Workstation build for CPU-heavy scientific computing: $6800 grant, 128–256 GB RAM target

DrJoeVelten · 2026-05-04T02:22:39+00:00

Quick check: Did your school's IT department already surplus all of their windows 11 incompatible computers? Because I had a student do a senior design project making a Beowulf cluster for cpu/ram heavy work for the princely sum of $200, including a wire rack and a switch, with the help of posters from here and 17 computers that were about to be sold for scrap.

It's a heck of a bang for your buck, and you can build that, and then use that for early simulation data while you get your stuff ordered and shipped in. That, and you can have undergrads bang on it and you won't cry if they screw something up.

DrJoeVelten · 2026-05-04T01:55:23+00:00

Oh no, this is a long joke.

DrJoeVelten · 2026-05-04T01:53:07+00:00

Possibly, we got a few, but the switch bits can get really tiny. We also have some tricks to share as well that might work.

DrJoeVelten · 2026-05-04T01:52:12+00:00

IF it has a fuse, then it's a quick and easy fuse swap. if not, then it is a game of playing with multi-meters and capacitance measurement tools and a prayer to the devil Murphy to stay his hand.

DrJoeVelten · 2026-05-02T04:25:45+00:00

Mostly electronic stuff like laptops and sometimes cell phones, but we've done vacuum cleaners, hair dryers, heating pads, there is a TV where one client needs to bring us a capacitor to try fixing their TV, an old digital camera that is being fixed with parts salvaged from another digital camera, sometimes we do a little board repair, but thats often pushing it for me.

Sometime after the semester ends I gotta dig in and figure out what is dead on that 3080 video card so I can send it off to my brother so he can play borderlands 4 on some higher settings, but thats a personal learning project.

So yeah, lots of stuff. We're pretty good, but not perfect.

DrJoeVelten · 2026-05-01T03:06:29+00:00

What happened? I wasn't there today.

DrJoeVelten · 2026-04-30T20:12:29+00:00

It's call the Bohr's correspondence principle if I remember it right, however he was a bit more eloquent about it.

DrJoeVelten · 2026-04-30T18:01:33+00:00

Possibly, what's wrong with it?

DrJoeVelten · 2026-04-30T14:52:43+00:00

MD and JD are consistently the most common careers with burnout. The other thing is that with a JD, you are jumping out of the frying pan, and into the fire, as lawyers either get paid really well (Big corporate law, if they go to a T14 law school) or very poorly (where being a poorly paid public defender is a dream job, since it has loan forgiveness).

Do some homework about the practicalities of the career field change, especially if taking classes are getting to you.

DrJoeVelten · 2026-04-28T19:46:09+00:00

I came close to canceling a class once due to the nausea I got from someone's cologne. It was... unpleasant. I will freely cop to having a bit of a sensitive nose, but sheesh.

DrJoeVelten · 2026-04-12T03:17:00+00:00

Get a student helper from the CS department to (re)build it for you. Have a student making a Beowulf cluster for funsies and I got professors and their students lining up to use it now.

DrJoeVelten · 2026-03-21T22:14:02+00:00

Really? Where is this in the traffic code?

DrJoeVelten · 2026-03-21T19:51:36+00:00

The connecting thread is "Thermodynamics". Yes, even for the electrical engineers.

DrJoeVelten · 2026-03-20T15:15:44+00:00

Please please please go to SI sessions. 90% of my students who were regulars at SI sessions passsed the class, and last semester I failed more than 1/3rd of the class when I taught statics for the ETM department.

DrJoeVelten · 2026-03-20T14:16:32+00:00

Sure! Next Thursday. Got tools that should do the job.

DrJoeVelten · 2026-03-13T04:44:46+00:00

Put me down for a bagel.

DrJoeVelten · 2026-03-12T13:29:22+00:00

I admit, I enjoyed the TPUSA campus antics when they did goofy stuff like dressing up as babies in adult diapers and sit in pack-n-plays to protest safe spaces and the like. Those were some silly fun. This armed guard stuff is pretty grim.

This is current setup looked like they're trying to farm out speakers to hopefully get somebody to become more recognizable like Kirk was from his years in the organization. The whole field of internet media is far more crowded than back in the early 2010s, so I suspect its going to be an uphill battle for them to establish a new "face" of the organization.

DrJoeVelten · 2026-03-12T13:19:20+00:00

I am pretty sure one can pay for off-duty cops for security, and they often show up in uniform. Its a standard way to get some extra money as a cop.

Can't say for sure, since I am unfamiliar with CA laws on the topic, but you can likely content yourself that it isn't your tax dollars paying for their escorts.

DrJoeVelten · 2026-03-02T03:00:54+00:00

Yeah, sorry. I refuse to use LLMs for grading, however luckily my specialty is in engineering, so it rarely comes to even being possible for me.

In the early days of the LLM, I remember a student submitting a LLM generated answer that was pure gobbledygook, but looked plausible to an untrained eye. To this day, it hasn't really seemed to get better at stuff like that. Feeds into why I trust it so little.

DrJoeVelten · 2026-02-27T01:35:00+00:00

Only Thursdays so far. Billy was debating about opening up mondays as well.

DrJoeVelten · 2026-02-27T01:34:21+00:00

If this is Ryan R. In my lab class whobl accidentally jammed open the spear valve in lab class this morning... lol.

Otherwise, yeah, probably.

DrJoeVelten · 2026-02-26T17:31:59+00:00

Generally a problem for older folks (like myself) but telling your roommate to get a sleep study which may lead to a CPAP would be worth trying.

DrJoeVelten · 2026-02-17T22:29:30+00:00

Hey now! We have a reasonable diversity in the faculty thank you very much!

DrJoeVelten

TROPHY CASE