the memory as being a source of data corruption. Again the whole ECC vs non-ECC discussion has taken on religious overtones, and Cyberjock has propped himself up as the Pope of the Church of ECC with FreeNAS.

Whether the error correction function is being used requires experiencing correctable memory corruption. But then you end up with a version of the falling tree problem: if a correctable memory error occurs and the memory controller corrects it, did it actually happen?

Saying you can’t know whether ECC actually works on AMD platforms requires speaking out of ignorance or delusion. For one, the most powerful supercomputer in the United States relies on AMD Opteron 6274 processors and ECC RAM. And as the Opteron 6274 has the same memory controller as the FX processors, I think it’s safe to say that it works.

PassMark has also tested the ECC error detection in MemTest86 using an AMD FX processor. I’d say that’s good reason to trust that, at least with the AMD FX lineup, ECC RAM is going to work. After all, I’d think they would’ve reported back any problems.

Further, see my previous point about corruption originating from sources other than RAM. Seems few can think beyond that.

Hot-swap. To use hot-swap bays with the Sabertooth 990FX R2.0 (and other ASUS boards may be the same), enable the option “SATA ESP” for the SATA connectors that will be plugged up to hot-swap bays.  Make sure it’s also set to AHCI mode. For the ASMedia (white) connectors, just make sure they are enabled. They are hot-swap by default.

On the hot swap bays themselves, the included fan is fairly quiet. That was one of my primary concerns, but I was willing to change out the fan if I felt necessary, and I’m glad to see that won’t be necessary.

The only criticism is simply the fact all of the connectors are located along the left side when looking at the back. This means you’re almost guaranteed to be working in a tight space when trying to plug this up if you’re going to be putting this in a tower. Many rack chassis also have the drive bays on the right side when looking at the front, again guaranteeing a tight work space. Rosewill could’ve made things a little easier by including a Y-splitter for the two 4-pin Molex power plugs. For the SATA cables, just make sure to plug those into this before putting it into the chassis.

Cool and silent running. The Noctua fan on the cooling tower is quiet as expected, and the cooler performs reasonably well. The UEFI reported the processor sitting shy of 60C after the system had been running MemTest86 for over 18 hours (testing the ECC memory). But the processor isn’t going to be under that kind of load running FreeNAS unless I need to rebuild one of the drives for some reason. But even then, it won’t (or at least shouldn’t) be under that kind of load for 18 hours, so I shouldn’t have to worry about much here.

And that’s it for this part. All that’s left to do now is just select and order the 3U chassis and migrate everything into it, including installing both mobile racks. I’m also going to be changing over to the shielded SATA cables I mentioned earlier, the 3M 5602 series. I’ll just need to determine the lengths.

Feminism/Marriage and Relationships

Yes, having it all does suck

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment

Over on Medium.com, Amy Westervelt wrote a very compelling article on being a working, middle-class mother in this modern day and age called “Having it all kinda sucks“. And I’m quite inclined to agree with the title. Having it all does suck. After all, as my anti-gun friends are so quick to point out to me: with rights and privileges come responsibilities.

And much of what she lays out in her initial observations I’m sure you’ve heard before. To summarize, women are largely expected to work and have children, while still being the devoting wife to home and husband. Or, to borrow Amy’s eloquence:

Here’s what we tell women today: You not only can, but should have a career and children — because if you don’t, you’re basically a) lazy, b) weak, c) not a real woman. But also, you should do it without any support. Without government-paid maternity leave (what are you, a socialist?). Without too much childcare (because then you’re a shitty mom) or falling behind on the job (because then you’re a shitty employee — typical woman!). Without too much help from your husband (because then he’s a pussy).

But, as Amy later points out, and it’s something I’ve observed as well, it’s actually other women who tend to be the ones who hold this standard over other women:

I have routinely had women pass me over for work because I’m pregnant, or complain that I can’t make an evening meeting because I have kids. In fact, I’ve had more women penalize me for having kids than men. And it’s only been other women who have called my parenting into question because I work.

Thankfully, though, she’s willing to actually tell the truth. And one major fact of life many either hope they can avoid or want to avoid — whether by some miracle or by the government reimbursing them for the costs of their decisions — is simply this: choices come with trade-offs. Again, going on Amy’s eloquence:

I do think, though, that we should cut it out with the fairy tales already. Stop telling women they can have everything without sacrificing anything. Here’s the truth: You want to have a career and kids? You totally can, but both will suffer. You will never feel like you are devoting enough time to either. You will never feel like you are good enough at either. You will never get time off (at least for the first several years). You will always be choosing between things that need your attention, and you will almost never choose yourself. You will be judged for nearly every move you make and you will never measure up to anyone else’s expectations.

And the rest of Amy’s article is spot on with every point she hits. Except one.

I’m saying let’s make it okay for women to admit they’re pregnant, or take a little bit of time off to recuperate from having a baby without having to worry about tanking their careers.

The thing that needs to be kept in mind is, again, choices come with trade-offs. As Amy admits, as earlier quoted, trying to have a child and a career means both suffer.

It’s great that women have the choice to work. My wife’s work means we have more money in the bank to afford many of the luxuries we’ve indulged that otherwise would’ve still been largely out of reach. And now that I’m enjoying a better salary going forward than before, my wife has been able to cut her hours without us really feeling it. At the same time, my current work allows me to take home more money while working fewer hours closer to home.

But moving to a new job for the better salary and hours comes with one hell of a trade-off: the loss of seniority. On my team at my previous job, I had the highest seniority of all employees reporting to my manager. Now I have the least seniority on my team. But I was willing to trade seniority for having better hours and better pay.

Having a child means time off. It means you can’t be nearly as devoted to your work or career, as Amy again points out. It means lost seniority and falling back on advancements and advancement opportunities within your career path.

If you think the train called your career path is going to just pull into the station and wait till you’re ready to get back on, then a heavy dose of reality would be in order. Just like a Formula 1 race, the rest of the pack keeps going when you pull into the pits. They’re not going to pull in with you to wait until you’re ready to go again just so you can maintain your standing. It’s one of the reasons the daily grind is called the “rat race“. If you’re not running it with everyone else, you’re falling behind. And having a kid means falling behind. And you’ll keep falling behind as you keep getting nudged out to handle family affairs.

After all, if you could just hit the pause button on your career at any time and take as much time off as you feel is desirable without any consequences to your career and your standing within your career path, that provides some very dangerous precedents and incentives.

One trend we’ve seen in the last decade is a push toward the government reimbursing people for the costs of their choices. Currently we’re seeing that with the “forgive student debt” movement, and we’ve seen it as well with pushes for government-paid maternity leave among other things. Actually Bernie Sanders’ entire political platform seems to be a good summary of everything the people want to enjoy without the associative cost.

While you may not necessarily tank your career by having a kid or two, it does mean you cannot devote yourself to your career the same way as before. But if you feel that not being as devoted to your career means you shouldn’t suffer any kind of penalty, the world has never worked that way.

If I were to take six months away from my work and my career, and not do anything with regard to my profession during that time, I cannot and should not expect to be able to walk back into my career as if I never took any time off. My standing in my career will and should suffer, just as a woman’s standing in her career will and should suffer if she chooses to have children and all the burdens that come with that. It is the significant trade-off that comes with that choice, so make sure you are positioned appropriately to absorb it.

As such, don’t expect that having kids means no deviation from your career path and no penalty to your career. The career velocity of a 20-something with no kids will be higher than a 20-something with kids, and higher still than a 20-something unmarried with kids. That’s just how it works. A 20-something with kids can have the same career velocity as a 20-something without kids. It just requires putting a lot more fuel into the engine, which means, as Amy has already pointed out, you cannot be the devoted mother and wife. And if you’re a 20-something unmarried with kids, you’re going to need even more fuel.

But again that’s just how it works. A pick-up towing a half ton on a trailer requires more fuel to accelerate to highway speeds than a little Fiat with only the driver. And if you don’t have the energy to pull all that weight — the kids, the marriage, the career — then that means rationing your available energy, meaning they’re all going to suffer in some way.

Welcome to the rat race.

Concealed carry/Driving

Stopped by police while NOT carrying

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment

I recently posted an adventure I had the other night trying to find an emergency dentist in the middle of the night. One thing I omitted from that description is being pulled over on Amour Road in North Kansas City for speeding. I was paced at 40mph in a 25mph zone, and I’ll freely admit that I saw the sign too late and forgot how fast I was actually going. By the time I realized how fast I was going, the officer had already lit me up. Thankfully she let me off with a warning on the speeding charge — likely due to the hour of the night.

Now given this was the middle of the night and we were out and about looking for dental or medical attention, and I had just left the emergency room after having a tooth looked at, two things were true: I did not have the full mental capacity I would’ve had 12 hours earlier, and I was not carrying my firearm.

However in Kansas City, if you do have a concealed carry permit, the police are going to be informed of this when they run your license. I’ve said previously on this blog that you must inform police that you are carrying a firearm when you are pulled over. Twice. But what if you have a concealed carry permit and are not carrying?

As it was the middle of the night, and I again didn’t have my full capacities due to the hour, I did two things wrong during that stop that, thankfully, still turned out okay. First, I did not have my hands where the officer could initially see them upon approaching my vehicle. Second, I did not preemptively inform the officer of my concealed carry permit so I could inform her, in advance, that I did not have a firearm. I realized this mistake only after the encounter ended, as I could see via the passenger side mirror a supporting officer approaching as the detaining officer approached again on the driver side.

My wife was pulled over the previous week in Parkville, Missouri, for failure to yield at a stop sign. When we discussed the encounter, she gave me every impression that she did everything right during the encounter. Including informing the officer preemptively that she did have a concealed carry permit but that she did not have her firearm.

So when it comes to police stops, assume that the officer running your license will discover you have a concealed carry permit. To keep everything working in your favor as much as possible, inform the officer of that before they discover it. And follow-up by telling them whether you are or are not carrying a firearm.

Absinthe

Distilling Absinthe — Part III

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment

Build Log:

The United States Postal Service certainly had a weird way of delivering a package. I live in an apartment complex, meaning that packages that cannot be put in the mailbox get held at the office. It’s why I typically have packages shipped UPS or FedEx where possible and have those packages redirected to a place with better hours. On a Saturday, it means my hours are even more limited.

But when I saw them delivering mail, I checked the mailbox and found some mail, but no package despite it being listed as “Out for Delivery”. So I checked with the apartment manager to see if the package had been left with them despite not receiving a package notice as that’s happened before. No luck. Then closer to 4PM, approaching the time the apartment management office closed, I checked the listing again:

amazon

This time I had the SSD in my hands. For a while I started to worry they delivered it to the wrong apartment as I’ve received mail for other apartments. Thankfully no packages, but I wouldn’t put it past them to do something like that.

950pro

950pro2

So with the SSD in my hands, I installed it into the mainboard. Note to Samsung: change the label orientation on the drive. Initially the Windows 10 installer didn’t want to install to it, but a quick “Load Optimized Defaults” and a few small modifications — disabling the serial port and onboard audio — managed to get the installer detecting it as a bootable drive.

With that out of the way, the only thing left to do was get naked.

Note: When using the 950 Pro, be sure to download and install the Samsung driver for that device to ensure optimal performance and stability. I actually had a hard time getting a fresh Windows 10 install to remain stable until I discovered that driver.

Stripping down

Since my wife still actively used Absinthe while I was testing the new hardware, I obviously needed to coordinate with her on making the upgrades since this was going to mean several days of downtime.

Saturday was spent finishing the testing on the hardware while also grabbing the water I knew I’d need to flush out all the components. I already had four gallons of distilled water before buying an additional six. Ten gallons should be plenty, and if it’s not I can always grab more. I’ve had as much as 14 gallons stocked before — that was ahead of building Desert Sapphire.

I also reinforced the pine table under her desk. The board had some flex to it and it made me uncomfortable given how much weight would be resting on it. So I took some slimmer pine boards — 3″ wide by 3/4″ thick — and made crossbeam supports going across the width of the panel underneath it, just screwed and glued in place.

Sunday was crunch time. After coordinating with my wife, we disconnected everything and got the case within reach. Not being able to access the system in order to keep it clean has definitely taken its toll, meaning the move to below the desk will certainly be beneficial, not just in terms of airflow.

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dust5

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Once everything was shut down and disconnected, I first wanted to take care of the software side of things. That meant migrating her Windows 8.1 Pro license to the X99 Pro system. I had already installed Windows 8.1 Pro to the system the night before, so it was just a matter of activating it. Once activated, I upgraded the license to Windows 10 Pro, made note of software key for a fresh install, imaged the drive, and shut everything down.

Next came draining the loop and taking it all apart. And I took everything out of the system to get as much of the dust out as possible. I re-assembled the system by the end of Sunday as well, with the exception of the water loop. I saved assembling the loop for Monday since I knew there were going to need to be some changes.

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assembled

Assembling the loop

Monday had the new water block coming for the CPU. One other thing about the Watercool block to enjoy: the instructions say the alignment of the block doesn’t matter. And the mounting system for the block is very, very easy for LGA-2011 and LGA-2011v3 sockets. I mounted the block with the outlet downward as I feel that makes draining the system much easier since it means the CPU block isn’t going to be a fluid trap.

heatkiller

Now this meant that going from the CPU back to the reservoir was going to require a new line. But I decided to try something a little different and use PETG, using a 40mm extension fitting to raise up a 90-degree fitting enough to get a straight line to a 90-degree dual-rotary fitting. I also replaced the line across the front on top of the bottom radiator with PETG as well. This was left over from the stock I ordered for building the cabinet in Desert Sapphire.

Now most of the rest of the copper tubing runs could be re-used. The runs going from the graphics card to the top radiator and top radiator to CPU could not due to the memory slots between the rear I/O and the CPU — slots which aren’t present on her previous Sabertooth board.

But the change in approach was pretty straightfoward: right-angle bend between the graphics card and top radiator, dual 90-degree bend to get from the radiator to the CPU. Only I didn’t have a lot of copper left and I ended up messing up the bending trying to measure it and account for the radius in my tubing bender. So rather than buy another coil of tubing, I opted for a different approach that required overnight shipping.

Out with the copper, in with the PETG

AlphaCool and Bitspower make 90-degree fittings that are female-to-female G1/4″ threaded. This allows you to screw hardline fittings into them and use those to make the 90-degree bends instead of trying to bend tubing. They can work with Type L or Type M hard copper pipe along with PETG and acrylic tube. I ordered six of the AlphaCool fittings from Performance-PCs along with more PrimoChill fittings.

And once they arrived, I sought to change the loop over from copper to PETG. It didn’t take long, thankfully, and part of the reason is how easy PETG is to cut to length. The same tubing cutters I’ve used previously for soft tubing can cut cleanly through PETG without any problem. So after some careful measurements and cuts, all of the copper was replaced with PETG.

petg1

petg2

petg3

petg4

petg5

And with that, the loop was leak tested and filled with coolant. I did a clean install of Windows 10 Pro to the system and imaged the drive, then turned it over to my wife to install everything else. We still have the external enclosure, and that will be connected later to recover her other profile-related items before the drive is set up as a backup unit.

And the Green Fairy takes hold, the green glow of her enchanting spell that inspires this project’s namesake will surely captivate my wife again, drawing her deep into its temptation. Listen closely and you can almost hear her calling out for you.

final

Final specifications

System specifications
CPU: Intel i7-5820k
Mainboard: ASUS X99-PRO/USB 3.1
RAM: 16GB DDR4 (will be upgraded to 32GB eventually)
Graphics: XFX “Double D” R9 290X
Storage: Samsung 950 PRO
Power: Corsair RM1000
Chassis: Corsair 750D with Airflow Edition front panel
Sound: Creative Labs SoundBlaster Z

Water loop specifications
CPU block: Watercool Heatkiller IV Pro
Graphics block: Aquacomputer kryographics Hawaii with passive backplate
Radiators: AlphaCool XT45 360mm (top) and 240mm (front), AlphaCool ST30 240mm (bottom)
Pump: AlphaCool VPP655 with AlphaCool HF D5 clear acrylic top
Reservoir: Bitspower Z-Tube 100mm with Z-CAP I and Z-CAP II (acrylic)
Fittings: PrimoChill Revolver 1/2″ OD, AlphaCool HF L-connectors, Swiftech 90-degree elbow fittings
Tubing: PrimoChill 1/2″ OD PETG

 

Health care

Emergency dentistry

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment

Here in Kansas City there are a number of emergency services available. There are emergency rooms for emergency medical attention. The closest to where I live is either St Luke’s Hospital off Barry Road, or North Kansas City Hospital — the difference between the two I’m sure is less than a mile. There is an emergency veterinary clinic off Barry Road and MO-152 called Blue Pearl. I’ve mentioned them on this blog previously.

Why are there no overnight dental clinics?

I mean, let’s have a little thought experiment. If you have a sudden injury to any other part of your body except your teeth, you can have emergency medical attention. If you break a tooth or something like that, your only option seems to be the emergency room.

Let me provide context here. The night of February 9, I suffered a tooth fracture. The corner of one of my molars just completely popped off. So being in a slight panic, I took to the ‘Net to find an emergency clinic. There was an emergency dispatch service that, in hindsight, I should have called. But there were two clinics in particular that I found: Dental Corner down off 87th Street in the southern part of KC, and Dental Emergency Services in Prairie Village, KS.

There was also one dentist that advertises on their website as having a 24-hour emergency hotline. We tried calling it and were sent to voice mail! Say it with me: “FALSE ADVERTISING!”

Eventually we wound up at the emergency room at North Kansas City Hospital to see if there was any immediately-obvious damage and see what could be done. The on-call doctor said there wasn’t anything immediately concerning, and to use dental wax to pack the area and see a dentist as soon as possible.

So fast forward to the next morning, February 10 (when I’m writing this). A nice, bright, sunny Wednesday morning. First place we tried going was Dental Corner. Dentist is out of town through the end of the week.

So next we went across the state line to Prairie Village, Kansas, to Dental Emergency Services. Door was locked when we arrived and an attempt to call was sent to voice mail. The dental emergency clinic that advertises themselves as having a 24-hour hotline was in the same building as Dental Emergency Services. In hindsight we probably should’ve stopped in. Oh well.

Third clinic we tried was in northern Kansas City north of the MO-152 in the same area as Blue Pearl. They have a sign in their window saying that emergency cases were welcome, and they say on their site they take emergency cases. When we got there, they said the soonest I could be seen was Tuesday. What?!?!?

Here’s the thing about emergencies: immediate attention is being requested or needed. In the third clinic, I even said I was there specifically to have a tooth fracture examined. If I tried to walk into an orthopedist’s office with a broken arm, they would’ve sent me to an urgent care clinic or the emergency room. If you walk into a dentist office with a broken tooth, your only alternative is another dentist office.

Again, why are there no actual 24-hour emergency dentists available, especially in a major metropolitan area like Kansas City?

The fourth dentist office we tried is Joy Miller, DDS. She happens to also be my wife’s regular dentist (and after this incident, soon to be mine as well). My wife called in and asked if they could squeeze me in. After making it clear over the phone that all I was immediately wanting was having the tooth fracture examined to see where to go from there, they agreed to see me. After determining the extent of the damage — thankfully it looked worse than it actually was — we scheduled a follow-up procedure. Only thing of immediate concern was just having what felt like a sharp edge ground down so it wasn’t scraping against my tongue.

Again, though, we need actual 24-hour emergency dental clinics available, or hospitals need to have at least one on staff. And if a clinic advertises themselves as able to take dental emergencies, they better be able to take dental emergencies, meaning if a patient walks in with an emergency — which I believe a tooth fracture qualifies — they shouldn’t be told to come back on Tuesday.

Absinthe

Distilling Absinthe – Part II

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment

Build Log:

Now that we’re past the introduction, let’s actually get down to work, starting with a small aside on the table.

I said in the previous section that I wanted to move the system out from behind her monitors and onto a small table under her desk.  First my wife’s desk is actually a 42″ bar table. Specifically it’s the Pinnadel pub table from Ashley Furniture (link to product) that we bought through Nebraska Furniture Mart for much less than what Ashley charges for it directly. Anyway, the stretcher is about 8″ above the floor. So I need a table that can clear over that while still leaving adequate clearance above the chassis for air flow around the top radiator.

The small table was very simple: a pine plank cut from larger stock with four (4) IKEA Godmorgon legs. It took me only 15 minutes to make the table as I already had a plank of wood left over from building the Desert Sapphire cabinet. For most builds a 12″x24″ board should work. Get either oak or pine as those are the two strongest commonly-sold woods with pine typically being less expensive (and stronger than oak). Shelf boards will be your friend here. But avoid MDF and particle board.

IKEA has other vanity legs available that are shorter and less expensive if you don’t need what I acquired. Otherwise all you need is just a board large enough to hold your tower. If you are building this to support a larger chassis, buy an extra set of legs for the middle for extra support.

New hardware

Now let’s get into the feature presentation, starting with the new CPU block:

HK_IV_PRO_INTEL_Acryl_3

I decided to go with the Watercool Heatkiller IV Pro, specifically the acrylic version. It’s a little lower profile while retaining much of the silver from the Koolance CPU-380A currently being used. In some tests it’s been shown to out-perform the EK Supremacy EVO. And it doesn’t require any modification for it to perform well for LGA-2011v3 processors. In short, all around I think it’s the better option.

So I ordered it from Performance-PCs at the same time I ordered a few other things to finish up another project. For Absinthe, thankfully this is really the only thing I needed to order since I’ll be re-using everything else.

But let’s get to what you’re really wanting to see.

Testing the new hardware

For testing I used a spare GT620 graphics card since my wife’s R9 290X was still in Absinthe when I set this up.

test_setup

One thing I really like about the X99 PRO is this little guy:

fpio_plug

But given how I have the FPIO already connected in Absinthe, this is largely unnecessary. Still a nice touch, though, and I’ll use it anyway as it’ll make it a lot easier to figure out the pinout for the USB plugs I currently use.

So with everything mounted, using a CX750M for temporarily powering this and a ThermalTake Water 2.0 Performer for the CPU, it was time to power it on so the mainboard could fail to detect the M.2 drive… Ugh… I assumed the drive was bad, so I exchanged it at Micro Center. Interestingly, I ended up getting a slight refund doing this because of a recent price drop. When I got home, I plugged in the other drive…. only to get the same result.

I took to the Internet to see if I could find out what the hell was going on. In searching around, I decided to look through the PDF version of the manual for any information regarding getting M.2 drives to work — double-checking for recommended BIOS settings in case there was something non-obvious I needed to do. That’s when I discovered this little gem:

x99pro_ssd

That’s right, the X99-PRO does not support SATA M.2 SSDs, something Micro Center’s product page doesn’t mention. You must use a PCI-Express based SSD in the M.2 slot. So guess who’s getting a 950 Pro 512 GB…

That’s what I get for not doing a good enough compatibility check before buying parts. But at least I could absorb the extra cost. Mostly. I know a lot of people end up pouring a lot of saved cash into builds like this without a lot of leeway for contingencies — a consideration that seems very curiously absent in discussing builds online.

So it looks like Beta Orionis (β Ori.) is getting an SSD upgrade ahead of schedule. What’s interesting is that the M.2 850 EVO worked without issue in the ASRock X99 Extreme4 board I used in Desert Sapphire, so I think it’s reasonable to presume that another X99 board would’ve been able to use the 850 EVO. Oh well. While waiting for the SSD to arrive (I ordered it through Amazon), I decided to move ahead and test whatever else I could. I had a spare 120GB Patriot Torch LE SSD I could use in the mean time.

So that’s it for now. The more immediate next step will be to test the 950 Pro when it comes in to make sure it’s not DOA. Then Absinthe will be torn down completely, stripping the 750D completely naked for cleaning and parts inspection. I’ll probably need to give the case a shower as well to get all the dust out of it.

Note: the product image for the Watercool Heatkiller IV is copyright Watercool e.K. (Germany) and used in accordance with Fair Use under 17 USC § 107 for the purposes of commentary and/or criticism.

Absinthe

Distilling another batch of Absinthe

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment

Build Log:

It has been about a year since I last wrote about my wife’s computer, Absinthe. In that time the system has been running smoothly without any complaints. To recap, here are the current specifications of the system:

Processor: AMD FX-8350
Mainboard: ASUS Sabertooth 990FX R2.0
Memory: 16GB AMD Radeon Performance DDR3-1866
Graphics: XFX R9 290X 4GB “Double D”
Sound: Creative Labs SoundBlaster Z
Power supply: Corsair RM1000
Chassis: Corsair 750D
Storage: 2 x 1TB WD Black in RAID 1 (MediaSonic ProRaid HUR3-SU3S3 connected via eSATA)

And the system is water cooled:

Pump: AlphaCool VPP655 with AlphaCool HF D5 Plexi pump top
Reservoir: Bitspower Z-Tube 100mm with Z-CAP I and Z-CAP II (acrylic)
Radiators: AlphaCool XT45 360mm (top) and 240mm (front), AlphaCool ST30 240mm (bottom)
Fans: Bitfenix Spectre Pro 120mm and 140mm
Tubing: Type L annealed copper tubing
CPU Block: Koolance CPU-380A
Graphics card block: Aquacomputer kryographics Hawaii (acrylic glass edition) with passive backplate
Coolant: Koolance LIQ-702 clear

Wait, no complaints with an AMD FX processor? How is that possible?!?

The system is coming due for an annual cleaning and flush. This time around I’m going with a different coolant: Mayhem’s X1 clear. The system will basically need to be torn down to practically nothing for cleaning as well. Getting into every nook and crevice of the 750D, flushing all the radiators and blocks, clean all the fans and everything, and largely get everything back up and running again, clean as a whistle.

I will also need to inspect the copper tubing and replace any that is discolored or showing signs of oxidation. Having copper doesn’t get you away from that.

Along with that, the system is going to also be moved out from behind her monitors, where accessing it can be a chore, to a short table under her desk where it’ll be a lot easier to see and access for periodic dust removal with the vacuum, especially on the bottom radiator. Again, the new coolant will be Mayhem’s X1. Desert Sapphire required only 1L of coolant, and I ordered three bottles of concentrate for it. I’m likely going to be exceeding 1L for Absinthe. We’ll see.

The water cooling configuration is likely not going to change this time around. We’ve talked previously about moving the system back into her old blue chassis and externally water-cooling it, but we’ve opted against it this time just to get things back up and running faster.

But that’s not all that’s happening…

upgrade

Processor: Intel i7-5820k
Mainboard: Asus X99-PRO
Memory: EVGA SuperSC DDR4-3200 2x8GB
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO M.2 500GB

And yet to be ordered is the new CPU block, which will likely be the EK Supremacy EVO, or I might opt for something else such as the Watercool HeatKiller Pro IV, or stick with Koolance and go with the CPU-380I. We’ll see. The new hardware will first be set up in a test setup to tempt my wife (yes, I love to live dangerously) and make sure everything is going to work as expected.

Absinthe currently has Windows 8.1 (Pro if I remember correctly), and that license will be moved to the new platform and upgraded to Windows 10. The external RAID 1 will be used for periodically backing up the system. Given she’ll have an SSD this time around and we have Google Fiber, installing her games onto the new system is going to be child’s play. She was practically drooling over Desert Sapphire, so this’ll be a good upgrade for her with plenty of room to expand later on.

Why Haswell-E and X-99 over the Skylake and Z-170? In short, scalability.

As I’ve said here numerous times, my wife multitasks like nothing. She’d been doing that since first having dual monitors on an Athlon X2. That is why I went with the AMD FX-8350 when I initially built her system a little over two years ago. On the Intel side, getting that same scalability requires going with an i7 regardless of which generation you select, and it was a price premium I wasn’t willing (or really able) to pay at the time. An i5 has only 4 cores, which doesn’t provide the same scalability for multitasking as an i7 or FX 8-core.

When she had only two monitors, she probably could’ve gotten away with an i5. But now that she has three, an i7 would basically be required. About the only other upgrade that would’ve improved multitasking performance is an SSD. And single-thread performance is a non-issue when the operating system is trying to balance processes across a small number of cores. That is where the AMD FX 6-core and 8-core processors beat the Intel i5, though whether an Intel i7 matches an AMD FX 8-core is debatable given HyperThreading is not the same as physical cores.

So when it came to the next upgrade leap, Haswell-E was a no-brainer, as was the SSD, and I’ll likely do the same or my system, Beta Orionis, depending on what AMD’s next generation has to offer. The i7-5820k has six (6) physical cores plus HyperThreading expanding it out to twelve (12) parallel threads, a 50% improvement in parallel multitasking over the FX-8350.

And when you combine better scalability of the Haswell-E with the better per-thread performance, scaling both horizontally and vertically, overall you’ve got a very significant gain. But that is basically the overall philosophy of this move, coming to a newer generation processor that will also have more cores and threads for better multitasking.

FedEx

Thank you, FedEx

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment

I’ve written about FedEx a few times, including going so far as to write a couple articles talking about a complaint I had against them in late Q3 2014 (here and it’s followup). However I believe that when a company does something right or positively unexpected that they deserve public praise as well.

I ordered two surplus computers from Arrow Direct, one on January 27, the other on January 28. One of them will ultimately be returned because I got an order cancellation request in too late. Anyway, Arrow Direct shipped the computers FedEx Ground. Typically this is their slowest service. And even for packages coming a short distance away, they’ve sometimes still taken almost half a week to get here. That’s why I’ve typically favored UPS for shipments over FedEx, and will gladly pay a couple dollars more for that.

FedEx sent the shipment alert e-mails the night of January 28, showing they were shipping from Columbus, Ohio, with an expected delivery date of the following Monday, February 1. The following morning after they were shipped, I went into my FedEx account and redirected the packages to be held at my local 24-hour FedEx Office — it’s just a lot more convenient doing that when you live in an apartment complex.

The morning of January 30, when I’m writing this, I had a voice mail, text message, and e-mail alerts from FedEx telling me the packages were ready for pick-up. They were shipped FedEx Ground, and the packages were delivered in 2 days, on a Saturday.

Thank you, FedEx.

fedex

Libertarianism/Vaccines

Doxing anti-vaxxers

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment

If you click on the “Vaccines” category for this blog, you’ll find two other articles preceding this one. Vaccines is one topic that probably riles people up more than abortion and gun rights. Combined.

That said, I’m a staunch advocate of vaccination. It’s very safe and very effective at preventing the contraction of various communicable diseases. However, being a staunch libertarian, I always believe it should be up to a person as to whether or not they will take the vaccines or allow them to be administered to their children. That being said, the government has the power to determine the vaccination requirements for children attending public schools under their purview:

When you send your kids to a public school or private school, you have to abide by the rules of the game. It’s as plain as that. Public schools are owned and operated by the local or state government. As such, the government sets rules about attendance and those who attend.

An obvious example of this is the vaccination schedule. For decades, public schools have required that students be vaccinated in accordance with a recommended schedule codified in their regulations. For the most part these schedules follow the CDC recommendations. If you do not keep your child’s vaccines up to date, you will be notified of the noncompliance. If you refuse to bring your child’s vaccinations back into compliance, your child will be removed from the school, and other repercussions could arise as well.

Now a lot of school districts and States do allow for the medical equivalent of “conscientious objectors” with regard to vaccines. There are a couple problems with the idea related to how vaccines work. First, not every vaccine provides 100% impenetrable immunity in every person who takes it, yet anti-vaccine advocates readily propagate this straw-man argument: “If you’re child is fully vaccinated, why are you so concerned about my unvaccinated child?” No vaccine is 100% effective, and no vaccine expert will say such. That is why we are still concerned.

This goes on the concept of “herd immunity”. Herd immunity is established when a pathogen’s presence in a population is relegated to one or a few individuals and the pathogen cannot spread beyond that. Herd immunity does not mean no presence of a pathogen in a population. But if it is introduced, it cannot spread. Herd immunity protects those who cannot be vaccinated and those in whom the vaccine for some reason is not effective.

Again, no vaccine is 100% effective. Not everyone can take it, and it won’t take in everyone. That is why herd immunity is extremely important to population health and the eradication of communicable pathogens.

That being said, though, if you are one such “conscientious objector”, should your refusal to vaccinate your children be public knowledge?

Mike Drago of the Dallas Morning News seems to think so: “If you don’t [vaccinate your children], and your kid goes to school with mine, I should get a note or a call from school about it, pronto.” Except there’s a huge problem with this idea: medical privacy laws. But Drago has already thought of that: “I suggested we amend the ‘Affidavit Request for Exemption’ with language effectively asking parents to waive their privacy protections.”

One way you can easily tell if ideas like these are bad ideas is to apply them to other areas. After all, I’m pretty sure the anti-abortion right would love to extend this idea to abortions and make signing away your privacy rights a condition of obtaining an abortion or birth control. Anti-gun advocates are practically calling for just that with calls for universal registration, especially given that a newspaper in New York published the names and addresses of those who had a handgun permit.

Even better, let’s extend it to the First Amendment. Want to speak your mind on a political matter? Better be willing to give up your right to privacy. Note that I am aware of the invasion of privacy known as “doxing”, and I do not advocate or condone its practice in the least. But Drago is saying that anyone who refuses to vaccinate themselves or their children should essentially be “doxxed”.

Like it or not, we do have the right to body autonomy. Sure not being vaccinated means that you could potentially risk the health of others. So, then, why aren’t you calling for “doxing” everyone who refuses to wash their hands after using the restroom? If you don’t wash your hands properly and use hand sanitizer to further reduce your own personal chance of spreading a communicable disease, I’m afraid you’re a much greater risk to population health than a couple conscientious vaccine objectors.

Remember, in the wrong person, any pathogen can be fatal. So you not washing your hands properly could cause a child or immuno-compromised adult to be exposed to a virus or bacterial strain that causes a debilitating case of diarrhea.

One unvaccinated child is not a significant risk to the health of a population. Even a few unvaccinated children will not be a significant risk. If those children are never exposed to the pathogens against which vaccines are available, they are not a risk to anyone with regard to those pathogens. But a schedule-compliant vaccinated child who isn’t taught how to properly wash his/her hands is a greater health risk than a child whose parents didn’t get him/her vaccinated according to schedule.

Let’s keep the risks into perspective. And the perspective is simple. You are likely a greater risk to your children’s health than your children’s classmates.

That being said, there are vaccine-preventable pathogens that are still common in the United States. Pertussis is one, along with influenza and HPV. With these, the possibility of exposure is significantly higher than for measles, and everyone should be vaccinated against them according to recommendations. But it is disgusting to call for “doxxing” those who don’t vaccinate.

In any decision, there needs to be a cost/benefit analysis. There is no benefit to publicly outing those who don’t vaccinate. There is plenty of cost, though, especially in a currency we cannot afford to spend: our liberties.

Instead, this is just an idea by a few people who want to shame people for making a contrary decision.

Background checks/Due process

Reply to Nicholas Kristof

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment

Nicholas Kristof is a writer for the New York Times focusing on human rights, women’s rights, health and global affairs. As part of the SundayReview column, he addressed firearms in an article called “Some Inconvenient Gun Facts for Liberals“.

At the start, Kristof states some basic facts. The number of guns in private hands went up while the number of homicides went down. Kristof mentioned gun homicides, but all of violent crime declined after peaking in 1992 and 1993 as gun ownership went up. Kristof also mentions the landmark study showing the Assault Weapons Ban of 1994 did practically nothing for violent crime.

On concealed and open carry, he points out that the fears of liberals have largely failed to come to fruition, but with a small caveat:

With some 13 million Americans now licensed to pack a concealed gun, many liberals expected gun battles to be erupting all around us. In fact, the most rigorous analysis suggests that all these gun permits caused neither a drop in crime (as conservatives had predicted) nor a spike in killings (as liberals had expected). Liberals were closer to the truth, for the increase in carrying loaded guns does appear to have led to more aggravated assaults with guns, but the fears were overblown.

Then he turns his attention to the inertia in Congress with regard to getting new firearms legislation passed:

So why does nothing get done? One reason is that liberals often inadvertently antagonize gun owners and empower the National Rifle Association by coming across as supercilious, condescending and spectacularly uninformed about the guns they propose to regulate. A classic of gun ignorance: New York passed a law three years ago banning gun magazines holding more than seven bullets — without realizing that for most guns there is no such thing as a magazine for seven bullets or less.

Absolutely this is one of the major problems in the gun control debate. You have a bunch of people who are largely ignorant not just of firearms, but existing laws regarding firearms, attempting to lecture and belittle those who defend gun rights. It should be considered obscene for those who wish to implement policy to be ignorant of that which they seek to regulate more than already is — yes, we already have plenty of laws governing firearms.

I mean liberals are likely largely offended by the ignorance of creationists when it comes to talking about evolution, so why are they accepting the large-scale ignorance of the anti-gun lobby when it comes to firearms? I think it’s for the same reasons that Christians continue to argue about creationism: they don’t realize their own ignorance, and won’t do anything to correct it.

For example, we already have background checks in the United States, yet the discussions on “universal” background checks fail to include this point. I wonder why. You also cannot purchase a firearm off the Internet to evade a background check. I’ve purchased two firearms online and had to go through a separate background check for each one.

Another is the common retort that the NRA managed to ban research into gun violence, and no such thing has happened. The only thing the NRA managed to successfully lobby is to prevent the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — a subset of the United States Public Health Service, who has a stated anti-gun agenda — from conducting gun violence research. Gun violence research has actually been occurring by other organizations.

And, one other thing: stop using the term “gun safety”. I really hate having to continually address the fact that passing new laws regulating firearms is not about “safety” but control.

Before continuing, I should make one thing known here. I’m a very, very staunch defender of due process. No person should be stripped of any of their rights — including the right to a firearm — without first having been adjudicated through a Court. This is a basic requirement of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. No person can be deprived of their rights without due process of law. Plain and simple.

Any time you talk about restricting someone’s access to a firearm, if that restriction is not predicated by any kind of legal process through a Court overseen by a judge, you’re violating the Due Process Clause. Don’t like it? Tough shit.

As such, all this talk on universal background checks is moot. If a person hasn’t been adjudicated by the system, it won’t come up in any background check. And all the discussion about universal background checks largely forgets this.

New Harvard research confirms a long-ago finding that 40 percent of firearms in the United States are acquired without a background check. That’s crazy. Why empower criminals to arm themselves?

The link Kristof gave is to an article on the site The Trace called “Just How Many People Get Guns Without a Background Check? Fast-Tracked Research Is Set to Provide an Answer“. Deborah Azrael, PhD, of Harvard University, conducted research to determine how many guns change hands without a background check being first conducted. The research covered a survey of 2,072 firearms owners, about 40% of whom said they acquired their most recent firearm without a background check.

So far it appears the study has yet to be published, so quoting an unpublished study is a bit premature. Azrael has promised to be detailed in her study:

Azrael says that when results from the survey are published, they’ll note the distinction between gun sales and gun transfers, and provide more information on where these unregulated exchanges take place.

Those are very important distinctions. The current standard under law is that a person cannot transfer a firearm to someone they know or has reason to believe cannot legally possess one. That’s the standard here in Missouri, and it’s a standard that applies under Federal law as well.

Here’s another distinction: how many of those claiming to have acquired their latest firearm without a background check have never had a background check for any firearm they’ve acquired? The percentage in that instance will drop to under 1%. Some States — Kansas being one, I believe Missouri is another, but I’m not sure — allow those with an active concealed carry permit to bypass the NICS background check when acquiring a firearm due to the extensive background check needed to acquire a concealed carry permit. That’s not a private transfer, but it is still one occurring without a background check.

So we’ll have to wait till Dr Azrael publishes her study to see how well it withstands scrutiny. I don’t expect it to given the fact they surveyed only a little over 2,000 gun owners. Now, granted, that’s better than a previous, oft-quoted study that only had 250 participants, but it’s still tiny compared to the estimated number of gun owners in the United States.

But let’s get back to Kristof’s question: “Why empower criminals to arm themselves?” This is a presumption that the Due Process Clause does not allow regulators to make. You cannot presume that everyone who seeks a firearm through a private transfer intends to use that firearm for harm. Indeed, even if a large number of private transfers are to people who legally cannot possess a firearm, it appears they aren’t really doing much with them.

Dr Azrael estimated in statements to The Trace that her numbers provide an estimate of 20 million firearms changing hands each year in private transfers. Provided that number is accurate, let’s assume for a moment that all homicides and non-fatal injuries in 2013 (latest year for which fatal and non-fatal injury data is available through WISQARS) resulted from private transferred firearms. That is 84,258 non-fatal injuries and 11,208 deaths. So in total 95,466 total injuries and homicides from firearms. Add in another 21,175 suicides, and the total is 116,641.

Out of 20 million firearms transfers, that amounts to 5.8 firearms injuries or deaths per 1,000 firearms privately transferred. Out of the total number of firearms estimated to be transferred via her survey (50 million per year), that’s 2.3 firearms injuries or deaths per 1,000 firearms transferred (privately and not).

And out of all firearms believed to be in private hands in the US — I’ll use the estimate of 300 million — the rate drops to 3.89 in 10,000. Talk about a drop in the ocean.

So perhaps the focus on private transfers is, as many gun rights activists have been saying for years, largely overblown? Perhaps time would be better spent focusing on the problem areas, such as the one Kristof mentions next:

Some evidence supports steps that seem common sense. More than 10 percent of murders in the United States, for example, are by intimate partners. The riskiest moment is often after a violent breakup when a woman has won a restraining order against her ex. Prohibiting the subjects of those restraining orders from possessing a gun reduces these murders by 10 percent, one study found.

“If you can keep a gun from someone at that moment of threat, that is very important,” notes Daniel W. Webster, a gun safety expert at Johns Hopkins University who has pioneered research on keeping guns from high-risk individuals.

And we absolutely should. The question is how to identify “high-risk individuals” to cut them off. Restraining orders are one such identification. And, here’s the thing many don’t seem to realize: you can restrict firearms ownership for someone under an active restraining order without violating their Due Process Rights! That is so long as the person who is the subject of the restraining order has an opportunity to fight the restraining order.

At the same time, though, it sounds like it’s largely not having a great affect on homicides. Sounds like for intimate partner violence, firearms are not the weapon of choice. But it’s a small thing that can be instituted without much regulatory effort and without violating someone’s due process rights, so why not?

Some public health approaches to reducing gun violence have nothing to do with guns. Researchers find that a nonprofit called Cure Violence, which works with gangs, curbs gun deaths. An initiative called Fast Track supports high-risk children and reduces delinquency and adult crime.

And this is largely where we need to focus our efforts. “An ounce of prevention” so to speak. The only downside is these programs are having a hard time securing funding, so every effort should be made to fund these programs. So if you care about stopping gun violence, whip out your checkbook and send them some cash!

In short, let’s get smarter. Let’s make America’s gun battles less ideological and more driven by evidence of what works. If the left can drop the sanctimony, and the right can drop the obstructionism, if instead of wrestling with each other we can grapple with the evidence, we can save thousands of lives a year.

Nice little attempt at trying to play to both sides overall. It’s one thing to say “if we focus on what works”, it’s another ballgame to prove that something works.

The problem of violence is how it plays out. Most violence is “heat of passion”, such as intimate partner violence. Comparatively little is premeditated. And the premeditated violence can be extremely difficult to prevent because 1. it is difficult to identify those premeditating violence to stop them and 2. those premeditating violence will work around whatever laws are passed. After all, that’s exactly what Eliot Roger did. Funny how no one in the “gun safety” movement mentions him.

So instead if you want to curb violence, not just gun violence, you need to go right to the sources of it. Unfortunately those sources extend from childhood — the environment in which a child is raised. Yet most who are raised in squalor don’t go on to commit violence. It’s just not in them to do it. So what pushes others to commit violence? That’s the question to address.