Where PC means Personal Care® · July 2005 · No. 52
WEST SEATTLE JUNCTION FESTIVAL 2005
Win a free LCD monitor!
— See the Sealth High School robot —
At this year's West Seattle Junction Festival (formerly known as the West Seattle Street Festival), Quidnunc will give away a BenQ 15" LCD monitor worth over $300. Pick up the entry form at our booth and enter inside the store. You do not need to be present to win.
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Chief Sealth Robot Featured at Quidnunc Booth
West Seattle Street Festival, July 15-17, 2005
Quidnunc is proud to be one of the sponsors of the Chief Sealth High School Robotics Team's Iron Hawk, a robot designed and built by students to compete in the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics Competition – a national competition. Iron Hawk will be featured in Quidnunc's booth at the West Seattle Street Festival from July 15 through 17, 2005. Drop in and be nothing but impressed by the ingenuity of our Chief Sealth students!
About the FIRST Robotics Competition
The FIRST Robotics Competition is an exciting, multinational competition that teams professionals and young people to solve an engineering design problem in an intense and competitive way. The program is a life-changing, career-molding experience – and a lot of fun. In 2005 the competition reached close to 25,000 high-school-aged young people on close to 1,000 teams in 30 competitions. Teams come from Brazil, Canada, Ecuador, Israel, Mexico, the U.K., and almost every U.S. state. The competitions are high-tech spectator sporting events, the result of lots of focused brainstorming, real-world teamwork, dedicated mentoring, project timelines, and deadlines.
Colleges, universities, corporations, businesses, and individuals provide scholarships to our participants. Involved engineers experience again many of the reasons they chose engineering as a profession, and the companies they work for contribute to the community while they prepare and create their future workforce. The competition shows students that the technological fields hold many opportunities and that the basic concepts of science, math, engineering, and invention are exciting and interesting.
The Chief Sealth Team
Featured in this newsletter:
· Win a free LCD monitor!
· Chief Sealth Robot...
· Game Players Connect...
· Quidnunc Website
· 3 Free Months of DSL...
· Faster Data Access...
· Keeping the Heat in Check
Also:
Coupons
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Game Players Connect Wirelessly
Console game players can now share the wireless networks used for broadband Internet service. The Linksys Wireless-B Game Adapter will accept the connection from an X-box, Sony Playstation 2, or Nintendo Game Cube and send and receive high-speed information from a wireless router. When there is no router available, two or more players can compete head-to-head if each person has his own adapter.
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Quidnunc Website Improvements
Check out our website. It's had a facelift and it's now easier to navigate. Please feel free to add any comments and if there is anything that you would like to see us add to the website, please let us know.
www.quidnunc.net
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3 Free Months of DSL for anyone that signs up for DSL service.
Pssstttt!!!
You know that spam and virus protection that AOL has been advertising for the past months? It's nice they finally caught up with Quidnunc – we've been doing it for 5 years!
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Faster Data Access for High Speed Business Networking
If your business needs to send large files between computers or run key applications across the network, Gigabit speed networks (1000 Megabits) are here, and available at a price not much more than the previous 100 Megabit networks. People in businesses running database applications (including point of sale systems) across their network will notice a dramatic increase in the speed of accessing their data files. A Gigabit network will require new network adapters, new switches and probably new cabling. The incremental cost of this new hardware is relatively minor. Many adapters are $30–$50 and 5-port switches are usually less than $80.
In 2002, 15 students and the original Iron Hawk robot went to their first competition which took place on the University of Washington campus. The rookie team was proud of reaching the quarterfinals and of the relationships they established with Microsoft, the Seattle Robotics Society and the national FIRST organization. Each year, teams receive a kit of parts, rules to a new game, and six short weeks to complete a very complex task. Students work with engineering mentors to design and build a robot to play the game.
In its second year of robotics, the team went beyond focusing on the building of the robot, to mentoring students at Seattle Lutheran High School (West Seattle) and Forest Ridge (Bellevue), as well as helping three additional teams to get started. Once again the Sealth students made it to the quarter-finals in Oregon, but as mentors they were very proud of the Seattle Lutheran students' efforts which advanced them into the semi-finals. For a small rookie team, they performed exceptionally well.
The FIRST Robotics contest values not only engineering skills, but also rewards teams for community involvement. In its third year, Chief Sealth members helped organize the 2004 FIRST Lego League event in Washington State, a robotics competition for middle school students, organizing the awards and judging, and helping with event operations during the competition. It was great for the students to know they were helping to lead the younger generation towards a path of hands-on work that was not only a school activity, but could become a career of choice. The group also acted as a mentor for other schools in the area, and performed community demonstrations, most notably at the Seattle Robothon, which is the largest hobby robotics show in the world.
Each year the team proceeds further towards its goal of winning the final round of the FIRST Robotics competition. It has made the quarter / semi finals of the past 2 years of the big competition in Portland. You can learn more about the Chief Sealth Robotics Club students by visiting their website at www.team1039.org
| Quidnunc: the friendliest computer, software & Internet store in Seattle |
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Keeping the Heat in Check
Summer is coming and heat can be an issue.
An overheated computer (motherboards and processors are particularly susceptible to excess heat) can malfunction and eventually fail. To guard against that, we recommend that you check the performance of your computer's fans, to be sure there is adequate air flow around and through the computer. Your computer should not be in an enclosed space (like a cabinet) and there should be at least 6" between the back of the case and the wall. You should also check to make sure that there is not too much build-up of dirt and dust inside the case. Computers located on carpets or in homes where pets are present are especially susceptible to large amounts of dust inside the computer. Smoking around the computer can also be harmful as the smoke has so much tar in it that it forms a coating on the interior components of the computer, causing dust and dirt to stick to it and inhibiting its cooling functions.
For a diagnostics fee of $39, Quidnunc technicians will check the fans, clean the inside of the computer, make sure that cables are arranged to allow adequate air flow, and advise if there are any potential concerns with the motherboard or other components.
 UPS |
 Surge Protector |
The most reliable form of power protection is an uninterruptible power supply (UPS). A UPS is in effect a storage battery – it's always being charged by being plugged into your wall outlet. Your computer then receives a smooth flow of current from the battery. A UPS has the additional feature of providing a source of power for 10-30 minutes in the case of a complete power failure, providing enough time for you to save important work and shut your computer down normally.
Power surges and dips are usually associated with physical damage to a computer system but it is also possible to lose data or have operating systems or drivers become corrupted when trying to record information to the hard drive.
Prices of surge suppressors range from less than $10 (minimal protection) to $30 or more.
Our AVR sells for $39.99 and UPS starts at $49.99.
| Custom-built Computers! Games! Productivity! Utilities! Modems! CD-ROM! |
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Save Quidnunc postage and trees!
Get this newsletter by email and prevent at least one postal worker (and maybe Bill) from developing a bad back. To subscribe, send us an email — we currently distribute nearly 2,000 of these newsletters electronically.
We will recycle old computers, printers and monitors for a nominal fee of $15/computer or monitor, and $5/printer.
Remember to bring in empty ink jet and laser toner cartridges. Keep them out of the landfills!
Get 3 FREE months DSL service!
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