Black Friday Shopping

Happy Belated Thanksgiving! And happy Black Friday...

I hate shopping on Black Friday... I do all of it online, which is nice, but it still sucks! Last night at 4AM I placed an order for a 500 GB Seagate Hard Drive for my computer, on special at NewEgg for $149.99... However, there were many issues with processing this order....

First, the system needed me to utilize some "secure banking" thing where I had to create an account (through my credit card company), setup passwords and special lines of text to ensure that "I'm entering information into a legitimate website" and all that crap. To annoy me further, the site was poorly designed, annoying to navigate, had minimal features, and to kick it all off, it was being slow processing my request! Risking my black friday order!!

Then, I was returned to the NewEgg site, where NewEgg said "You have to ship to a confirmed address (billing address) or ship to a secondary address that needs to be on file with your bank. If the address isn't on file with the bank, order processing may be slowed for up to three additional days." I was a little worried that would screw up my processing, since I wanted the stuff shipped to work instead of home, so this morning, I spent half an hour on the phone with my bank, only to come away with, "We're sorry, but there can only be one address associated with your account." GRRR! It'll slow processing down, but at least it won't be a major problem.

Then I got an email from NewEgg... Apparently, I typoed one thing on my order... My expiration date on my credit card. Grrr. The email said that my card didn't process, and it asked me to resubmit my card information, so they could reprocess it. I did so, and then got another email... Same thing -- and even though I put in the correct information, I noticed that it still said the incorrect expiration date, so I tried it again. Third time, it didn't take the updated information as well! So, not to be daunted, I canceled my order and went to redo it from scratch... *OUT OF STOCK* GRRRR!!!! The worst news possible for a Black Friday shopper... Now I know how those 12:01 AM wal-mart shoppers feel!

Luckily, I was able to re-initiate my old order, and get the thing processed. This time, with the correct expiration date, with the "secure banking" already set up, and it seems they have already started doing the address confirmation from my first order request! ^_^ Now, I'll just have to see if I'm in the queue where I was before, or if I'm going to get an email from NewEgg that says, "We're sorry, but that hard drive is *out of stock* now." That would just be the kicker, but things are looking up... Everything seems to be processing though just fine, as the image below shows.

Core 2 Duo Now, Eh?

Apple just released their new MacBook line, featuring the Core 2 Duo processor in their MacBook. This less than two months after I bought my MacBook! It's so infuriating, but these things happen in the computing industry.



It's a little more expensive than what I bought (and I did customize my MacBook to include the 1 GB of RAM and 80 GB HDD), but it's still just a little annoying. But, I am really happy with my MacBook, and I did get a free iPod out of the deal, so it's not all that bad ^__^

Apple-Apple-Apple

I finally got that Apple rejection letter today. I immediately checked Apple.com/Promo, and found that they have started processing my claim again. ~sigh... Another waiting game to see if I get it this second time around or not.

Apple also has recently upgraded their processors in the MacBook Pro series to the Core 2 Duo... Faster, but also much more expensive than my ol' MacBook with the classic “Core Duo” processor. I'm still flabbergasted by the sheer speed of my MacBook, I cannot imagine anything that would be faster than it is right now. I'd love to see the new MacBook Pro, as well as what's just over the horizon for CPUs and the computer industry.



I do have a few complaints about the MacBook, most of it is structural design however... The processor is speedy and seems to stay quite cool, the “mag lock” charger and LCD latch are delightful, and I'm getting quite used to the software and how things work on the Mac. It's power management is second to none, the graceful OS is like dancing when I'm operating the system.

However, everything is not wonderful in wonderland... There is still much room for improvement... some of the issues I'm having are that the iSight is placed right where I would usually put my thumb when opening the LCD. Each time I open it, I'm worried that I'll damage the camera. Also, the bezel of the laptop, albeit beautiful, is quick to get dirty and scratched. The more you use or move the laptop, the worse off it gets. The touch-pad's mouse button also has some issues, it's a little difficult to click sometimes, others it's just really loud – that is at least when you don't press right down on the center of the button. And worst of all is FRONTROW!!! I love the concept of it, but it tends to crash on occasion, as well as it seems to be rather slow when accessing the harddrive. I also haven't figured out how to make it play a “playlist” of video files, and worst of all, I have yet to figure out how to start the application without using the Apple Remote. Grrr.

I would walk five-hundred miles

Or in this case, that would be five-hundred phone calls.

I've been trying to redeem a rebate from Apple for their “Major in Mac” rebate: buy a Mac and get an iPod free (up to $179 off). Well, Apple has been having trouble processing my claim for quite some time now.

First, they didn't want to accept my claim since the MacBook didn't ship until September 21, a few days after the end of the promotion (September 16, I believe)... However, I ordered the MacBook (and iPod) on the same day, September 14.

After talking to an Apple technician, I was able to get that cleared up by her saying, “Just submit it by the hand-written form or set the MacBook's shipping date prior to the end of the promotion.”

~sigh... I felt like I was being told to lie or something. Well, Apple should have all of that information on file anyway.

I ended up submitting the rebate the first week of October, getting closer and closer to the end of my submission window. I still was able to get it in on time, thankfully!

However, on October 28 (late at night), I happened to check Apple.com/promo again to see what the status of the rebate was. “Rejected” was at the top of my browser window. I was so frustrated that as soon as I saw that there was a phone number to call for questions, I immediately dialed it up. I was only slightly relieved when the automated system informed me that I needed to “submit additional information” for my rebate to be processed. Since the promo center was closed by the time I got that message, I called the following day and talked to a tech.

When I talked to the tech, she supplied me with the necessary information about what I needed to submit (the invoice for the iPod seems to have been missing) along with all the required claim numbers and fax numbers. Hopefully, with this additional information, I'll be able to get that rebate check back to me here a little sooner.

The odd thing about this is that the iPod invoice was on the same sheet as the MacBook invoice... It was once invoice for both products. Well, at least I've still got a chance to get that rebate... Fortunately, I was able to reprint the invoices (this time separately) from the Apple website, and the technician I talked to informed me that I can fax in the invoice or wait for the letter to come in the mail and submit the rebate the old fashioned way (envelope-and-stamp method). I'll see if I can fax in the information tomorrow at work though, hopefully that'll get things done faster.

But, I must say, that all these issues I've been having with Apple Promo have been rather infuriating. The last thing I want is for my rebate to be rejected, but I can't wait for all of this dancing around to be done... whatever the outcome.

Screenshots of the Week

I’ve found some really interesting screenshots in the past week at work, and I thought I’d share them…


A CD-R designed to look legit? And I actually think it is!
It seems the system is a refurbished one… but who knows.


Oh, and that same system came with this,
“Operating System NOT Installed On Your System”
Annoying, since it says you can install it, but they
Don’t provide you with a key!!


712 Viruses! And the system was only connected to
the network for 5 minutes, unprotected, after an
Operating System Realod! Also, you can see
where Automatic Updates has crashed! Sadly,
the system didn’t survive the OSR. :(


And what’s even better: 8,675 viruses deleted
from a computer that Joel was working on at the same time!
Note to self: turn off that “Beep for each detection” seeting
In AntiVir

And best of all…

And finally, this week’s AntiVir Notifier… Shockingly insane!

Firefox Frustration

Firefox 1.5 has been annoying me recently. The browser will stop responding if left running for an excessive amount of time (days to weeks) or if there is a lot of tabs running. I'm not sure why the browser does this, but it's quite infuriating, especially when I lose web sites that took me hours to find.

I was presented with a few options for a solution:
1 – Use a different web browers (Opera)
2 – Attempt to find a solution to this issue by searching google
3 – Upgrade to Firefox 2.0 RC3.

In this case, I was lazy and chose the latter...

I've been running F'Fox 2.0 RC3 in Mac OS for a while now, but Mac OS X is easy to manage installation and uninstallation of programs, allowing me to have two copies of firefox installed at the same time with out a single problem. Linux is a little different, but still easier than Windows (which has to use registry files and “shared” system files), but I was still worried about loosing my bookmarks, and worse yet would be the possibility that it may just screw Firefox over.

To ease my mind, I made a simple backup of both my bookmarks (export to .htm file) and my /opt/MozillaFirefox/lib directory, one for Firefox 1.5 (a second lib file now exists, called lib 1.5) and installing F'Fox 2.0 RC3 to lib, over-writing the old 1.5 files. Things went swimmingly, and I'm quite pleased with it so far. Hopefully, it'll keep going this way as I start to use it as my primary browser on more and more of my computers. --Hey, at least it loads faster now!

Also, I have upgraded my Thunderbird from 1.5.0.6 to 1.5.0.7 – that installer was managed by YaST, so it was nice and easy, and it was a change from 1.5.0.6 to 1.5.0.7, so there isn't much different, at least not that I could tell.

One last thing... I have also tried out SeaMonkey (also from Mozilla), and once again on my MacBook... I was none-too-pleased with it. The interface uses the old “Mozilla” web browser interface (pre-Firefox years) which turned me away from it right from the start. I'm not sure if they just used the old Mozilla skin or if they actually used the old Moz core... I've got a feeling it's the latter, and I haven't been able to really warm up to the program after that.

Maybe one day I'll start to really use it, but not until they get it set up using Firefox.

So Much Has Changed…

Since my last post, there have been a lot of changes in my IT life.

Lets start at the beginning, shall we?

Hardware

My laptop, a Dell Inspiron 2650, dubbed “Miki-ni” was damaged on vacation. The laptop had been showing it’s age for a long time and was in dire need of some upgrades, and after the damage to the system (and since it was getting closer to needing a total system overhaul) I decided that it would just be a better move to replace the entire unit.

After shopping around, I decided that I wanted to go with a Mac. Apple was going to accept my student discount (Dell wouldn’t) and I have had very little opportunity to work with Macs, even at CyberMedics. So, the decision wasn’t all that difficult. I even got a free iPod out of the deal! (assuming that they will accept my rebate!)

Around that time, my Windows machines began to fall apart… Shortly before I ordered the MacBook, my Windows 2000 fileserver (which spends most of it’s day powered off now – damn energy bill) lost it’s primary storage drive: the E drive, at 250 GB! Fortunatly, it was just a damaged MFT index table that was easily repaired, although a few folders lost their names. Although, things could have gone much worse!

The same thing happened to my Inspiron shortly after I got my MacBook… Both were repaired by doing a check disk on the drive. Thankfully, I was able to use my CyberMedics resources for both computers when I needed them. My bosses even offered to assist me if it was something more serious.

Software

Needless to say, I’ve been experimenting with software of all types now that I’ve got the MacBook. I’ve been tinkering a little with Microsoft Office:mac 2004 and Front Row. I love Front Row, although I have yet to figure out how to start the application without using the Apple remote!

I’ve also started to go a little Mozilla crazy. I’ve got two versions of Firefox installed (versions 1.5 and 2.0rc), as well as SeaMonkey – I’m not much of a SeaMonkey fan though, it seems to be based on the old Mozilla Browser engine, and acts a lot like the old Mozilla browser, the pre-Firefox years. So, I haven’t been able to really warm up to it, but maybe one day I will.

Firefox 2.0 has been doing wonderful on my Mac so far. I haven’t tried it out on Windows (don’t have any Windows machines running), nor have I tried it out in Linux yet –Mac has the easiest software management!

Skills and Education

Other than that, my IT hardware support skills have been going up and up and up. CyberMedics usually gets mostly hardware support issues that I have to find solutions for, and after working there for five months now, two of which have been 25 to 50 hours per week, I have had a lot of time to spend figuring out things that I just have never ran across before.

This is a good place for me to be right now, since my classes are coming to an end and I really need to start getting that work experience going. I was really concerned about what kind of IT job I would be able to get after all those years of college, and having next to zero IT job skills, not to mention nearly having no work experience in general!

Well, aside from that, I think there isn’t much really to say about technical life in general. I’m still a big fan of Open Source Software and plan to stick with it for a long time, just because I have a Mac doesn’t mean that I’ll be using it for everything, also I do have a lot of things to experiment with at work for Linux solutions! I’m even trying to get the bosses to start pushing OSS a little more at work. We’ll have to see how that turns out in the end!

What ya've got there is a serious case of *not enough HDD space!*

How many times I've been downloading some anime and then got the ol' running out of space notification. I've seen it in operating systems ranging from Windows 3.11 - to Windows 2003 Server, SUSE 8.x to 10.x - even in a few versions of Mac OS. Now this spreads DECADES. And it's getting a little old.

Well, once again, I recently had to say good bye to my OSx86 machine - to make room for a new SUSE 10.0 rc1 file server - dubbed Suzi10. My SUSE 9.3 box (Suzi-LNX) had packed it's 250 GB HDD full with various torrents, of which most were various anime. As I continued to download my torrents though, I needed more storage space... Hence the creation of Suzi10. And now, I'm maxed out on both machines (making for approximately 275 GB of used space).

It's hard to believe that I've maxed out both machines, but I have. Not to mention that I have another 250-350 GB of torrents down in Adrian waiting for me to come get them. I swear, I'm going to download the Internet here soon.

Well, I guess there's one good thing, however annoying it may be... The college has started blocking torrents again, so I can't download anymore (sad and pout). But, the good thing is, now I'm not going to max out my HDD. *Happy happy!* Bad news: I'm 18 out of 20 GB done for one specific torrent. Grrr... I guess it'll have to wait for the end of the term, or at least until I move out of the dorm next Wednesday, and we get cable Internet in the new place.

But, there is a serious need for cheep TB storage in my life.

OOps, ya broke it...

Because I forgot to mention that you shouldn't be doing that!

I cannot tell you how many times I've run into people unqualified trying to fix a problem that they don't fully understand... Just about everyone does it at one time or another in their life! Not long ago, I tried to work on my car a little bit, and ended up making the problem worse (lesson: don't attempt to fix car - ask someone who knows about cars to do it!).

But still, it is tempting isn't it? Today at work, I kept seeing people walk up to the printers and start pushing buttons, loading paper, and the notorious "resending the print job over and over again."

Since this is quite annoying, makes me look like a lazy computer lab assistant, and can easily lead to paper jams, I thought, "Why do people keep doing this, even though I rush over each time to fix the problems they have made?"

And then, it dawned on me as a student once again informed me that the "it's probably just that the color printer takes a while to warm up," (as I read which tray is the source of the paper jam)... People believe that they truly know the answer to these computer problems, but in reality, in their "attempt" to fix the computer, they make the problem ten times worse!

So, without being rude (and just telling them "ALWAYS ask the lab assistant") how do I communicate that same idea... The best way, is always the easiest... Make a simple 8.5x11 inch poster! "Document didn't print? Paper low? Blinking Lights? See your handy lab assistant for help!"

I posted, after approval of my boss, two of these posters (which were stylized a bit more than can be described in text form) - one at the set of black and white laser jet printers, and one by the solid-state color printer. Have a clear line of communication about policies and exactly what we would like the users to do is really the best way to keep the patrons of Support Services doing what we need them to do.


Image of my poster publication.
It's missing some fonts in my "at home" version :(

OSX86: Natively!

When I returned to college, I had a few things in mind on what I was going to do with my machines to get everything running the way I wanted it to be, and I had a few tests that I wanted to run on some of the boxes to troubleshoot some potentially failed PSUs or Motherboards.

Turned out, that my computers were all fine, accept for two of the power supplies failed! That was annoying, but with the purchase of one 400 W PSU from a roommate of mine, I was doing okay. But, I did make the mistake of leaving a few hard drives at home, one of which is critical for the boot process of Windows 2000 Pro.

Sooo... Seeing as how I had no ability to utilize that box, I decided to install OSX86 to it! It took me a while to get all the hardware configurations right (since I played around in BIOS when testing out the PSUs), but it worked easily!

I made one mistake of doing an upgrade from 10.4.5 to 10.4.6, which screwed up the boot process (note to self: let's not do that again), but other than that, it's been pretty smooth sailing. I'm loving the dashboard even more, and I've been playing around a little with X11 in OSX86, with limited success. Surprisingly, X11 is quite limited in OSX86, whereas the standard terminal is nearly fully functional!

Since it's so cold in the dorm at this time of year (drafty rooms, with the boilers running at low power), I've been keeping all the computers I can running at maximum CPU output, to help keep the room a little warmer... Hence, I've been running folding@home for a day now, and it's working beautifully. Oddly enough, it's the PPC version... The linux version didn't work at all (that's where I noticed X11 was fairly limited).


BTW: You can see my folding running behind the dashboard screenshot, and you can view my folding stats here!

OSX86

It's like eating ice cream with a fork...
I'm finally back in OSX, but it's not the OSX that I remember from that old days... I'm running OSX on my Intel P4 (it is a hacked version of OSX, but I do have a legal copy that isn't installed on anything, so I think that gives me the right to test out OSX on a Pentium, well... At least I think it gives me the right).


It's taking some getting used to, since I'm trying to figure out all the short-cut keys, and why some applications randomly crash (verrrry unapple like), but over all I think it's been a quite interesting experiment.

Since I'm in VMWare, I've had some odd issues... First, it took me about 6 times before I could get the OSX installer to work (some guess work, and a little bit of determination, and things ended up fine). I'm not so sure how much I like the system yet though... It seems to be a bit of a CPU hog (although, that may just be because of how the OS is set up in VMWare), but I'm really enjoying the widgets! At first they were a bit of a pain to get configured and placed, but once I got them set, they make for quite the pleasant addition to the OS.


If there's one thing that justifies spending all that money on a macintosh, it is definitely how awesome the operating system looks. I've got a minor bug with this, since I have no control over my refresh rate (seems to be a VMWare problem), and my mouse and keyboard seem to be a bit delayed (seems to be an OSX issue).

I was even able to configure Japanese text input (いけ、いけ！日本語！) fairly easily, much easier than in Windows (and Linux is a bit difficult to get input methods to work just right anyway) but overall, I'm quite impressed with the operating system.

Coming Soon: Windows Vista: The Resurrection of Windows
and: Xgl (for linux) The Future of *NIX GUIs

MCSE

70-290

It's kind of sad, but I should have expected it...
As the term came closer and closer to ending at Baker College, I decided to peruse the online book catalog of the Owosso campus library. I ended up finding five or six MCSE test prep books, none of which looked like they had ever been removed from the shelf since they were put there!

With the upcoming Cram Session, I decided that it may be in my best interest to check out the 70-290 book and read it... But I knew that I wasn't going to be using it at all during exams week, so I decided that I would check it out after exams week, where it would either become checked out by one of my classmates, or I would get it and have it for all of break.

And that's exactly what happened. I grabbed the book, checked it out (had to have an override -- all books were due back on Friday of the last day of the term, and therefore, it was checked out for a maximum of 3 hours. ~sigh.) but now I've got the book in my possession and I'm already a decent bit into it.

My goal is to have the entire thing read by the end of spring break, and be well prepared for the upcoming cram session, which is supposed to take place sometime during Spring quarter. I sure hope this helps me out, I may end up watching some of the test prep videos that I have for 70-290 as well, before I return to campus in two weeks.

S
S
L
Wow, what a lecture we had in MCSE425 (ISA Server 2003) Thursday evening. We were talking about how ISA server deals with filtering encrypted traffic. My instructor started off by saying, "Does everyone know how SSL works?" Everyone nodded... It's basic, it encrypts the data-payload of a standard HTTP packet, and authenticates communication. Easy, right?

Well one student said: "Could you clear it up a bit?" Well, most of the class was thinking... "Gee, this is gonna be a quick lecture on how SSL works, and then we'll be done." Well, that was before we figured out that we didn't have a clue how SSL really worked.

We knew that it had to do with certificates, but we thought it had to do specifically with Public Key Infrastructures... Well, it seems it doesn't (although, Wikipedia says it has more to do with PKI than my instructor said... hmm). From what I got from the lecture, SSL connections (HTTPS in particular) work like this:

Client: I want to go to https://www.secure.com/, so I'm gonna need a certificate... HELP!
Certificate Server: the certificate for https://www.secure.com is {cert101}
Client: Okay! Thanks, Certificate Server!
Client: I want to go to https://www.secure.com, I've got this certificate that says to encrypt my communications in such-a-way... So ENCRYPTION ENABLED! Request secure communication with server, key (randomnumbers910832here)
SecureServer: 'Aight! Communication with (randomnumbers910832here) accepted. So... do you have a certificate for this communication?
Client: Yup! Here it is: {cert101}
SecureServe: 'Aight! That's the cert. Wadda need kid?
Client: I wanna go here, do this, upload this, download that, and spend mucho monies on your site.
SecureServer: Okay!
Client: Alight, I think I've run out of money... I'm gonna go away now and watch my credit debt pile up. Laterz!
SecureServer: Mwahahahaha.... *ahem* I mean, okay. Closing connection.

The problem was really the start of communication... It's still a little foggy to me... The client gets the cert from the cert server... Okay, great. But anyone could do that!

Two, when the client goes "I want to go to https://www.secure.com, and I'll encrypt my communication in such-a-way" -- in what way does it encrypt the traffic? And how does the SecureServer know how to decrypt the traffic? I think the traffic is encrypted using the randomnumbers key, but then how would the server be able to decrypt it? Oiii, this still isn't clear enough for me, but since my instructor was turning a dozen shades of red with frustration, I decided not to ask him about it anymore... I think I got the jist of it anyway.

Relevant Links:
TCP/IP Guide: HTTP Security and Privacy,
Wikipedia: Secure Sockets Layer,
Wikipedia: HTTPS

TCP/IP Seminar!
On a side note, I went to that TCP/IP seminar yesterday... It was informative, although the problem was that it was very "bringing old network professionals up to date" with utilities and what-not stuff... Some of the stuff was replay for my class, where other bits were new stuff that was a bit irrelevant to our class... But then again, the seminar was geared toward network professionals that have been in the field, and want a second opinion or to be brought up to speed on some topics. If you take that into account, it was a decent seminar.

I did work a bit with some utilities (Ethereal is so very cool), but my favorite part of the whole thing was watching him PuTTY into Linux boxes and control them and the trip into the server room, where most of the servers are Linux boxes assembled by Penguin Computing! That is so very sweet. I don't recall what distribution he said he was using, I'll have to ask Royce that later. He also mentioned that he's using SmoothWall as his firewall! Totally sweet.

It just fixed itself.... but no one but me needs to know that fact!

A few days ago, I was running Suzi like usual... I had just started watching an anime video in KPlayer, full screen, when I realized that I had seen the video before. Being lazy like I am, I hit Alt + F4, which is supposed to stop the video, close the video file, and close KPlayer, returing me to the KDE desktop and to the most recent window or application that I was using... Well, for some reason when I do this every now and then, it'll crash KWIN (the portion of KDE that manages the windows and K-bar). With KWIN crashed, there's almost nothing accessible in KDE. The front most window is stuck there, the file menu is usually still there, and the front most windows can be closed, allowing data to be saved (if luck is on one's side...). Sometimes the File menu isn't there, and there's nothing to be done about that, accept try to work around without being able to close that window (and it being permanently stuck in the foreground).

This time, I was able to close several windows, accept one of the konqueror windows (which mysteriously lost it's file menu). An odd thing that I noticed when I was preparing to log out of my session, was that the Gnome desktop manager (Nautilus, I believe is it's name, although that may only be the name of the file browser) was actually managing my desktop -- which looked pretty damn odd. I couldn't click on anything, but my icons and the way the desktop looked was in an obvious gnome look. After a bit of pondering, I decided to keep going with this "emergency shutdown process" -- I was mostly worried about the applications that I wasn't able to shutdown... I keep several apps in the KDE system tray (Gaim, Amarok, Mozilla Thunderbird, and Mozilla Sunbird) -- each of these apps can have a bad experience if they are left running when I log out of the system, especially the Mozilla applications, they can easily get a file-lock on the profile, which can take some work to undo (finding the lock file can be quite the pain at times).

Since there wasn't anyway for me to access these applications, aside from going to a tty session and killing them by hand (which would have had the same affect of doing a log-out without shutting them down) I decided to just go ahead and log out and hope for the best. When I returned to KDE, things were looking good: the desktop icons were in the correct spots (a tell-tale sign of KDE/SUSE problems is when the desktop icons shuffle themselves into the upper left corner of the screen), and amarok, gaim, thunderbird, and sunbird all started without a hitch! Yeah! The deities of Linux were with me that day!

But after awhile of using the OS, I noticed something... Amarok has an OSD that displays the name of the song it just started playing for five seconds, and then disappears. It was now displaying the name of the song before it started playing it... It was quite odd. And then I noticed something else... The songs weren't changing, they were transitioning via a fade! Amarok has never done any fading that I've noticed before! And to top matters off, the spectrum analyzer (the bar things at the bottom of the amarok window -- also in XMMS and WinAmp and others) which has never worked for me suddenly started working. w00t! I'm soo happy, but I find it odd that it just started working out of the blue!

SUSE Baby!
Alright, so I was thinking, Gee, I'm not really happy with that Gentoo machine... It doesn't work the way I want it to, and it's really difficult to use the damn thing... Grrr, I wish I had a decent linux file server! and then I realized that I hadn't tried out the latest and greatest version of SUSE (version 10.1 beta 3)... So, I went to OpenSUSE.org, did a little research, and decided that it would be nice to try out 10.1b3... I haven't messed around with the 10.0 virtual machine in ages (nor have I messed around with the Windows Server 2003 VM in ages either, but I digress), so I figured that it's high time that I update the VM... And if 10.1b3 works out well, it shall be time to say BEGONE, foul operating system! and then usher in SUSE 10.1b3.

Either way, it should be fun to experiment for a while. I think the downloads should be done by tomorrow evening... Although, next week is pretty busy (8 extra work hours, plus a TCP/IP suite seminar in Ithaca on Friday -- going to that instead of work).

Miki-ni Update...
Last Friday, I was playing around with creating a copy of a DVD in Linux, and I was having a minor issue, so I decided to head over to Miki (my Windows 2000 Pro machine) and see if I could get the files off using Windows... When I KVMed over to Miki, I was greated with:
KERNEL_STACK_INPAGE_ERROR 0x00000000 (0x00000077, 0xC000000E, 0x00000000, 0x01AB0000) Oh joy... A BSoD. I noted the message, and restarted my machine.

Upon reboot from a BSoD, there's one thing that every computer user should do: look at the Event Viewer. So I rebooted my computer to do just that. The reboot was successful... There's some possible risky situations to keep in mind when rebooting from a BSoD:

Risky Situation 1: after blue screen, OS or hardware failure prevents booting...
[ status: avoided ]
Risky Situation 2: after rebooting from a blue screen error, OS is not usable for troubleshooting due to other errors thwarting usability of the OS
[ status: my computer made a "spin down" sound followed by a "spin up" sound. The sound of hard drives powering off and on... Quite the bad sign, wouldn't you say? ]

When the first spin down occurred, for a moment my computer lagged. I had lost control of the OS as one of the drives had spun down and, after only a moment, spun back up... But at least the system came back up. Maybe it wasn't the hard drive? Just some odd sound? I knew better, but it was a thought that would keep me from freaking out that my anime/file server had crapped out on me... And the OS had returned to my control anyway, so it could have been a fluke... Although, an error like an HDD spin-down isn't something that just happens for no reason.

So I clicked on Event Viewer, and as I was moving my mouse to click on the "System" subfolder (where any HDD errors, possibly page file errors, and other major system faults would be reported, and might hint to a reason for the BSoD error I received) - that when it happened again!! One of my HDDs spun down again, locking the system where it was at. This time, when the drive spun-up again, there was no recovery. My screen was locked in the same spot that was was... Keyboard and mouse were unresponsive.

I waited for about five minutes, without regaining any type of control. But when I heard the drive spin down for the third time, I could only think that this was no fluke, there was either a very hardware fault on one of my drives (*gasp!*) or that my power supply wasn't able to power all of my devices at the same time

The PSU being a FOUR year old, a no-name-brand (Nobilis), low wattage (230 watt, I believe), and suffering though nearly continuous use since 2002, I figured that it may be the PSU (power supply)... If it was, it may explain all the odd errors in the system, including page file errors, odd BSoD errors, and worst of all, if it is the PSU, it could eventually lead to damage to other components to the system... Since I figured that the most sensitive part of my system is the PSU, I decided to replace that!

A fix was in immediate need, but with Andrew still sleeping it wasn't possible... Rebooting to see if the error persisted was foolish (such obvious PSU trouble could easily cause more damage to the system if I power-cycled the machine). The best thing to do was to power off the machine, get back into bed, and deal with it after work. So, that's what I did (surprisingly, I wasn't worried about Miki-ni, and put the computer out of my mind shortly after I turned it off).

Later that evening, I was able to get to work on the machine. A PSU transplant:

For some reason, after a long day under near-zero conditions of sleep, I always seem to have trouble staying asleep. But, after a short two-hour nap, I felt refreshed enough to attend to Miki-ni. The plan of action was simple: do a power supply unit (PSU) transplant from Experiment8 to Miki-ni.

Notice: any type of hardware modification to any computer is potentially dangerous, and may void your warranty.

Miki-ni being so old --and custom built by a small-time computer shop in my home town, it had no warranty. And doing a PSU transplant is analogous to doing a heart transplant in surgery... Everything needs to go perfectly, since the PSU supplies the "blood" (DC current energy) to the computer's internal organs (components).

Since Ex8 was just sitting around doing nothing (it has gentoo installed to it, but without a monitor, keyboard, or mouse, it wasn't being of any use -- not to mention that I wasn't able to setup my "gentoo file-server" like I wanted...) I decided to work that that machine before Miki-ni... Ex8 had a relatively new PSU, a 400 watt baby that I installed when Ex8's PSU died about four months ago --at the time, I was having trouble with Miki-ni's PSU, and thought about replacing it, but wanted to try out this "ALLIED" PSU [image] before actually installing it in Miki-ni... And now was the time for the testing to be over, and the full blown installation to be underway.

The removal of the Allied PSU from Ex8 went as easy as silk. Opened the case, undid the molex connectors [image] from the drives [image], the motherboard connector [image], and all other remaining connectors, removed the PSU from the case, and sat it aside. (images from google image search, and not from my personal machine)

The removal of the Nobilis PSU from Miki-ni wasn't as simple. Undoing the molex connectors, and all most other remaining connectors was simple, but the connector for the motherboard was placed in under my hard drives in a spot that is inaccessible without removing my "drive cage" - a total pain to get in and out... But possible.

Once the cage was out, I had to pull the 20-pin motherboard connector, which after being seated for four years was nearly impossible to remove. The securing latch on the connector actually broke away when I removed the connector from the system!

The easy part was installing the Allied PSU, but there is a scientific methodology to dealing with power supply units...

1. On the first boot, never hook everything into the machine and attempt to boot it... If anything should go wrong, a limited number of components in the system would be at risk of damage. Although knowing this, the last time I reconfigured my system (just over a year ago) that it wouldn't boot the OS without all the harddrives hooked in together, but at least keeping the drives to a minimum would allow me to see if the system would run (or fry) itself.... PASSED: Due to having all the HDDs unhooked and none of the input devices (Keyboard, Mouse) or output devices (Speakers, Monitor) all the system did was beep.
   
2. Test Two: The big test: would risk all of the system, accept for my CDRW/DVDROM, 250 GB anime drive and my 100 GB storage drive. A necessary risk. So, with my system laying on the floor, with it's guts plainly exposed, I hooked in the one required item to the computer: the power plug (risking the monitor, keyboard, and mouse was again unnecessary). Pressing power produced the expected results (no smoke, error beeps for having no keyboard or monitor). This is a good sign, I thought to myself, time to go to the next stage.
   
3. The final test is a boot-up of all devices: And once again the system began to successfully start up, I cheered with delight! The computer was booting, with all components successfully loaded. I was abled to access all of my drives, read and write information, and all looked good. It was time for some stress relief: once I had determined that the system was doing well (no odd system failures or error messages) I played a song for my computer - "Oingo Boingo: Weird Science" [ Lyrics ], it seemed appropriate ^_^

Fast Forward: One Week Later
There was one thing that I noticed about Miki-ni while I was in there working on the hardware: the system was getting really dusty. I hadn't had the time in ages to actually dust out the system, so it's about time for that. I managed to get my hands on a new can of compressed air today, and that's what's going to be happening to Miki-ni as soon as that last download finishes.

But other than the dust, there have been no odd errors... ShareScan crashed a few times, but I think that was just the application, and had nothing to do with the PSU, or anything else that is related to hardware. Only time will tell if this was the right decision, or if I was just looking in the wrong direction, but so far, things are looking good.

That's one odd IT Failure, after a long weekend....

Preproduction
Computers

• Miki-ni (a.k.a. "the Desktop"): OS Windows 2000 Pro, SP4. Relevant Software: ZoneAlarm 6 (Trusted Zone).
  
• Miki-chan (a.k.a. "the Laptop): OS Windows 2000 Pro, SP4. Relevant Software: ZoneAlarm 6 (Trusted Zone).
  
• Suzi-lnx: OS SUSE 9.3. Relevant Software SUSE Firewall (Internal Zone).

Network Setup
DHCP offline (college reasons, details superfluous to this entry)
Physical CAT5e connection to college network removed in the process of troubleshooting early on

The Network That Wasn't
When I got back from my brother's wedding, I wanted to do one thing: transfer some anime (kyou kara maou) over to Miki-ni. Since the network was down anyway, I unhooked my link to the college network and reconfigured my computers to have statically assigned IP addresses (since Miki-chan can't get a DHCP address on campus), and with the DHCP server inaccessible to us anyway, it seemed like the logical thing to do.

Miki-ni: 172.16.5.10
Miki-chan: 172.16.5.9
Suzi-LNX: 172.16.5.8
I added Suzi-LNX in there because I wanted to show episode one to James (who was over visiting at the time).

I was able to transfer episode one from Miki-chan to Suzi-LNX without any problem, and after we watched it, I wanted to transfer all the rest to Miki-ni, so I wouldn't have to keep my laptop on all night transferring files from it to Suzi... Doing one big download to Miki-ni seemed like a better idea, Miki-ni is my fileserver anyway.

And that's where all laws of IT-physics seemed to break down. Miki-ni and Miki-chan could not see one another on the network. The ping command didn't work at all...
C:\>ping miki-chan
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
C:\>

And worse:
C:\>ping 172.16.5.9
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
C:\>

And the same was true for pinging Miki-ni from Miki-chan. I just couldn't get the two machines to work together. Eventually, I set them both to DHCP (knowing that they would get an APIPA address, which should allow them to communicate over the network) I figure that I must have done something wrong -- like configuring the IP settings wrong, or maybe even having the firewall set wrong, so I turned off the firewall, and with their new APIPA addresses, communications should be easy as pie.

But it wasn't. Miki-ni and Miki-chan couldn't see one another nor could they ping one another. They were on the same subnet and had valid APIPA addresses, but they couldn't ping one another. At this point, I was desperate. I restarted both machines, swapped out their CAT5e ethernet cabling for different CAT5e wiring... To no avail. Both machines still couldn't ping one another, let alone get files transferred... You would think that a 5 year college veteran like me, with an associate degree in CIS, and with nearly a dozen Microsoft Networking classes under his belt, I would be able to get a laptop and a desktop (running the same OS, without a firewall) to be able to access one another... But no. Andrew (my roommate) suggested that I use my USB flash drive - but that would have been a lot of work (I wanted to transfer 5 GB of data, and the USB drive is only 512 MB, not to mention that Miki-chan and Miki-ni both have only USB 1.1, so they are pretty limited when it comes to USB).

Eventually, I decided to switch back to a static address (a 192.168.1.z) on all the machines to see if I could get that to work... But once again no... By this time, James had long since left... There wasn't much point in staying around when I'm trying to fix a problem like this, because I'll stay there and work it right into the ground before I give up on it. And that's exactly what I did. It took me a while but eventually I was able to get Suzi to see Miki-chan, and I downloaded all of Kyou Kara Maou over to Suzi (and started watching, as a reward to myself).

What was really odd about this hole situation was that in the beginning, Suzi and Miki-chan could access one another, but never could Miki-chan and Miki-ni see one another. And, as soon as I put Miki-ni on the network with a static address, I couldn't access Miki-chan from Suzi either... I'm not sure if that was a fluke, or if there was something from Miki-ni that was interfering with CIFS/SMB connections. Another oddity was that throughout this entire process, it seems that Suzi was able to access Miki-ni the entire time!

I did notice something odd, that may have been why some of my connections were being so odd... At the end, when I would ping Miki-chan from Linux, the first 7 to 10 ICMP echo requests would not be responded to, I'd see something like this:
indigo@Suzi-lnx:~> ping 172.16.5.9
PING 172.16.5.9 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 172.16.5.9: icmp_seq=9 ttl=245 time=236 ms
64 bytes from 172.16.5.9: icmp_seq=10 ttl=245 time=175 ms
64 bytes from 172.16.5.9: icmp_seq=11 ttl=245 time=171 ms

--- 172.16.5.9 ping statistics ---
11 packets transmitted, 3 received, 73% packet loss
indigo@Suzi-lnx:~>

And even when I used Suzi to access Miki-chan, there was a noticeable delay in communication... At first, it took a while between the time I hit "Okay" at the login prompt and the directories were displayed, and then again, when I hit copy on the files of anime and pasted those files over into Suzi, there was another delay... Each seemed to be right around ten seconds long too... Mystery... Maybe, there wasn't a problem with Miki-ni, but maybe there was some type of delay in communication with Miki-chan that caused the default way that windows works to not be able to communicate with it (note that windows has a default maximum ICMP echo request of 4, where as Linux has no default maximum (on any distribution that I've used at least... and SUSE 9.3 is no different).

But, after over two hours of work on this, with only a round-about solution, I decided to at least reward myself for my efforts... I watched episode two of Kyou Kara Maou... And now I'm addicted! Eeaakk! ^_^

The Installer That Wasn't

Some of you may know that Thunderbird 1.5 was released yesterday, and I decided to install it (in SUSE Linux 9.3). Yesterday, no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't get the Thunderbird 1.5 installer to update my Thunderbird 1.0.6 files...

Mozilla wasn't much help... Their readme file directed me to http://getthunderbird.com/releases and the Get Thunderbird site listed:

Other Platforms
Extract the compressed archive and run thunderbird

as the installation instructions for "Other Platforms" (which seems to be *nix systems

I even restarted my computer (thwarting my uptime at right around 5 day - such a small number!) to no avail. It seemed almost as if the installer wasn't actually installing anything... Or perhaps, it wasn't installing it to the same path that SUSE installed Thunderbird 1.0.6 all that time ago... I decided to give up; playing around with this was only going to lead to a broken SUSE 9.3 system, and a weekend spent fixing it (causing undo stress all weekend long). I ended up just going to bed...

The Next Day
Alright, so I kind of woke up in the middle of the night, with only four hours of sleep (half because of all the trouble I have sleeping and half because I had a bit of a stomach ache -- ¾ of a pot of coffee, 2 cups of earl grey, and 4 beers with minimal food throughout the day can do that to a guy) so I got up. I noticed that Suzi-LNX's LCD was still powered on (to a black screen) and not in power save -- which it should have powered off after 10 minutes. So, I decided to go check it out. I couldn't find any problem... Annoyed, I decided to proceed onto my next issue of annoyance... Thunderbird.

I started the task with a new concept, but I already fully believed that there was no way in hell that I was going to be getting TB to work, there was obviously something I just didn't understand about the installer script that was preventing me from accomplishing my goals... It could even be something along the lines of SUSE using a non-standard installation directory, but theoretically, to fix that issue, I would just have to point my TB links to the default location, or reinstall TB to the SUSE location. Either way, I wasn't too confident, but I did have my "new concept" that I was going to try out... The concept was:

1. Use KSysGuard to find the executable path of Thunderbird 1.0.6
   
2. Close Thunderbird 1.0.6
   
3. Under user, execute the Thunderbird 1.5 installer
   
4. When Thunderbird 1.5 attempts to run, check KSysGuard, and note the executable path of Thunderbird 1.5
   
5. See if there is someway to use that path instead of the one for Thunderbird 1.0.6

Well, KSysGuard listed:
thunderbird /bin/sh
thunderbird /opt/MozillaThunderbird/lib/thunderbird-bin
I was pretty sure that /opt/MozillaThunderbird/lib/thunderbird-bin was what I really wanted.

I then closed Thunderbird 1.0.6 and started 1.5 (by going to the uncompressed installation files and executing ./thunderbird) and I checked KSysGuard again, this time seeing:
thunderbird /bin/sh
thunderbird ./thunderbird-bin
waa! I could have nearly cried right there! The one path that I really needed wasn't listed! But the ./ gave me an idea... It may be pulling the thunderbird-bin from the installation folder! WAA! Could it be so simple?!

YES! I checked /opt/MozillaThunderbird/lib and compared it to the "uncompressed installer folder" - and to my surprise, they were nearly identical! I shutdown my current instance of the Thunderbird 1.5 installer and decided to take the risky path... I was going in as root, renaming /opt/MozillaThunderbird/lib to lib.old and moving the installer file in there (renaming it "lib" instead of "thunderbird")... And then, I'll just execute one of my links to Thunderbird to see if it actually worked...

DUN DUN DUN! It worked! *yatta*
Thunderbird 1.5 now installed!

What Was the Deal?
Well, it seems that there was one little thing I missed,

Downloading Thunderbird 1.5
...
Linux: GTK2 + XFT (no installer)

I interpreted the "no installer" part as "not provided in a package" -- meaning that I'd have to compile the software... It turns out that it meant something entirely different. Although this was my fault, I think the Mozilla site (GetThunderbird is part of the Mozilla site) should have listed that fact.

So, what I thought was an installer wasn't an installer at all, it was just a folder full of binaries... I'm glad I figured it out ^_^