I sense a disturbance in the Force...

...it's as if dozens of voices cried out in terror and were silenced.

Seems the Zune wasn't ready for leap-year 2008... 366 days in 2008 have caused the Zune to crash at boot.

May I say, Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha~~~aaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh.
Stupid Microsoft.

Also Reference:
Zune 30 Faq [Zune.net]
Zune Freeze Result of Leap Year [blog.wired.com]
Zune.net (forums) [forums.zune.net]
Microsoft Zune Committing Mass Suicide [it.slashdot.org]

Synergy Love

Oh, how I love the program "synergy"

But, that is like saying, Oh, How I Love VI!.

Synergy is old, not developed anymore, and difficult to configure; however, once it has been set up, it works great!

What Synergy is... A quick summary
Synergy is a small console program that when configured and ran will allow you to connect two computers and two monitors to one keyboard and mouse over a network connection. This allows you to have something that looks like dual monitors with an extended desktop. But it has a huge advantage in the fact that it is an entirely separate computer, allowing for different not only different processing power and storage, but even an entirely different operating system.

I just got done configuring up synergy to connect from my Linux desktop to my MacBook. But, I added a stipulation, from Linux, it will only transfer from the lower right side of the monitor to the laptop and from the MacBook will only go back to the Linux PC from the middle (range 25% to 75%) of the left side. This decreases the number of times that I'll accidentally move from one computer to another.

Also, this seems to allow me to use the open rage for another computer. I've configured the upper right half of my Linux desktop to connect to my PowerMac G4, however, I don't have this guy powered on presently, so I haven't verified that this works yet.

How May I Ruin Your Day?

On 11/26, I sent an email to one of our vendors (who shall remain nameless).

Their response back on 11/28 was: Please provide your Financial Account and Billing Account numbers.

On 11/29 I provided such information.

On 12/4, I asked for a status update.

On 12/5, they asked for an order number.

On 12/5, I indicated that we didn't have an order number and I was getting more and more concerned that the order was never placed.

On 12/8, they informed me that I didn't have authorization to place the order, but my co-worker, who had requested that I have access to such ordering abilities and confirmed with her manager that I was authorized for such a level of access in October, could email them and place the order in my place.

Oh, and the order? It is for a small chip that our vendor ships for free. Apparently, I don't have that level of clearance.

If fonts were people...

Thought I'd share this... I originally found this by listening to an episode of net@night.

Parallels (17 months later)

I'm one of the Mac supporters at work. Recently, I was assigned the task of reloading a MacBook Pro (2.16 Ghz, 2 GB RAM) with OS X Leopard and Boot-Camping with Vista SP1 and using Parallels to have access to the Boot Camp partition.

Things were going well (aside from a few slow downs due to shipping issues). Until I started working with Windows Vista in Parallels.

After I got all my software installed, including items such as Adobe Photoshop and Microsoft Office, I started my testing of the software in Parallels. This didn't turn out so well. I fired up a few Adobe applications, such as Photoshop and ImageReady. Along with IE (7 of course, per Vista's requirements) and Microsoft Office. The only problem that I found was that the system was unable to run Photoshop. Granted, we were running the Parallels Virtual Machine hardware, so I can't really blame either Parallels or Adobe for the problems I was having. --Where I can blame Parallels is for the system being unable to free up memory and being unable to shut down afterward.


Once I was done testing, I was getting ready to gather up a few things and return the laptop to the Director that assigned me the task of getting the computer configured.

All I had to do was shut Parallels down, and test the system one more time in Windows Vista under Boot Camp. This is where my problems began...

Parallels just wouldn't shut down. The system got far enough in the shutdown process that I was unable to bring up task manager. After waiting for over half an hour to shut the system down, I finally gave up and clicked on the Parallels "Stop" button, which informed me that it was possible that I would lose data if I agreed to the improper shutdown. Since I had waited for so long, I did agree, and the unit powered off. I tried to turn it back on, and guess what happened....

The system was unable to boot. It would "blue screen" at boot. It was really quite frustrating. So I booted into Boot Camp, and loaded the system in safe mode (regular mode also wasn't working for Boot Camp). I found the .SYS file that wasn't working correctly, one of the Parallel Tools system files, I moved the file, and restarted the computer. I didn't notice any other major problems, so I called it "Stable" and moved on to restart the computer into Mac OS X Leopard for Parallels testing.

Upon starting Parallels, I didn't seem to have too many problems. I had to reactivate, but that was a problem that Parallels clearly documented as a known issue with Parallels software. Strange that it would come up now, after the previous problems I had with the system, but not quite unexpected. And, after activating Vista, the system did boot normally. I tested the software, and found everything to be operational. So I called it "Stable" and shut the Parallels virtual machine down. I then rebooted the computer, to load up Boot Camp to be sure that the system was still stable on that side.

I was quite surprised to find out that Windows, on the Boot Camp side, needed to be activated. I thought it was strange, but once again, this issue was documented by Parallels. So I reactivated Windows. Things were working just fine. I was able to access all of the programs and all of the drivers seemed to have installed correctly. I called it "Stable" and decided to reboot into Leopard to test Parallels (post Boot Camp side activation) to see how it held up).

Boot Camp started normally, but it needed activation. Once it was activated, it worked swimmingly. I found no major problems, aside from the fact that Photoshop wouldn't start up. No big deal, since most of the graphic design would be done from within the Boot Camp partition.

For certainty, I decided to reboot the PC into Boot Camp to see how the install of Vista came though. Unfortunately, it didn't turn out so well --once again, it needed activation. I went around with Boot Camp and Parallels for nearly three hours, trying to figure out what was causing the system to deactivate itself. The only thing that I could conclude was that the .SYS file that I moved was the source of the problem. Unfortunately, since the system was being so stable without that file, I decided to actually delete the file, and reinstalling the Parallels System Tools did not seem to help my problems at all.

My options, that were once limited, now seemed to be down to one: reinstall Windows and see what happens.

I did just that. The system was behind schedule by two days now, but it was coming along well enough. I was able to get the operating system and the software configured and tested within a few hours. I found no obvious problems. So I called the Director, and informed him that the PC was ready for pick up. I went though a tutorial on how to use some of the features of Parallels and reiterated the limitations (and apparent sensitivity of the software). I didn't want him to be out of the state and have the system crash on him.
* * *
The following Monday, I received an email stating that the system wasn't able to boot into Boot Camp or Parallels - it was blue screening at boot. Mac OS was working fine though.

I made it into work early that day and immediately took to working on the MacBook Pro. I met up with the Director, he explained that he was finally able to get the Mac to boot into Windows after following instructions he was able to dig up with extensive digging though the internet, but found that the Parallels Tools, which he no longer trusted (since it was the cause of the blue screening issues) was unable to be uninstalled unless it was running from within Parallels - which he uninstalled from Mac OS (I would have done the same).

Unfortunately, the only option I could figure out, was to reinstall and reconfigure the Parallels software and uninstall the tools from within Parallels, and hope for the best.

The first attempt didn't work so well. The cursor turned into it's new version of the hour glass and was just "clocking" as we waited for the control panel to load up. After waiting for a decent bit of time, Windows returned that Explorer.exe had failed. We had to power down Parallels from the Parallels Stop button. Luckily, upon rebooting it, we were able to get the system into Parallels and we were able to remove the software without problem.

* * *
Well, the happiness and joy of a job well done didn't last long. It was only a few hours later that the Director contacted me to let me know that the drivers for the audio in Windows died out, he was in a desperate state to get the system up and running as soon as possible or he would miss a plane shortly there after. I did a quick check of the system, but I was unable to find a cause for the hardware problems. The system kept reporting that there was no audio devices installed. It was also reporting that all the drivers of the system were installed, just that there was no audio devices installed in the MacBook Pro.

The director eventually had to switch to using a regular Windows based laptop to take with him out of state, but he wanted to take the MacBook Pro with him to tinker with it to see if he could get it back up and running.

A few days later, he contacted me to let me know that he wants to try reloading Windows Vista to see if that will rectify the issues. This time, Parallels will be a "no-go for launch."

42 Years of Star Trek

42 Years of Going Boldly Where No One Has Gone Before.

I do have to disclaim that Star Trek is one of the biggest reasons that I got into Technology. This show has inspired so many people in so many ways. It has not only driven a new generation of scientists and space enthusiasts, but also helped mold a population of people more willing to accept one another and to venture outside of their comfort zone, to do something different - to boldly go where they haven't been before.

It's unfortunate that this anniversary comes upon the heals of The Star Trek Experience closing (last Monday, 1 September 2008).

Happy Anniversary Star Trek.

If it aint broke, don't fix it...

Such simple words for such an important statement.

Managing the Firefox executable in Linux (my install of SuSE 9.3, I should say) is fairly simple. One just opens up File Manager as root, and then navigates to /opt/MozillaFirefox/lib/ and copies lib for a backup (I leave the backup in the same directory, but name it with the Firefox software version at the end, such as lib2.0.0.16). This works fairly well. Step one done: a backup of the current version of Firefox has been made.

Next, take the new Firefox tar.gz file, decompress it. I keep mine in /home/user/daniel/My Downloads/*latest version of Firefox*/, so I went to /home/user/daniel/My Downloads/firefox-3.0.1/ (still in super-user mode in my file explorer) and opened up the one folder in there, "firefox" - so very simple and benign. Things were looking good.

Inside "firefox" is the core application of firefox and firefox-bin and all it's core "Firefox centric" files, like chrome and whatnot. Do a "select all" and then copy all the files.

Continuing on, (once again, still in super-user mode in my file explorer), and paste the contents of the folder firefox into /opt/MozillaFirefox/lib/ and permit an over-write of the files in there. It'll over write of the files that need to be updated, while maintaining anything special that one already has in there.

Update of MozillaFirefox is now done.

Note: This is more complicated than the Windows version of this update, and far more difficult than the very simple Mac version of updating software. However, backing up ones installation of Firefox is much simpler in Linux than in Windows. It is about the same to backup ones programs in Mac OS though

Now, just click on your usual Firefox icon and the browser starts.
~or, at least that is the theory.

* * *
One may get: nothing at all.

I thought, "Perhaps I didn't click it..." - so I clicked it again. No dice.

~sigh, it must be some strange error. I fired up Konsole and navigated to /opt/MozillaFirefox/lib/ and executed firefox, which returned:
daniel@Suzi-lnx:/opt/MozillaFirefox/lib> ./firefox
./firefox-bin: error while loading shared libraries: libpangocairo-1.0.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

All I could think was " f r e l l . " (see references in the American Sci-Fi show Farscape) I was looking down the long slope to dependency hell, which has been known to on many occasions to cause serious over-hauls of the system's software, and on some rare major cases, reinstallation of the OS itself. I wasn't about to go down that route unless I was really aware of what I was doing, that meant research time.

Since I didn't have an operational Firefox, I chose to use Opera to google up some results, I chose to use firefox 3 suse 9 error while loading shared libraries: libpangocairo-1.0.so.0: cannot open shared object file as my search "tearm" (if one can call such a long string like that a "term") and found some results. The first result was pretty spot on, ./firefox-bin: error while loading shared libraries: libpangocairo-1.0.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory at the Firefox Support Forum. Page 2 [.link] is even more useful. This second page informed me that there was a work around for this issue on good 'ol mozillaZine (my most trusted site for Mozilla application troubleshooting). The article I was told to look up is Firefox 3 on CentOS 4?

The results were pretty poor however. Install Firefox 3 though a package manager. Upgrade your pango libraries by hand. Use wine and run the Windows version of Firefox instead. Upgrade your OS - maybe it'll have Firefox 3 preinstalled.

The worst line: "It's probably not recommended, but here's one way."

Even though the post moderator has the best intentions, I find it hard to go to such extremes.

I think for now, I'm going to let FF 3 in Windows and Mac OS, and I'll work on upgrading it after work-arounds for this pango issue become well documented.

For those of you who are in need of the link to the old Firefox software releases, see Mozilla Firefox 2: Download Firefox 2.

Help - Help is not avaliable in this version of Windows!!!

Today at work, I was tinkering with a Vista computer (trying to pin down what can be done about it's excessive RAM utilization), and upon closing all of the open Windows on the computer, I found this notice behind everything.

I loved the wording of the message. "Windows Help Program is no longer included with Windows." - Strategically worded so they don't say "Help isn't included with Windows anymore... we gave up on "helping" with this version of Windows."

* * *
Why couldn't this be phased out anyway? I've even got help file viewers on Linux and Mac OS X computers, it seems a little odd that Microsoft would just stop including it with Windows. What I would have done is include the old help viewer, but start writing all the new help documentation in the new format. Maybe with the next version of Windows, include the old help viewer as an optional addition, but not have it installed by default.

At least Microsoft does include it as a download from their website [.link] - however, there is a total of 6 pages of documentation, over half of which is "known issues after installing WinHlp32.exe" - sigh.

Well, that's my two-cents anyway.

Firefox 3.0.1 (Mac OS X version) Preliminary

This afternoon, I finally decided to start some testing of Firefox 3, I've been putting it off for ages now, and with the frequent notices by Firefox about how version 3.0.1 is available (as well as the fact that the Firefox people have made it to version 3.0.1 already) I decided to give it a shot.

The way I work with new releases like this, I start by using the Mac OS X version of the software, where backing up old programs and demoing new versions is so much easier than in Windows (and lets not even talk about how hard that is to do in Linux), but I found something interesting while using the browser in Mac OS X 10.4.11: the menu bar repeats itself. On Mac, you should see something that looks like this:

[click the image below to see a full-sized version]

But, what I'm seeing with Firefox 3.0.1 is a bit different than usual Apple interface standards:

[click the image below to see a full-sized version]

The items seem to "slide" -- sometimes, the "Firefox" item is the furthest to the left, other times, "Help" or "Window" or "File" will be furthest to the left.

Presently, closing and reopening the browser has not helped the software out. I'll keep tinkering with the software, perhaps Firefox 3.0.1 isn't quite ready for Mac OS X 10.4.11 yet. I'll keep running it for now, and maybe I'll find something out there on the MozillaZine that will help out.

[update]
Since restarting the MacBook, Firefox has worked just fine. It seems restarting the software several times was not the root cause of the issue... Something must have been running resident in memory that needed to be cleared out before the menu bar would work correctly.

Still a strange error, one that I've never encountered before in the many years that I've been running Mac OS (from System Software 7 to OS X 10.5).

NewEgg's DVD store no more?

I was looking up prices on "China's First Emperor" that aired on the History Channel, it's around $35 USD + Shipping and Handing from History.com [.link]

I was hoping that I'd be able to find a better price, and not seeing the DVD listed at Amazon.com, I decided to proceed to the NewEgg DVD store - I didn't think that I'd be able to find it there, but if I did, I figured it would be at a better price.

But when I loaded up NewEgg.com, I could not find any references to the DVD store. I even did a NewEgg.com search for "Movies" and "DVD" -- nothing turned up but blank media, DVD burners, etc. So, in a last ditch effort, I did a google search for "NewEgg DVD store" which found the NewEgg DVD store [.link].

The page looked oddly blank, but it did not display an error or reference the store being closed - it is even titled as having "Blu-Ray DVD & HD DVD" movies, making me believe that it had to have recently been accessible. So I ran a search for "China's first emperor" - which returned no results. Searching for "Anime" also returned no results, and searching for "DVD" returned the same results that searching for "DVD" at the NewEgg main page did.

I can only conclude that the DVD store is gone. :( I always found good prices at the NewEgg DVD store, but I never got the change to order anything from there, I hardly ever order DVDs (I prefer to buy them at a local FYE). I guess it'll be back to FYE and Amazon's DVD store for me.

Good ol' Microsoft Software

China's Olympic coordinators trying, to stun the audience with images displayed on the walls and roof of "the bird's nest" at the Olympics [.link], stunned themselves when one of their advanced Lenovo PCs hooked up to a projector to display these images, blue screened [.link]

Also see: slashdot.org, sydney morning herald, power apple (chinese).

Note: there is some debate as to the truth of these images, but with the sheer volume of photographs showing up, it is gaining acceptance.

Windows Antivirus 2008 Woes

With the many antivirus notifications users receive, it has become second nature to click on them and start scanning or cleaning their computer. Some even now have the ability to receive a notice in the program about the subscription expiring and be sent to a web site (for example, Symantec Anti -Virus) where the end user just puts in his or her credit card info and then receives a special code or is emailed a file.

The big problem with this... Modern spyware/malware is taking advantage of this. Anti-Virus 2007/2008/2009 (ad nauseam) is a perfect example of this. This program displays false pop-ups (usually though IE 6 and other older browsers) that look incredibly like a pop-up from one's own Anti-Virus software.

However, once the user clicks on the request to thoroughly scan the system (or whatever sly message they are displaying for the day) the software then installs itself in a more malicious way into the system, ensuring that pop-up messages invade the system followed by notices that purchasing the software is highly recommended.

I have recently seen infections like this propagating though corporate networks. Unfortunately, after a brief stay on the system, the software can cause such damage to the OS that it is nearly impossible to get the system back up and running in a timely fashion. Reloading the PC and reinstalling the necessary applications is the only resolution I have come up with.

Needless to say, fighting malware is becoming an increasing problem in the IT industry, especially when that malware is labeled as being a solution to the problem itself.

Now comes the new title: Grey-Ware. Half on the dark side, half on the light.

~sigh.

Time for an Upgrade

It has been a while since I last did any real management of my Linux box. I believe that the last time that I actually shutdown the computer and put in a new component was over a year ago. Those are also the times that I usually spend some time cleaning the system and doing general maintenance.

Since it has been over a year now, I decided that once I get my next paycheck, I'd purchase something small that the computer needs: RAM.

The RAM in the PC isn't too bad, it's 1.0 GB with 1.0 GB Swap. But it does have an excess of memory being used by applications (not HDD caching), which annoys me, especially when there is some application that uses a lot, and ends up causing the system to flip out, pulling data out of and putting it right back into swap,

I hope things will run a little smoother with the extra 2.0 GB, and at under $55 (after shipping), it was a decent enough deal that I just had to pursue it.

Printer Woes

Friday, I spent most of my day working on various printers. I'm convinced that the biggest problem with computers is the devices responsible for conversion from analog to digital. Printers and scanners; mice, keyboards (HIDs) are okay... but scanners and printers always seem to be troublesome.

I had one printer that had a report of having "black streaks."

Found nothing major wrong, accept the rollers were worn a bit.

Another printer was out putting black dots along one side. It was a problem with the drum, which I tried to clean off a bit, which minimized the black dots, but suggested be replaced anyway.

Finally a fax had white streaks. Dead fuser.

These devices are incredibly annoying. Especially the ones that are used rather frequently.

Living out of one hotel room or another.

To say my professional career has done a "180" would be an understatement. It's been more like a "540."

When I started at CareTech, I thought I'd be doing menial jobs for quite some time, as I worked my way into the corporate structure. I by far am not doing anything major as of yet, but I have been assigned to work with CareTech teams in both Cincinnati, Ohio and Elkhart, Indiana since I started just six weeks ago.

Things are showing no sings of stopping. I already know that there is a Chicago, Illinois trip planned for me sometime soon, and there is also other teams that I may visit in other sites. Mostly for learning "the CareTech ropes" or training, but it's already so different compared to my previous jobs.

At CyberMedics, I hardly left the county that the store was founded in. I spent most of my time being lead support in-store and later on, on-site as well. Once I left the business, that quickly changed. I was just "another CareTech guy" once I got there, but there was so much more responsibility and drive at CareTech compared to CyberMedics.

It'll be interesting to see what CareTech has in store for me in the future.

Two Weeks Later...

indigo@Suzi-lnx:~> uptime
9:25am up 116 days 23:30, 10 users, load average: 3.58, 3.23, 3.13
As of Saturday, March 8, 2007.

Shortly there after, the system was powered off... For moving to Sterling Heights, Michigan.

I have left CyberMedics, as of Friday, February 29, 2008 at 6 PM. I have also found a new job in Troy, Michigan and have moved into a condo with a friend of mine in Sterling Heights. Much has changed in the past two weeks.

At the new job, I'll be in the Help Desk department, and I'll be doing field support (building and upgrading computers). The start date is tentatively set for Monday, March 17, 2008. We'll see how things go. I count myself as lucky to have some pretty decent connections to be able to get a decent job in such a short period of time.

On a side note, I believe that one of the Hard Drives in my Windows 2000 Pro box has died... The 250 GB drive. I'm going to try running Spin Rite on it here some time soon, but Spin Rite has had problems with the BIOS on that computer before, preventing it from accessing the 250 GB HDD. So, I suppose that I'll have to do some extra work to run the program.

Invisicons... what?

I found this on my desktop today... Just went and did a drag to select operation, and it found several other "squares." I can drag them around, if I click and drag on the "real folder" first. I cannot open them however. I wonder what they are....

BTW: refreshing the desktop does not make them go away. Selecting the mysterious icons by them selves also highlights them, but they cannot be dragged anywhere. Deleting the CMC Contract folder has no affect. Finally, I cannot delete the "invisicons."

Strange.

A trip to Lansing?

Today, Mitch (one of my best friends) called me up from his work place in Lansing. We were doing some basic checks of his server... He needed to open the case and check to see the motherboard model and if all the RAM slots were full. He was planning a RAM upgrade, and I needed details, especially since I was getting different information about his server from different sources. Opening the case would be required.

He said he would call me back once he got the information. I told him not to break the server -- I was headed off to a service call in East Owosso, and would talk with him afterward. The roads were bad, a good 3" (7 cm) of slushy snow. Driving back, it was a little worse, but not too bad. The snow was tapering off, but still, I made the decision that all other service calls were canceled, save for mission critical support.

Once I walked into the store, returning from my service call less than an hour after I left, Mitch was already on the phone with Joel, co-owner of CyberMedics. First words out of Joel's mouth: "Mitch is on the phone, apparently the southbridge heatsync fell off... the server has shut itself off."

This was critical in Mitch's work environment. They only had one server, and everything was loaded on to it. Exchange (mail), Data Server, Domain Controller, everything. It simplifies administration, but it also is one whopping single point of failure, and it was down.

I stopped Joel as soon as he finished speaking and instantly responded, "Transfer him to me." I needed to speak with him immediately to get the details. I was quickly regretting not polishing off my cup of coffee before heading into work.

Yes, it was that bad. Mitch opened the case and the heatsync just fell off... No apparent reason why, it just fell off. It took only seconds for the server to over heat and shut down. And now, the server was unable to boot. Thoughts rolled though my head: circuitry failure from over heating, power supply failure, motherboard failure. All of which are hardware related, none of which were a quick fix.
Status: Server is Down, support required, mission critical, productivity has been stopped.

I was to prepare for a trip to Lansing, a 35 mile (55 km) drive. There is now nearly 8" (17 cm) of slushy snow on the ground. Calls were going crazy, authorization needed to be made before I headed out to work with Mitch, and I needed to schedule things with CyberMedics before heading out.

Within half an hour, a strategy was made, and the trip was planned. I was to head out, stop by my apartment and grab a second set of clothes, a blanket, some food, and something to drink (all but the first were in case my car broke down or I got into an accident, as well as planning on staying the night on site, since the roads were to get worse until after 1 AM) -- if I could, Mitch asked me to pick up some Cheetos for him, if I passed a convenience store, we were planning for a serious all-nighter. The 2-mile drive home took me nearly 20 minutes. While I was there, I took a moment to leave a note for my roommate with emergency contact information, in case I was in an accident or didn't return from Lansing within a day or so; I told myself, "Just in case, ya know?"

Upon leaving with my supplies, I got a few blocks before I determined that the storm had become a lot worse, there was now around 9" (22 cm) of snow on the ground. The snow had picked up visibility was down to nearly nothing, and my little car, basically a Ford Escort without anti-lock breaks, was unable to safely navigate the roads in town... The 35 miles to Lansing seemed quite impossible without getting into an accident or losing control of my car. And I was really beginning to think that those emergency contacts I left my roommate would need to be used if I did go to Lansing this evening. My logic stepped in full force, I had serious doubts that I'd be able to drive though town, let alone to Lansing, without getting into an accident. I needed to cancel on Mitch.

I felt bad. All I could do was call Mitch and talk with him over the phone. I really wanted to be there and help him with his network in this critical state, but it was too dangerous to drive this evening... I told him that I would try to come out the following day if he wasn't able to get the server up and running that evening, if the roads cleared up. I told him to call me with updates as he worked this evening.

The roads were so bad that I even called into work and talked with Joel, I told him that it was unwise to drive my car presently and would not be returning to work. It took me another 10 minutes to drive the half mile back home, down a single road, sliding with each turn, sharing a near-miss with the Shiawassee river at one point.

I just hope Mitch makes it home safely. I'm going to call him later this evening just to be sure.

iPod of Love?

32 GB iPod Touch? Ohhhh, that is awesome.

iPod Touch: 32 GB: $499USD.

Just switch that wire....

A few weeks ago, I was working on site with a business planning on doing a minor change-over. Scheduled service was for Friday at 1pm. Due to another business having serious issues, I wasn't able to get on site until 3:30, at which time the in-house technician had already started some basic adjustments, nothing serious though.

Our goals were pretty simple. Migrate from the DSL internet connection to the T1 per the instructions of the ISP, adjust the backups on the server to be sure that they were working correctly, and ensure that the antivirus software was working correctly throughout the network, including the satellite offices (via remote desktop) several of which are located in Canada. Estimated time on site: 3 to 6 hours.

Well, our biggest problem was that due to the previous net admin's total lack of documentation, we were running into this with high-hopes while also being a little blind. We totally didn't think about the router configuration. A Cisco 800 SOHO router.

The switch over directions from the ISP were pretty much "just switch over the ethernet cable from the DSL to the T1 and you'll be all set." Well, we didn't have a crossover cable, we just had a standard ethernet. Doesn't work when connecting between the Cisco 800 SOHO and the Cisco 1700 T1 router.

So, after a few hours of troubleshooting, we go that situated with the help of the local ISP. We then realized that the configuration of the Cisco 800 SOHO wasn't correct, but we didn't have the password to it... Here's where the trouble started coming in...

We got the Cisco Console cable from the ISP and instructions on how to reset the password on the router without reseting the configuration. A few simple commands.

Even with our best efforts and constant contact with the ISP, the router configuration was lost. It was now coming up on 2 AM, I had been on site for over 10 hours and was losing the ability to think straight, so we decided to call it a night and resume troubleshooting the following day.

Day two's priorities were different. Get the router up and running. Everything else is secondary. So that's what we did. I contacted the ISP and had them out on site to take a look at the Cisco 800 SOHO and figure out what was wrong and if we could restore the system back into a running state.

The ISP guy informed me that we needed to get the config file from the other network site, to get the configuration details. So at 5 PM, we made the final decision to head deep into Canada and get done what needed to be done.

The drive was going to take 4 hours. Quite a haul. And I don't have a passport, so it was a little risky, for the most part the problems would arise when coming back though, and the priority would be to just go over there and get the config file and email it back to the ISP. Simple.

So, that's what our goals for "the Canada trip" were. As everything else, it didn't go smoothly.

Canadian Boarder Crossing Services stopped us for nearly an hour, (apparently, they don't like Americans that are going into the country to work) but they eventually let us in. We headed on to site an hour behind schedule and got to work right away.

The work was simple... Meet up with one of the Canadian employees to let us in the building, adjust set up a computer near the router, directly access the router, copy the config and send it to the local (American) ISP and have them adjust what needed to be adjusted. We would then test the config to be sure that everything was working and then go home. Total estimated time on site: 45 to 60 minutes.

Once again, things didn't go as planned. Once we got the computer hooked up, we found it to be incredibly slow. And once we started working on the router, we found the data transmission to be faulty. After talking with the American ISP guys to see what they thought, they told us to replace the computer with a different one to check to see if it was a problem with the COM port on the PC. So we did that (it wasn't easy to set up these computers in the networking closet either, it would take around 15 to 20 minutes just to plug everything in). The second computer was no better. But we lived with it. Once again the communication wasn't working correctly though. So we called the American ISP again to see what they thought...

Well, there's several areas of configuration for the HyperTerminal configuration. First, we had to figure out which COM port was used. After some troubleshooting, we figured it must be COM3, it was the only port that displayed anything when we tried to connect to it. But, the port would only display gibberish. After talking with the ISP again, they suggested playing around with the Bit Rate settings. Over an hour of troubleshooting later, we finally found the correct bit rate. We made some setting adjustments and hacked the password on the router (very carefully) and copied the router configuration. All we had to do then was to email it to the American ISP.

That's when we realized that the internet was down. We spent a good fifteen minutes or so troubleshooting that, when we finally gave up and did some resets to the router to get it back online. We finally were able to send the email to the American ISP. Me and the In-House IT guy snacked on some chocolates that the office had laying around. We talked a little about what else we needed to get done and what we needed to test before heading back home.

It didn't take long before the American ISP got back to us and told us that the router should be back online and running as it should be. We did some basic checks and tested the ability to communicate over the VPN and called it good at 5 AM, where we decided to head back to the US.

Once at the boarder at 8 AM, the US Department of Homeland Security didn't take too kindly to us not having passports, but let us back into the country anyway, after inspecting the vehicle. We didn't get back to Owosso until 10 AM, 24 hours after I got up to go to work. I was glad to be home and be free of tinkering with an international network.

There were some problems come Monday, but nothing major and nothing that we couldn't get fixed remotely. By Wednesday, everything was fully operational.

Thin as Air

Yesterday evening, I got an email that I just couldn't ignore for more than a day. Apple has released a new notebook computer, the MacBook Air.

Quite the impressive design, weighing in at under three pounds and no more than an three-quarters of an inch thick at its widest point, it is by far the smallest full-sized laptop ever released by Apple, and perhaps the smallest the IT industry has seen yet.

The unit still retains many features of the every-day MacBook, complete with the built in iSight camera and microphone, as well as the 13.3" screen. But it does come with some differences one may want to consider before buying the unit.

For one thing, the unit only has one USB 2.0 port and no firewire port. It has a single headphone jack, but no audio in (beware podcasters!) The unit also has no Ethernet (although, a USB adapter is available, for an additional charge).

The Mag-Safe adapter is a common feature, but it's not the same adapter that the previous MacBooks have used, so don't expect to have a spare power adapter from that ol' MacBook Core Duo.

There are some nifty features of the unit that aren't as highly publicized.

For one thing, the screen is lit using LEDs instead of a CCFL tube, which makes for less energy consumption, which is quite handy. And for those of us on the plane frequently, or in dark college dorm rooms, a back-lit keybaord may come in handy, especially when trying to finish up that term-paper at 4 AM.

One of the more astonishing aspects of the laptop is that if you are willing to be an early-adopter of the new "mobile computing concepts," you could get the $3,000 version of the Air that comes with a solid-state drive instead of the usual thin PATA that the less expensive ($1800) version comes with.

Personally, this is something I'd buy in a heartbeat...
...If I were rich.

PS: Check out Air's web site to watch the promo, guided tour, and if you have the navigation skills to stumble accross it, even the Steve Jobs keynote, presenting the new unit.

Enjoy.

Octadecimal

Today I got an email from Apple announcing that they are upgrading the standard again. The default configuration for the Mac Pro now is eight-core. It's really an insane default configuration. The configuration can easily handle just about anything a video guru can throw at it,

This incredible power stems from all-new Quad-Core Intel Xeon “Harpertown” processors, featuring speeds up to 3.2GHz and 12MB of L2 cache per processor.

Apple Store

The default configuration, starting off at $2,799.00USD may be a bit much for most home Mac users, but this computer is no iMac.

Leopard Upgrade

So, the trip home wasn't too bad. The annoyance of having to make a special trip to manage a Macintosh because the correct OS wasn't preinstalled is really annoying, but I did need to manage the firewall directly, and there was some other family issues that needed to be addressed, so it wasn't exactly just a "tech support" thing.

I must say, the OS is beautiful. My family is quickly adapting to the Mac OS lifestyle, and they are really loving it. Especially Photobooth.

The biggest issue so far has been the side buttons on the Mighty Mouse, they kept hitting them, causing Expose to fire-up. So I decided to disable that button (#3 on the mighty mouse). I enabled right-click though (button #2) on the mouse, to make troubleshooting with them over the phone easier.

Unfortunately, Remote Desktop doesn't seem to be working so well over the internet. I believe that it is the firewall at home that is doing it, since everything is spot-on with the Mac, but each time I try to RA into any computer from outside the network, I'm blocked. Very disappointing. The ISP is also bouncing the IP address around all the time now, It seems to change every 12 to 48 hours, making remote access almost impossible. I'm really starting to think that it is time for my parents to change ISPs again.

Outside of that, the iMac itself is running wonderful with Leopard (upgrade only disk, requiring Tiger to be installed before Leopard can be installed). There's really no complaints about it, other than I'm not so sure that I like the new folder icons. Everything else is nice though. I'll be tinkering with it on and off again over time though, if for nothing else than to decide if I want to upgrade to it myself. ^___^

About This Mac

Well, I cannot emphasize how disappointed I am in Apple right now.

The new iMac that my parents just got, it did not come with Leopard.

Leopard is in the box, but it's not on the computer. Blue swirly background. Old dock. About This Mac: "Mac OS X Version 10.4.11."

I'm really annoyed by this. I may have to make a special two-hour drive south tomorrow to go fix it. In the mean time, I just might call Apple about this.

One heck of a way to start the new year.

Update: I am making a special trip home tomorrow to upgrade the iMac. I just cannot believe how stupid it is for Apple to sell an iMac (ordered on December 23, nearly two months after the original release of Leopard on October 26). I am utterly dumbfounded. Is this the way all new Macs are shipping? If so, why?!? If not, then why is my parents computer configured the way it is?? And no, it's not like it was a "pre-boxed special" or anything, it was a modified order placed at store.apple.com.