The Broken

So, after three months, I've got a basic review of my "new" keyboard.

When I got it, there was some signs of wear and tear on the keyboard and mouse. For one, some of the text on the bottom of the keyboard was faded. It looked like from being slid across a desk. The same goes for the mouse and for the glide pads on the bottom of the mouse. Rather disappointing.

Minus 1 Point

One of the little flippers on the bottom of the keyboard just fell off the other day. I don't even use them, so it seems odd that it would just fall off one day without any reason.

Minus 1 Point

They removed the scroll lock button, because "it's not often used" however, they added in an "F-Mode" key... for being dumb, I feel they are in need of... They also put the "connect" button in an odd place on the bottom of the keyboard, so it's a little too easy to hit when picking the board up. And the new layout of the "home-end" keys area of the board and moving of the "insert" key completely into a different area of the board. Not to mention the missing left windows key. Not major issues by themselves, but for us KVM users out there, I must say:

Minus 1 Point

The mouse doesn't have an off button. Even with my lack of using the mouse, it has already died, within three months of use. I picked up rechargeable batteries shortly there after.

Minus 1 Point

The keyboard has a simple and sleek "black" design. Smooth keys. Not to mention the special utility keys, such as backward, forward, and volume controls.

Plus 1 Point

The keyboard batteries, which I really utilize, have not failed. I have replaced them with rechargables anyway, but they went three months without so much as a single issue. I did have to reconnect once to the receiver for the keyboard, but that was after taking a vacation for almost a week, leaving the keyboard and mouse sitting idle without anyone using them.

Plus 1 Point

The mouse, lefty-compatible, fits well in the hand and is quite simplistic, utilizing the standard three button with scroll wheel. And the optical light hasn't cause me any issues as of yet, working just fine on my desktop, my mouse pad, the edge of the bed, even on the leg of my pants once.

Plus 1 Point

It's wireless, need I say more? And I already knew about all of it's flaws before I purchased it.

Plus 1 Point

Final Score:
0
Break Even.
I'm not exactly impressed with my Logitech EX110 Cordless Desktop, but it's not exactly bad either. There is definitely room for improvement, and there were a few corners cut by both Newegg and Logitech, but nothing too serious. I'd buy another in a heart beat. As a matter of fact, I noticed several of these wireless guys when I was on site earlier today and was impressed with the wise decision of the owner to purchase a decent wireless keyboard. It really did help the office seem less cluttered.

Buying a new computer for your parents is like shooting yourself in the foot.

Or so Mitch would say.

Last week, on Sunday, December 23, 2007, I went home for christmas. My dad had complained that the computer, a Dell Dimension from 2001 (yes, it uses RD-RAM) was shutting down randomly. I brought my PC repair kit from home, and dinked with the system shortly after walking into the house (and after my two-hour drive down south).

I noticed that the system was booting slow, but the system logs didn't show anything too abnormal. So I decided to run a few more intensive scans on the hard drive. From those scans, I found that the hard drive was starting to fail. I was able to restore it to normal operation, but it is now only a matter of time before the drive is gone far enough that it'll just die off one day.

My dad was determined. Finally, he had an excuse to get a new computer. Mom was none-too-happy, but she'll live with it. My dad has had his eyes set on a new iMac for quite some time now, and finally, he was an excuse to get one. He's going with the 20" iMac 2.0 Ghz Core 2 Duo with 2 GB DDR2 RAM and a 250 GB Hard Drive. Ordered Sunday night, arriving, tentatively on Saturday, December 29, 2007. If it does arrive on that day, I'll be heading home either that day, or the day after to set up the system for them and retuning home the following day. My biggest concern is the fact that it won't be just a new computer for them, but also an entirely new operating system, one that is really new. I've never so much as booted a Leopard machine, and with only a year or so of Tiger experience, I'm a little worried to say the lest, but I am confident in being able to use VNC to manage their computer. Besides, how bad could running the world's most user-friendly operating system be? Never mind, parents always find a way to break computers.

More on this as it develops...

100th Post! Good Bye Vista, Hello XP?

Today at work, the Vista machine started acting oddly. We hate Vista at work. It's system requirements are too high for our used hardware and the system is sluggish. Worst of all, we didn't install XP as a boot option with Vista, so we didn't really have an XP option to use at work, outside of our register.

Well, we finally had it today. Vista had lost all it's network shares, connection to the internet, it's desktop background, and a few other minor things, along with the problems we have been having using the Vista operating system instead of XP. So, we backed up what was necessary and reinstalled Windows XP. Vista just wasn't cutting it, and we weren't about to spend hours running through the software to get it up and running the way we want.

So, we've got our new Techroom system, which Mitchell has dubbed "Milton" after the doofusy character from Office Space. A fitting title for our strange an unusual Tech Room system.

We'll probably just run Vista in an emulation mode, but more on that later, after it has been implemented.

BTW: the odd behaviour in Vista turned out to be more related to a bad network cable than a problem with the OS, including the desktop background, which was being loaded from one of our network drives. Ahh well.

24: The Unaired '94 Pilot

Remembering The Little Guys

Back in the late 90s, there was a lot of wild and crazy operating system development projects. Linux was growing in it's early days, Windows was in it's hay-day, and Apple was floundering, but would shortly gain a bunch of strength once again with the return of Steve Jobs and the development of OS X.

But there was much more out there than what we know of as the Big Three in the IT industry... Unix was still quite common, BSD was commonly used, NextSTEP was in development, and so many others were out there.

There was a little guy out there though, one that was distributed for free yet still had closed source: BeOS.

Be was the little guy on the block. Having dealt with being only for AT&T Hobbit architecture, and later PowerPC only, before adding in x68 in the late 90s, which was when I first started using it.

The OS seemed as easy, if not easier than using KDE and GNOME in Mandrake Linux back then, so I was tinkering with it. The system was stable and there seemed to be just about everything I wanted on the system pre-installed. I was continuing to work with the software, but due to school requirements, I couldn't keep running BeOS running, especially since I didn't understand the concept of "dual booting" at that time and was unable to figure out how to do things in open source that would be compatible with my Microsoft-centric high school.

In the end, I only worked with Be for a few weeks before I headed back to Windows 98, an operating system that paled in comparison to BeOS.

There are some out there that may question me, "Well, if it was so nice, where is it now?" Unfortunately, due to their failing business model, BeOS didn't make it much past 2001. Be Incorporated folded, selling shares off for just a few dimes.

Controversy was followed, albeit a few years later. Be's source code somehow got to yellowTAG, a German company, which began re-releasing BeOS under the new name, ZETA in 2004. Zeta looked interesting to me, especially since I was nursing along my Windows 2000 machines, and I was none-too-interested in switching to Windows XP and the prospective Longhorn (later Windows Vista) seemed even worse. In that situation, I was getting more and more disillusioned with the Microsoft model of development and their ever-growing paranoid obsession with software piracy.

I never switched to Zetta, because of their custom license agreement and their closed source model... In the end, I chose openSuSE Linux.

Now, I'm pretty grateful. Zeta was only for for a few years before it was found to be legally questionable to such a degree that yellowTAB (now bankrupt) stopped all software development and distribution.

I must say, when I found out about this, I was really disappointed. When Be folded, I was really hoping that the OS would go open source, and be distributed and modified by the community, since the business had failed. When I heard about ZETA, I believed that they were close to the appropriate solution, however not being open source, I was a little disappointed, but I could understand the mentality. But to once again go through seeing Be and later ZETA go through these failures is very disappointed. There was so much potential for these operating systems... It's sad to see that business-related troubles has once again stopped development cold of a quality operating system.

A Public Letter

Today I want to take a minute to write a letter to someone. This person has been posting items about CyberMedics and me on the community forms where I live, posts that I believe are not true.

Dear Poster,

If your intention was to hurt someone's feelings, you should know you have. Your posts on the forms have really hit a key with me and will be taken to heart. I am sorry that your experiences with Don, Joel, and myself have given you cause to be so angered with us; to the point where you don't feel comfortable talking with us anymore.

I respect your rights to post about your experiences at CyberMedics. I can only ask that you post only the truth.

Respectfully,

Daniel,
CyberMedics Computers,
Departments of PC Repair, On Site Support, and Accounting
117 E. Main St.
Owosso, MI 48867
989.729.2667 x115
dan [at] saycomputer [dotcom]


However, if these posts were from a customer, I feel that I must also write a response:

Dear Poster,

I am sorry that you feel that my service to you was less than what you expected. Policy at CyberMedics is to make ethical and logical decisions on the repair process of every computer and to keep the customer informed to the highest level of detail regarding the repair process. If I have failed you in any of these aspects I express my apologies.

As an IT professional it is not only unethical, but could also jeopardize my career if I install the wrong operating system on a computer. That being said, we are required to install the operating system listed on the product code on the side of your computer if we cannot repair the operating system on your system. If I did not make this clear, I take full responsibility for the situation.

Information is the most critical part of any computer system. In your post, you stated that a back up that you paid for was not performed and your information was lost. This is a most serious issue for a PC repair technician. I can only ask that you please stop by CyberMedics, preferably with your receipt or work order, and I will offer a full refund for your data back up and I will personally speak with the owners of the shop to see if I can offer you a full refund for all labour performed on your system.

If you do have any questions or would like to speak with me in person, please feel free to contact me in person at CyberMedics, 117 E. Main St., Owosso, Mi, 48867 or on the phone at 989.729.2667 x115. I am frequently out on service calls, but if you leave me a message, I'll return your call within two business days.

Once again, I offer my apology for any inconvenience you have had.

Daniel,
CyberMedics Computers,
Departments of PC Repair, On Site Support, and Accounting
117 E. Main St.
Owosso, MI 48867
989.729.2667 x115
dan [at] saycomputer [dotcom]

Keepon!

Razr Hell

I cannot emphasize how much I cannot stand this phone anymore. At first, it was beautiful. It had a better camera and was quite stylish to use. Best yet: it was easy to sync up with my MacBook via Bluetooth. Excellent.

That is, until I started playing around with my own mp3 ringtones.

I quickly found out that to get a ringtone onto my razr (a V3m from Sprint, USA - CDMA) phone, all I had to do was upload it to the \audio\ directory and then set the phone to use that as it's ring tone.

Excellent! In a test, I uploaded "My World Down" from the Animation Beck OST. However, I did that a year or so ago now... I've since got a few complaints that the ringtone sounds like a failing HDD and my co-workers freak out each time they hear it. I was getting a little tired of it too, and the ring tone was the full song (around 3 minutes) and over 2 MB, taking up a lot of space on the phone.

So, I decided to delete the mp3 from my razr. Simple enough, right? Just go in through bluetooth and delete the file like I do with the photos.

I keep getting an error, "Operation failed" each time I try to delete the file. There also seems to be no area of the phone itself where I can delete the ringtone. It doesn't show up in the "Ringtones" section of the phone, but it is listed as a ringtone. But, in the "assign a ringtone" section, I cannot delete ringtones. Frustrated, I tried connecting the phone via USB. No luck at all.

After doing some google searching, it seems that the Razr phones will do this to a lot of people. Requiring one to set the phone to silent, load it up as a USB disk drive, go into the "audio" subdirectory, delete two *.db files, and restart before deleting the MP3 can be done. --Getting it to load as a disk drive isn't bad, but I'll also have to use a special "razr explorer" app to view *all* the files on the phone. ~sigh. Okay, whatever... I'll follow the directions and do this.

Well, it didn't turn out so easy. First, the Mac directions won't work on a Razr V3m Sprint CDMA phone. Okay, what's next: using "hack the razr" to do it via USB in Windows XP. No prob, fire up XP in Parallels and we'll be all set. Parallels for some reason tonight freaks out my Mac however. Eating RAM and CPU like nothing else.

So, I'll just grab the link from Firefox and email it to myself and reboot the Mac into Windows XP (boot camp) and we'll go from there. Well, that's when I found out Firefox had freaked out after Parallels used up so much of the system resources. Took some time, but Firefox eventually came back to me. I quickly grabbed the link, pasted it into an email and sent it off, and restarted the Mac into XP.

Once in XP, I found the site really well laid out. Including video examples. Nice! I did exactly what they said, and loaded my phone into the system. Took a while to do everything just so, but it was going well. Drivers successfully loaded all I had to do was plug the phone in and wait for Windows to see it.

Apparently, Windows can't load the correct device drivers and it displays a message, "An error occured... Yadda yadda yadda... Device might not work." Great. Well, Hack the Razr says that I can get the most recent drivers from MotoDev, okay, no problem.

Registration required. Crap. At least it's free. Okay, do that. Signing away my identity again (*garbage in, garbage out*) and logged in. Downloaded the drivers, only to find that the device still won't work. Great, I can't even get the first and most critical step done. Grrrrr.

By now, I've spent over an hour and a half working on this dang phone, just to DELETE A SINGLE RINGTONE!!! I was so enraged, I was willing to just stomp on the phone to be done with it. ~sigh... This happens, lets try Bluetooth in Windows, maybe that'll have better luck... No dice. Bluetooth in Windows is even more shitty than Bluetooth in Mac OS X. Okay, well, the *.db files are probably hidden files, so how about using Onyx on OS X to view hidden files and connect via Bluetooth to delete the files. No dice once again. Too frustrated to continue on, I shut the phone and Mac off and decide that I'll just have to live with the ringtone until I get up the desire to get peeved by it again.

Guess What Broke Down Again

Early this morning, my MS rep called me, wanting mostly to close the ticket. I bet his manager is breathing down his neck to get the account closed... We've already spent nearly 8 hours on the phone together. I finally let him talk me into it.

About 15 minutes later, I found out that the backup from the night before failed. ~sigh. Nothing sucks more than realizing that you just paid Microsoft $259 to waste two days of work. I'm still troubleshooting it now myself, while I've been in contact with my MS rep (via email only, apparently he doesn't feel like calling me back anymore) trying to get the back ups running again.

Damn you Exchange, you suck.

BTW: I also found this guy who actually did hit the 16 GB limit. Thank God that didn't happen in my Exchange environment... But it seems the two of us are having "post maintenance" troubleshooting. I'm glad that at least my users are able to send and receive easily, but without having decent backups, we definitely having a ticking time-bomb that is known as Microsoft Exchange Server.

[update]
I just finished some basic management of Exchange, I ran eseuitl /k (checksum checks) which turned out well, as well as eseutil /d, which defraged the database just fine. I then ran NTBackup and was able to backup the database... However, Veritas backups still don't work. ~sigh. I might look into troubleshooting that, but I'm not so sure that I'm as worried as I was earlier.

Exchange Sucks

I have no clue why Microsoft doesn't really design a better concept for Exchange. It works, and it works really well, until something goes wrong and undetected for a few months.

The repairs I ran with my Microsoft Support guy did get the job done... We did eseutil /k on the priv1.edb and priv1.stm files. Priv1.edb was find. No errors. Priv1.stm: a few thousand errors. My tech literally said "Oh My God" twice as the errors scrolled up the screen.

He then informed me that deleting the STM file and recreating it would be the best option for this situation. Repairing the file just wasn't as likely to succeed.

Unfortunately, both the database and our server were in bad shape. The server has very little storage space available on it. It was so low in fact, that we had to do much of our database management on an external USB hard drive and to expedite our troubleshooting, we also used the tape drive to back up the MDBData directory.

Once we got everything done, which we started at 5 PM and ended at 9:30, we made a backup of the MSExchangeIS and proceeded on to basically conclude the ticket. People were able to access their storage, the database was able to be backed up again, and I was even able to do an offline defrag of the database. Things were looking good and we were done long before I thought we would be.

I left the building after speaking with my "on-site boss." Neither of us got home until well after 11pm. I then spoke with Don, my "boss/mentor" down at CMC. We talked on the phone until 2 AM about the service call and what needed to be covered a few other things that needed to be done on site to be sure that we had everything under control. I was finally able to get into bed at 3AM.

I woke up at 7:30 to turn on my cell phone, just incase something happened on site, I went right back to bed.

At 8:30 AM I received a call from my on-site boss. There were problems. Apparently, after the work done on Monday night, now ever one on site who connected to Exchange had lost all of their external emails. They had emails from the local domain, but anything outside of that, including emails that have been saved for years were lost. It caused quite a stir come Tuesday morning. Fortunately, the most affected people were the IT staff.

I spent some time on the phone with Microsoft technicians and eventually we decided that further work was needed on the database. I worked with a new MS Technician for over an hour, before I got a call from the tech that I worked with the night before. We ended up deciding to switch the contact from my new support technician back to my original and continue work. I talked with my support tech and we decided that we needed to back restore the database to an alternative location and then we needed to get a second server up and running and mount the database on that guy to retrieve the data if at all possible.

Getting a decent computer, installing Windows 2000 Server and MS Exchange 2000 SP3 w/ Roll-up was troublesome enough. It was worse when I got back on site and received a call from my support tech at 4:30 and was informed that "Oops, we can't actually do that. It won't work unless everything is really similar." Great. 4 hours wasted. At least I got half an hour of sleep while the server OS was installed by Joel and Mitchell.

So, my support tech and I decided that it would be best to take our database offline, mount the old one and use ExMerge to pull out the six mailboxes that we needed. The process should be relatively quick compared to Monday's work.

Assuming, that is, if it works... Which it didn't.

ExMerge got one mailbox out of six. It was the largest mailbox too, at nearly 2 GB. At least that was something.

We then went and loaded up client machines and pulled their mailboxes off right from outlook instead of trying to do it through exchange. A much slower process, but at least it is much more likely to get the correct data. It seemed that it had. We remounted the "good" exchange database and all we needed to do was import the data back into Exchange.

Right then and there, my tech seemed really interested in getting me off the phone. We had pulled the mailboxes off of the server to back them up and we had reconnected the good exchange database, but we had not restored anything to Exchange.

I managed to talk him into helping me restore a single mailbox and keeping the trouble ticket open for another 24 hours before he closes it. And he quickly ushered me off of the phone. I can understand, the two of us have had busy days, but it was a little crappy there at the end... And I was not exactly pleased about the whole "Make a server by 4pm!" thing either.

~sigh. This is why I cannot stand Exchange.

Finally, The Horrors of Exchange, part 1

Last week, Wednesday, September 26, 2007, I was assigned to an on-site contract for a local Owosso business. On day 1, I focused on getting oriented with the network there, mostly just familiarizing myself with the 5 on site servers and the one off site server.

The network is interesting, it is international, two exchange servers, and a whole kaboodle of other traits of the system that give it a personality all its own.

Standard IT policy for managing a network, be it from day one administration or having a new administrator come into a network, the first place we look is at the domain controllers and fire up the event viewer to find out what errors the system is having.

I noticed several errors labeled as "MSExchange..." This is one of my nightmares. Exchange is really sensitive, and can be easy to break or lose data if it isn't dealt with according to Microsoft policy. I'm not sure why Microsoft made Exchange in such a sensitive way, but they must have had a reason for it, seeing as how they've been doing it for over a decade now [Microsoft Exchange Server, Wikipedia]. One of the interesting design concepts of Exchange is how messages are stored on the server. Exchange drops messages into one of several databases: priv1.edb priv1.stm pub1.edb pub1.stm or into an ever-increasing amount of log files. But one of the annoying features of Exchange is that it requires everything to be 100% operational for most of it's own functions to work correctly.

For example, while on site, I found that the Exchange wasn't backing up correctly each night and it had been doing this for several months. After doing some tinkering, I also noticed that it was running out of space. The MS Exchange database --the database is priv1.edb + priv1.stm, was 15.9 GB, while Microsoft has set maximum capacity on the Exchange database to be 16 GB. Email doesn't exactly come in at an extreme speed for the network, so it wasn't slated as a major thing, so we scheduled Exchange Database management for the upcoming Saturday, which would give me plenty of time to check to see what commands I need to run on the database and what contingencies I should be prepared to deal with (cough-disaster recovery-cough).

One day went by without major events, but then on Friday, I arrived on site to find that the Exchange had crashed and was re-enabled. It had crashed, according to event viewer, because the hard drive had gone down to less than 10 MB of free space (thankfully, Exchange was hosted on "D drive" instead of on C). However, when I fired up My Computer to see how much space was presently left on the drive, and found it to be under 512 KB, I immediately reported to my on-site boss that the Exchange server was going to go down any minute, due to the drive being filled up again and I was going to have to shut Exchange down to prevent it. He quickly remote into the server to take a look at the data, and noticed that the drive had 2 MB free and was growing?? And then several people immediately stated that they had suddenly lost email... Yup, Exchange had crashed again.

Now, this isn't a huge issue, Exchange is designed to protect itself in situations like this, by shutting down and displaying error messages so we avoid data loss. However, now that the drive had less than 10 MB free, we were in a bit of a bind. Exchange needs to be defraged (that would be the command eseutil /d) --the defrag command deletes information in the database that has been deleted by users or mailboxes that have been deleted by administrators, which should free up a decent bit of space in the database. The recommended procedure by Microsoft is that we take a backup of Exchange and then run the defrag command. While it is very common for the defrag command to cause problems with the database, it is still a possibility, especially if we have undetected hard ware problems.

So started the second fiasco. Backing up Exchange. Now, we have known for a while that the Veritas Backup Exec backups have been failing on that server for a while now, but they were backing up the entire server, and while it was getting an error while backing up Exchange, it wasn't clear if the Exchange errors were causing the backups to fail, or if it was more related to a tape/tape drive issue. So, I decided to just do an NTBackup.exe backup and save it to an external drive. It was redundant enough for our situation.

The backup started, and 2.5 hours later it had not displayed an error message and switched to data verification. 2.5 hours after that (a total of 5 hours after starting the backup), it returned "Backup failed." I checked the logs, and it said "\Mailsore (%servername%)" failed. The database may be corrupt or inaccessible. The file will not restore correctly. This was a becoming a major stressor for me. I have to do a defrag on the database, which a backup prior-to doing the defrag is highly recommended by Microsoft, yet I am unable to do the backup due to a corrupt database.

To keep this story from getting horribly long, I eventually was able to just run Defrag on priv1.edb, pub1.edb, and pub1.stm, which freed up nearly 6 GB of space. However, I was not able to defrag priv1.stm, which seems to be corrupt. I spent a lot of time with other variations of the eseutil command, but wasn't able to get the database back. I could use eseutil /p [database] /i to rebuild the indexes between priv1.edb and priv1.stm, however, the P switch will not only repair the database, but it will also delete anything it determines to be corrupt. Which, frequently will cause other problems with the database. But, there is one nice thing, even if it does delete files that it shouldn't, we can use the *.log files to replay transactions in exchange to get it back up and running with the correct information.

Once again however, my hopes were dashed. To save space, some log files had been deleted. There is no guarantee that we'll be able to use the log files to get the database up and running again. Hopes dashed. And upon further research, I'm suck between a rock and a hard place. There is no other options available. The only options I've got are to break the RAID array and tinker with one half of the mirrored image to see what happens (no guarantee of success, and it is possible to damage the RAID array in the process), or I can call Microsoft and start a support ticket. My boss at CyberMedics suggests the latter, after talking with the guys on site, we'll make the final decision come Monday.

More details as the story progresses.

The 'k' is for krazY!

Krazy 3-D Sudoku!

Now That's Comedy

And yet, it's sooooo true!

Sorry the weekend article has been postponed. Upcoming (sometime soon) will be an article about the horrors of Exchange Server... You'll see why once I post it.

365 Days Later...

A little over a year ago now, I got frustrated with a customer at CyberMedics. I had one of "those weeks" and just wanted to go home early and watch TV or sleep the day away or something. Since I was in the middle of work, I didn't do any of that. But I really wanted to treat myself to something, so since I was getting ready for a new laptop, and the new MacBooks had been on my shopping list, I ordered one right from work.

The Positives
A few weeks later, what would later become known as Akira (A for Apple), arrived. An Intel Core Duo MacBook SuperDrive (DVD+RW DL), with upgrades from the standard model of 1 GB RAM and an 80 GB SATA hard drive. It came preloaded with OS X 10.4.7 (now Running 10.4.10).
Score: + 1
The hardware is still better than industry standards

I must say, the laptop has impressed me in ways I couldn't even imagine. It dual boots with Windows XP, thank you Boot Camp. The dual core processor has made emulation and virtualization not only easy, but also low-impact on the system.
Score: + 1
Booting XP or Vista on a Mac? It's still insane.

The built-in iSight and microphone makes for quick and easy "myspace-esk" photos or simple audio blogs. I still love tinkering with some of those simple "time-waster" games that were preloaded on my MacBook, the ones that will automatically load up my iSight if I'm playing with another person. It's just fun.
Score: + 1
Cool, but it's a time waster.

I've been really getting to love iPhoto. Especially when I was on vacation and wanted to just load up the photos from my camera quick... Without really having to spend half of the day configuring the program.
Score: + 1
This program is just awesome.

The white coloring of the MacBook allows it to stay cooler in the sunlight, making it just that much easier for me to utilize outside and near windows, without having the fans on the unit kick up to full power.
Score: + 1
White? Perfect color for a notebook computer.

Speaking of power, the MagSafe power adapter has already saved me a few times from having my MacBook tossed to the floor, or worse, going into CMC for a "laptop powerjack replacement."
Score: + 1
Powerjack Replacements are Expensive! Yea for big savings!

The power brick also came with a "travel adapter," which instead of having the power brick with the detachable wall cable, the wall cable could be removed and the travel adapter used in place of it, allowing for one to keep cabling to a minimum while traveling (as a matter of fact, the 5' power cable for the MacBook was the only cable I need to run it).
Score: + 1
Travel adapter: added convenience that I soo love!

The magnetic latch is quite excellent. It really gives the notebook a sleek look and feel to it, without having those ugly little latches sticking out.
Score: + 1
Style. Need I say more?

The Negatives
There is a little "divot" in the bezel of the laptop so it's easier to pull up the LCD display... Unfortunately, this is right in front of the iSight on the notebook, making it easy to get finger prints on the lens of the iSight.
Score: - 1
Blury iSight Photos... That sucks.

The MagSafe power adapter has a tendency to fall out a little easily, not a major problem, and it is basically "playing it on the safe side," but it does become a problem when the MacBook is running low on battery power.
Score: - 1
MacBooks going into suspend when least expected. Not cool.

The LCD is designed to be flush with the bezel of the MacBook, however, mine is slightly off set by the smallest degree. However, it annoys me to no end to see such a beautiful device, with such a flaw, albeit minor.
Score: - 1
Minor structural failings, not cool.

Vibration! For some reason, when I first got my MacBook (Akira), there was a major vibration sound coming from it when the LCD was in certain positions or when the back light was set to specific intensities. It didn't really make much sense to me, but it eventually went away. I was happy when it did so.
Score: - 1
Vibration noise... Annoying!

Final Total: 8 out of 12
Not bad, for a first edition.

Major Microsoft Change Slated --Did We Learn From History?

In July '08, Craig Mundie and Ray Ozzie will each be taking over a portion of Bill Gates' role at Microsoft, as the Chairman steps down. This will be a major change in Microsoft that may have an impact on the entire industry.

A "slightly similar" situation has happened in the past, when Apple Computer (now Apple Incorporated) Partner and Co-Founder Steve Jobs [2] was ousted from the company by the board of directors and then CEO John Sculley. Apple started to fall behind in industrial development. The Apple line of computers were slowly being phased out while the Macintosh line kept taking more and more power away from the Apple line. Unfortunately, there wasn't enough major changes in the Macintosh line, which was focused mostly on "Portable Computers," which seemed to hit it's prime with the Macintosh SE and Color Classic. Inevitably, Scully was removed from his position of CEO and replaced with Michael Spindler, who further compounded Apple's problems, including problems areas such as allowing other companies to develop "clone" systems that were not developed by Apple, continuing research into a new OS (Code named: Copland) and failed negotiations of a take over with companies IBM, Phillips, and Sun.

While this was going on in the early 1990s, Microsoft was perfecting it's Windows, improving on Windows 3.1 with 3.11, NT, and 95.

With the industry being geared toward freedom of thought and design, having one primary company stressing innovation within it's own set boundaries while also having a concept of "Think Different" [2] ended up being counter intuitive. By the late 90s, when Windows 95 and later Windows 98 were gaining market share from new computer users and Macintosh people that had converted to Windows, either by necessity or by preference, began to dramatically gain power is when forecasts of Apple's demise began to circulate, citing them as a computer company that just didn't understand modern thinking in the IT industry.

With the limited changes with Mac OS, decreasing market share to Windows, and increasing financial problems, Mac became a minor player in the industry by the late 1990s, when Microsoft's Windows reached 90% market share for the first time. In 1996, Spindler was replaced by Gil Amelio [2], Apple's shortest lived CEO.

Many people link this "down-swing" of Apple's status directly to Apple's longest running and then CEO --Scully. Mac OS 7 (1991 to 1997) was in it's final life, it's foundation (System 6) and age was making programming difficult and implementation of new hardware concepts increasingly challenging. Scully attempted to implement Mac OS 8, its development starting back during the days of System 6, however the project, known as Copland suffered from stagnation...

Eventually ignored by Apple itself, the Copland project finally dried off in 1996 as Apple began talks with the now defunct Be Incorporated for development of a new Mac OS. However, the Copland project wasn't a total loss however, its features that were favored were slowly integrated into OS 7, while the development of a new OS was abandoned for purchasing of a third party OS that would be purchased by Apple Computer.

Then the shock came. Be Inc. refused to settle for anything lower than $400 Million for Be OS, while Apple refused to pay more than $125 Million for it, by some, the cost of $125 million was considered to be three times as much as it was worth; citing bad blood between then Be CEO Jean-Louis Gassée (a former Apple official) and Apple Computer. Due to the stressors of encountering such resistance and lack of development of Mac OS 8, Amelio turned to NeXT. A NeXTSTEP OS and Mac OS merger was quite unexpected by the Macintosh industry, whom cited concern over the NeXT CEO and the short duration of negotiations between Apple Computer and NeXT Computer.

The primary concern of Apple Fanatics was the similarities between the Be negotiations and the NeXT negotiations... After Apple Partner and Co-Founder Steve Jobs was forced out of Apple, he founded NeXT, and began work on a new OS concepts and design. Based on the UNIX Mach kernel and BSD Source, the system was slated to revolutionize the OS market. However, differently from Be, and once again a failing of Steve Jobs' business model, the proprietary foundations of NeXT held the company back; NeXT being designed to only run on NeXTSTEP computers, with their high price tag (of around $10,000) limited adaption, and the company was struggling to keep itself afloat. One desperate move after another was made to try to keep the OS going, and then along came Apple... Desperate for a new OS, Jobs required Apple to pay through the nose of NeXT Computers. It isn't clear exactly how much Apple had to pay for NeXT, but it is commonly believed to be at least $375 Million, but no higher than $450 Million; however NeXT also required approximately 1 million shares of Apple for the merger, and placing Jobs as the interim CEO for Apple in 1999.

The story is sweet and simple from there on. Apple released Mac OS 9 shortly after Jobs took over as interim CEO. iMac, iTool (now, .Mac), iTunes and later OS X (based on NeXT) was integrated into Apple's line up, as Steve Jobs took over as Apple's present CEO in 2000.

It is now considered that Steve Jobs saved Apple from folding in 2000, it was an expensive and long term process, but with the salvation of Apple comes a new line of thinking for the IT industry: how dangerous is it to have a major software player have huge changes with its founders? This concept came up when Bill Gates stepped down from CEO to chief software architect and Chairman of the Board, placing Steve Balmer as CEO; allowing Bill Gates to further reduce his role in Microsoft, eventually removing from all day-to-day activity at the business. Bill Gates has slated Ray Ozzie [2] for "day-to-day management" of Microsoft and Craig Mundie [2] as "chief research and strategy officer." While it remains to be seen what will Develop for Bill Gates and Microsoft come 2008, it's ramifications won't be obvious for several years after.

This will definitely be an interesting turning point for Microsoft, and the IT industry in general.

Gaming Macintosh

This evening, I received an email from Apple, titled: "The best EA games are now available for Mac." It seems that EA and Apple are working hard together to get more games onto the Macintosh platform. From checking out the Apple Store, there seems to be increasing advertisements for video games, especially the EA derivatives, such as the Sims 2, Battlefield 2142, and Command & Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars.

It'll be interesting to see how the Apple change over from PowerPC Processors to Intel Core series processors will turn out to influence the gaming industry.

Doovde Player?

JOOVC DOOVDE Player!! On sale now!

It's so funny because it's true.
This kind of thing happens all the time in the IT industry, with so many acronyms, people get really confused about what they need. Not to mention the horrors of terminology. I can't tell you how many times I've told a customer that a "new modem costs around $15 to $20" only to find out that they are calling their "computer" a "modem." ~sigh. Serenity Now.

Just One More!

This guy owns one too many Macintosh computers. Although, I'd love to visit and see all of them running!

Is that a Lisa?!?!

Keycombos Can Define Life Itself!

A friend of mine sent me this image the other day: [image: shortcuts]

Enjoy.

Is Privacy Dead or has it just become Publicized?

With the recent innovations like Google Maps: Street View and MSN/Live's Virtual Earth, there has been growing concern about privacy. No-one really says that better than private investigator Steven Rambam, who is mentioned in the blog Privacy Is Dead: Get Over It [HomelandStupidity.us] (Homeland Stupidity contains links to Steven Rambam's Nov. 16, 2006 presentation, "Privacy is Dead: Get Over It.")

While Privacy is very difficult to maintain in this technological-centric society, it may still be possible, or at least controllable... Some of this is explained in further detail at the Opinion Editorial Is privacy possible in the digital age? [MSNBC.com] there is also a lot of easy common-sense things to avoid to help maintain one's own privacy. For example, avoid publishing blogs that reveal information that you wouldn't want seen in public... Be it your boss, your grandma, or worse-- someone that wants to trash your reputation. Remember that there are sites out there like Archive.org and Google's "search cache" that maintain a "back up" copy of a decent bit of the internet... The first search for "booting from the shadow of a broken mirror" at Google reveals IndigoJake.com's Black Friday Shopping, from November, 2006. IndigoJake.com is too new to be archived at Archive.org.

Do enough digging around, and you can find the other blogs that I'm associated with, including blogs that are much more personal than this one. It can be a little scary. I've dug up old friends from middle school with creative Google searching! In this situation, the best one can do is to control what information is posted on the internet. Anonymity is difficult, if not impossible, flexing basic control may be the best option for many out there today.

There have even been lists of search queries posted on the internet, including easy tracing options that can return what user, and eventually, the person and home address/phone of the searcher! While searching for directions to the nearest air port may not be much of a problem, searching up about "whistle blowing" or medical problems may end up with one getting a pink-slip at work or denied health benefits when applying for insurance.

What is easy to overlook is just how much information one posts to the internet, and how easy it is to index and use that information. For a potent example of this, check out the social engineering experiment, "We Feel Fine," and tinker a bit... The results were astonishing to me.

Even modern computing technology, including major programs such as Microsoft Window's Genuine Advantage report back to Microsoft information, albeit basic information, about your computer and it's connection to the internet. That's why when one changes certain components in a computer, the Windows Activation wizard will appear.

Is this a good thing? Many people say no... However, there are still many people that prefer to purchase a vehicle with OnStar available and will sign up for Kroger shopping cards, not even giving a second thought to the fact that they are permitting more and more information is being tracked about them. There is no need for George Orwell's "1984" to happen... But we may already be on the road to it, however in our reality, it is being pitched as "just a few pieces of information that will bring discounts on products and better service..." However, it may also lead to employer's later finding out what medical issues one has or lovers finding out about that ex from six months ago.

Pointless?

Far be it for me to state that someone else's work is of questionable rational, but "How to install and boot 145 operating systems in a PC" from the JustLinux forms is hopelessly pointless. There just is no logical reason to boot that many operating systems on one computer.

The author, saikee, states that "[the 'How to install and boot 145 operating systems in a PC'] thread is to show how booting is laughingly simple in Linux."

~sigh, sounds like a waste of time to me. Go GRUB for being able to boot so many operating systems, but even the author states that he has been using an old obsolete version of GRUB that is being phased out. I can only imagine why he would do this, outside of the fact that it is cool to say "I had a PC that booted 145 operating systems, in one GRUB menu."

The Second Big Bang, Seven Lives On!

History
Back when I first started with computers, the first system that I fell in love with was a computer at my middle school, my Mac SE. I loved the little critter. It was fairly portable, and so cool and technological! --At least, it was for it's day. Throughout my time in middle school, I secretly wanted one. I didn't tell my parents that, since we just got a Packard Bell 486dx just a year or so before [image: example of pb 486dx, google image search]. However, that didn't change my dream of having an SE of my own.

When I got into high school, I was developing into being an expert at Windows 9x and later Windows 2000. My days as a Mac user were far behind me and the newer versions of Mac OS (7.5.x and 8.x) seemed to pale in comparison. Their graphics seemed basic and as I got further into Windows, it just seemed that I was able to do more with the OS in comparison to Mac OS... But I still wanted a good ol' SE to grace my desk... Even if it was just to have Tetris, Oregon Trail, and my favorite: Brickels (Break Out).

As time went on, I developed a rapport with Garrett, a classmate of mine who went to the same elementary and middle school as I did. We never became good friends, especially since he was the King of Mac at school, whereas I was more of a PC Fanboy. Garrett and I still managed to forge a friendship, and one day, when my school district was having an auction selling off old computer equipment that they were phasing out in favor of newer equipment (namely, PCs).

At the auction, I was able to get my hands on two Mac SE systems. They had the spiffy 20 meg hard drive and everything! They even came with OS 7.1 and loaded with software, like Microsoft Office version 2.1 and Claris Works and games like, you guessed it Break Out, Tetris, and Oregon Trail! I was loving it. I not only had a ol' Mac SE to grace my desk, but I also had a second one in case something failed with the first one. I spent a lot of time tinkering with these two Macs, and even had them networked together for a while, sharing the entire hard drive of of each computer to the other.

Eventually, I tired of using the old systems, and put one away and left one out on my desk, just to tinker with occasionally. Eventually, it became more of "potted plant" on my desk that a commonly used system... However, I did make one exception, I kept a journal on that old SE, a kind of "Year in Review" thing, written late in December or Early in January. They also included a quick snip-bit of a look into my day, to give me something to look back on and smile. I tried to do some homework on the SE, but with only a dot matrix printer and with commonly required fonts, like Times New Roman and what not being required, they quickly lost that job as well.

The computers nearly became forgotten once college became my focus, and Windows 2000 my primary OS with a few experiments into Mandrake Linux. The old SE systems dropped further out of range after I got my Indigo iMac 350 Mhz running OS 9.2, and later OS X (10.0 -- and quite badly at that). When college started, I didn't even bring a single Mac with me, including my new iMac. I only brought one PC and one laptop, and went into my computer programming degree. I still occasionally had a desire to use good ol' 7, but I just never had the space in my little dorm room to bring in an old SE unit nor was I able to find a decent emulator for one. So I just lived without... Besides, when I had requirements to meet for school, I wasn't about to take the slowest and oldest computer that I had access to and bring it into the dorms... Besides, my SE systems were special to me, and I didn't want to lose them at college.

Eventually, I was able to get my hands on two more Mac SE systems in 2003. Further adding to my Mac collection and my ability to combine the software from the four machines into one collection of games and programs. I never even brought the SE systems into the dorm, much to the complaint of my college roommates who wanted to "check the system out." Instead, the systems went staight home where they were placed into my collection.

I even eventually lost the iMac Indigo... After loaning it to my cousin, who didn't have a computer of his own; and then finding out later that he left it in his apartment, which he abandoned. To this day, I have no clue where the computer is. I hope it found a good home, but with the issues my cousin was going through at the time, I suspect it may have been the innocent victim of my cousin's ex-girlfriend's wrath.

After that, I hardly used Mac OS for a long time. I would tinker with it when ever I got the chance on one of the campus Macintosh computers (we had two Baker College of Owosso Macintosh computers, Power Macs which were only used by the graphic design students).

In September 2006, I decided to purchase a new Macintosh, a MacBook with the Intel Core Duo processor. It would be much faster than the old Macintosh computers I had used in the past and being built on OS X, it would provide me with a stable *nix-like environment that is easy to use. I loved the thing, but there is still something to be said about sitting in-front of a desktop computer and actually having some serious power under the hood, which just isn't possible to replicate on a laptop.

Earlier this Week....
I happened across this website SE Item, a clear Mac SE, limited to 10 production units and "only released" to Apple "SE Project Managers," which got me looking into older Mac SE info, which directed me to Mac ITX, a site where a guy moded his old Mac SE into a modern Windows 2000 computer, running an emulator for Mac OS 7, that emulator was called Basilisk II, which is the emulator which is enabling me to type this blog in SimpleText running in Mac OS 7.5.3 rev. 2 [image: simpletext in os 7].

The system was difficult to install at first, finding an old Mac to get a ROM image from, then getting the correct .dsk image to use in Linux, and then again getting the installer to work correctly, but it eventually turned out totally swankin' [image: mac os 7.5.3 installer].

I don't have much software in the emulated Mac OS, but that may soon change with my good old-school Mac connections I have. I may even invest in some other version of the OS just to tinker with. Good ol' System 6. And apparently, BasiliskII supports Mac System Software starting with System Software 0.X, the earliest releases of what would eventually become Mac OS. It'll be interesting to play around with as time goes on.

Drawbacks
For one thing, I cannot find the "Option" key on my keyboard.
- Control maps to control
- Command maps to Alt
- Windows doesn't map to anything.
No combination of shift or holding multiple keys (CTRL + ALT) and what-not have revealed which key I need to press to get Option to come up...

The emulator keeps my PC running at high-utilization [image: ksysguard].

The emulator can be quite unstable, crashing frequently and randomly (save often, there's no "auto save" in SimpleText 1.3.1!

No Ethernet access... yet. I want to bridge BasiliskII with my Ethernet adapter and see if I can get an old version of Netscape on the puppy. On the "to-do" list for this weekend, along with testing of the CD ROM interface.

Trouble writing to "Unix" -- although, this may be by design, I would love to be able to quickly and easily save documents between OS 7 and "Unix" (which is "/" in my SUSE Linux system).

Awesomeness
Sound works just fine, including the "speaking" functions of Mac OS 7.5... Well, as good as can be expected from an OS that's well into it's 12 year of operation and running in an emulator. I actually wasn't expecting sound to work at all!

Quick response time. OS 7 was designed to run on a 68K processor, yes, but running in emulation mode it has quite the speed boost. The system takes only a handful of seconds to boot up. And loading extensions is nearly instant. Swankin' I can't wait to try out some of my old games on this bad boy, just to see if things work as well now as they did in the past, or perhaps, as the Mac ITX people have said, maybe running the 68k emulator is the "ultimate hack for an Mac SE."

klickity-klack

My new keyboard has arrived today. This blog is half an early review, half a test of how easy it is to utilize the keyboard. The keyboard is unique in appearance, layout, and design concept. It'll be interesting to see how extended use of the board will turn out.

But, starting with the basics...

Initial impressions: The 'board
The keys are totally membrane-esk, even more so than any previous keyboard I've used; while nothing can beat the old IBM "Classic" keyboards, which had a distinctive "clack" with each key press, making it quite obvious when one had actually depressed a key. The classic IBM keyboards where where I founded most of my typing skills (I actually started on a Mac SE keyboard as well as a standard membrane keyboard that I utilized on my Packard Bell 486dx back in the day; so I adapted well to membrane keyboards later on).

The closest I've come to the feel of the EX110 is some of the more "modern" Dell keyboards, the ones with the odd shape. Their keys have a similar feel, almost as if one isn't typing at all... They keys move in a more solid motion on the EX110 however, decreasing the plastic-on-plastic sound, however, they still have the "gooey" feel of a well-designed membrane keyboard.

The biggest, and most noticeable features of the keyboard are the new layout for the secondary keys. There is a large space between keys F8 and F9, it focuses one on the Logitech logo, but there doesn't seem to be much more of a reason for the space than that. There is also a new "F-Mode" button, which toggles the function keys from being their standard, "F1, F2, F3... F12" to launcher keys, such as Word, Excel, Powerpoint and so on. I'm not a huge fan of MS Office programs having their logo white-washed on my keyboard, but at least it's in a dark blue color, which is hardly noticeable.

The board has also been "relieved" of two keys: "Right-Windows" and "Scroll Lock," two keys that are not commonly used. However, the Windows key has become more and more of a short-cut-enabler key, similar to Alt, and removing it from the left side of the keyboard may cause some people quite an inconvenience.

There has also been a slight layout change of the "Home/End/Page-Up..." key arrangement, which is usually in a 3x2 arrangement. They have changed this area of the keyboard dramatically. Insert has been moved up next to Print Screen, on the same row as the function keys, but further to the right. The "Home/End/Page-Up..." area of the keyboard has also been re-designed to function in a 2x3 arrangement, and Logitech has also elongated the delete key, so it is similar in size and shape to the "+" and "Enter" keys on the number pad.

Other than that, there are even more specialized keys now than there were on my iTouch, not only do I now have extensive media keys: "Play/Pause, Stop, FF, RW, Vol+, Vol-, Mute," but Logitech has added in "Web-Browser-Stop" and "Go-Back," and like my old iTouch, there is still the hot-keys for "Email," "Home," and "Calc." Fortunately, these keys fit well into the design of the keyboard.

I've also noticed that the keyboard font seems to be something a little block-esk for such a newly designed board. It reminds me a lot of the good-ol' Windows system font. At least the key-markings are centered (they used to be in the upper left of each key) and non-italic (commonly used on Mac keyboards until recently, and some PC keyboards).

So far, my most common mis-typed key is "Insert," frequently when pasting in URLs, I'll do "Shift + Insert" instead of "CTRL + V", it utilizes both hands for doing an Insert instead of a paste, which I have to rely entirely on my left hand to do. It simplifies things for me, but with insert being move nearly two inches on this new deign, I keep heading over to the "Home" key, which is in the position that "Insert" used to be on my old keyboards.

However, it is a nice board. The design seems to be based mostly on symmetry instead of standard QWERTY-extra-keys layout that has been common in the tech industry for nearly a decade. Non-standard keyboard layouts are starting to make a come-back on desktop units, as can be seen with the Apple Bluetooth Wireless Keyboard, which doesn't implement a number pad and uses a "Fn" key to emulate some keys that otherwise are not available.

The one remaining comment I have on the keyboard is it's over-all sleek-style. The keyboard is quite thin, light, and it contours well to the touch. Lesser used keys (such as the function keys) are thinner, to decrease the keyboard area they take up, while more commonly used keys, such as the spacebar are over-sized, making them easier to hit. The black keyboard with glossy-highlights and silver accents and white text is really quite beautiful.

Now comes the true test of this keyboard... Active operation and use. I've kept all my documentation and even the box with the foam peanuts in it at work, just in case it doesn't turn out the way I want.

Initial Impressions: The Mouse
The mouse is rather quite unremarkable. It's designed to be the usual Logitech uni-handed mouse. It is black with glossy-highlights and silver accents and white text, just like the keyboard is, and is quite sensitive, for the same performance settings as my old Logitech USB ball mouse, this guy really zips across the screen. My only concern is what everyone else is complaining about, without having an off button on a "AA battery" powered optical mouse, the batteries could easily drain. That can only be revealed over time. There is a slight "cheap-ness" feel to the scroll wheel on the mouse, but it functions well, and make just take some getting used to.

Remaining Concerns
There are a few reservations I have about the keyboard and mouse of EX110... And that is just that there are signs that this might have been an open box. On the back of the keyboard, there is some writing that is worn off, which to me looks like it may have stemmed from use over time. The mouse also is showing some extensive wear on the glide-pads. These could both easily be due to the manufacturing of the components, but there is also a possibility that this EX110 combo was once returned to NewEgg. But, NewEgg has always been very good about clearly labeling returned items as "open box," which makes me doubt that it is a returned product... However, it is still a concern that'll be in the back of my mind for a long time to come.

For this guy, only time will tell if it is a ripe cherry, or a rotting lemon.

GoDaddy v. Blogger, IndigoJake Style

It all started Sunday afternoon, when I was tinkering with some settings in my blogger account. Minor profile adjustments and what-not. But then I thought, "Gee, back when I first signed up, there was an option to utilize a domain instead of a 'user.blogspot.com' address (Blogger accounts are 'housed' at username.blogspot.com)... I wonder if I can manually transfer my indigojake.blogspot.com blog over to www.indigojake.com?" Ohhh, and guess what I found out! Blogger not only supports it, but they have a tutorial for several popular hosting providers, and number one on their list: GoDaddy, my domain provider.

History
Since I only tried out web hosting once (Andrew, my former roommate was the web-hosting provider), and I didn't really take to it, IndigoJake.com has never truly had a "web-site" per se... I never really enjoyed managing a website, and with the hosting options that Andrew had, including Coppermine and Xoops and C-Panel, there was just too much for me to really want to tinker with. So, for six months or so of operation, IndigoJake.com was just a directory listing. So very pathetic for a website designed in 2005. I nearly gave up on the domain, but at the same time, I was also working on my Blogger "professional-esk" blog, and decided that I wanted to have my blogger associated with IndigoJake.com... It seemed simple enough at the time...

So, I decided to go into my GoDaddy account and enable domain forwarding. Ever-since I gave up on the web site hosting and just forwarded the domain to indigojake.blogspot.com, I was quite happy, and so lived IndigoJake.com for over a year.

But there was a flaw in my Blogger <3 GoDaddy merger... If one went to (www.)IndigoJake.com, they would indeed be redirected to http://indigojake.blogspot.com... However, the domain would change in the address bar, something I did not like. I wanted it to stay "http://www.indigojake.com" --it just looked cleaner. I enabled masking with my GoDaddy account, but for some reason, it never worked. I grew frustrated and just left it as is... That is, until Sunday, September 9, 2007.

The Horrors of DNS
I totally hate DNS. With a passion. Now, don't get me wrong, but the Domain Name System is a god-send for the internet... Without it, there just wouldn't be much out there. No more "www.google.com" nooo... we'd be going to "http://64.233.167.104" Try to remember that! Or we could still use the hosts file and WINS... Oh joy. So, DNS is better. Yet, it still sucks. And I still just cannot fathom the concept of it. Web stuff is difficult for me to grasp, but DNS is just horrid.

Well, guess what the primary requirements for me to get indigojake.blogspot.com swapped over to www.indigojake.com... You guested it, I had to just do a little DNS modification, and I'd be all set. Yea, right.

I did exactly what google said, "change your 'www' data entry from '@' to 'ghs.google.com' and click apply. Save your 'forward to 'http://--yourwebsitehere--' at blogger and you are all done!"

Sounded simple enough. But, as soon as I did that, I got an error message at my blogger account: "Another blog is already hosted at this address!" For one thing, there shouldn't have been a blog already there, I had broken the domain forwarding, and waited for that to propagate though the DNS system (took a few hours) and then I was ready to transfer from blogspot to godaddy. But I kept getting that error message.

Since I thought it might have been something that I was doing/did, I decided to try it a second time, this time around, suggesting that http://indigojake.com be the site, instead of just http://www.indigojake.com. This, while it didn't generate any error messages, it didn't work out so well on the godaddy side of things, since I didn't have a C-Name record I could modify, there wasn't much that I could do.

So I tried part three, creating a new sub-domain, blog.indigojake.com... "blog" had a data-entry of "ghs.google.com" and I then went back to blogger and told it to transfer indigojake.blogspot.com over to blog.indigojake.com... And within an hour, it was up an running. But each time I tried to do www.indigojake.com, no matter how hard I tried, I kept getting the "Another blog is already hosted at this address." Frustrated, I finally went to google and did a search on the error message, and came up with site after site about the issue. It seems that this error is something that crops up every now and again, usually when moving from a username.blogspot.com blogger to a custom-configured domain_name.XYZ... It didn't really seem to matter about the domain provider or anything like that, it just seemed to happen on occasion. And there was little to nothing that blogger could do to fix the issue, as there have been numerous trouble-tickets lodged with nearly no rectification yet. And the basic help, "delete the 'www' entry and save it, wait for it to propagate and then recreate the 'www' entry with the 'ghs.google.com' data again, and try a second time," didn't help at all.

At one point, I had a dozen tabs open from blogger, another dozen from google searches on the error message, and then two or three open from my godaddy account. It was really starting to drive me insane. And things were acting really weird... www.indigojake.com was getting "infinite loop" errors in Firefox, blog.indigojake.com was getting 404 errors, while indigojake.com kept forwarding me to http://www.google.com. I was really starting to lose my sanity. I even started writing a trouble ticket to blogger, but I decided that it wasn't worth it, and I decided to just give up on it all an reset indigojake.com to just forward to indigojake.blogspot.com and be done with it.

So that's what I did. I enabled forwarding and masking (just for giggles) and guess what... Masking worked. And not only that, but http://www.indigojake.com and http://indigojake.com both go to my blogger page... What I wanted in the first place.

Keeping Tabs
DNS
The Negatives: Confusing, Slow, Complicated
The Positives: Simplifies the internet, enables otherwise impossible features of the internet

Blogger
The Negatives: Easy to enable features that aren't exactly "working" correctly
The Positives: Very easy to use, very configurable

GoDaddy
The Negatives: ...nothing really, can be a bit complicated if you go into the advanced features area though.
The Positives: Very configurable, "reset to defaults" for some areas.

Over all, the whole thing just sort of sucked. I'm glad that things are back up and running again!

control-freak

Yesterday, I spilled a limited amount of water on my wireless keyboard. The keyboard seemed fully functional after a quick "upside-down shake" to relive the keyboard of the water. However, over night, the board lost it's "control" keys. Yes, keys. Neither control key presently functions, nor does the "caps lock" key... Which doesn't make any sense!!

The water was only spilled on the right side of the keyboard, keys like B N M < >, H J K L : " Enter and Shift got hit with the water. However, for some unclear reason, the left and right control keys as well as the caps lock key are now not functional. It's quite confusing!!

Since I lost my CTRL key, I've started to notice how often I use it... CTRL + T for a new tab, CTRL + F for find. CTRL + A for select all, CTRL + F# (in linux) for the TTY sessions, CTRL + Backspace to delete entire words instead of individual characters, CTRL + PgUP/PgDWN for moving between the different tabs! I couldn't even lock my computer this morning (CTRL + L in linux) nor log into my Windows box (requires CTRL + ALT + DEL to access the log on prompt). ~sigh, a sad life it is for the IT pro who can't use the control key. I even thought about looking through linux to see if I could find a mapping program to make something like the Windows key map to the CTRL key, at least until I can get a new keyboard, but I'm holding off on doing that, just because of the trouble it can cause.

My wireless keyboard, a logitech itouch, is quite old, I purchased it back when I was still in high school, using it sparingly until I got well into college, around 2004 I believe. And now it's finally starting to kick the bucket it seems. I've found a decently cheap and decently workable keyboard/mouse combo at NewEgg/Walmart, so I'll be looking into that later this week. The problem is that it is only available online... No "in-store inventory" was found based on the info from either website. It seems that I'll have to purchase a new one online to drop by staples/walmart to see what they have laying around. ~sigh.

For now, I think I can deal with out a CTRL and Caps Lock key... At least for a few days. With wet electronics, it's quite possible the system will come back to me tomorrow! Besides, ensuring that a new keyboard and mouse will work correctly with linux (via wireless over a usb wireless receiver) can be quite a pain and all too frequently involves returns. ~sigh. According to several websites however, they are indicating the EX110 Logitech Cordless Desktop works just fine over USB in Linux.

it didn't go quietly into that good night

Due to my needs as an IT professional, I decided that I did need to get a new Cruzer Micro, however, my favorite model was not available, which is quite understandable, since that model was last popular in 2004. So I bit the bullet...

This is my new cruzer, which is quite a disappointment compared to my old cruzer micro. It is made of much thinner plastic than my original cruzer, and instead of having a nice case like the original, it's USB port retracts into the plastic. This way, there is no cap to loose.

However, there is a cost to it... There actually isn't any way to completely cover the USB port, and with the thin plastic, there is a possibility that the first time the drive goes through the was, and trust me, it will happen one day, it has a high likelihood of coming out in pieces. The worst thing about the new cruzer is the U3 software. It's supposed to manage the drive for you, enabling special features in Windows XP and crap like that. It tossed a "hovering icon" over on the lower left of my screen as well as putting an icon in the notification area (by the clock)... All without notifying me of what it was doing. It also auto-mounted a disk image into XP... And Mac OS X! I was so enraged by this fact, that I nearly returned the drive. However, after doing some digging, I found the U3 uninstaller on SanDisk's website and removed the damn software before it could drive me far enough up the wall to throw it into the garbage disposal.

I am a bit disappointed with this model flash drive as opposed to the older cruzer style, but then again, I could have paid twice as much for a cruzer titanium, but I didn't want to pay so much without knowing if the product would suck or not. The two-gig size is nice, and the so is the thin-ness of the device, yet at the same time, the giant orange LED is ugly and it's annoying that the drive is longer than the old version.

~sigh. I suppose I shall say that the verdict on the drive is still out for me... I don't trust it yet, so I'm doing some more stress-testing on the thing (namely, I installed a video game to it instead of to my notebook. Depending on how much the game modified the registry, I might be able to take the game to another Windows computer and play it there, which is pretty swankin', if it works.

There is one thing I can say for sure... I wish my original cruzer didn't die.

goodbye, my friend

Today has been "one of those days" again for me, this time, something didn't survive.
My most durable technological possession of all time, my USB flash drive, my SanDisk Cruzer Micro, 512 MB version (click on photo to go to the Amazon store for a better photo).

I bought the flash drive in 2004 or so after my IT classmates kept joking around that I was the only one in the class still using floppy disks to transfer my work back and forth from classroom to home and vice versa.

Once I did buy it, I was really impressed with the design and abilities of the Cruzer Micro. It had nearly the capacity of a CD-R, was small enough to fit into the "key pocket" on my jeans, and even withstood the tortures of going through the wash three times and the dryer twice! I was astonished that the drive held up so well. And was behaving just fine the other day. As a matter of fact, I used the drive on Thursday at work, copying off files before I went on a service call. The drive was fully functional.

Today though, I only needed the drive once. I powered on a computer that couldn't see it's USB keyboard. It couldn't see the CyberMedics "internal store use only" USB keyboards or mice, so I thought there might be a problem with the HID (Human Interface Devices) subsystem on the computer... So I plugged in my flash drive and waited for it to be auto detected. During this process, the computer crashed. I was too focused on the customer, explaining things, when I finally decided that I should reboot the computer and run some diagnostic utilities on the system. To prevent erroneous readings, I powered the computer down and then removed the flash drive, which never was auto-detected by the computer, nor did the big bright blue LED light up on the drive either. I figured it was never detected by the computer. But when I pulled my cuzer out, it was hot. Not to the point of burning me or anything, but a good fifteen degrees or so hotter than it should have been, especially for not being detected by the system.

I decided to leave the flash drive out on the table to cool off while I troubleshooted the system further. Eventually, I decided to plug my flash drive into my g4 Mac (the "MacBench") at the store to see if it recognized. It did not. Just a quick blink of the blue LED, no mount point on the desktop, no detection by Disk Utility. A bad sign. So I let it sit for another few minutes and went back to trouble shooting the computer that started this whole mess.

Eventually, I started a hard drive diag on the computer that murdered my flash drive, and then went to plug the cruzer into a Windows Vista station we have at CyberMedics. Unfortunately, it yielded the same exact story. A quick blink of the LED, no mount point in "My Computer," no detection by Disk Management. Ditto goes for when I got the drive home on both my MacBook and SUSE Linux systems. If the drive doesn't come back by Friday, August 31, before I leave work, I'll be heading off around town to see about getting a new one.

It should be noted that I in no way fault SanDisk or the cruzer micro series of drives for this issue; in fact, I so favor the cruzer micro drives that I will lean very far toward buying only those flash drives, however, the new style just isn't the same. I've even thought about checking out Amazon and buying another cruzer 512 MB drive, same model as mine. It's price has dropped quite a bit, from the $45 I paid back in 2004 to around $12 at Amazon.

If it comes to that, I'll be writing an IT obituary for the drive this weekend.

Note: the above photo was taken shortly after the flash drive was removed from the dryer, after going through a fully cycle of laundry. It functioned for several months after ward, including going through the wash twice after this incident, and the dryer one more time. That is, until it ran into a defective computer that was putting excessive voltage though it's own USB ports, effectively killing various USB devices.

beating the horse

For the past few weeks Apple has been advertising their new iMac line, and with rumors of Mac OS X: Leopard (10.5.x) coming out soon, they are making some major headlines in the Alt-OS circuit.

But there is one Apple product that has been overlooked, the one item from Apple that I've never been able to understand or truly endorse: the Mac Mini. At the announcement earlier this month, Apple, Inc. announced the upgraded Mac Mini, which is, (IMHO) a total joke. It's got the Core 2 processor now, instead of the Core/Solo processor. It also have a few minor changes, but it is still the slower of the Mac series, starting off at 1.83 Ghz with a Combo (no DVD burning) drive, I believe it is the only Mac still available without a Super (DVD burner) drive.

And then there is the logic behind it:
FOR: The computer makes a great home theater PC
AGAINST: Since replaced with the Apple TV
FOR: It's small profile allows it to fit easily onto one's desk
AGAINST: the iMac does this as well, and going with small form factor, the MacBook/MacBook Pro function in the exact same way a mini does, plus they have the ability to be uber-mobile.
FOR: It's a great entry-level desktop-mac for those of us who want more than a MacBook/iMac but less than a Mac Pro
AGAINST: unfortunately, it's slower and less-functional than the MacBook/MBP... Which makes me wonder WHY does Apple still sell them?

I can only gather that there is enough of a niche market out there for them... But with Apple being in itself a niche market for computers, it's odd that they would cater to a further declining area.

The biggest selling point of the Mac Mini is the price, starting at $599, it happens to be the cheapest Mac available, however one should note that this configuration doesn't come with the DVD burner nor does it come with a monitor, both aspects are standard features of all of Apple's computers, save for the Mac Pro, which doesn't come with a monitor in the default configuration.

The biggest thing against the MacMini, of which I can only hope they've improved in this new version, is the horrendous upgradeability of the unit... Popping the case requires the use of one of three tools: an "Apple specialized" tool to open the case, a putty knife, or a lot of wire -- all operations require a decent bit of time and patience to actually "crack" the case. The design could not have been more horrid! It is so difficult, that there actually isn't a single user-serviceable internal part on the unit; even the MacBook and MBP can have their RAM and HDD upgraded by the home user.

Apple, this horse is dead... It's time to put it to rest.

Keynote: The Presentation

The presentation went well... I would have been happier with questions during the presentation or at least a little less yawning! Seriously. I suppose I understand, I used to yawn all the time during my MCSE classes with Tim Brock, even though I would be really interested in the class... Just too tired not to yawn, especially when the lights are dimmed and one has to listen to someone talk for half an hour straight!

After the presentation, we had a "hands-on" session, with three broken down old Dell Optiplex systems (PII processors, 2.0 GB HDDs, etc.) -- easy to open, no worries if they break afterward.

The only part that was truly difficult for me to deal with was how so many of the students would try to talk over one another, and it was really difficult for me to deal with two or even three students trying to ask me questions at the same time. Over-lapping voices like that yields one confused guest speaker. I suppose I should have been prepared for that, seeing as how I was speaking to a group of high school freshmen on their second day of class and not a group of college seniors on their way into their professional careers.

I thought about putting up the presentation here on IndigoJake, but there really isn't much of a reason for it... Just a bunch of pictures of the innards of an eMachine... I still hate putting text into presentations, much preferring to just use photos and sort of wing-it.

Keynote

On Thursday, I'll have to make an IT presentation "keynote" at Spring Vale Academy to a collection of 15 or so high school freshmen. It's been ages since I last did this, I'd like to do a cut-a-way presentation, but since computers aren't really layered so well, that's not going to work. Perhaps an "activated first," "activated second," strategy would be okay, but things are just so instant on computers that'll be a chore to figure out. Perhaps most important first? But if even a single component is too far out of range, a computer won't boot.

~sigh, I'll just have to do it in a seemingly random order. I think my keynote presentation is setup as motherboard, processor & cooling, hard drives, optical drives, and a few other minor things. I suppose that'll do.