Blog Posts

Great Service from an Unlikely Source

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Sometimes you find excellent customer service in the most unlikely places. That’s what I’d like to tell you about today.

Just over four years ago, I left the state of Washington for the desert of southern Utah. In addition to trading the mild Seattle climate for the scorching summers of Utah, I was now on the hook to pay state income tax. Washington finds a way to get their pound of flesh through higher sales and property taxes, but completing my end-of-year accounting was easier in Washington because all I had to worry about was Federal taxes.

The Only 5 Chrome Extensions I Install

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Over the years, I’ve used Google Chrome as my default browser more than any competitor. A couple of times I ran into issues with a build and switched to Firefox, but that didn’t last more than a few months.

Family Photo Storage Options

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I’m not a professional photographer and neither is my wife. Heck, we’re not even amateur photographers either. I’d say we’re more social photographers. Beyond the occasional spur of the moment, all our pictures are from special occasions like our kid’s birth, vacations, birthday parties, etc. I’d imagine many of you are similar. We’ve amassed thousand of photos throughout the years, and our current method of backing those up is burning them to a DVD.

There has to be a better way.

Purchasing an Uninterruptible Power Supply

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I was recently working on a video project at home when the power suddenly went out. While this is a not common occurrence where I live, it was great to have an Uninterruptible Power Supply save the day and give me time to do a proper save then system shutdown.

Nobody Uses That Anymore

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Whenever I’m feeling confident that I’m successfully contributing to raising five children, my 13-year old daughter does something to jolt me back to reality. That the was the case this week as I sat in the car and gently honked the horn as a reminder she was going to be late for dance practice.

Stop Directly Comparing CPU Specs

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Every time a new generation of CPUs is announced, I see a number of people writing about how they think it will be faster (or slower) than current technology because of the advertised specifications. CPU specs alone don’t tell the whole story, though, and comparing core count and clock speed across different brands or generations of processors is extremely misleading. Stop doing it!

Dear Bitplane and Imaris Users

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Due to the extraordinary amount of time and effort that goes into one of our Recommended Systems we will no longer be able to maintain and update our Recommended System for Imaris.

Tesla Builds More Than a Supercharger

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I got in line at the Starbucks’ drive-thru yesterday for my iced caramel macciato. While waiting, I noticed a familiar scene play out. This is a scene I’ve watched dozens of times since Tesla placed a Supercharger station in the Starbuck’s parking lot:

Tesla owners chatting with each other.

ANSYS Mechanical – Balancing Performance and Licensing Costs

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We test a lot of software here at Puget Systems, and in most cases what we are looking for is what hardware lets a given program run the fastest – or in some cases, what is the most cost effective. If you can get 95% of the best possible performance for half the price that it would cost to get a full 100%, for example, that is often a compelling way to go. However, ANSYS Mechanical (and FLUENT) present a different challenge: how can you get the best performance within the limitations of the ANSYS licensing model?

The Best Service for Sharing Large Files

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Over the past few years, customers have asked us to recommend a service for sharing large files. In the past I’ve recommended Dropbox to those sending files under 2GB. But what if you need to send a really large file, say a 50GB file? And what if you need to send that 50GB file to five people in different locations?