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.