PS3 Slim sized up: smaller, deeper, no Linux or PS2 compatibility

Well, here's the details on the new, slimmer PS3. Still not PS2 compatible. Too bad; I was thinking about getting one until I read that.

PS3 Slim sized up: smaller, deeper, no Linux or PS2 compatibility: "

	120GB PS3 Slim	160GB PS3	80GB PS3
Product code	CECH-2000A	CECH-Pxx	CECH-Kxx / CECH-Lxx
Price	$299.99	$399.99	$299.99
Color	Matte Black	Piano Black (Glossy)	Piano Black (Glossy)
HDD	120GB 2.5-inch SATA	160GB 2.5-inch SATA	80GB 2.5-inch SATA
Dimensions	11.42 x 2.56 x 11.42 in.	12.75 x 3.86 x 10.8 in.	12.75 x 3.86 x 10.8 in.
Weight	7.05 lb.	11 lb.	11 lb.
Power	250W	280W	280W
Vertical Stand	Optional ($24)	Not necessary	Not necessary
Compatibility	PSOne	PSOne, Linux	PSOne, Linux
PS2 compat?	No	No	No
BRAVIA Sync (HDMI-CEC)	Yes	No	No
Bundle	Wireless DualShock 3 controller	Wireless DualShock 3 controller, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, PAIN downloadable game voucher	Wireless DualShock 3 controller

At this point, would-be PlayStation 3 buyers have two options: wait until next month to get the ultra-hip PS3 Slim model for $300, or plop down that same figure now for its chunkier older brother. As far as we can tell, unless you're absolutely dying to load Linux or another OS on top of the console, or have some strong aversion to matte finishes, there's really no incentive to purchase one right now without a more drastic price cut -- or if you're really lucky, perhaps you can find one of the older, discontinued models that can still play PS2 games.

Filed under: Gaming

PS3 Slim sized up: smaller, deeper, no Linux or PS2 compatibility originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 18 Aug 2009 16:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Before There Was Twitter, There Was Blogger. And It’s Turning 10.

I knew Blogger was old, but 10? Wow. I had just gotten my first "high-speed" internet connection.

From TechCrunch:

Before There Was Twitter, There Was Blogger. And It’s Turning 10.: "

What were you doing in 1999? Maybe you were following the Kosovo War. Maybe you starting using Napster. Maybe you were entering your senior year of high school (I was), or maybe you started blogging. After all, on August 23, 1999, Pyra Labs launched its Blogger product, which would go on to become the biggest blogging platform in the world.

Yes, on Sunday, Blogger turns 10 years old. And to celebrate, the Blogger team (which is now a part of Google following the 2003 acquisition) is promising a bunch of gifts to users in the form of new features. Without naming anything specifically, Blogger points to this list as a good reference point for some of what they’ll be rolling out over the next few weeks. Of note on that list are a better commenting system and WordPress-style pages (About page, etc).

It’s worth noting that Blogger’s roots are deeply tied to the new hot web platform of choice: Twitter. Pyra Labs was co-founded by Evan Williams, who is now the CEO (and co-founder) of Twitter. Also a part of Pyra Labs were Jason Goldman who now runs product development for Twitter, and Jason Shellen who now runs Thing Labs, the makers of Brizzly, a much buzzed-about new Twitter client.

Biz Stone, another Twitter co-founder, joined the Blogger team at Google before leaving with Williams in 2004 to start Obvious Corp. which would eventually birth and turn into Twitter.

These days, while the web is abuzz over Twitter, no one really talks much about Blogger despite millions of people using it everyday. The fact is that as a platform, it has fallen behind the more nimble blogging platforms like WordPress and Tumblr in recent years. Still, in terms of straight up simplicity in setting up a blog, it’s easy to see why Blogger is still popular among users (and, unfortunately, spammers).

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

"

New Insight

And again, it's been two weeks. I have a valid (at least I think it's valid) excuse this time, and I'm going to write about it today.

Since my back problems started up, I've been having issues getting in and out of the Cobalt Bomber. It's an awesome car, but it's just too low to the ground for me. I started doing research into the existing hybrid cars on the market, and I kept coming back to the 2010 Honda Insight. Even with the mid-range package (the EX model), it's cheaper than the Toyota Prius. But price wasn't my only concern. My major concern was comfort. I'd already done all my research online, so it was time to visit one in person.

I called Koon's Honda in Manassas VA (close by the house) and set up an appointment for Saturday afternoon, August 1st, but we didn't take the Cobalt Bomber, we took my wife's minivan. When I called, I made sure they'd have one I could at least sit in. The reason I checked is because when I was shopping for the Cobalt Bomber, we didn't even get to test drive the standard transmission version. We were sitting in the car and a sales rep sold it literally out from under us. They walked up and said "Please get out of that car. We just sold it". We ended up buying it in Maine at Blouin's Honda in Augusta. We saved money, and got a 3 day vacation out of the deal.

But back to recent times. My appointment with Josh Bond (I bet he hated being called James as a kid) went well. Josh seemed impressed with our knowledge of the car and had limited knowledge of the older Insights, but that's OK because they weren't selling them anymore. The first test was sitting in one. I was impressed. The seats were very comfortable, and the driver's seat was adjustable in all three dimensions. My wife and I also tried the back seats and found them comfortable, too. During the fall and winter, my mother-in-law and her sister live with us, and I wasn't about to get a car that wasn't comfortable for them, so we called them up and asked them to go to a Honda dealer where they are in Maine and try out the seats for them. A few days later we got a call back saying not only are they comfortable, but my mother-in-law's sister would actually consider buying one for herself!

So, the decision was made; we were going to buy the 2010 Insight. Now we needed to figure out where and how.

We do most of our banking with USAA, as well as our insurance. We went to the USAA website, logged in, and noticed they have a car buying program through Zag.com. We went to the special website for the program, put in our zip code, selected the make, model, color and special features, and we got an email from Zag.com for three dealers in our "area" that participated in their program, and pricing for that specific car. Then, the dealers contacted me either by email or by phone to discuss my particular needs. The only problem was that Koon's Honda doesn't participate in that program. I was disappointed, but I had a plan. I spoke with a representative at Hendrick Honda in Woodbridge VA and got what they called the "out the door" price, to include tax, tags, and other fees. Now that I had their bottom line, I could move forward with my plan.

We also needed financing, so we noticed that we were "pre-approved" for a new car loan through USAA, so we put in the bottom line number we got, rounding up, of course, and I clicked the "Apply" button. My wife was watching over my shoulder. "So when do we hear back?" she said. "That's it. It's done. We're already approved." It was that easy. Too easy. (ominous background music to show foreshadowing).

The following Saturday, August 8^th, we got a 1:00PM appointment with Josh to discuss the deal. We left the house a little early so we could grab a quick lunch at McDonalds, across the street from the car dealer (this is an important point. We ate lunch literally 100 yards from where we would buy the car). We had cleaned and vacuumed the Cobalt Bomber that morning, so she was looking good for her appraisal. As I pulled into the parking space at McDonalds, I heard a sickening sound, the sound of fiberglass rubbing on concrete. The guy in the car next to us looked at us and pointed down and forward at the front of the car. I slowly backed the Cobalt Bomber away from the front of the parking space, turned her off and got out. The bumper cover and air dam on the front of the car had caught on the concrete edge of the parking lot. When I backed up, the piece, in its entirety, broke free of its retaining clips and fell to the ground, with only one of the about eight clips still holding on. My heart sunk. We couldn't believe it. We had just cleaned the car, so there were no tools, no supplies, nothing to help fix the problem. We stood and stared at the bumper and air dam, dumbfounded. We're right across the street from the dealer! What do we do now? How do we hold the bumper on the car long enough to get it over there so we can trade it in? It's like she KNEW we were taking her for our last ride with her, and she didn't want to leave.

I remembered the Valet key. Any time I took the Cobalt Bomber in for work, I would leave the valet key, and they would put the tag for the service on the key. When it was done, I'd remove the tag, but leave that little metal ring on the key. Now I know why I did that. I pulled out the valet key and removed four of the little rings. I put one ring in one of the holes for the retaining clips. I put another in the corresponding hole in the bumper cover. I used the four rings together to tie the bumper cover back into the car. It wasn't a permanent solution by any means, but it would hold it to cross the street.

After lunch, we drove across to Koon's Honda. We met up with Josh and asked what he could do to help us get into an Insight that day. He had our car appraised, and came back with numbers for us, but they were much higher than what we were quoted from Hendrick Honda. We jockeyed for position, playing the pricing game that new car dealers play, and then I took out my ace in the hole; my quote from Hendrick. Josh took it back to his manager, and came back with a comparable offer. They would have to drive one of their Insights to Leesburg and trade for the "Atomic Blue Metallic" color that I wanted. While Josh was getting the car in Leesburg, we talked to the Customer Care representative and a Finance representative. We added on the Honda extended warrantee and got a better financing deal through Koon's network of lenders (ultimately PNC bank). I took six hours, but we left that night with a new car that I could drive and get in and out of!

I have nothing but good things to say about Koon's Honda and Josh Bond, our sales representative. They all worked very hard to make sure we were happy with our new car and that the deal was the best we could do. I've been having service done at Koon's Honda since we moved into this new house three years ago, and I'll continue to work with Koon's Honda. They're all good people there, and they work to ensure the customer is happy.

My new Insight doesn't have a name yet, but I'm working on it. Here's a picture of it before we left Koon's Honda last Saturday. So far, I've driven it to work and to church, and I'm averaging about 45 miles to the gallon. Not the 60 I was getting, but for a four door car, it's great!

Two new toys in the house

I'd like to start off by apologizing for not writing anything last week. No excuses, just nothing came to me. But the good news is, I have something to write about today!

This past week we got two new tech toys in the house; a new multifunction printer (printer, scanner, copier, fax) and a GPS for the car. I wanted to test them out before I wrote about them, so here we go.

 

First let's look at the multifunction printer. We used to have a Brother multifunction printer that we bought at Wal-Mart for $99 or so. It was about 5 years old, I guess, and it was starting to die. Then within a week, both the scanner bulb and the print head went out. So, now it's basically a paperweight. But it did last us 5 years or so. I started doing my research based on where I could get a new multifunction printer, what was available (and on sale) and what functions I needed and wanted in a new printer. After a week or so of research, I settled on a Canon MX860. Not only was the Canon MX860 a good printer, but I could buy it on sale with free shipping. Awesome.

So, what's so great about the Canon MX860? Well, let's take a look. All these comments are subjective and not based on any objective testing. The Canon MX860 met all my basic requirements; color inkjet printer, scanner, copier, fax. But, it exceeded my requirements in a few areas and still had a low price. In the exceeding area, it doesn't just print, the Canon MX860 is the first duplex inkjet printer I've ever owned. In other words, this printer will print on both sides of a page without having to figure out how to stick the paper back in the feeder so it prints correctly on the other side. That is really cool. I have an HP LaserJet 4000N that duplexes, but sometimes, you just need color and on both sides of the page (and not only that, it saves paper!). The other area it exceeded my requirements in was the scanner. The MX860 has a 30 sheet feeder for the scanner, and it duplexes the scanning! In other words, you can scan both sides of the page automatically! I have never seen this in a scanner that was under $200 before; and absolutely never in a multifunction printer that duplexes the print. I may be completely wrong on this, since I've been out of the printer market for a while, but this is an awesome printer. The third element of awesomeness in this printer is the fact that not only can you attach it to your network, you can use WiFi to attach it, if you don't have a physical cable available to get to your printer. WiFi, scanning and printing duplexing, what more could you ask for? Well, how about awesome print quality and fast printing? The Canon MX860 is a great multifunction printer that does it all. Recommended.

 

Now let's look at the GPS we got for my wife. We got the Garmin Nüvi 265WT. Staples had it on sale this week for $199 after rebates. This particular Garmin has some cool features that make it perfect for my wife. First, it gives turn by turn directions and says the name of the next street to turn on, which is great. It has a reasonably up to date map, although the maps don't include the street that was completed about a year ago in my neighborhood, so it looks like we're off-roading for a while (and I updated the maps when I got the GPS). The kicker for me was that it has Bluetooth capabilities, so it can pair with your phone and be used as a hands-free device. Also, this particular Garmin has traffic reporting (hence the T in the model number), which if you live in a major metropolitan area can be VERY helpful.

The GPS features are the normal kind of things. In the past few days the only problem we've found with it is it doesn't know which street you're on if you're driving under an elevated street or highway. My wife was following the directions from the Garmin and must have missed a turn or the Garmin didn't realize which level she was driving on, and she got lost in DC down by the Potomac River, because the Garmin thought she was on the elevated part of the street. Once she worked all that out, it was fine and it helped her get back to where she needed to be. I don't think that's a limitation specific to the Garmin, I think all GPS would have problems in that area.

The Bluetooth capability is nice. Pairing the Garmin with my wife's Blackberry Curve from Verizon Wireless was easy. Once the two were paired, the Garmin downloaded the entire address book from the Blackberry. Also the Garmin allows you to voice dial your phone (if the phone has that capability). We've been looking for a hands free device for my wife for a while now, since the headsets don't work too well for her (and she hates the wires). This one works well, and the sound quality is very good for a secondary feature.

The traffic function is cool. The traffic is provided by NAVTEQ. NAVTEQ uses RDS to transmit traffic information on a 57KHz subcarrier. Some car stereo systems receive RDS information and can display traffic or other data. Friday when my wife was driving me to work, I played with the traffic capabilities of the Garmin. Friday was a bad day to do this, because Fridays are usually light traffic days. When you turn on the traffic map, routes that have moderate traffic are marked in yellow and routes that have heavy traffic are marked in red. The Garmin has the capability to route you around heavy traffic areas, but I haven't had the opportunity to test that yet. Also, traffic is currently only available in 50 cities in the US, so it's not everywhere (although, if you lived in the middle of Kansas or Iowa, you wouldn't need traffic maps now would you?).

So far, we're really happy with the Garmin Nüvi 265WT. It's a good GPS with multiple voices to chose from and great additional capabilities. Recommended.

 

Now on a personal note, I got to meet one of my Twitter friends in person last weekend, @NicLizD. If you use Twitter, I highly recommend following her. She's a great person who is very smart and really enjoys chatting with people. Also, this week I went back to my office for the second time since March, and I went in two times this week, although not for full days. That's a big deal for me. I'm doing physical therapy three times a week, so the other two days I go into the office and work from there for a while. It gives me the chance to understand everything else that's going on around my projects, so I can keep things tied together. Still no major progress on getting Windows Vista installed on Frag Mom's Frag Box, but I have made baby steps toward fixing it. It seems to be the USB drivers that are causing it to fail, so my next step is to flash the BIOS with an update, then try again. But it's working on XP, so that's not a real problem. Hopefully I'll have a full fix on the Frag Box soon.

YourFi, MiFi, and OurFi

Did you ever have one of those mornings? On the plus side, I did get to sleep in until 8:00AM, which was a great blessing. But then things went a little "wonky" to use an Abby word.

 

A little background is in order here, I think. In the past few months I've become a very active part of a Christian prayer and outreach group that uses Twitter and a blog to reach people. The twitter account is @worldprayr, and the blog is here. Well, the blog site is where the problems lay today. It seems that during our nighttime and during the daytime over in Asia, someone decided to hack all the images at imageshack, a website used by bloggers and others to store images. One of the images used on the worldprayr blog site is stored on imageshack. But one is all it takes. That image now shows up as the Anti-sec manifesto. I don't want to give this group much more press time than it's already getting, if it is a group (it may only be one person. There's very little information out there on Anti-sec). I will get on my soap box about defacing someone else's web page for your purposes.

Let me say this up front. Graffiti is NOT art. Some of it may have artistic tendencies, but it is still defacing another person's property. Hacking someone's website is no different than tagging someone's fence or house or business. It's thuggish graffiti, and childish at best. Oliver Wendell Holmes said "The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins." Defacing a website goes just beyond the nose. If you want to make a point, there are many other ways to make it without defacing other people's websites.

Those of you who disagree with me, fire at will.

OK, off the soap box. (and the site is fixed now).

 

I got back from Maine on Wednesday. I had the perfect opportunity to test my new little MiFi 2200 from Verizon Wireless that I talked about a few weeks ago. The first test was in Fairfield, Maine, which is about 44.58°N, 69.60°W. It's a small town by most accounts, but a larger town by Maine standards. Since Verizon Wireless bought AllTel last year, most of the coverage in the state has changed over to Verizon (although AllTel is still operating as a subsidiary of Verizon Wireless). I tested my new toy in Fairfield and it worked like a charm. I had full signal strength, full throughput, and a very reliable connection. The next test was the kicker.

Let me tell you a little about my dad's house (we call it "the farm") and the town he lives in. Dad lives in Winn, Maine. It's a speck of a town, way off the beaten path, at about 45.45°N, 68.34°W. We always joke "It's not the end of the world, but you CAN see it from there!" According to the 2000 census numbers, there were 420 people living in Winn in 2000. I don't know where they found them all, because I think there's a LOT less than that. I think in the 1980 census, there were only 250 or so (I was one of them then). Dad's house is built in a valley of sorts. There is no line-of-sight anywhere because of all the hills. Since the digital television transition, there is no signal there because of all the hills around the house. On the good side, it makes the house easier to heat in winter and cool in summer (well, usually cooling isn't needed!). I marvel at the design of the house every time I'm there, since there were no "engineers" involved in the design process. But I digress, as I usually do. Historically speaking, no one in the family has been able to make or receive cell phone calls at the farm because of the hills around it. This trip was different.

Maybe Verizon Wireless added towers in the area. I did notice one up on top of Mount Jefferson. I don't know if VZW uses it or not. But my Blackberry Curve got between one and two bars of signal strength, depending on where I was standing in the house! Cell phone signal at the farm! It was reason to celebrate. So I pulled out my MiFi 2200, set it up as a WiFi hub, put it up as high as I could (on top of one of the window valences my dad made about 30+ years ago), and tried to connect to it with my laptop. BINGO! Not a perfect signal, but there was a connection, and it was as fast as the DSL connection I was using in Fairfield! As far as I know, this was the first time Internet access was made at the farm that exceeded 14,400Kbps.

I'm not being paid by Verizon Wireless for this endorsement, but I highly recommend them and the MiFi 2200. But if they wanted to pay me for my endorsement, I'd take it!

 

I hope to spend some time this week trying to upgrade Frag Mom's frag box to Vista (yeah, I know some of you would argue the term "upgrade", but so be it). I think I've found the problem but I just haven't had the time to test it yet.

 

It's good to be home!

A Story From My Past

Happy Independence Day. In honor of Independence Day, I thought I'd post a little story from my past. Not really specifically uplifting, not about technology, but a story from my past while I was in the Air Force, teaching ROTC at the University of Maryland.

First, a little background.

In 2004, I was sent to train ROTC cadets, most college sophomores (soon to be juniors), at ROTC Field Training, a 28 day training experience where the cadets learn leadership, followership, and team building skills in a controlled, stressful environment. That's the nice way of saying it.

Field Training Officers or FTOs were assigned to each flight (the smallest unit in the Air Force, like a squad in the Army). Three flights to a squadron. Being the ranking officer in my squadron, I was the squadron FTO, with 2 captains under me. Each of us started with 24 to 28 cadets to train. Each flight also had a Cadet Training Assistant or CTA who was a junior (soon to be senior) who showed aptitude and leadership at field training last year, to help the FTOs with the flight. I also had a squadron CTA that rotated through the squadron and up to the wing (the next higher level, similar to a battalion if squadron = company). So that's 2 captains and 4 soon to be lieutenants (which the Field Training commander, an AF colonel told us to treat as we would lieutenants).

We were all given information on the cadets we would have in our flights, but you can only learn so much from paperwork. GPA, basic aptitude, etc. But that doesn't tell you 2 major things we were looking for; leadership and stress management. They (those in charge of the entire camp) also ensured we would not have cadets from where we taught college. Each cadet would be assigned a room in the dorm, 2 to a room, 2 rooms to a bathroom.

Enough background. Here we go.

It was my week to pick who the cadet squadron commander would be. I had a cadet who was falling into the background as much as possible, but had great paperwork. He just wasn't stepping up. Time for a little push. After discussion with my captains and the CTAs, we agreed, Cadet Johnson (not his name. In fact, I can't remember his name) was the choice for cadet squadron commander.

When it was announced, he looked shocked. This was to be a big week. We were supposed to go through preparation for "deployment" to "the field" for 3 days. That included a 5 mile road march (wow, 5 whole miles!) in formation through a supposed hostile environment. Squadron commanders were to control all three flights in their squadrons, through their respective flight commanders.

It was going well until they came "under fire". Cadet Johnson lost total control of his flights, as well as his composure. I pointed at him and yelled (he was about 100' away) "You're dead. Fall in with your flight." Not angry, just loud. What I call "the dad voice". Cadet Johnson complied, angry and flustered. Now a new squadron commander had to be selected, but I let the flight commanders decide what to do, since there was an order of succession laid out. They did it correctly. A few other squadron commanders "died" that day.

That evening, we let Cadet Johnson know he was back in as squadron commander for the remainder of his scheduled time. He didn't look happy.

The next day went as well as can be expected in the first 2 weeks of field training. Lots of frustration and mistakes under pressure, which is what we wanted. Cadet Johnson was very frustrated, and didn't respond well to the stresses of 3 "real officers" yelling at him, as well as 4 CTAs.

That evening was when it got interesting. During inspection prep time, when cadets were supposed to be getting everything ready for the next day, Cadet Johnson and his roommate had their door closed (which was not allowed). My CTA noticed the issue, and stood in the hall, listening at the door. He could hear Cadet Johnson ranting about his time as cadet squadron commander.

"If Major Stratton and Cadet Moier (my CTA) think they can tear me down like this, just wait until we go to the firing range with the 9mm! I'll show them. They won't come back" is something close to what Cadet Johnson said. It didn't take long for my CTA to open the door and try to find out what was going on. Neither of us was used to death threats.

That was a long night. Between that point (about 9pm or so) and 11pm, Cadet Johnson saw every real officer in his chain of command starting with me, all the way up to the Colonel in charge of the camp. It was decided that he would not remain at field training (I decided that about 2 hours before!) and that he would immediately be removed from the area around his flight. He was moved to the staff building (didn't make me feel much better) and was constantly watched, not allowed to leave his new room. Also during that time he was interviewed by the real base security forces, since there was an actual crime here. The determined he was not a threat to anyone (again, didn't make me feel much better).

Cadet Johnson was removed from field training with prejudice, in other words, he was removed from ROTC completely and would never be allowed to serve in the military. He was sent home about 4 days after the incident, due to flight scheduling. After that point, my flight began to gel together as a team. Although they never won an award during field training, they were constantly just below the waterline, but the winning flight was different every time. My flight was the number 1 flight of field training in all areas.

I've lost contact with my cadets from field training. I hope most of them are still serving. The ones that completed field training were outstanding Americans, and I knew they would be excellent officers. I really miss them. Even though I was "the bad guy" always yelling and correcting them, they knew that I genuinely cared about each of them as individuals, and wanted them to succeed. We also had lots of fun during that time. My job was to make it as hard as possible for them, but not to be hard on them. After Cadet Johnson left, they understood why I was there. There was no stopping them after that.

If you are currently in, or have served in any branch of the military, thanks you for your service.

Voltage, MiFi, and Radio Frequency! Oh My!

Well, I'm trying to get back into my Saturday schedule again, so here I am. I have a loose end to tie up, and something new to talk about, and a bit of personal news.

First, the loose end. Frag mom's frag box is running. It's not running Vista, but it's running. The problem is, I don't know why. Here's the deal.

I signed up on the ASUS forum pages so I could try to get more info. There was some info there, but not much was helpful. So, I posted my problem (which was almost the same as the "Open Letter" from last week). I got some responses, but mostly commiserating from other people that couldn't get Vista to work on their ASUS N3M78 Pro motherboards. However, they could get XP to work. So, I dug around for a copy of XP, found a key that was on a computer that had the OS replaced (not upgraded. We're fully legal here). Then I installed XP. Have you ever formatted a 500GB drive in XP? Full format, not a quick format? It must have taken 4 hours. That was the most agonizing part of the installation. After the format, everything went slick. Everything installed without any problem. Then I installed all the correct drivers from the DVD that came with the motherboard (not the newest drivers) without any problem. Next, I installed the utility from ASUS that monitors the health of the CPU and motherboard. Wait a second. What's the voltage in the CPU? 1.3v. What?

I went to the AMD website and searched for the specs for the Phenom 9500 CPU. (If I'm reading this wrong, please let me know) Operating voltage is 1.15v to 1.25v. So, the voltage for the CPU is high. That explains the 57°C CPU temp (which is also high). But I can't find in the BIOS how to lower the voltage of the CPU. I'll need to do more digging and get back to you. I'm guessing that MAY be part of the problem with Vista Ultimate installing. That and the voltage for the RAM is running low; 2.0v rather than the 2.1 to 2.2 that it likes. If you know how to fix that, or have any other comments or suggestions, please let me know.

 

Well, the good news is that now that the new frag box is running, we can again start running instances in World of Warcraft! It's neat to be able to run them with the four of us in the house, even though we use Skype to be able to talk between the floors of the house! Lots of fun, trust me. And we've done the first two instances of Wrath so far. Nexus was the first time we've run an instance with no one in the group having been in that particular instance before. THAT was fun.

 

I had an interesting problem with work this week. I was trying to use my normal method of VPN to get into work, but the DNS for Comcast wouldn't resolve the name of the servers I wanted to go to. "That's odd" I thought. So, I tried to go to a few websites I go to, and those were not accessible, but my "normal" sites were. Odd. And that brings me to my newest toy.

Since we started with Fortune Hi-Tech Marketing (FHTM), we've been looking for a "business" internet connection that isn't too expensive (although it's a business expense anyway). So I did some research. I wanted to use VerizonWireless, or at least some form of wireless / cellular / 3G connection, so I could take it with me where ever I was working (I've been to one too many "free" wifi places that I had a hard time connecting through). After painstaking research and study, I settled on the VerizonWireless MiFi 2200. Let me tell you something, this baby is AWESOME!

First, let's look at it physically. It's 3.5" high, 2.3" wide, and only 0.4" thin! That makes it a little bigger than a credit card, and thinner than the Motorola Razr V3 phone. It weighs 2 oz, which is 2/3 the weight of the Razr phone. Let me put it this way: if you wear bondage pants, you could lose it in your pockets. It comes with a micro USB port for connection directly to a computer (PC or Mac (or Linux for that matter)), and for charging. Yes, you can charge your battery while you're tethered to it. There's also a short USB cable and a wall charger in the box, as well as a small fabric sleeve for it, for when you're not using it.

It was delivered at around 5pm, and after opening the box and looking at the directions (yes, I sometimes do that), I decided that maybe I should charge this new toy for 24 hours before trying to use it. Sigh. So, I put the battery in (doubling the weight, at least) and plugged it into the wall, making a mental note of the time that I could start playing with my new toy tomorrow!

That night was like Christmas Eve. Well, not really, but it's good for dramatic effect.

The next evening I followed the directions to activate the MiFi 2200. I connected it to my laptop with the USB cable, and it showed up as a thumb drive! The MiFi 2200 has VZAccess Manager installed in a small memory chip. You install that from the "modem" itself, then update over the air after the connection is made. Using the MiFi 2200 as a directly connected modem is easy. VZAccess Manager detects when it is connected and gives you the option of using it for the primary internet connection. The great thing about VZAccess Manager is that it gives preference to WiFi connections, so you don't use up your throughput.

I hear what you're saying. So what! What's the big deal. VerizonWireless has lots of USB connectable 3G modems. Well, not like this one. You see, the real fun begins when you disconnect the MiFi 2200 from the USB cable. Once the connection with Verizon is made, the MiFo 2200 acts as a WiFi hub, allowing up to 5 connections through to the internet over Verizon's 3G network. So if you have a small group of people getting together in a place where there's no free WiFi, no problem. Whip out the MiFi 2200 and hook up wirelessly. Speeds are almost as fast as my Comcast connection over normal WiFi G connections.

The real test will be when we travel up to Maine for the 4^th of July weekend. According to VerizonWireless' coverage map, my dad's house in the middle of the Maine woods is covered by Verizon's "Enhanced Services". That's going to be the real test. Last time I tried to get internet connectivity there, it was at less than 14.4Kbps!

Oh, but the best part, was that because I bought it through FHTM's Wireless shop, I got a discount on the MiFi 2200. The service is still $59.99 a month for 5GB (5,120 MB), but the MiFi itself was only $79.99, instead of $99.99 directly from VerizonWireless. Sweet.

 

I said there'd be a bit of personal news. The trip to Maine was not it. (By the way, the alarm will be on and the police will know we're out of town, in case you're thinking of being bad). On Thursday, June 25^th, I will be having a procedure for my back called radiofrequency neurotomy, where the doctor will be going into my back with a needle and basically burning the facet nerves for L5-S1. Thursday will be the left side, the following Tuesday will be the right side. It sounds kind of scary, but with God's help, I should be back to what passes for normal for me within two weeks. I'll tell you next week how the first one goes, if I feel up to it! But for now, it's back to the frag box to try to figure out how to drop that CPU voltage!

Open Letter to ASUSTeK

Dear ASUSTeK,

I just wanted to let you know that I'm still having problems with my new M3N78 Pro MoBo. I'm on my 2nd M3N78 Pro MoBo now. The first was defective. Now that I installed the second one, I can't get Vista Ultimate x64 w/SP1 to install. I have been testing this for over a week now, following the scientific method, changing only one thing at a time trying to get Vista to install correctly.

Please check http://insidephilsbrain.blogspot.com/2009/06/frag-moms-new-frag-box.html for details on the system configuration and my previous experience with this MoBo.

The closest I've come to actually completely installing Vista was getting to the screen just before entering the user name and password for initial user creation, and sticking at "Completing Installation .." but it wasn't.

I changed the SATA to AHCI, then to RAID, then to IDE. Each time, no difference.

I lowered the voltage for the DIMMs and for the North Bridge. No difference.

I slipstreamed the drivers from your website into the install DVD. No difference.

I know the DVD media is good because I installed onto another 500GB SATA drive I had on a different system with no issues at all. After that was installed and updated using Windows Update, I powered down and switched the drives. No difference. I tried booting into Safe Mode, waiting for drivers to load from the DVD, and even loading the drivers myself, but I couldn't log in, and the system was unusable.

I tried pulling one of the DIMMs. I tried moving the DIMMS to different locations.

To make this long saga short, nothing has worked. I'm at the end of my rope. This was supposed to be a simple replacement of a problem Dell that was hyper-unstable. I'm tempted to switch back to the Dell and live with the BSOD.

I'm not stupid. I've been building computers since 1993. This is the biggest nightmare I have ever experienced. If someone can point me to some voltage settings, maybe a way to underclock the CPU, some magic incantation. Anything would be appreciated. I've done everything short of sacrificing a goat.

I keep reading everywhere that this is such a wonderful MoBo. I haven't seen it yet. I'm about to order a new MoBo that will use the same CPU and RAM from a different manufacturer, then take this one out in a field and go "Office Space" on it.

Any suggestions?

And by the way, don't call my house, because my wife is fit to be tied. This was supposed to be a quick fix so she could get back on World of Warcraft. It's been two weeks now.

Frag Mom’s new frag box

Well, it's Tuesday evening, and the parts are all here; the next step is getting it all together!

Here's my parts list:

Apex PC-389 ATX Black Mid Tower Case

Ultra LS500 Lifetime Series 500W Power Supply - ATX, SATA-Ready, PCI-Express

Asus M3N78 PRO Motherboard - Socket AM2+, Geforce 8300, ATX, HDMI, SATA, Gbit LAN, Hybrid SLI

AMD Phenom 9500 Processor HD9500WCGDBOX - 2.20GHz, 4 x 512KB Cache, 1800MHz (3600 MT/s) FSB, Agena, Quad-Core, Retail, Socket AM2+, Processor with Fan

Ultra X-Wind Aluminum Socket K8/AM2 CPU Cooling Fan

OCZ SLI-Ready Dual Channel 4096MB PC6400 DDR2 800MHz Memory (2x2048MB)

WD Caviar 500GB Serial ATA HD 7200/8MB/SATA-3G

Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit DSP OEM DVD

Sony DRUV200A/BR DVD/CD Rewritable IDE Retail Drive

Diamond Multimedia Radeon HD 4670 1024MB GDDR3 PCIe 2.0 Graphics Card

 

You may recognize the video card from last week. It's the same card. The one that came in the bundle wasn't as good.

(Fast forward) 8

Well, it took me about an hour and a half to get the computer built. Not too shabby. But that's when the "fun" began.

First try at installing Vista Ultimate 64 bit was looking great, until it hung on the final (or at least what looked like the final) phase of the install and configuration, "Completing Installation. . ." My first guess was dirty media, so I wiped the DVD clean (physically, not the data!) and tried again. It died in the same place. So, I thought "Maybe I'm just not waiting long enough. It's getting late anyway; I'll just start the install and go to bed." Nope. That didn't work either. I got up Wednesday morning at 5:30 and still, not done and sitting in the same place. "Completing Installation. . ." All I could think of was "No, you're not! That's the problem!" It's time to do some research.

(Fast forward) 8

After searching for some time, I found that sometimes the SATA driver from Microsoft isn't completely compatible with the nVidia SATA chipset. So it seems that the data going to the hard drive is being corrupted and is then not able to be read, which is a bit of a problem. After many attempts, half attempts and one or two near successes, it was after 5PM on the Wednesday. This is taking more time than I wanted it to.

(Fast forward) 8

OK, and now it's 8PM on Wednesday. I've decided to take out the ATI video card on the off chance it's conflicting with the nVidia GPU on the motherboard. We'll see if this install works. And yes, I need to re-install because something got horked up and it wouldn't boot. Hopefully we won't have a power failure along with the thunderstorm that's going over right now. That would be bad (but not totally unexpected, given the way this project has gone).

(Fast forward) 8

And the fun continues. It's now 8PM on Thursday. 24 hours since I took out the ATI video card, with still no joy in mudville. To be honest, I don't know how I haven't gone completely bald or completely insane because of this. I've NEVER had an installation go this bad. Blue screens or hangs at seemingly random times. There's no way to diagnose, because the dump doesn't get put on the hard drive. Sometimes the install blue screens during the initial phase. And what the heck is are PTEs?

(Fast forward) 8

I just got off the phone with the ASUS technical support folks (after the third try. The first two the line when dead as the tech came on). They seem to think that the problem isn't with the motherboard (big surprise) but with the media from Microsoft. I won't write that off, I've seen it before. In fact, I've seen viruses from Microsoft software; pristine, from the factory CDs with a virus on it. It does happen. So I'm going to try putting Windows 7 on it instead of Vista. The tech suggested XP, but I don't know that I have an XP disk I can install from. So I'm burning the Windows 7 x64 RC to a DVD to try that.

(Fast forward) 8

As I expected, Win7 wouldn't install either. Linux won't even recognize the video card. <sarcasm> I wonder what that could mean! </sarcasm>

(Fast forward) 8

It's now Friday morning, around 11AM, and I just got off the phone with the great folks at TigerDirect. I have nothing but praise for these folks. They definitely know how to do customer service. A 5 minute phone call, and the new motherboard will be here (but in three to four business days). Once it's here I can send back the dead one. The biggest problem I can see with this whole thing is that frag-mom is still frag-box-less. I'm going to have to hook up the dead Dell again and pray it works for a few days. The saga continues.

I’m still alive, but I can’t say so much for the Inspiron!

I know I've been away for quite a while, but life has a way sometimes of getting really busy, especially when doctors are involved. I'll spare you the dirty details, unless you request a "deep dive" as they say at work.

 

Last time I wrote about Frag-Mom and her new video card. Well, both success and failure. I usually don't talk bad about manufacturers, but Dell REALLY bit the big one with the Inspiron 531. After changing out the video card, it worked well for a few days; then it started the BSOD issues again (0x00000E if that means anything to you). But I think we've found a fix for the problem. We're buying a new computer and pressing this one into service for doing accounting and inventory for our new businesses.

 

Yes, I said businesses, plural. I'm getting tired of the way the Air Force works (you'd figure that after 21 years, I'd have figured it all out, but no). In the past 2 weeks, I've learned that both of the people above me a few levels, the CIO and the one below him, are moving to different jobs. There is no stability in the Air Force leadership, and THAT, my friends, is why the military in general (no pun intended) cannot get anything accomplished in a reasonable length of time. So, I'm going to try to build up my businesses part time while I'm working until I can support my family in the manner to which we've become accustomed without being a government contractor. I have no idea how long that will take, and I have no idea if one day I may just get so fed up with contracting that I just walk off. Only God knows what the future holds.

 

So, I'm guessing you're wondering about my new businesses. I'm going to withhold that information until everything gets stabilized in the part-time realm. So you can wait for a few months until I hammer out all the details. I will share one part of it, though. Go to this site. Poke around and let me know if you have any questions. I'll respond in less than 24 hours, Lord willing.

 

Well, back to Frag-Mom's new computer. You'll have to wait for that, too, just like we do. TigerDirect says it should be here around June 2^nd, so once it get's here, there'll be unboxing pictures and a nice long article about the "construction" process (because I'll be building it from parts).

 

I'm going to keep this one short, because I'll be posting more in a few days once the box is completed.

Happy Mother’s Day, Frag-mom!

Let me start out by saying that we've never been a "normal" family. In fact, in my house, "normal" is only a drier setting.

 

Let me continue the lead-in by adding that my wife has never been one for the typical gifts, mostly because she's not a typical wife. A few years ago, she sent me to Home Depot to get her a new circular saw for Christmas because there was one on sale. I went to Home Depot, found the saw, went to the check-out counter and waited in line. When I put it on the counter I said "I'm getting my wife this for Christmas." The woman at the register looked at me with that look you give someone who is obviously going to do something stupid and said "You don't want to do that." I explained that this was exactly what my wife had asked for and she just looked at me, shook her head, and rang up my purchase. I just don't think she believed me, but it was true!

 

With Mother's Day coming up, I wanted to make sure my wife got something she would use every day, and something that she needed. No, not a vacuum cleaner; that would just get me hurt. Time for me to give you a little more background.

 

About 2 years ago, I got my wife a Dell Inspiron 531. It was a decent computer for a good price, and we got it at Wal-Mart. At least I thought it was a decent computer. For the past year or so she's been getting the dreaded BSOD, and worst of all, it would happen at the most inopportune times, usually during a battle while playing World of Warcraft. The BSOD's pointed to 2 issues; memory problems and the graphics driver.

 

My first attack against the dreaded BSOD was to find the memory problem. I booted up with The Ultimate Boot CD (TUBCD). TUBCD is an awesome collection of diagnostic tools for troubleshooting or fixing a PC. TUBCD has more than 50 tools and utilities to help you diagnose and/or fix computer problems. OK, so I booted with TUBCD and ran one of the memory diagnostics. I got an error in the 2^nd DIMM. So, I rebooted and ran it again just to make sure; same error. I turned it off, removed the power cord (safety first, just like Norm says), and looked at the mother board. Hmmmm, which is DIMM 2? Count from the top or the bottom? I guessed, pulled a DIMM, moved them so they were all adjacent, put the power cord back on and rebooted with TUBCD and reran the test. Success! No more memory errors. I ran the test again, just to be safe; same successful result. Cool, one problem down.

 

My next attack was the video driver. I checked the Dell website and got the "recommended" driver for the 531. No joy. So I downloaded the driver from the nVidia website. Still no joy. She got a BSOD during combat! That wouldn't have been so bad except that we were under Skysong Lake in Nagrand, doing the Agitated Spirits of Skysong quest. Not a good place to get a BSOD! We both assumed she'd come back dead.

 

Don't get the idea that this all took place in a short time span. These events took about 2 weeks, just to let you know.

 

So, I'm reviewing all these issues, and I hit on an idea. The 531 has a graphics card on the MoBo. Integrated graphics cards share system memory, and sometimes have problems. That's when the light bulb went on. A new graphics card!

 

I started doing the research like I always do. We have a Microcenter not far from our house (about 22 miles), and on the way between our house and most of my doctor appointments, so I wanted to find a graphics card I could pick up on my way home from the doctor.

 

I did my research at Tom's Hardware. Tom's is great, and they do a monthly feature article on graphics cards (among other things). Specifically, I was looking at the best graphics card for the money, ~$65. Tom's recommended the Radeon HD 4670 with 512MB GDDR3. I looked at Microcenter, and they had them for a decent price. Time to take a few extra minutes on the way home and pick up a Mother's Day present! Yes, a new graphics card; the perfect Mother's Day gift for the gaming mom.

 

But wait, the story isn't over yet. We also decided that I should get one for a Father's Day gift. I'm cool with that. My graphics card only gives me 20 to 30 frames per second (FPS) in WoW, so a new one would be helpful. Into Microcenter we go, and I start searching the aisles for the desired card.

 

I love Microcenter. I have renamed it "Geek Mecca" because I need to make a trip there every so often to maintain what little sanity I have. But I also like consistency. If things change, I tend to get confused. Microcenter is rearranging their build it yourself section, and I couldn't find the graphics card I was looking for. We must have spent a good 15 minutes just wandering around once we found the aisle of graphics cards. I couldn't find the cards I wanted. Once I got some help from Daniel, everything was better. Daniel pointed out a few similar cards, and then my eye was drawn to a sale placard (my wonderful wife, the über shopper pointed it out). It was for a Diamond Radeon HD 4670, but it had 1GB of DDR3! With a $42 rebate! W00T! So, we picked up two of the cards and took them home.

 

Installation of the cards was easy. No additional power connection is required, unlike some of the higher-end graphics cards. Simply remove the power cable (thanks Norm), push the card into the PCIe slot, make sure it's locked down, close it up, plug it back in and boot. The software on the disk was outdated (not a major surprise) so after we installed the initial drivers, we down-loaded the newest off the ATI website.

 

So, what's the verdict? The FPS in WoW went up from 20 – 30 for me to 55 – 60, no matter where I went, and that was after improving the way the graphics were displayed, i.e. deeper depth of field, adding shadows, etc. They are very impressive cards. I also noticed that when I use graphic intensive applications (like GIMP) the variable speed cooling fans on my desktop don't go to full speed, which tells me the graphics card is doing the heavy lifting, like it should.

 

Oh, and a happy ending to the combat tale of woe, she didn't drown in Skysong lake. She came back, swam up, and got to safety!

 

Happy Mother's Day, all you gaming mothers out there. Go get yourself an awesome graphics card.

 

P.S. – For some reason, the Dell 531 is STILL getting the BSOD, but so far it hasn't happened while we're playing WoW. More troubleshooting on the way, or it's time to start looking for a bare-bones system to put all the good stuff on.

Jaunty Jackalope First Look: a Slack brown Fedora Dr. Jones would be proud of!

Earlier this week Jaunty Jackalope was released (that would be Ubuntu 9.04). I thought it would be interesting to give it a try on one of my computers, so I picked my new HP notebook. For a real test, I set it up with an external USB 60GB drive (mostly because I didn't want to screw anything up by modifying my 320GB internal permanently).

 

I downloaded the iso image on Wednesday night. It took much longer that I expected (since that was the day it was released) because of the traffic at all the download mirrors. No big deal. I downloaded it using one of the spare laptops we have laying around, an old Celeron system (about 5 years old or so) that I am playing with Win7 on. The download went without a hitch (once I found a mirror that would actually let the download start!). As a side note, the built-in CD burning in Win7 is very nice; fast, easy, convenient, and accurate. Once I burned the image to a CD, I thought "What the heck, I'll try the live boot feature and see what happens".

 

I was impressed. The image booted correctly, identified all the devices on the Toshiba laptop, and came up quickly (for a 5 year old system). It correctly identified the wireless network card, the sound, the dimensions of the LCD, all on the first try. I may put in on there as a final version once the Win7 beta expires in August. I didn't try too much, just played around, used Firefox, hit some web sites to test the WiFi card (and it seems faster, or maybe it's Firefox, I'm not sure). That was a good first test, so I waited until Friday night to give it the final test.

 

The install went very quickly. I'm impressed with the install menus. I think back to the mid '90s when I would do my Slackware installs, shuffling floppies in and out of the drive; nobody EVER thought about putting Linux on a laptop; Minix maybe, but not Linux. Well, it's been several millenniums in computer years since then. Ubuntu 9.04 installed in less than 30 minutes, and even gave the option of porting over my existing files and settings from my Vista boot drive. That's a nice feature.

 

With the installation done, it was time to play! The CD drive popped open and I was given the prompt to press Enter to reboot.

Grub Loading stage1.5

Grub loading, please wait...
Error 17

No joy.

 

So, since I have my desktop sitting right here with all the resources of the world at my fingertips, let's find out what the problem is. I went to Google and searched for Grub Error 17. There are over 153,000 hits for that, so I'm guessing it's not an uncommon problem. I started poking around and the most recent information I could find on that error was from June of 2008. Hmmm. That was a while ago. You'd figure they'd have fixed it by now if it was a bug. Digging deeper told me it was the Grub loader configuration, not a bug. Grub tries to identify the hard drives on the computer based on polling them, not from BIOS or directly from the system. If there is a discrepancy between the two, Grub won't boot the computer correctly and will give the Error 17. That's nice, but how do I fix it?

 

I booted off the boot CD again, and dug around on the new Ubuntu boot disk. I looked in the /boot/grub/device.map file. It looked OK to me. I don't see any real problem. Paged through menu.lst with the same result. OK, I'm stumped. Back to Google.

 

Then I stumbled upon what may have been a gift from God. Buried deep in the recesses of some forum (and I can't remember which one) was a link to the Super Grub Disk. The WHAT? The Super Grub Disk. It's a magical 4MB CD iso image (yeah it's a waste of a CD but it WORKED) that, when you boot from the CD will analyze your Grub setup and configuration and fix any problems. FANTASTIC! I quickly downloaded the image (it took less than 30 seconds), burned the image, put it in the CD drive of the notebook, booted and prayed.

 

The menu was slightly confusing, but I dug around and figured it out. Pick the automagic menu item. It took all of about 2 seconds, and the computer rebooted. And magically, the Grub menu appeared with the boot choices. SAVED! I didn't lose all my stuff on my notebook! Huzzah!

 

It was 11:00 PM by this time, and being an old fart dealing with back problems, it was time for bed. But it was like Christmas Eve knowing that I could play with my new Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope install in the morning.

 

I crawled out of bed at around 7:30 or so this morning and stumbled to the office to test my new toy. Windows Vista shut down cleanly, booted into Linux with no problems. Very nice. Now let's play. The first thing I noticed was the wireless card wasn't connected. No problem, I thought, I'll just do what I did with the Toshiba downstairs the other night. I put my mouse over the wireless icon on the top bar, but it didn't show the dropdown of the available connections. That's odd, I thought. OK, well, I clicked on it, and Linux hadn't installed the wireless card by default. I typed in the SSID of my wireless network, and it fired up. Perfect. Now that my Jackalope knew it was on the net, it did the updates (yeah, 3 days out and already there's updates!). Firefox updated and a few other minor updates (to be honest, they went by so fast, I missed most of them). No restart required. But wait a second. When Ubuntu boots, isn't there supposed to be that wonderful African drum beat sound? I don't remember hearing that. Hmmmm. I tested the sound card. Nothing. The volume was up, and was not muted. OK, Linux didn't recognize the sound card. I installed Skype anyway and fired it up. No sound, of course. But at least I have Skype installed.

 

Here's the bottom line. Jaunty Jackalope is a nice Linux build, but it's not perfect. I've done some research on the sound card issue and it should be an easy fix (I hope). I'll get that fixed and test it for a few more weeks. I'll give you an update then.

BlackBerry tools and Dr. Frankenstein’s Laptop

It's been an interesting week, news-wise, but I'm going to stay as far away from politics as I can today and focus on two things; Windows 7 and my beloved BlackBerry.

 

Just to be confusing, I'll start with my BlackBerry. I've had my BlackBerry Curve 8330 from Verizon Wireless for about five months now. It has become an indispensible part of my work tool kit because it is so versatile. Let me give you a feel for what I'm using on my BlackBerry. I have Slacker Mobile for music. I have YouMail for my voicemail, I have ÜberTwitter for Twitter access, and I have several of Google's mobile tools installed just to round things out. So where do I start?

 

Let's start with Google. I have three mobile tools from Google installed on my BB. GTalk, Gmail, and GoogleMobile. If you have a BB and use gmail for your email, you absolutely MUST install the gmail app for the BB. But let me warn you, if you get a lot of mail in gmail, change the default alarm options, or you'll be inundated with vibrations and flashing lights (or you can just remember to close out of gmail when you finish reading your email)! By default, when you escape out of gmail, the application remains open in the background, checking for new messages for you, and letting you know when they arrive. If that's what you're looking for, that's great, but I prefer to exit out of gmail completely so I use the menu options and scroll down to exit. If you haven't tried gmail for your BB, you'll understand what I mean when you try it. Gtalk is exactly what you think it is, the Google Talk capability for your BB. It's fully featured, you can use emoticons, and you can have multiple conversations going at once (but that is very cumbersome for me). But if you are logged in to Google in several locations, all of them will alert you on the initial GTalk message (which is an issue for me that I haven't fixed yet). So when I get a GTalk message, my BB vibrates, my Gmail on my PC flashes the message, and Pidgin flashes. Lots of excitement for one simple message. I'll find a solution for it eventually, but it's not high on my list of things to do. Finally, there's GoogleMobile. The icon on my BB is a nice blue square with a big G in it (and I thought big G was General Mills). GoogleMobile gives you access to search, Gmail, GoogleMaps, GoogleNews, and Reader. I don't use Reader on my BB because I follow so many RSS feeds that it would just be lots of hard work. I do, however use GoogleMaps. The new version of GoogleMaps includes Google's Latitude (which I talked about earlier). I use it to figure out where my wife is when she's out running errands, just in case I need to help her find directions to get home. All of these apps are highly recommended.

 

ÜberTwitter is a recent discovery for me. ÜberTwitter is currently in open beta testing, but you wouldn't be able to tell it by using the app. It integrates itself very well into the BB, with modifiable alarm levels for Friends updates, @ replys, and Direct Messages, which I find very useful. It also is always on, which is somewhat of a battery drain, but that's OK, given what it does for you. You can configure ÜberTwitter to update your GTalk status based on your last update. You can also configure ÜberTwitter to update your location based on cell tower location, not relying on your GPS (which is good for Verizon users). It also lets you tweet video and images by pushing them to a dedicated ÜberTwitter user site and tweeting the URL. You can look at your friends list, and best of all, you can install it OTA, so you can just go to the site from your BB and install. This is an awesome Twitter tool for the BB, and in my book, it is far ahead of all the other BB Twitter tools out there, and it's still in beta!

 

YouMail is a cool voicemail tool that replaces your voicemail from your current provider and provides you a better and free replacement. Your cell service provider pays YouMail for providing the voicemail service that you are not using from your cell provider. All you need to do is go to the YouMail website and download the software on your phone. The web site will walk you through what you need to do with your phone to switch voicemail providers. Then upload your contacts to YouMail. Here's the cool part: once your contacts are uploaded, if one of your contacts calls your BB and you don't answer, the voicemail answers and greets them by name, and takes a message. That feature freaked out my daughter; I thought it was just awesome. But wait, there's more! You can record your own personal greetings and assign them to specific contacts, so if you want a special greeting for your mom, you can record something like "Hi mom, sorry I missed your call! I'll call you back as soon as I can, but let me know what's going on, ok?" and every time your mother calls and you don't answer your BB, she will get that greeting. You can also set up specific contacts that will be ignored or just dumped (in case you're trying to lose that really needy guy you just dumped). For a fee, YouMail will transcribe your voicemail and send you an email of the message. All the rest of the features are free. YouMail is just Awesome.

 

Slacker was the only I found to stream music on my BB. There are two versions, free and pay. Pay give you the option of skipping as many songs as you would like, while free only lets you skip 6 songs per hour. I don't find that to be an issue, so I stay cheep and go with the free version. Slacker also sucks your battery dry, so make sure your BB is plugged in or well charged if you're going to listen for a long time!

 

Windows 7

 

About a month ago, I helped my Mother-in-law buy a new laptop, which relegated her old laptop to the stack of Dr. Frankenstein's play-things. Her old Toshiba Celeron-based laptop was about 5 years old, running really slow, and was annoying for her (because her games were running slow, which I totally understand). So what did I try? Last night I put Windows 7 on that poor old warn out laptop. To my surprise, it actually works! Let me share with you some of the issues I've found with Windows 7 on this old laptop.

 

First, let's look at Internet Explorer 8. This is an integral part of Windows 7 (although I've been told you can actually uninstall it). For some reason I haven't figured out yet, Gmail gives me an error when I start it in IE8. I have no idea why this happens, but if I find out, I'll let you know.

 

One of the cool things about Windows 7 on the home network is that it has "Libraries". Libraries are a collection of directories (folders) that contain the same type of file (say MP3s, videos, pictures, etc). You can add or remove folders from a library using the properties dialog of the right-click menu. It's a great way of putting similar things together without really clumping them together.

 

Like I said, I installed yesterday, so once I've played with it for a while and my wife as well, I'll have more for you, but so far, I'm really impressed with Windows 7. IE8 just seems like another non-standard Microsoft browser, and even though it's supposed to be main stream now, I'm not going to upgrade my work laptop until I absolutely have to, because no one has tested it with our work VPN yet. More on that later, I hope.

 

Like I said, it's been an interesting week. Hope you had a good one. Oh, and if you have computer related questions or problems, send them to @Mister_Fix_I_T on Twitter. I'm shooting for less than a 24 hour turn-around time at the start, and hopefully I can drop that down to about an hour in the future.

Safe Computing

I sit here in my home office, completely surrounded by technology. Three desktops and a laptop running, two desktops in various states of disrepair, a multifunction inkjet printer, and a laser printer, are all within eight feet of where I sit. All of the computers are running or configured to run Microsoft operating systems, XP, Vista, or Windows Home Server. I haven't used a Macintosh since I gave up my old Mac SE. Well, that's not quite true. I bought a Mac Mini for the church a few years back and I spent some time configuring it and playing with the Bluetooth keyboard and mouse.

 

Lots of people are moving to the Mac platform. You hear things about the Mac being "virus free" or people saying things like "I've never owned any anti-virus software. My Mac doesn't need it". All I can think is "your time will come, my friend." In fact, I think your time is very near. According to an article on Ars Technica, the market share of Mac OS X browsers (a reasonable indicator of Mac ownership) has increased steadily since 2007. In January 2009 the Mac OS X browser market share was 9.63%, up from 6.38% in February 2007. What does that mean? Mac computers are getting more popular.

 

OK, I hear you. So what? Macs are getting more popular. Good for them. Well, maybe not. Let's think about this for a moment. According to hitslink.com, Microsoft has 87.5% of the OS market share, with Apple's Mac OS X at 8.66%, Linux at 1%, and 2.9% for other OS out there. Let's discount the fact that there are lots of bugs in the Microsoft OS, actually, let's assume there are equal numbers of bugs in ALL operating systems. Using a military term, Microsoft is a "target of opportunity" because it has such a large market share. If you want to crack into a computer, and you don't know what the operating system of that computer is, it's a good guess it's Microsoft based. But Apple's Mac OS X is on the rise. That means that crackers will soon start focusing on OS X, if they haven't already. And OS X is a nice, soft target because so many Mac users have been lulled into a false sense of security.

 

OK, you say, what about Linux? It has a real small market share, right? That means it's safe, right? Um, no. Not really. Linux is a very powerful operating system (and Mac OS X is similar to Linux in that it is based on Unix). So powerful is the same as not safe? No, not really. There are many different ways to configure a Linux-based system. Those configurations may include opening up ports or controlled holes in the firewall on the computer, or turning the firewall off altogether. This can inject vulnerabilities into the configuration if you don't know what you're doing. Linux has historically been the OS of choice of crackers, because of its ability to be configured and manipulated. You can configure a Linux computer to look like other operating systems, both visually and on the network.

 

So, what am I trying to say here? No computer is inherently secure simply because of its operating system. All operating systems have vulnerabilities. Microsoft operating systems are vulnerable because they are the most widely used operating system, so they are an easier target. So far, OS X has been reasonable safe because of "security through obscurity". And while there is no honor among thieves, there is among crackers, so most Linux-based computers are safe because of "professional courtesy". There is malicious software for any and all operating systems out there. No one operating system is safe, because no operating system development team can consider all the possible weaknesses inherent to their system. You need to protect your computer from attacks. If you have sensitive information on your computer (like checking account numbers, date of birth, etc. what is known as Personally Identifiable Information or PII) you need to protect that information. Please protect your computer, no matter what operating system is running on it. Get anti-virus software, anti-spyware software, and a firewall to protect you from the bad guys out there.

Random Ramblings

Well, it's been an interesting week. And I'm using the word 'interesting' sarcastically. Filled with doctor visits, a smattering of telephone conferences, and trying to write in the medicated fog of Vicodin and Flexeril, this week has been a challenge. The good news is, the meds have trimmed the pain down to a tolerable level, but they make me so, well, drugged up that I can't think straight most of the time and have to do mindless things just to stay occupied and awake. Enough about me, let's look at some of the things I DID accomplish this week.

 

I'll start with Windows Home Server. Power Pack 2 came out last week, and it was an automatic download if you have your server configured for that. Power Pack 2 fixes some problems that server had, and also added the ability to use Remote Desktop from Vista to the home server. Remote desktop is awesome. I was using TightVNC, which is fantastic for free software, but I was having some issues with screen refresh on some of my applications, so I was looking for a better solution. Remote Desktop IS that better solution. No screen refresh issues, and it's VERY fast. Several years ago, Remote Desktop was always slow for me and the refresh times were not tolerable. Either I have a better network now or they fixed the refresh problems. Great product. If you have WHS and don't have automatic updates turned on, get Power Pack 2 and install it. Word of warning though, your clients on your network will need to update their local software, and some will need to reboot. The only thing I saw was that Vista 64 bit didn't need to reboot, but Vista 32 bit did. I don't understand why, but that's what happened.

 

I'm using Galleon on my WHS box for TiVo connectivity. Galleon pulls my favorite shows down from either of my TiVos on my network and saves them on the server. Galleon 2.5.5 was released this week. I didn't see any noticeable changes in it, but it was an easy install. I didn't have to save any of my configuration files, just downloaded the executable file to the server, then ran the application for the install. The install stopped and restarted the service cleanly with no issues. If you're going to do this, make sure you're not doing any downloads from a TiVo when you do your install. That will break that file and you'll need to delete and re-download the file. Not a real problem, but an inconvenience. If you have a Linux server or a Mac, you can run Galleon, too. Galleon is written in Java, so it's platform independent. Galleon is a MUST for anyone who wants to save files from their TiVo.

 

Two weeks ago, I wrote about Twitter. Twitter is an awesome tool and great for communicating with large amounts of people at once. But it can be addictive (I have one of those personalities where I get addicted to things very easily, which is why I don't really drink much alcohol, but that's another story). You've been warned. Twitter is really cool, though. I've met some great people on Twitter, and they've exposed me to many new ideas that I hadn't thought about. It's very mind-expanding and educational. I've been using twitter since a little before Thanksgiving of 2008 I guess, and I now have almost 1000 followers, which is a milestone I never thought I'd reach. At times with the 1100 or so people I follow some people's comments that aren't directed at me are lost in the noise of all the other "tweets" going on, but that's how life works. I was asked this week how I would describe Twitter. I compared Twitter to a cocktail party (or whatever kind of party you want to use). There are always multiple conversations going on, I just pick one and jump in. Or if I see someone I know, I go over to them and start talking. Some people are going around handing out business cards (not that there's anything wrong with that) and some people are off in one corner talking about personal stuff. Twitter is one big world-wide conversation that can include anyone and anything you want. I've found it to be a great educational tool, a great teaching tool, and also great for sharing with people who are of a like mind.

 

I picked up an older WRT-54G wireless router from Linksys a few weeks ago, but I haven't had time to play with it. I'm planning on flashing the OS with one of the free versions, but I can't decide which one. If you have a recommendation, let me know. I'd love to have a new toy to put on my network!

 

I also helped my mother-in-law and her sister buy new laptops recently. Both their laptops were over 4 years old, and were having problems with both speed and bugs. The best solution was to get new laptops. I looked at BestBuy.com and picked something that was good for Internet and e-mail, and something that would play their non-graphics intensive games. I settled on a pair of Acer-Aspire Laptops with Intel® Pentium® Dual-Core Processor T3400 (the Acer model number is AS4730-4516). They are decent laptops, and probably overpowered for what they need, but including the shipping and 2 year support plan they came to $500 each, which would have been unheard of two or three years ago. They don't have all the bells and whistles, but they'll do exactly what my in-laws need. And I can hear you asking the question "Why did you buy from Best Buy? Wasn't there someplace cheaper?" My answer is both yes, and no. I've had a Best Buy Reward Zone card for some time now, and the perks associated with having that card were never huge, until I became a Silver Premier member (which means I spent LOTS of money at Best Buy). One advantage is that shipping is discounted significantly. Another advantage is the fact that I get the equivalent of cash back on my purchases in the form of Reward Zone points, which I can spend at Best Buy. It's a great marketing ploy. At least it worked on me! Back to the laptops. I plan on trying to load Linux (most likely Ubuntu) on one or both of the laptops and see how that works. Maybe I can use one for war-driving. Stay tuned.

 

There have been a few things in the past few weeks that have kept me sane (well, as sane as I can be); E-mail, Twitter, and Skype. Since my back problems have come back, I'm basically home-bound for now. I've been able to work some from here at my REAL job, and I've also been able to use Twitter for social interaction. But the real saving grace lately has been Skype. If you don't use Skype, get it and play with it. Skype is free. There are multiple things you can do with Skype; you can use it as just another IM tool; you can use it for "Skype calls" which is just free VoIP to other Skype users, and you can do video calls. With my oldest daughter moving to Japan with her husband, Skype has been a life saver. We have used the video chat almost every day since they got their Internet connection up and working. I get to talk with my grandmonster and he still feels a connection to us. It's really cute when he gives me a hug good-by at the end of the call (which is usually around 10PM here, because I'm starting to prop my eye-lids open with toothpicks). It's kind of odd, though, when my daughter carries me around the house by taking the laptop with her. Now I know how Raj's parents feel on The Big Bang Theory! Funny and strange all at once! If you're not using Skype, give it a try! They just released a new version and it's VERY stable, even across ½ the world!

 

Well, I guess that's enough ramblings for today. If you have any comments or suggestions, please let me know and I'll either comment back or try them out.

 

Why Are You Here

Hope you had a good week. I wanted to start by apologizing for this week's blog (I know, don't apologize, just move forward! Sorry (there I go again!)). It's been an odd week and I didn't get much tech stuff done this week. But I would like to share with you something I wrote back in January that I didn't publish. Not tech related, but more about service and thinking. Hope you like it.

 

3:00 AM, January 1^st

"Why are you here."

It wasn't a question. It was a statement. It made no sense as a statement, but there it was.

"Why are you here."

Where were those words coming from?

"Well, I've thought about that a lot from a metaphysical point of view. Why are any of us here?" I thought.

"Why are you here."

That's when I realized, it wasn't a 'voice' per se. It was a thought. It was in my head. It wasn't my thought, but it was in my head.

I could see pictures in my head. People I know, enjoying each other's company; sharing communion; it was at church. They were sharing what they had to help others. I was sharing what I had to help others, too.

"Um . . . to help others?" I thought. My high school teachers would have asked 'Is that an answer, or a question?' It was a question. Someone had to ask a question, and the 'voice' in my head wasn't doing it.

I could see people I had never met before, but I knew them. Is this something that will happen in the future?

"Where am I?" I thought.

"I'm in bed. It's still early. Go back to sleep." I answered myself.

That's what got me thinking. Not just the big question of why are we here, but the question I asked my kids about 10 years ago when we were "church shopping".

Every time the Air Force moved us to a new base, we looked for a new church. "Church Shopping" is what we called it. Sometimes we found a church we fit in with. Sometimes we didn't. With a family that is 4/5 introverts, it's hard to find a place where we all fit in. Sometimes, we settled. Sometimes, we just avoided the problem, and slid back into our 'overly relaxed' ways. No contact.

The last move put us here in the Washington DC area. We actually lived for a year within the boarders of the city. During our church shopping trips, we decided there would be an outer fringe we would not break. No more than 30 minutes travel on Sundays to get to church. That narrowed it down to 3 places. They were about the same distance from where we lived. One was a big congregation with a deaf ministry and a large teen group (and we had teens at the time). One was a medium congregation of mostly older families with few teens, but a large pre-teen group (we had a pre-teen). The third had some teens (not many), lots of little kids (8 and below) and a small overall population. They were struggling to stay together. I guess there were less than 10 men in the congregation. They had a new minister who had just returned from being a missionary. He had lots of interesting ideas about the New Testament. Some people considered him to be controversial. He had a heart for Muslims. He, with lots of help, translated the New Testament from Greek, Latin, and Aramaic into simple English, and then into Arabic.

Where did we decide to "go to church"? Of the three choices, two had something we needed. The third needed something we had. We decided to go with the third.

It's been 10 years now. The church has grown to about 80 or so members, and more men then we can schedule in a month's time. One question keeps ringing in my ears: "do they still need what we have?"

"Why are you here."

It’s not just what a bird does

OK, let me start with an apology. It's not the next week. It's been much longer than I expected, but the world has gotten away from me.

 

So I've obviously been playing with this "new" bit of technology called Twitter. It's not really new. I first heard about twitter last year, I think, and it had been going for a while before that. I was told that Twitter was "a micro-blog" and that "you just type in what you're doing right now in 140 characters or less", and I thought "who would use that, and why would I want to know what you're doing?" Well, my mind has been expanded.

 

I got an email from a friend of mine from way back. His email was very short. "Tell me about Twitter, please. Thanks." Wow, what a lead in. Here's my response:

 

Twitter is an odd duck. It's a community of people who share their thoughts and what they're doing 140 characters at a time.

I guess one of the most famous Twitter users right now is John McCain, tweeting (that's what sending a 140 character message is called) about what's going on in the Senate. It's interesting to see the sarcastic side of John McCain. Earlier last week when he started tweeting the top 10 pork items in the bills being passed, he said this:
#5. $650,000 for beaver management in North Carolina and Mississippi - how does one manage a beaver?
and
#2 $2 million "for promotion of astronomy" in Hawaii - because nothing says new jobs for average Americans like investing in astronomy

You start out on Twitter by "Following" people. For me it felt a little like stalking. I searched for people I had emails for and followed them. Then I searched for famous and semi famous people and followed them. Then I looked at their followers, and followed a few of them. Some people follow you back so you can have 2-way conversations, some, like John McCain, only follow a few people, but basically broadcast their message to all their followers (Senator McCain currently has almost 159k followers and is following only 32 people).

Current estimates are about 2 to 7 million people around the world are using twitter. Early reports from the emergency landing in the Hudson River were from Twitter. Early insights into the president's address to congress were from twitter.

There are groups within Twitter that mark their comments with what are "hashtags" or #. One I use is Top Conservatives On Twitter or #TCOT. I just learned yesterday that there is a dictionary of hashtags, but I haven't found it yet. I'm still looking.

Twitter is a great tool for communicating, especially for people like me who don't do well in a face to face situation. It gives me just enough anonymity to feel comfortable.

Twitter's great. Join up. HTTP://www.twitter.com

 

Well, since that time, I've done a little digging. The dictionary of hashtags is at www.hashdictionary.com (what a surprise). I've also become very much a twitterholic. It's amazing to me that this application, this piece of technology that I was so unsure of, has become a part of my daily life so quickly. I have friends all over the world: Poland, England, Canada, Brazil, Taiwan, Indonesia, Australia, India, and many more places I'm sure (including the US!). What's funny to me is that I actually communicate with these people. People I've never met (for an introvert like me, that's odd).

 

Twitter can become an amazing tool, or it could devolve into a useless toy and a waste of time. For now, I choose to believe it will be an amazing tool to move the world forward into becoming a smaller, more closely knit community of people. Like I said in my email to my friend, Twitter is great. Join up. When you do, follow me. I'd love to chat with you.