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.

Windows 7 & Google Latitude

As I've said a few times, I'm playing with Windows 7 Beta. I downloaded both the 32 bit and 64 bit versions, just in case I get to install the 64 bit version somewhere (I have a few computers I could install it on, but I don't want to lose what's there). I have Win7 installed on my HP Notebook, running in a VirtualBox VM. Install was easy, I just pointed the VirtualBox to the ISO image of the install CD as a virtual CD, made the virtual hard drive, then booted the image. The install went fine.

 

Once Win7 was installed, I noticed that there was a warning message about not having any anti-virus software on the image. Well, I wanted this to be a full test, so I clicked the button for suggestions on how to fix it, and was taken to a website with links to multiple anti-virus suites. Feeling adventurous, I decided to try Kapersky because they had a free beta test version of their anti-virus for Win7. I downloaded the software and installed it on my Win7 image. And that's when I started getting the marvelous BSOD. I have nothing but anecdotal evidence that Kapersky caused the BSODs that wouldn't allow the Win7 image to run. My main piece of evidence is that when I rolled back the install of Kapersky, it worked fine. (Kapersky = Not recommended).

 

So my next test was Norton 360. It installed with no issues and has been running error free ever since. However, it's only a limited beta trial that expires (I can't remember when it expires right now, but it's way too soon since the Win7 beta goes to August). I have a complaint with my Norton 360 as well. I may have it configured wrong, but I had to force it to update signature files. All it would do is say "Your anti-virus signature files are out of date" and "your anti spyware signature files are out of date". Great that's helpful. If you're so smart, why don't you fix that for me. McAfee does that for me by default. I'm not saying I'm stupid, but I do like to have things done for me. And why do I need to restart after getting a virus signature file?

 

My next test is to put some real programs on Win7 and see how it works. I know it will be different than a real computer since it is in VirtualBox, but it will give me a feel for it. I also have an older computer that I want to try Win7 on (an old Celeron box from a few years back) just to test out the low end capabilities. I will say I like the way Win7 looks. Nice graphics, semi-intuitive layout. More on Win7 later.

 

Another new toy I've been playing with is Google Latitude. Latitude is a location sensitive program for your mobile phone. It runs in Google Maps and interfaces either with the GPS on your phone or self-locates by using information from the cell towers the phone is talking to (with a large margin of error, but that's OK). I'm using Latitude on my BlackBerry Curve from Verizon Wireless. The way Verizon has the GPS configured on the BlackBerry it won't talk to anything but the default Maps application, so Latitude is using triangulation to find my location. (BTW, I saw this week that the new version of Google Maps for the Storm WILL talk to the GPS. Keep hacking at it Google, I'll be happy when Google Maps can see MY GPS).

 

Once I got Latitude installed (actually, Google Maps 3.0.2 for my Blackberry) and set up my account (you need a gmail account for it to work), I set up some friends so I could test it. A coworker and I configured so we could track each other's location. He's using a Bold on AT&T, so his location is off his GPS when he can get satellite signal. Standing beside each other and looking at Latitude, we were about 3 blocks apart (difference between GPS and cell tower triangulation). Again, I don't have a problem with that. I think I kind of like it, really. I don't mind people knowing I'm in a particular 750m radius of a cell tower. Getting my location down to about 3m is a little creepy. Thursday morning once my coworker got to the office, I walked up to him and said "bad traffic, huh?" He just looked at me, then it clicked that we were using Latitude, and I could see that he was in one place on I-95 for a particularly L-O-N-G time.

 

I can think of a few legitimate uses for Latitude. First, in a business situation, if you have a distributed sales or support team or a delivery system, you can track the location of your team members in real-time and redirect them to a new location if needed. Also, if your staff were in an on-call situation, you could contact the member closest to the location that needed attention and dispatch them quickly to that location. Of course, as an individual user, you can limit who can see your location on Latitude, so if your staff members didn't want to be tracked, they could go "off-grid" and disappear. Second, in a social situation, you can go to a location and see who of your friends may be close by and invite them to join you (or you could join them).

 

Latitude could be looked at as high-tech stalking, but if you remember you can limit other people's capability to see / track your location, you are in total control of the situation. However, it does go to a central server, and well, you get the picture. Administrators have access to anything on their server, right? Even taking all that in consideration, I really like Latitude and highly recommend it. All you iPhone users will have to wait a while to get Latitude on your phones, but Google says it's coming.

 

Next week, my current take on Twitter.

 

One Thing

DISCLAIMER: This post is religiously oriented. If you are offended by religious thought and can't get over the fact that other people have opinions, feel free to stop reading now. But if you stop now, you're going to miss something good. Those of you who do read this, please comment.

 

Ever wonder what God has planned for you? I'm not talking about your final destination or anything like that. I mean like tomorrow or next week. Does God micromanage our lives to the point where He moves us around like pieces on a chess board? Do we have any freedom to do what we want to do?

 

These are questions I've been considering (I was thinking of saying struggling with, but that isn't quite true) since the beginning of the year. You see, I am of the opinion that everyone has a purpose. That purpose may be somewhat self directed, but ultimately we have a single purpose; the "One thing" that was spoken of in City Slickers. Figuring out what that one thing is takes us through the experiences of life day by day.

 

So what's my one thing? Well, I've tried several things, work wise. Music, radio personality, computer operator, system administrator, programmer, general geek, teacher, husband, father, grandfather, chief cook and bottle washer. That's not what I'm talking about. What you do does not define what you are, or at least it shouldn't. I think that's one of the problems with society, not just today, but since we as a race started specializing (I'm not the guy who grows food, that's Jack over there. I go out and tend the flocks so my wife can make yarn so Jane over there can knit sweaters). To quote a great fictional man, "A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects!" But all those things will lead you to that "One thing". Just because you can do all these things doesn't mean you don't need and aren't directed by God.

 

OK, let's go back in time. Step into the wayback machine with me as we go back about 4000 years or so to the time long ago and a place far away. We see a rich man. Here, rich means he has a big heard of sheep / goats, lots of servants and mercenaries, etc. Not necessarily money. This rich man wigs out and thinks he hears a Voice. That Voice tells him to go someplace where he's never been but the Voice will tell him where to go. This rich man was named Abram. Abram lived in Iraq (well, that's what we call it now). He lived in one of the biggest cities in the world at the time (not that anyone could have known that then). He had everything going for him and left it behind because of this Voice. Abram had a purpose. His "One thing" was to become the father of a great nation. That's not to say he didn't mess up along the way because he did. He told people his wife was his sister to keep out of trouble. He was told by the Voice that he would have a son by his wife, but tried with his wife's maid instead and fathered Ishmael. Once he finally did what he was told, things started to work out. But then the Voice told him to sacrifice his son Isaac. He was no stranger to human sacrifice. I'm sure he was confused because this Voice had never asked for anything like this before. But he obeyed and God (yeah, not such a veiled reference) provided a ram to sacrifice in Isaac's place.

 

Fast forward to about 20 years ago. If we saw someone walking around talking to "themselves", we would have them sent somewhere that could help them. Today, we just assume they are talking on the cell phone with a Bluetooth headset. But what would you do if you heard a voice, and that voice wasn't like anything you've ever heard before? Would you ignore it? COULD you ignore it? Would listening to it help you find that "One thing"? Do you believe that God speaks to people?

 

I don't think I've found that "One thing" yet for me. I am still looking, though. I'm not comparing myself with Abraham except that I too am on a journey with an uncertain path. However, like Abraham I know where that path will end. I don't know when (thank God) because that would just be scary. The journey continues. Will you walk with me?

Office Politics

WARNING: the following blog is vague and nebulous to protect the innocent and the guilty. If you can't follow along, draw a picture. That usually helps.

 

I've noticed something this week. People handle thing differently. No real big surprise there, but I wanted to share two different situations with you.

Situation number one.

I work as a contractor for the military. Not a building contractor. I have a contract with a branch of the military to do specific work for them. My military boss is a Lieutenant Colonel. For those of you who don't know, lieutenant is derived from the French for "in the place of", and colonel, well, it has the word colon in it, so use your imagination (just kidding on the colonel part). Military people move around a lot and have different job experiences within the same career field. This particular Lieutenant Colonel (Lt Col from now on) has had many "assignments", to include being in Hawaii for several years at the Pacific Air Forces headquarters.

Recently, a new military person came into the office; a Major, with more time in the military than the Lt Col who is in charge. That's not an issue in the military. It's not about time seniority, it's about what you wear on your sleeve or collar that matters. Here's the interesting part. The Major worked at Pacific Air Forces headquarters at the same time the Lt Col did; but at that time, the Lt Col was a Captain, and the Major was still a Major, so was of higher rank. The roles had changed. The interesting thing with the dynamic here is, there's no animosity, no angst, no anger. That's just the way it is in the military some times. Now the student is the master.

There's no power play, no "Ha ha, I outrank you now!" none of that nonsense. It just works. The Lt Col is in charge, knows what needs to be done, delegates work to everyone in the office, including the Major, and everyone reports back on progress. That's how it is with the contractors in the office, too; most of them are retired military, one a retired Colonel. We all know who is in charge, do what we're assigned, and report progress or lack thereof to the boss. It's a very smooth operation, mostly because the boss takes most of the heat for all of us, but that allows us to continue to do our jobs.

 

Situation number two.

This one goes back almost two months. As background, one of my responsibilities is the standardization of all operating system and office productivity software for this particular branch of the military. One of the individuals in a cubicle near mine was having issues with a particular piece of office productivity software. It seemed to be a configuration issue. The problem started about two months ago, but I was asked about it two weeks ago. Because of my responsibility, I know a lot of the folks responsible for configuration control of the software on all the computers in this service. There was a configuration change made at our office (mandated from above) that "broke" this particular office productivity product. As far as we can tell, they are the only office in all of this branch of the service that is using this software. Like I said, I was asked to help out, and I volunteered to step in to see what I could do.

The issue seems to be bigger than we all thought. I had people in many places working on the problem, with minimal success. Since any changes will likely affect more than just this piece of productivity software, great care must be taken not to break any other software with this fix. However, the boss of the individual I volunteered to help is getting concerned that the repair is taking so long. That boss has threatened to bring in the bosses of the people who are trying to fix the problem. Now, I don't know these particular bosses. I will say, I'm not impressed with the techniques used to try to expedite the resolution. If I were trying to solve a problem directly and you threaten to get my boss involved, I would hope that my boss would support my stance and tell you that I'm doing all I can considering I have other responsibilities. What I'm hoping is that over the weekend the problem gets fixed and no bosses need to get called. But if that doesn't happen, I hope that one of those bosses tells the individual who is trying to play politics that they need to back off and let people work.

I guess it all boils down to this: threaten me all you want; I know I'm doing the best that I can do and that's better than anyone else can do, so just wait until I'm done. If I weren't the best at what I do, I wouldn't be here. That's not being conceited, that's being honest.

Windows Home Server (WHS)

Windows Home Server (WHS). For some people, it conjures up visions of rack mounted systems with blinking lights heating up the basement. For others, it is just a way for Mr. Super Geek to show off his stuff. Well, WHS has been on the street for a while now (it's been out in final version since November 2007 and Service Pack 1 has been out for about six months). I finally got the chance to "play" with WHS. It's been 30 days now, and I'd like to let you know what I've discovered.

Let me start off with the fact that I didn't get one of those ready-made WHS boxen. No, I can never do that. I had an older desktop system that I replaced a year ago with my current AMD Phenom quad core from Gateway. I started out with an FIC K8-800T AMD Athlon 64 3000+ based system with an 80GB SATA primary hard drive, NEC DVD-RW drive, and an old Matshita LS-120 super floppy drive. [Just wanted to note here that Word 2007 just crashed on me and I lost the next paragraph or two, so I'll have to rewrite them. Anyone know of a better blog editor that works with Blogspot?] I then added a Maxtor 6L300R0 300GB EIDE drive and a Seagate ST3400832A 400GB drive. I would like to say that the K8-800T is a great motherboard, but I ran into some issues that I'll get to later.

The install was flawless. Booted off the DVD, wiped the drives clean, and then installed everything. It took a few reboots, but it was up and running in about two hours. If you're doing a user install of WHS, remember you need to name your server, so be ready. I named mine SERVER. I know, it's accurate but unimaginative; give me a break here, I can't always be creative! Once SERVER was up and running, I created user accounts for everyone in the house and created the client software install CD. Don't forget to create extra shares if you want them.

The Client Install CD ensures the client PC can see the WHS box, makes a link to the WHS shares on the desktop, ensures the passwords are in sync between the two boxen, and then installs the remote access software. It was about three hours total and I had my server (don't forget the name – SERVER; tough one to remember) and two clients up and running, sharing files and being all happy and stuff. Then I began the process of modifying SERVER.

If you know me, you know I can't leave well enough alone. I need to make it faster, better, smarter than it was. So, what's first? Let me start with explaining you can manage your server from any client using the Windows Home Server Console, which is a nice GUI that shows useful information about the status of your server. It's also extendable by adding in, well, add-ins. If you know me very well, or have been reading this blog, you can guess what my first add-in had to do with. My first add-in was TiVo Publisher. TiVo Publisher allows you to publish music, photos and video from your WHS to your TiVo. This is a one-way connection, so you can't pull video files off your TiVo to your server. More on that later. TiVo publisher installed easy (you can download the software on a client, copy it to the \\SERVER\Software\Add-Ins folder, then run the console and install the software). Now my TiVos can see the music, photos and video files on my WHS box. One down.

The next one was a little more difficult. You may remember me writing about Galleon
before. Galleon is a Java based TiVo client / server for any platform (did I mention it was Java?). Galleon is really cool and I've been playing with it for a few years now. I knew it would run on a WHS box because I had read about it (and everything you read on the Internets is true, right?). So, my first step was to install the Java JRE on the server. Luckily I had a monitor, keyboard and mouse connected to SERVER, so I could do this directly on the box. Not sure how you would do it otherwise. Once the JRE was installed, installing Galleon was quite easy. I got the windows install package and ran it on the server. Once Galleon started up, I noticed my Living Room TiVo was not talking to the network. Ok, no problem; it's on wireless, I'll just tweak it a little and it'll be good to go. Nope. It was dead. No lights, nothing. Wouldn't start up. More on this fix in a bit.

OK, so TiVo Publisher is installed so I can share files to my TiVo(s), and Galleon is installed, so I can pull video off the TiVo(s). Now I can share TiVo files to all the PCs on my home network, right? Yeah, I can share them, but they're *.TiVo files, so nothing can play them except TiVo Desktop and I don't want to load that on all my computers. There must be a solution to this problem! There IS!

The solution is the TiVo File Decoder. You see, the *.TiVo files are simply an encrypted mpeg2 file. All you need is a decryption tool and you're good to go. TiVoDecode is that tool. TiVoDecode uses the Media Access Key (MAK) assigned to your TiVo(s) when you get TiVoToGo to decrypt the files. That's all I know. I know if you have TiVo files, your files are encrypted with your MAK and mine are encrypted with my MAK, so in theory we can't share them unless we share MAKs. TiVoDecode uses your MAK to decrypt the files and saves them as an mpeg2 file. These files are playable with the standard mpeg2 CODEC. I haven't found (or written) a way to automate the decryption process, so I have to check the "daily downloads" for .TiVo files to decrypt. Once the decryption is done, I delete the *.TiVo file, but can still share the file back to the TiVo because of TiVo Publisher. SWEET!

I also tried a few other add-ins, but I'll talk about them another time. Now, here's the sad part.

I had SERVER up and running for about 3 days when the inevitable happened. If you remember, I had server issues when it was running Linux. Stupid me, same server, same drives. I thought wiping and low-level formatting the SATA 80GB drive would fix the problem. NOPE! Dead as a doornail. This is the reason I keep my hair short now; not long enough to grab onto to pull it out in frustration. I pulled the 80GB drive off the system and re-installed SERVER in the same software and data configuration (no backups, just did it all again from scratch / memory). So, I lost 80GB of space, but added to my experience by doing the install again. So when my birthday email from Best Buy came and they said I'd get triple reward points if I bought something this month, I knew what I was going to do. Seagate has a 1TB SATA drive (ST31000333AS) that would be perfect for my server. Best Buy had it for $120, and I had $40 in reward cash from getting my notebook in November.

I got the drive and waited until the weekend to install it. I thought "SATA is SATA, right?" so I just shut it down, installed on the same channel the 80GB was on, and powered back up. The server just sat there. After about five minutes (which seemed like an eternity) it booted, but didn't recognize the drive. Research time. It seems like SATA is not SATA. The new drives support 3.0Gbps throughput, vs. the old 1.5Gbps throughput, but Seagate puts a jumper on their drives to force the drives down to the 1.5Gbps speed. Shutdown the server, pull the drive, set the jumper (incorrectly the first time, but fixed it the second time), reinstall the drive, power up. The server just sat there. WHAT IS GOING ON?!

Research time again. After many hours of very frustrating research, I discovered that the K8-800T uses the VIA VT8237 south bridge chip. Why is this important? Well, it seems the VT8237 chip doesn't correctly support the 3.0 to 1.5 jumper and will not auto-negotiate the drives down to 1.5, so it won't even recognize the drive attached if it defaults to 3.0Gbps. Back to the store. This time, to Micro Center. My research had told me that the Silicon Image chip would recognize the drive. So I picked up a Syba SIL-3114 PCI SATA card. Once I installed the PCI card and connected the drive to it, BANG, it was recognized.

WHS is easy to add a drive to (assuming you don't have hardware issues, of course). Once the server came up and I logged into the console, I went to the Server Storage tab, noticed the nice juicy ST31000333AS 1TB drive sitting there, I told it to format and add it to the Data partition. Five minutes later, I had 1.55TB of space on my server with about 60% free, vs. the 18% free I had before the new drive. Now I'm down to 54% free. Too much TiVo.

So, what's the bottom line? I like WHS. I wouldn't say it's your mother's or grandmother's server, but if you are a light to moderate geek you should be able to set it up and configure it within a day if you're building your own, and less if you buy one off the shelf (I'd still like to try one of them if anyone from HP is out there reading this!). If you have a lot of media files (and who doesn't these days) I'd recommend the WHS because it's easy to use and configure.

Oh, and the dead TiVo in the living room? After more research, I found Weaknees.com which sells TiVo replacement parts, and information pointing to the fact that my power supply was dead. I ordered a new power supply from Weaknees.com, 2^nd day air (which doesn't include weekends and holidays, so it took 4 days to get here!), but the replacement took about 10 minutes and it was back up and running again!

IT Job Security in the DC Metro Economic Bubble

How safe is your IT job? And for people like me living in the DC area, does living here make your job any more secure?

There's been lots of rumors and out-right lay-offs in the past month or so, and lots of them in the IT industry. Here's some titles from today's news: IBM employees buzzing about layoff rumors, Microsoft layoff rumors continue their swirl, Bay Biz Buzz: Logitech joins local layoff parade, Widgetmaker Clearspring makes cuts, Lenovo denies rumors of layoff plan, LiveJournal Makes Deep Personnel Cuts, Chelmsford's Kronos cuts jobs, . . . do I need to continue? And that's just TODAY's news! It's hard to think about IBM and Microsoft thinking of laying off folks. I've always thought of them as the most solid of the IT area.

I'll be honest, about a year ago or less I was thinking about switching to a non-government type job. No, I'm not a government employee, but I'm the next best thing. I'm a government contractor, also known in this area as a "Beltway Bandit" or "Parkway Patriot" (my personal favorite). But working as a government contractor does not make my job much more secure. Let me give a pre-recession example.

I've worked for the same company for over three years now. The first contract I worked on was as a lead software development engineer (read project manager) for an online database for the Air Force. Due to several issues (none of them my fault or the fault of my company or coworkers) the customer asked that I be removed from the contract. This should have been the first sign of a problem, because the customer had no issue with me or my work, we were just "overspending the budget" for the contract. So what do you do when money is tight? Get rid of the most expensive person on the team you hired. It doesn't matter that without a team lead the rest of the team needs to pick up the management slack that I was keeping them isolated from. OK, so now you have developers doing their normal job and the management and demonstration aspects of the project. Another warning sign. Three months later our next option year on the contract was not exercised; we (as a team and as a company) were fired.

Now, understand that this contract expiration did not affect me directly (it did affect my company, as we lost several really good people because of this, and I'm still burning a little inside from it). When I was removed from the contract, my company had fortuitously gotten a new contract working in a different part of the same branch of the service. That's when I started in my current position. I've been there coming up on two years now, and every time a contract comes up for annual review I get nervous. The military is spending so much money supporting the war that there is very little money left to pay for contracted efforts that need to be done. Why does the military need so many contractors? Because the government has told them they can only have so many people (many times less than there used to be) but they (the service) need to continue to do everything they used to do. Do more with less by "working smarter, not harder". Yeah, right. As a contractor, I can only work 40 hours a week. There's no overtime on my contract. That's good for me. But I feel bad when I get up and walk out at the "end of the day" and the military and civilian folks are still there, sometimes until 9:00 pm at night.

I really didn't want this to become a dissertation on what's wrong in the military services today. What I'm saying is, in answer to my question, I would say that government jobs in the DC metro area and federal government jobs in general are safe; for now. To be honest, I don't have a good feeling about the next few years. (Heck, I don't have a good feeling about the next few weeks, but that's another story). I don't know what the answer is. I really haven't figured out what the question is! I just know that money is tight everywhere right now, and soon the government will start to feel the pinch. You can only print so much money until it is so devalued that it's useless.

I remember back in 1987 the Air Force sent me to Sicily for a month. Our team decided to go out for pizza (what else would you get in Sicily!). When the meal was over, the bill came to over 120,000 Lira! I looked at it and my jaw hit the table. I'd never seen that many zeros on a restaurant check before. 120,000 Lira! Good Lord! That must be an outrageous amount of dollars! Actually, it came out to about $10 each for the eight of us. Over time, the Lira had become so devalued that you paid rent in the millions.

I don't want to paint a bleak picture of the next few years. We don't know what the future will bring. Right now, there seems to be an economic security bubble over the DC metro area (I heard today we're only up to about 3% unemployment in northern Virginia). However, don't let your guard down. Anything can happen.

“Digging up” some long lost relatives (Geni.com)

Well, I'm late again. This is NOT going to become a habit! (If you know me, you know that's likely going to be a lie)

I wanted to write this week about a discovery I made (alright, I was pointed to this by @TS_Elliott on Twitter). I've always had an interest in genealogy, but never had the time or ability to do it justice. That's where this discovery (alright already! She already got credit. Leave me alone!) comes in.

Check out www.Geni.com. Geni is a combination genealogy website and social networking site. Let me give you an example of how this works out by talking about my experience.
 

Like I said already, @TS_Elliott pointed me to this site from Twitter because we may be related (I guess she used to be a Stratton in a previous life J). So, I went to the site, started an account, and started putting my family tree in by having Geni search my Gmail account. OK, this looks familiar; sort of like Facebook or Linkedin. Same concept. Then I built the relationships of the people I added (my brothers and sisters and my dad), filled in the holes, then sent out invites to all the family emails I had. That's when the magic happened.
 

The next day I got an email from Geni. One of my brothers had connected with Geni and updated lots of information.
 

I need to make a small break here and add some information, because I'm starting to sound like a bad son and brother. I'm from a BIG family. Huge by today's standards. Five brothers, two sisters (ok, three if you count Jackie; and most of us do because she lived with us all but the first 5 ½ or so years. Sometimes sharing life experiences is thicker than blood). AND both my parents came from big families. And most of their brothers and sisters had big families. So you see where I'm going with this. As an example, when I went to my parent's 50^th wedding anniversary, I had cousins come up and introduce themselves to me. Yeah, it's a big family. So, that said, it's hard for us to keep up with each other, especially since we're scattered to the four winds in the US.

 

OK, where was I? Oh, yeah. One of my brothers had connected with Geni and updated lots of information. I was never the organized one, so I was happy about that part. Then I started getting more emails. My daughters and my wife connected and updated their info. My mother-in-law got on and updated her family information. My daughters' in-laws got on and updated their information. My sisters got on and updated their information. Then the real magic happened. My nephew got on to Geni.
 

I have since learned that Shawn has been doing genealogy research on our family tree for a few years or so. He had many many generations of information in another program on his computer, but couldn't share it with anyone, and was sort of floating alone in a sea of names and birthdates. One of the many benefits of Geni is the ability to import GEDCOM formatted information into the website. GEDCOM is short for GEnealogical Data COMmunication, and is a standard for transferring genealogical information from one program to another. This is one standard in my life that has come in useful!
 

Geni also has some other neat features, like a Google Map of where people in your tree were born (not very interesting if you never left your home town, but interesting for some of us "far flung" folks). You can also connect your tree to other trees if you can find a link point. That's where trees start getting big. Also, each tree has "Awards " (in World of Warcraft terms they would be Achievements). I started my tree on December 18^th. I've added over 200 names to the tree (Shawn added over 1000!), invited 14 people, and uploaded 5 photos. Cool stats if you're into stats (and I am).
 

So, to top this all off, I'm now connected to 1,347 people on Geni (and I just got an email from them saying my tree is growing!). I'm learning things about my family I remember hearing about but was too young to care about (like being a descendent of Christopher Martin who signed the Mayflower Compact and died in Plymouth Colony on January 18^th, 1621 (exactly 342 years before I was born). Also that the Crocker family line was descended from English Gentry, the Cole family line descended from the Norse invasion of England, and lots of other fun facts!
 

Geni.com is a really cool website, with features that make it fun, educational, and a great way to keep in touch with your family (especially if it's as huge as mine is). I highly recommend it. Check it out.