Last night, all of a sudden, my internet connection went down.

After a while, all my web requests started getting directed to a comcast page that said:

"You will need to activate your account"

telling me that I needed to download some software.  Total BS.

The link for the software didn't even work.  I tried rebooting the modem, the router, nothing worked.

So after an hour in a comcast support chat (using my EVDO card for internet) they finally added my modem back to their system (or whatever).

If you get this message, and you are not a new customer, either comcast f'ed up (which is likely because they are possibly the worst company on earth) or you didn't pay your bill.

My wife just tried to install Skype on her Mac OSX computer.  Of course it didn't work.  Nothing ever works on Macs it seems.

After lots of messing around I found some random suggestion on some forum to try this:

1. Quit Skype
2. Go to the folder “ ~/Library/Application Support/Skype/ “
3. Delete the file "shared.xml"
4. Start Skype

Amazingly, this worked.

I had recently tried to use my Windows Home Server to restore a laptop image to a VM running inside HyperV. 

In the event that my machine totally died (not just a hard drive issue) I could restore the image to a VM and work from there while I got back on my feet with a new laptop.

Unfortunately I didn't find any way to make this work.  I ended up doing all this work and in the end, I couldn't boot.

A disk read error occurred
Press ctrl+alt+delete to restart.

I tried everything I could think of, repairing the MBR, running fixboot, doing a windows repair, restoring the hal dll from i386 etc.  Nothing worked.

So I gave up on using WHS to create an instance of my dev machine, and fell back on just trying to do a P2V of any type.

I came across Disk2VHD, a free Systernals tool.  This tool includes the options to run on the source machine while online, and also provides an option to "Fix" the HAL (hardware abstraction layer).  I think this was part of my original problem (the HAL issue).  My computer was setup to use SATA drivers, and HyperV only supports virtual IDE drivers.  I think (but am not sure) that this is what was causing my problem w/ using the WHS restore.

So anyway, Disk2VHD runs super fast, and pretty soon I had a VHD to try out. 

Now, this VHD didn't work either, but it would get me further along.  I would see the windows splash screen before the black screen of death.

What followed was a weird set of steps trying to figure out why things wouldn't work, but in the end, I never ended up needing to disable anything.... so I'm just going to try to write down the steps I took as best I can.

1. After the first BSOD I booted to safe mode (using F8).
2. Safe mode worked, and it seemed to find some new hardware, as I would have expected, but I don't think it found any of the drivers it needed (so maybe I had ejected the virtual windows CD or something).
3. Booting normally gave the black screen of death again.
4. I then found this page with instructions on how to replace the HAL.  Really these instructions were how to do Disk2VHD to a working VM, but I had already done most of the steps except the hal replacement.  I'm going to replace those instructions below:
1. 1)Downloaded Disk2VHD (v 1.3) from sysinternals (free) and unzipped on the laptop
   2)Find a place to store the new vhd - I used a 320GB external USB, but any storage device that pc can see and is big enough to hold your hard disk should work
   3)Run Disk2VHD and input the name and location for the new file
   4)On your virtual host create a new VPC (I use Virtual PC 2007) and add that new vhd you just created as the primary hard disk.
   5)Make sure you have an ISO of WinXP or an actual disk. If using an iso you'll need to mount it so it can be booted from.
   6)Fire up the new vpc and have it boot from that XP disc.
   7)Let it run setup and then select option 2 (R) to get repair console
   Login in to windows (need admin pw)
   9)Type “cd system32” press enter
   10)Assuming your CD (or mounted iso) is drive D - Type “expand d:\i386\halacpi.dl_” press enter
   11)Type “copy halacpi.dll hal.dll” press enter and then press y
   12)Reboot
   13)Press F8 to get to safe mode
   14)After the message that new stuff was installed, click OK for reboot
   15)After system boots back up, log in and install VM Additions
5. IIRC I still got the black screen of death.  It's possible that at this point behind the scenes it was doing a check of my disck or something, but I can't tell in the VM if the HDD is going or not so I just assumed it was locked.
6. I booted to safe mode and used MSconfig to disable everything, and also used /SOS, and some other options.
7. What followed was just a series of successful boots with me enabling more and more until I had everything enabled and it all still worked, so I'm not sure why I was getting the BlackSOD before I started this set of SafeMode boots.
8. Another thing I did at some point (maybe more than once) was try to install the VM Integration Services, which says that it's updating the HAL, so maybe that had something to do with it too.

The next 2 things that I'm going to try are, running a WHS restore to a VM that is already working (I don't think this will matter, but we'll see), and 2 trying to use the Disk2VHD on a machine that has a VHD mounted as a secondary drive.  I don't konw if this is even possible, but I was thinking that I could use WHS to create the VHD, mount the VHD as X: on some machine, and then tell Disk2VHD to create a VHD from X: and instruct it to to the "Fix HAL" thing.  I'm guessing that will not work as well, but we'll see.

 

Here is the article on how to install the update on the EX47X machines.

When HP released the HP MediaSmart Server 2.5 Update for the EX48x machines, they also ^[1] announced the full software would not be available to first generation users due "to hardware differences" anhd "the underlying software architecture". Based on that statement, Nigel Wilks (Cougar) and Alex Kuretz (Yakuza) started work on a way^[2] to make the update available to EX47x owners, dubbed "SanEncore" after the code names for the EX47x (San Juan) and the EX48x (Encore).

Cougar and Yakuza have also developed a Windows Home Server Add-In to fake the Update package into thinking it is running on a 2.1 machine, and handles some of the missing configuration items so that the 2.5 update is sucesful.

This chat takes place after I have already chatted with a different support group, called the IBM parts divions, and the IBM tech support division:

Mohammed: Thank you for accepting our chat service, how may I assist you?
you: When I customize an x3500, at last screen it says: (5652) Planar Base [$699.00] is required for this configuration and has been added for you.
you: What is Planar Base and what about my configuration makes it a requirement?
Mohammed: Is this for yourself (your company) or a client of yours?
you: mysefl
Mohammed: I see. I'm not too familiar with the planar base. I can have a specialist contact you to further discuss this need of yours
you: ok. How long does that normally take?
Mohammed: our usual turnaround is 48 hours
Mohammed: however we can try to have somebody contact you by end of day tomorrow
Mohammed: but I can't make any promises
you: ok my number is (630) 708-1234
Mohammed: May I have your full name, telephone number, email address, job title, company name and physical address?
you: Chris May, (630) 708-1234, cmay@RealNameRemoved.com that should be good
Mohammed: unfortunately without all the information requested above, I will not be able to have a specialist contact you
you: ok forget it I'll just buy a Dell

UPDATE: I did buy a Dell.  Stupid IBM couldn't have someone take 5 minutes and answer a question for someone who wanted to give them $3000. 

When you login to your computer as Whatever\Username, you can have windows store usernames and passwords for Something\Othername and Hello\World using the Stored Usernames and Passwords.

Getting to this dialog can be a real pain.  Just run this command from the Run dialog.

rundll32.exe keymgr.dll,KRShowKeyMgr

 

Today I was trying to do a backup to my WHS and I was getting the message on my client:

Backup is waiting on (cleanup).

After quite a long time, it was still on this message.

I did some investigating on the server and saw that 45 minutes earlier my server had kicked off a backup cleanup process.  This was indicated in the event viewer under "Homeserver". 

Task Manager also showed whsbackup.exe doing a lot of work.

So, if you run into this, just wait a bit and when the server is done with the cleanup the client backup will start like normal.

What the heck?  This ad does in fact go to Mozy.com.

 

You can use XXCOPY (www.xxcopy.com) to write simple backup scripts to copy your files to remote storage locations, but you can also use it to compress those files on the NTFS file system.

I have used /CLONE in the past because it's easy, but a side effect is that all the files will maintain their attributes when copied to the destination.  What this means is that if a file is not compressed at the source, it won't be compressed at the destination, even if you set the destination folder/drive to be compressed.

To solve this problem you just need to first set the compression attribute of the container of the location you are copying files too, and then use a switch to tell xxcopy to only set the "normal" attribute, which I belive sets the "A" attribute.  Either way, it works.

xxcopy E:\ /s /ASDC
xxcopy E:\ /s /AS:C
xXcopy D:\FolderRoot\*.* E:\FolderRoot /CLONE /YY /Z0 /KN 

The code here is backing up everything in D:\FolderRoot to the E: with compression.

The first step sets the E: to be a compressed drive (this will work for any folder, not just the root of the drive).

The second step sets all files in all folders to be compressed.  This is just to make sure that when this runs at night, no files are missed.

The last step copies all files from the folder we care about, and the /KN swtich allows the destination files to inherit the "C" (compression) attribute from the parent folder.

 

NitroPDF.com offers a simplified version of their Pro online pdf product for free.

I needed to remove a few pages from a PDF document, and it worked perfect.

http://www.nitropdf.com/free/hammer/index.htm

Last night I had another instance where doing a:

SELECT * FROM
TBL WHERE ID NOT IN (SELECT ID FROM TBL2)

would fail every time to return any rows.

After longer than it should have been, I realized that it was this stupid issue that I blogged about already (SQL "NOT IN" Will Fail If The List Contains A Null).

 

Ever been logged into a machine via RDP and you need to do a reboot but guess what, "restart" isn't one of your options.  You only have Disconnect and Log Off.  Ooops.  Now what?

No problem, just run this from the command line:

shutdown -r

And thats it.  The system will reboot in 30 seconds.

Do you frequently get ConnectionError1 when using Mozy?

Try this: change your scheduled backup time to something more random than 2:00am.  Try 2:09 or 2:41.

It's that simple.

My lenovo came with Sierra Wireless MC5725 for use with Verizon's EVDO network.

VZAccess manager (Verizons POS software) told me today that there was a firmware update for my Sierra Wireless device.

This update failed, and now my device won't work.  I basically can't enable the device.  It doen't show up in my network list, and I can't turn it on using the fn+F5 screen.

Where can I get the firmware for this thing?  Sierra Wireless says they don't support these OEM devices, and Lenovo has nothing regarding firmware on their site, only drivers.

VZAccess Manager is one of the worst pieces of software I have ever had the chance to work with.  It never stops suprising me how crappy it can be, and yet I am still forced to use it every day.  I hate Verizon for doing this to me.

It took me a while to figure out that I didn't have a driver problem.

I was looking everywhere to find the switch for the wifi on this HP Elitebook 8730w, but it turns out the LED icon in the upper left that shows the WIFI status IS the button, but clicking it does nothing.. why?

Well, b/c HP is using "LAN/WLAN switching" which means that it automatically turns off the wifi connection if you are plugged in.

Just unplug your network cable and your wifi card will enable! 

 

I have been looking around for a quick easy load testing package.  Right now I'm trying out OpenSTA.  I can't say that it has been very direct, but I am still holding out hope that it will work.

This is the Getting Started Guide that I have been using.

I spent over an hour arguing with people from Verizon about a charge on my bill for my EVDO card.

They charged me another 200 dollars for "minutes" used.  Clearly this is a mistake, as I don't use the chip embedded in my laptop like others use a cell phone.  It's impossible actually, seeing as how you hold a mobile phone up to your face and my device is embedded in my laptop :).

At first, they spent 20 minutes telling me that the extra charge was for VOIP calls.  This is a directly quote from the CSR: "For example, you can use Yahoo instant messenger to make VOIP calls where you talking to someone through your computer."

I continued to argue that they don't charge for VOIP traffic any differently than normal traffic.

3 times she told me that, yes, in fact they did, and it's right there in my contract.  I kept asking her to show me where that was in my contract, and of course there was nothing about it.

In fact, Verizon even advertises VOIP as on of the uses of getting an EVDO card and data plan.

Anyway... so eventually they changed their tune and started saying that it was because I was using their Quick2Net network.  I tried to get them to understand that making VOIP calls, and connecting to a different data network are nothing alike, but they continued to act as if they were 1 in the same.

After 45 minutes or so we were no longer arguing about Skype usage and were fully on the topic of the Quick2Net network.  The CSR couldn't even explain to me WHAT the Quick2Net network was, or HOW I could even connect to this network, IF I WANTED TO!

They had 2 times when they claimed I connected to the Quick2Net network for an extended period.  Both of these times conflicted with my local VZAccessManager logs of when I was connected to the BroadbandAccess Rev-A network, but the CSR didn't seem to care about the fact that my own logs conflicted with what they were trying to bill me for.

While I was on hold I did some research and found that the Quick2Net network is the ooooooooold data network that Verizon has.  It's speed is 14.4k, or about 100 times slower than the connection I already pay for.

In fact, when I found this screen shot, I remembered Quick2Net:

This was probably about 5 years ago when this option was available.  As you can see, you used to be able to click on Quick2Net (and it used to be free), but I haven't had that option available to me for years.

Finally, the CSR set me to her supervisor, who agreed to refund my charge, and setup my account so that I wouldn't connect to Quick2Net again.

But, not because I never really connected to quick to net, or because it was a billing error on their part, or because if I DID connect, it was through a fault of their software/network/switches.  No, they agreed because I wouldn't have "benefited" from the Quick2Net services (seeing as how I already pay for a 100x faster connection).  I made a point to let him know that I never connected to this service, but accepted the resolution.

If you are unfortunate as I was, and Verizon tries to bill you for this, good luck.

I didn't find anything online with people saying they had this same exprience, so I'm posting this in case others run into this same issue and are wondering what happened.

I bought a cheap version of NeatWorks and downloaded a demo of Paperport from Nuance in an attempt to find a good option for digitizing all my mail.

My experience with NeatWorks isn't great.  It mostly works, but some problems have cropped up from time to time that make me have some concern.  For example, when I first installed the application it automatically searched for updates: it found one, and I installed the newer version of the app (newer that what was on the CD).

Well, it turned out over the next few days that much of the text that it would OCR would not make it into the search index.  So when you went to search for some keywords nothing would be found.

I contacted support and after walking me through a bunch of stuff, it turned out that there was a much newer version of the app available (but somehow their auto update didn't find it).  This new version seemed to fix this problem, but I basically had to rescan all my documents.  At that point, it was only a few, but what if I run into another problem after I have a few hundred scanned documents?

Speaking of a few hundred documents, right now I have 50 pages scanned and my database is 300MB.  This is insane!!  Even if you backup your data and compress it it ends up being like 500KB / page.  WAAAAAAY to large.  I guess it really isn't THAT big of a deal.  I mean if I end up with 5000 pages (100x what I have now) and my database is 30GB, it will really be stupid, but it won't really be a problem I guess. 

Another concern of mine with NeatWorks is lock-in.  What if I want to move to some other software product in the future?  How can I get my documents out of NeatWorks?  Well, it turns out not very easily.  You can export each document to a PDF, but you have to do it 1 at a time.  If you select multiple documents, it puts them into 1 giant PDF.  This is completely useless.  If you have 5000 pages and you want to start using some other PDF indexing product, it will take you forever to export all those files.  Also, you can only use the software with their scanners.

Also, last night I noticed that some receipt that I had scanned never showed up in my "inbox" (it goes from the Quick Scan to the Inbox).  This has me concerned.  I got no error message or any indication that something didn't work right.  It just never showed up.

Paperport has some nice pluses on its side.  It uses any scanner (not just 1 like w/ NeatWorks).  It stores all images as PDFs in a folder on your file system so you can manage them as you would any other file.

Reviews for PaperPort were not good, but others claimed the newer service pack fixed a lot of problems.  I did have it lock up on me once, but otherwise it seemed to work. 

The main problem with Paperport is it is trying to do to many things.  NeatWorks is for exactly what I am doing, Paperport is trying to be a fully featured Scanner software product, helping you to manage photos and stuff like that.  The UI is pretty poor also.

Basically though, the only reason I can't see myself using Paperport is that there is no way to attach and search by a date field.  I don't care about the date I scan a document (the file created date), I care about the date of the document.  So when I search for Mastercard statements, I can filter out what I want by date.  I didn't see any way to do this with Paperport.

Then when I went to submit a question to their support team asking about this, I was totally convinced to not buy their product (click for full size):

As many users have commented, it really does look like Paperport WAS a good product which has just morphed into a big, bloated, difficult to use product.

UPDATE: Now Nuance has changed me for the full product.  I'm guessing part of their trial is that they will automatically bill you for the software if you don't cancel your trial.  Wonderful, I am really glad I didn't pick Paperport: time to call and demand a refund.... again (they charged me 8 bucks for some BS extended download service on my free trial... these guys suck).

You may notice that your clipboard will sometimes work over RDP(TS) sessions, but sometimes not.

Normally the problem is that the server has clipboard access disabled.

Just follow these instructions to enable it

1. Log into the TS (on an account that has administrator rights)
2. Run the Terminal Services Configuration program
3. Select the Connections folder (under Terminal Services Configuration on the left window pane)
4. Right-click on the RDP-tcp connection (in the right window pane) and select Properties.
5. Click the Client Setting tab
6. Un-tick the Clipboard Mapping option under the Disable the following: heading.

Presto.

I am working on some stuff with WHS that would require me to have access to the bios and POST screens on my WHS, but unfortunately there is no video output on the HP machines.

Thankfully, cakalapati has started making cables that connect into a port inside the HPs.

http://www.mediasmartserver.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1290

Nice!  No soldering!

I have been slowly moving files onto my new WHS.  HP is due to release a new software version that allows for users to easily backup their shares to Amazon S3.

I have done a lot with Amazon's S3 service, but I don't feel good about using it for backups for a few reasons.  Primarly, if you want to backup large amounts of data, it IS very cheap, but it is sill kinda expensive.

In other words, it is very cheap compared with other managed storage options, but if you want to backup 500 GB you are still going to be paying a lot of money over the course of a year.

The solution I came across, which appears to be working fine on the WHS machines is Crash Plan (crashplan.com).  I installed it on my WHS and on the WHS I bought for my parents and have configured the 2 to backup to each other.

I won't get into all the details, but Crash Plan:

• costs nothing for the basic version
• encrypts your files before they leave your machine
• sends you emails if a backup has not happened successfully in X days

I have found no problems with running it on WHS.  I even replicate the files crashplan backs up across multiple drives so if my house burns down AND a hard drive at my parents fails, my data will still be safe.

One iPhone app that I really like is RJDJ.

http://rjdj.me/

It is very hard to explain it, but it basically takes the sounds around you that it picks up through the mic, and does all kinds of weird stuff to it to make beats/sounds/music etc.

It's really fun, and every single person I have shown this too has loved it, except for 2 people, and they are brothers, and they know who they are.  But everyone else has totally loved this program.

Unfortunately, many users felt that, once they paid the giant price ($2.99) for the full version of RJDJ, called RJDJ Album, that they would get future songs/scenes for free.

Instead, mostly due to how Apple restricts developers in how they can charge for stuff like content/udpates, they released the 2nd "album" RJDJ Shake as another $2.99 app. 

Some users were pissed, and I think they logged enough complaints to have RJDJ removed from iTunes, which totally sucks because I wanted to buy Shake and now I can't!

I wanted to put this post out there so if anyone else was trying to figure out why they can't get RJDJ they might get some answers here.

I hope the folks at RJDJ get this resolved, b/c I think it's an awesome program.  When I get some free time I am going to program some scenes for it, but right now I am spending all my free time on work for my clients.

UPDATE: It's back.

I have been looking into some of the options for streaming music from my WHS to devices in my house.

So far I don't seem to be finding many good options.  There are some that you point to a UNC share and then have to deal with a crappy UI to select the songs you want.

2 of the nicer options I have see are:

http://www.sonos.com/howitworks/

 

 

and

 

http://www.roku.com/products_soundbridge.php

 

 

 

http://www.roku.com/products_soundbridgeradio.php

 

 

I'm going to have to keep my eyes open for other options, but these seem like viable candidates.

 

I recently had an opportunity to travel to Mexico for some spanish lessons.  I wanted to put up a little write up here so if someone else was searching google for some options they might come across my article.

I arranged for lessons with Francisco Romero of the Cancun Spanish Language Institute.

http://www.studyspanish-mexico.com/

We had a great experience with Francisco.  We opted for an immersion type experience, with Francisco speaking almost no english during our lessons, but unlike some of the other instructors we have had, he was clearly 100% fluent in english, and could help explain some of the nuances in english. 

I would really recommend him to anyone else considering taking language lessons while in Cancun.

99 times out of 100 you can kill any process from within task manager, but what about that 100th time when it just doesn't work?

That's when it's time to get out the command prompt.

In task manager, you need to first get the PID.  Click View -> Select Columns and put a check next to PID (Process Identifier).  This will show you the PID in the task manager Processes tab.

Now, open command prompt and run:

Kill -f PID

If the process you want to kill was started by a scheduled task you need to run:

AT HH:MM <path>\kill -f PID

or

Soon <path>\kill -f PID

 

I am in the process of looking for a spanish school for this winter when I will be traveling to the Yucatán Peninsula.

I had meant to write something on here about my last trip to Mexico when we went to Veracruz.

We stayed at the Veracruz Spanish Immersion School.  Well, actually because we were there during their most busy week and we requested an odd schedule they put us up in one of their other houses, which was a short bus ride (or walk) from the school. 

The school is run by an American couple, who I think have setup a great program in Veracruz.  They meet you at the airport to make sure you arrive without issue.  Our rooms were nice, and all the rooms had A/C, which was extremely important as it was the hight of the summer.  Wireless internet access turned out to be equally important as some things with one of my clients meant that I needed to have internet access from my laptop to assist them, and I was able to do this without problem.

We met a lot of interesting people who were staying at the school.  I think probably the idea of language immersion programs might bring out some slightly odd people, and there were some for sure :), but we met a lot of nice people and spent a good amount of time hanging out with them.

The instructors were mostly in their early 20s.  Based on talking with some of the other students who had been doing these immersion programs for a while, it seemed like that might be different from most other programs, where older more experienced instructors were used, but I thought it was great.  I enjoyed talking with all our teachers, and they were all immensely friendly and helpful. 

All the instructors and students ate breakfast and lunch together, which gave you a chance to meet some of the other students/instructors that you might not have in your classes.  They also have one of the instructors during non-lesson hours from 5am to 9pm in the common area/living room.  This is a great idea, because if nothing is going on you can go hang out and practice your spanish, or just listen to others if you don't feel like talking.

The other thing they do, which is a really great idea, is that for 2 hours a day you go out on the town with one of the instructors.  You can use this time to practice your spanish, to learn about the city, to learn the bus system, to see sites, or in our case, to go find out how we can buy tickets for the upcoming futbol game between Cruz Azul and Los Tiberones Rojos.

One day a week is a day long trip to one of a number of destinations.  This is when we went to see some ruins.  We walked into the local town for lunch, and walked across a suspension bridge.  It was fun.

Veracruz was a nice place.  Safety was not an issue during our trip.  We were our walking around the city past midnight, and it was no big deal.  The buses that run up and down the main road were really easy to use and we took them several times a day to get all over the place.

The only problems we had were that I got sick (sore throat/cold) and then near then end of our trip got "sick" (montezuma's revenge!).  I probably had some bad ice somewhere.  Next time I'll bring some medicine in case that happens.  But overall, it wasn't that big of a deal. 

We have a few other places we would like to visit, but I would definitely go back.  We had fun and I think we learned a lot even though we were only there for a week.

 

There are lots of times when you might be setting up a batch file or nightly job where it would be nice to have the date in a format that you can use as part of a log file name.  i.e. ErrorLog021508.log (feb 15, 2008).

This is a script I found from a guy who goes by seamonkey, so I left his ownership line intact.

echo on
@REM Seamonkey's quick date batch (MMDDYYYY format)
@REM Setups %date variable
@REM First parses month, day, and year into mm , dd, yyyy formats and then combines to be MMDDYYYY
FOR /F "TOKENS=1* DELIMS= " %%A IN ('DATE/T') DO SET CDATE=%%B
FOR /F "TOKENS=1,2 eol=/ DELIMS=/ " %%A IN ('DATE/T') DO SET mm=%%B
FOR /F "TOKENS=1,2 DELIMS=/ eol=/” %%A IN ('echo %CDATE%') DO SET dd=%%B
FOR /F "TOKENS=2,3 DELIMS=/ " %%A IN ('echo %CDATE%') DO SET yyyy=%%B
SET date=%mm%%dd%%yyyy%
echo %date%

On Dell machines running Windows Server 2003 they are nice enough to stick an ugly bitmap on your background.  So when you VPN and RDP into the server, you get to sit and wait as it paints this image:

Thankfully, you can remove it.

Just use regedit and navigate to:

HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop

Then delete the key for WallPaper.

It's that simple!

 

David Szetela has a series of an articles on the science and methods behind successful PPC strategies.

This goes into the basics of testing different ppc ads, copy, landing pages, and maximizing ROI.  They say a 200% return is baseline acceptable, but 1000% is more what they are looking for.

Interesting and worth reading.

I have been accepting resumes for a while now trying to find developers for a client of mine.

I will be updating this article from time to time with new stuff.

DO have someone proofread your resume, cover letter, and email body.  Espically if you are not a native english speaker.  If you want your resume to go directly into the trash, then please, write your email with lots of grammer and spelling problems.

DON'T write in your cover letter that, while you don't have the skills/experience they are looking for, you DO have the skills/experience that really matters.  You have just managed to tell the person reading your resume that a) you don't have the skills they need, b) you think you are smarter than the person who came up with the needed skills/experience, and c) you are probably not easy to get along with.  All in the first sentence of your cover letter: BRAVO!

DON'T send a 9 page resume including every project you have ever worked on and details about said project.  I remember when I was told that resumes should be 1 page long (2 at the most) and I thought how wrong that was.  "My resme will be so awesome, 2 pages can't contain it!"  I realized very quickly how wrong I was.  I don't need to know the specifics of some project you worked on for 3 months back in 2002, and I don't need to know a list of every programming langauge, technique, or technology that you have ever touched. 

DO supply a cover letter, or at least turn your email into your cover letter.  It will get you bonus points.

DON'T include a stupid signature on your emails.  I actually received a resume that was signed like this:

--
If fishes could talk they'd ask for legs

Ok I guess that is somewhat funny in a Jack Handy kinda way, but it really doesn't belong on an job application email.

DON'T list "Internet Connection Technologies" that you have experience with.  I swear I got a resume with this as the 2nd heading (after education).  It listed "AOL Dial Up, AOL High Speed DSL, SBC DSL".  Before you start thinking, ok well maybe these were projects they worked on, you know, like working on the team to create AOL's dial up service... no this was not what they meant, it was clear from the rest of the resume.

DON'T just make up stuff if you don't know the answer to a question.  This isn't the ACT: there are penalities for guessing (it makes you look really stupid).  Now clearly there is a difference between making an educated guess (or talking in generalities instead of specifics) and trying to totally pull something out of thin air.  I recently interviewed a candidate who said he didn't have any project experience using AJAX but was aware of AJAX technologies.  So I asked him, can you explain how AJAX works?  I wasn't expecting much, just something about using client side script to make calls to the server w/o reloading the entire page.  Instead the answer we got back was "It's like JAVA running on top of Microsoft."  Up until that point I hadn't decided if this guy was qualified, and had he simply said "No, I am sorry I am not that familiar with AJAX" I probably would have still been considering him, but his terrible attempt at an answer removed all doubt that he was not qualified.

As I have grown older, I have learned to understand some of the quirks in my personality, and adjust my expectations accordingly.

For example, my whole life I have always had periods of intense interest in some subject only to lose interested after a couple months.  Various video games, RC Car building and racing, drawing, electric guitar, etc.

So now when I get older and I get ultra interested in some new subject, in the back of my mind I say "Ok, I know this seems like the most important thing right now, but in 6 months you will proably not be THAT interested anymore."

I would have bet you money that would have been the case with my most recent endevor, trying to learn spanish.  But here I am, listening (even paying for) podcasts, buying iPhone translation software (this software is really great), taking Spanish lessons twice a week with an instructor from Peru, and even booking a vacation to mexico to get 6 hrs of Spanish instruction a day.

I guess in my old age I am growing my attention span :).

In the next 72 hours, you expect the new campaign to generate 10x more traffic than you have had in the last 72 days.  How do you scale to deal with this problem?

Do you buy more servers?

A few companies are starting to offer instant scalability for needs like this.  Amazon has been doing this for a while with their web services, but it isn't very useful for people who need the site to be running 24x7 (and it isn't very MS friendly).  But now there are other companies coming into play to provide the service I am talking about.

https://www.gogrid.com/

and

http://www.mosso.com/

Both offer the ability to instantly scale up your infrastructure as needed.  You can buy more CPU cycles, storage space, bandwidth etc, for a short time period.

This may (or may not) be ready for prime time, but it an interesting development for sure!

I recently upgraded my iphone to the new version 2.0, almost entirely for 1 reason: exchange syncronization.

After some minor issues setting up, I got things working correctly and it worked great.  But, as soon as I connected to a wifi and tried to do anything with exchange it fails.

I first experienced this at work where we use 802.11 WPA-PEAP, so we were eager to take advantage of 2.0s support for WPA-PEAP.  We installed the profile and were browsing at fantastic speeds... but no email was coming through.

I couldn't send or receive any email.

We tried using the admin tools to look at the iphone console messages and they talked about some ASxxxxxx errors, error code 451 came up a lot.

I hoped it was something with our work network, but when I got home I found that once again, I couldn't send or receive anything.

Fantastic.

I'm hoping I am not the only one with this issue and someone else will read this and have more to add.

Update: It seems that the cause, for some unknown reason, is related to the profile that our network administrator is able to create with some new administration tools from apple.  Apple provides a tool to create profiles so you can send a config file to an iPhone and it will setup everything (email, wireless access etc).  When this profile (even if only for access to 1 wireless network) is on my iPhone, all exchange communication over our WiFi failes.

Update 2:  Ok maybe there is something else going on here.  I have removed the profile and I still can't send / receive from my home wifi.  I tried it at my parents house too and I get the same result.

Here are some keywords/error messages that I am getting:

Exchange Account Verification Failed

Cannot Send Mail.

An error occurred while delivering this message.

Update 3:  Alright, it appears we have it working now.  There were some settings across a few of our exchange proxy servers that might not have been updated, and also there are some activesync settings that allow you to configure an "inside" url and an "outside" url.  After much poking around, I think Mike Driscoll got it figured out.  Thanks Mike.

I recently wrote about how the Flickr Uploadr tool sucks, but the other part of that article was how the web upload tools for Flickr is very nice!

FancyUpload is a set of code using Flash/Javascript to perform out of band file uploads.

This is basically how Flickr allows you to queue files for upload in their web client, and it is very useful in this sense because it would be extremely painful to be forced to post every single image individually.

For me, I am more interested in the ability to post very large files without leaving the brower in a fashion that seems to make it look like it is "stuck" when really it is just uploading a giant file.

 

Flickr provides an application called Flickr Uploadr to help you upload your images, and it really sucks.

I have been trying to get it to upload my collection of images for the last 24 hours and it has failed at various stages of completion upwards of 10 times.  Each time it fails in the middle of a batch, it seems unclear as to if when I restart I am uploading the same images again or if it is smart enough to not upload images that have already been uploaded in the earlier batch. 

I think it probably isn't smart enough.

The other thing that is really crappy is that it is really really slow.

Using the web based upload tool (which is really sweet btw) is about 4-8x faster than using the Uploadr tool.  This is very frustrating because it should be the other way around.  You can do a lot of things with a rich client that you can't do in a web page, but apparently Flickr didn't put the effort into the Uploadr app.

Jungle Disk is another product (only 20 bucks) that runs on top of the S3 service from Amazon.

http://www.jungledisk.com/

Unlike S3 Backup, it acts as a virtual drive (like a USB drive) that you can drag files to/from.

The interesting part for me, is that they supposedly employ some kind of caching algorithm so that most files (I assume given availabe drive space) are cached locally so you don't have to go up to the server and download the whole thing when you want it.

Might be worth looking into.

Most internet providers for businesses offer some kind of SLA to show their commitment to continued uptime.

One of my customers who uses AT&T Business DSL recently had a multi day outage. 

So what does AT&T's SLA provide?

Customer connectivity shall be restored in 24 hours or less from the time AT&T is notified of the outage. *Customer shall be entitled to one (1) day's credit (based on 30 day calendar month) from the Customer's recurring monthly service fees if AT&T fails to meet the 24 Hour Service Restoration SLA.

Yes you read that right.  Your business has no email or internet access for 3-4 days and what does AT&T do for you?  They might knock 10 bucks or so off your bill.  How nice... well at least they don't make me waste any more time .... oh wait..

(*) Credits are not automatically applied. Customer must apply via the Business DSL SLA website located at http://www.att.com/businessdslsla, or by calling our Customer Care at 1-877-722-3755.

Wow. 

Jott is an interesting site that allows you to send emails from your phone.

You call a number, say the name of the person you want to send a message to, and it will do speech to text conversion and send the email.

As I understand it, they employ 2 different speech recognition engines, and if the 2 don't agree on what you said, they offload it to a person to do the typing.  Pretty interesting!

You can also set reminders and it will email ou 15 minutes before the reminder time.

Not sure that I will ever really get into using it heavily, but I thought I would give it a shot.

They also have an API so I could write up some code for my site and "phone in" my blog posts and they would show up here.  Pretty interesting indeed!

Here is the API: http://jott.com/jott/developers.html

 

Amazons S3 service already had crazy cheap bandwidth and storage.

Today I got an email that they are LOWERING the price even more!

Current data transfer price (through April 30, 2008)
$0.100 per GB - data transfer in
$0.180 per GB - first 10 TB / month data transfer out
$0.160 per GB - next 40 TB / month data transfer out
$0.130 per GB - data transfer out / month over 50 TB

New data transfer price (effective May 1, 2008)
$0.100 per GB - data transfer in
$0.170 per GB - first 10 TB / month data transfer out
$0.130 per GB - next 40 TB / month data transfer out
$0.110 per GB - next 100 TB / month data transfer out
$0.100 per GB - data transfer out / month over 150 TB

Excellent!

I am still not sure who to blame on this...

Is Comcast packet shaping Netflix, or is Netflix just not able to provide enough consisten bandwidth?

I'm leaning toward Comcast as being the problem behind this, but I haven't been able to fully verify it.

I have bandwidth to spare:

But netflix doesn't seem to like it:

 

Comcast has been caught "packet shaping" traffic for specific P2P applications like bittorrent.   While this isn't exactly packet filtering, the desired effect is to limit bandwidth for a given application.

It is total BS.

The last 2 nights, I have been trying to use Netflix, and even though speed test have me around 15 mbps (10 T1s worth of bandwidth), I am getting bandwidth warnings, and buffering pauses while trying to watch an episode of Dexter.

This is the message that I get:

Comcast has an interested in making your Netflix experience as terrible as possible: they want you to use their on demand video service!

Would they really do something like this?  Of course they would!  The question is not would they, but are they.

The only other possability is that Netflix itself is having some issues, but I can't seem to find anyone else seeing these major issues.

 

I am a season ticket holder for the Chicago Fire, and over the last few years, they have infuriated me numerous times with what appears to be total incompitance in running the business.  I won't go into it all now, but to point out yet another way they have blown it.

Let's say you ran the Fire, and you were trying to use your website to promote your home opener.  Don't you think you would try to avoid confusing your fans as to what time the games starts?

 

If you print out the season sechedule, it says 7:00.   If you look at the ticket, it says 7:30!

This is just dumb.  Dumb.

There are threads going on among fans on the various soccer related websites trying to figure out what time the game starts??  What is this, Guadalajara?? 

 

People love Apple, and they love iTunes, but I continue to believe that iTunesis the worst piece of widely used software out there.

Today I was trying to add a podcast to iTunes, and like months before, I ran into the problem of not being able to find anywhere that I could click to add a podcast.

It seemed the only way to add a podcast was to do so through the iTunes store.

Last time I gave up and was lucky enough to find the podcasts I wanted through iTunes, but this time the one I wanted to add wasn't listed there (or at least I couldn't find it).

After even more searching I finally found how to do it.  You need the URL as a link, and then you need to drag the link from your browser window, onto the "Podcasts" navigation link that is on the left hand side of iTunes.

Totally... stupid.  There is no other way to describe it.

 

This is pretty cool: http://www.jwirc.com/chat.html.

 

Microsoft really does a terrible job explaining all the variations of Visual Studio .Net 2008 (and there are many):

• Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition
• Visual Basic 2008 Express Edition
• Visual C# 2008 Express Edition
• Visual C++ 2008 Express Edition
• Visual Studio 2008 Standard Edition
• Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition
• Visual Studio Team System 2008 Architecture Edition
• Visual Studio Team System 2008 Database Edition
• Visual Studio Team System 2008 Development Edition
• Visual Studio Team System 2008 Test Edition
• Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Suite
  

After a lot of searching, I finally found this data sheet that explains most of it.

Why this was so hard to find is anyones guess.

One one of my dasBlog sites that was built before Akismet was supported, I accientally allowed for pingbacks to be tracked.

Ping backs are supposed to happen between blogs whenver you link to another blog article.

It's really a great idea!  If you are reading a blog post, you might see a list of 4 ping backs at the end.  These URLs are the locations of other blog articles that reference the article you are reading, so you might want to check some of those out to get those authors poing of view on whatever topic is being discussed.

But, of course, spammers ruin it for everyone.

Yesterday I got 18,000 pingbacks from sites selling prescription drugs in a matter of a hour or 2.

So I turned off ping backs, but that left me with a ton of spam to clean up.

Lucky for me, someone else has already run into this, and built a tool for stripping it out!

Really nice!  The only problem I found was that it didn't report issues with my config file (I had a bad character in there).  Actually, it WOULD report them, but would immediately begin processing the files (with no patterns to match against) so you couldn't tell that it was reporting it.

So if you run into a problem with this tool, try putting in a bad content path.  This was throw an exception and you will have time to read any debug info in the command terminal indicating if there was a problem with your config file earlier in the process.

After I fixed this issue, it worked great!

Thanks!

 

I recently wrote about some issues I was running into with Lenovo computers losing drive space.

I detailed it in this article:

What happened to my drive space (on my Lenovo laptop)?

Well, I think I found the solution.   My Lenovo came with built in Rescue and Recovery software (Under Thinkvantage).

This software tries to make local backups so you can rollback if you get a virus or something.

The problem is, it is very tricky, and doesn’t let you know that it is eating up your hard drive. 

The files never show up on your C:.  So, right now your C drive might show 80 GB total, 500 MB free… but if you show all files on the C drive, and select the properties of them, they all only add up to 45 GB (where is the rest?).

Well IBM hides these backup files somewhere.  I just noticed now that mine, even though I have never knowingly clicked “OK” when prompted to do a Rescue and Recovery backup, is saving 30GB of backup data.

So if you want to delete these, you can do the following:

1. Run Rescue and Recovery
2. Click on Advanced in the lower left hand corner
3. Click on Advanced (again) in the title bar
4. Select "Delete backups"
5. Select some backups to delete.

Thats it!
 

When Google Desktop first came out, I loved it.

It gave quick search results searching across multiple categories on my machine, and it was fast.

But the more I used it, the more I noticed things I didn't like.  Links to files that didn't exist.  Missing search results.  Incomplete results.

So even though I had a bad experience when I first tried Windows Desktop Search when it was in beta, I decided to try it again.

There is no quesiton, this is a clear cut total win for Microsoft.

Windows Desktop is fast, gives much more complete results (espically from my email), and has a much nicer user interface when compared with Google Desktop.

I have to say, I am suprised, but happy that it works as well as it does.

Give it a shot, cross your eyes just right and see the words that pop out.

Do you need to come up with some Use Cases?  Maybe you need to create a Software Requirements Specification document.  Or, how about something as simple as writing up some test cases.

ReadySET provides (for free) a set of software engineering document templates to help you come up with these articles.

Just select the type of document you are interested in and customize as needed.

Chances are I will never get time to do this, but still it would be nice.

Sometimes you might need/want to know what ports on your machine are being used.

If you try to start up a process listening on some port and it reports that the port is alread in use, what do you do?

The answer is to use this command:

netstat -a -n -o

This will show you all port activity including the PID so you can open up task manager and find which process is using which port.

Craigslist is good for laugh every now and then.

Usually it comes in the form of someone looking to hire someone to develop a site "Just like MySpace" with a budget of $500.  Or "I have a great way to run auctions online, a real Ebay killer.  Need you to implement my ideas.  Budget $1000 plus equity in the new company."  LOL.

But you can get a good laugh too by posting your own listing and reading the responses.  For example, I posted recently looking for someone with experience integrating business systems with quickbooks.  I wrote that, initially, I just wanted to sit with the person for a few hours to point me in the right direction, and to talk about some of the best practices for doing tihs type of work, but I might have them do some of the development work.

Here is one of the responses I got:

** CRAIGSLIST ADVISORY --- AVOID SCAMS BY DEALING LOCALLY
** Avoid: wiring money, cross-border deals, work-at-home
** Beware: cashier checks, money orders, escrow, shipping
** More Info: http://www.craigslist.org/about/scams.html

That is a hard program to automate, but I do have some experience with it when I worked for a large union construction company. You are better off not using it, I have some better methods of keeping your affairs in order using Excel. Call me if you want at XXX-XXX-XXXX for any questions. Marty

LOL

 

I was working on my father-in-laws laptop the other day and noticed that he was using up a lot of drive space.

I started poking around, but things were not adding up.  Of his 80 GB drive, about 30GB was unaccounted for.  I called a buddy of mine who was also running Vista to see if he had the same problem, and as it turned out, he was.

After some more investigation, it looks like this might not be a Vista issue, but is instead caused by IBM/Lenovo's Rescue and Recovery software.

I will have to confirm this later by actually fixing his computer, but I wanted to get this out there in case anyone else has a Lenovo laptop that is missing drive space.

Keywords:

Missing drive space, Missing disk space, Where is my drive space, Lenovo hard drive missing space.

I have been toying with the idea of trying to learn spanish... the class I most hated in school.

I have no idea where this desire came from, and more than I can explain my rather sudden interest in traveling and soccer (lots of EPL games on my DVR).

So I have been working with some Rosetta Stone CDs as well as listening to some podcasts ( www.coffeebreakspanish.com and www.notesinspanish.com ).  I have improved a little, but I think there is only so much you can do with reading/listening and not really having to interact with people who are speaking the native language.

I found this page that talks about the COE Language Proficiency Scale.  I think on this scale I would be only an A2:

A2 - Can understand sentences and frequently used expressions related to areas of most immediate relevance (e.g. very basic personal and family information, shopping, local geography, employment). Can communicate in simple and routine tasks requiring a simple and direct exchange of information on familiar and routine matters. Can describe in simple terms aspects of his/her background, immediate environment and matters in areas of immediate need. 

And I think I would like to be at the B2 level:

B2 - Can understand the main ideas of complex text on both concrete and abstract topics, including technical discussions in his/her field of specialisation. Can interact with a degree of fluency and spontaneity that makes regular interaction with native speakers quite possible without strain for either party. Can produce clear, detailed text on a wide range of subjects and explain a viewpoint on a topical issue giving the advantages and disadvantages of various options.

So while the ipods and Rosetta Stone are good, I think if I want to take it to the next level I need to take lessons.  I found 2 places that offer lessons online from native speakers over Skype. 

Nulengua (http://www.nulengua.com/) charges $10/hour and WebSpanish (http://www.webspanish.com/) charges $15 / hour.  Both are very cheap as the tutors are based in South America, so I guess I need to decide if I am going to bit the bullet and sign up for some of these.

The only thing holding me back at this point is the fact that I don't have any free time as it is, and also I am trying to factor in my tendency for being really interested in something only to lose interest over time, get burnt out, whatever. 

I think the term my mom used to use was that I was "very intense" when it came to things I was interested in.  So right now, I would love to spend a lot of time learning these things, but 6 months from now will I still have the same interest, and therefore be glad that I spent as much time as I did on learning spanish.  Or, will I be on to something else with my limited free time?

Sometimes I feel like simply being aware of my tendency to overly invest time in things like this has the opposite effect, causing me to over compensate and avoid moving forward.

Anyway, I am lucky enough to have a wonderful wife who puts up with my ebb and flow, and is willing to do the lessons with me.  Just need to find some time to get started.

 

I am having a very hard time using my iphone headphones outside these days in Chicago.  It gets pretty cold, and the plastic that they wrap the wires in freezes up almost instantly, making the cable stiff like a piece of solder.

So when you turn your head, the headphone wires don't move and the ear buds pop out of your head.  Pretty poor design.

I guess it doesn't get this cold in Silicon Valley, where Apple has it's headquaters.

 

So it looks like youtube.com is down.

I can't imagine how much money they are losing with each passing second.

Since moving from my old Rev 0 Verizon card, to the new Rev A built in EVDO card in my new Lenovo laptop, I have had a lot more problems with my service.

It could be that with my old setup, I could simply tell the network adapter to connect and it would take care of dialing out and setting up the connection.  In other words, I didn't have to go through VZ Access Manager.

But now, I am forced to use VZAM, and I have to say, I think it pretty much sucks.

In the last 10 minutes, here are 2 wonderful issues I have run into:

I have had this several times recently... my friend Pete who works a lot with this stuff told me that Error 913 ... "It basically means that Verizon is stupid and can't figure out if it should let your account login."

Usually I just keep trying and eventually I get allowed to login and connect.

The other cool thing that has happened a few times recnetly is that it changes my connection to "dormant" even though I am clearly not dormant (actively using the internet).

 

 

So while it is "dormant" I basically can't transmit any data, and it sometimes will not even let me disconnect and try reconnecting.

I don't have any solutions to these problems, but they are very frustrating.

In 2 years, WiMax should be fully rolled out in Chicago, so I look forward to trying another product, but in the mean time, I am stuck with VZW.

 

We all know ticketmaster is the leader in screwing people when it comes to buying tickets.  You want 4 $28 tickets?  Ok, that will be $165.  What?

Well, I just got done booking a flight on ATA:

Base Fare Per Passenger: $238.00
Taxes and Fees Per Passenger: $102.50

Yes, the taxes and fees are over $100 per ticket!

Here are some other fees that some airlines apply AFTER you have finished comparing which airline to use (which tickets are cheapest):

• $2.50: U.S. security tax ("the Sept. 11 fee");
• $4.50: U.S. passenger facility charge (Chicago O'Hare);
• $14.50: U.S. international departure tax;
• $24.23: U.K. passenger service charge;
• $37.27: U.K. air passenger duty;
• $14.50: U.S. international arrival tax;
• $5: U.S. customs fee;
• $7: U.S. immigration fee;
• $5: U.S. Department of Agriculture inspection fee;
• $130: United Airlines fuel surcharge.

$130 fuel surcharge???  Gimme a break.

 

Being a computer guy, I used to go the Black Friday sales most years.  There was always something worth getting.  A cheap computer, a laptop, a DVD player, packs of CD-Rs, hard drives, DVDs etc.

But when you get out of college and are earning real money, the idea of saving a few hundred bucks isn't as big of a deal as it used to be.  So for a few years, I skipped the early morning sales in favor of sleeping in.

Before, we would usually get in line around 4am, with the stores opening at 6am.  If we showed up 2 hours before opening, we would usually be around 30-50th in line, which was usually plenty to get whatever we were after.

So this year when I saw that Circuit City was selling the Sharp Aquos 46" 1080p HD LCD flat panel TV for $1299 ($1200 off what they were asking before) I figued it would be worth trying to pickup one, as both my wife and I had agreed that we needed a new TV in our living room.

My first clue that things had changed was when I was driving home from Thanksgiving dinner at my aunts when I saw about 50-75 people already standing in line at the Best Buy by her house.  It was not even 9pm yet!!

INSANE!!  These people had tents out and fires going.  It was really really cold out, and these people were insane.

I drove past the Circuit City by my house, which only had 25 or so people in front of it, but still.... it was only 9:30!

I went home and did some research.  Circuit City was going to be passing out tickets for their most in demand items, which I figured would include the TV. 

 From most the posts online, it seemed that 3am might be when they come out with the tickets.  So, after some deep consideration, (and amazingly some encouragement from my wife) we decided to go (my wife does this stuff with me, she is really a keeper) at 2:45 am, stick around for (hopefully 15 minutes) to see if we would get one of the tickets for the TV.  If not, we would just go home and go back to bed.

So, at 2:25, after 2 hours of sleep, the alarm went off and we got up.  I put on a undershirt, 2 tshirts, a long sleeve shirt, a sweat shirt, a windbreaker, and a coat.  On my legs I had 2 pairs of sweat paints, some warmup pants and jeans.  But I only had 2 pairs of socks, so before it would be all over, my toes would be frozen, but the rest of me was nice and warm.

So we showed up at Circuit City at 2:50am to find a line of people 200 or so long.  It stretched across the entire Circuit City, across the parking lot, across the entire ALDIstore next to it before making a right turn and heading out 200 ft into the parking lot.

You can see in the picture above the entrance to ALDI in the background.  Circuit City is on the other side of the parking lot, out of view.  It's about 100 yards away.  Below you can see how far the line continued in the other direction.

 

We talked with a few people, and it seemed that everyone was here for the TVs.  Great.... (not).  Kathleen convinced me to stick around for a little bit longer, but as time ticked on, it became clear that our plan of finding out our fate at 3am was not going to work out.

3:15, 3:30, 4:00... still nothing.

Then at 4:15 they started passing out the tickets.  Only a few items made it back to our place in line, and they were nothing I wanted.  We asked about the TVs, expecting to hear that they were all accounted for, but the guy said that they were NOT ticket items, and that we would have to go to the TV section and either find (if they were on the floor) or order one.

It was still not looking good, but Kathleen again convinced me to stay.  She had some things she wanted too, stuff like USB flash drives for her students and some The Office DVDs for her brother. 

So we waited till 5:00 with me taking a 5 minute break to warm up my toes in the car. 

When we finally got into the store, Kathleen managed to get in line before me in the TV section, so I went searching for her items.

I found 5 flash drives (the limit) and the DVDs she wanted, paid for them, and met her back in line that had formed in the TV section of the store.

It was now 5:30 or so, and she was getting pretty close to the front.  There were 2 people in front of her when we heard the guy tell the person that they got the last 46" Aquos TV.

I was pretty bummbed to hear this, not because I didn't expect it, but because we had come so close.

The guy behind Kathleen was beside himself, as he had been in line since 9pm the night before.  When he got into the store, they sent him to the wrong line to buy the TV, and he had to get back into line behind a lot of other people... that must have really sucked.

So I told her to ask about the 42", assuming that the 46" was gone.

However, the lady in front of us found out that they could "special order" the TVs from the warehouse inventory, so long as we paid the $70 for them to deliver it to our house. 

This was the best news I had heard all day!

We placed the order, but I was not going to celebrate until the TV was in the house.  I could see them pulling some kind of crap and trying to get out of honoring the sale if they ran out of inventory in the warehouse or something.

But, this morning they came rolling up with our new TV!

It looks great!

So the lessons I learned are:

1) Wear 3 pairs of socks

2) Black friday has gotten WAY worse the last 2 years

3) I am lucky to be married to someone who likes to go do these crazy things with me

 

On my new laptop, I had lenovo build it with a Sierra Wireless 1xEV-DO Network Adapter card built in to the laptop.

This means I should be able to access EVDO RevA "BroadbandAccess" basically across all of Chicagoland.  However, lately the VZ Manager software from Verizon has been only connecting me to the dialup-like "NationalAccess" and not the DSL like BroadbandAccess.  The signal shows that it is plenty strong, and I am using in the exact same places where I have used my old EVDO card, and even in places where my laptop worked at first.

This is so frustrating I can't explain it. 

I contacted Verizon, and of course they were no help.

So now I might end up in the situation of having to buy (and keep plugged in all the time) a pcmcia card for the verizon network, even though I already paid to have this functionality built into my laptop. 

This really stinks :(.

Last nigiht before I went to bed, I was working on a bunch of stuff.

Lots of files, tons of programs, all open to serve the task at hand.

So, at 3am, I was kinda up for some reason, but luck for me, that meant that I got to hear the sound of my laptop rebooting.

I almost got up to go check on it and make sure I wasn't dreaming, but sure enough in the morning I came down to find a login prompt.

Windows Updates on my new laptop. was set to automatically download and install updates at 3am.  Which is a good thing, unless the updates require a restart, which it will do wheather you want it or not.

So I had to turn off automatic updates for this reason, but this brings me to a bigger question.  Couldn't microsoft see this possability and give you and option to download/install but NOT reboot?

They already have a "feature" that is annoying as hell, that bugs you ever 15 minutes when you have installed a windows udpate that requires a reboot, but haven't rebooted yet.  They could just use that to make sure you DO reboot at some time.

Frustrating.

Update: Windows update rebooted my friend Mike's work desktop, even though he had it set to only download and not install updates.  So all those SQL Jobs that were running at the time.... yea they all got screwed up. 

 

Awk is a tool for processing text files, or data that is treated as text.

For some stuff I have been working on, I tend to use Awk a lot to filter down text being returned from another program (like a ls command).

Here is a nice tutorial on Awk.

Also, when using regular expressions (regexp, or regex) with Awk, here are a few helpful reminders and links.

.	matches any character
*	zero or more repetitions of the previous character or expression
?	zero or one occurrence of the previous expression
+	one or more occurrences of the previous expression

Regexp cheat sheet.

Test regular expressions.

Regexp website (tutorials and more)

Another Regexp tutorial

I was having problems getting streaming media to play on my old messed up laptop.

So now that I am finally on my new machine, I can again listen to launchcast (music.yahoo.com).

Launchcast was doing what Pandora Radio is doing, way before Pandora became popular.

Launchcast learns from your ratings and plays music it thinks you would like.  In addition, you can setup other users as "Influencers," which I have done with my brother who also users Launchcast.

So for example, when my brother ranks a song up, eventurally it will play on my station.

See this image for example:

Pretty sweet.

I love this service.  I have found so much music this way. 

 

Here are some site statistics for the last 12 months. Over a quater million visitors and almost 750,000 page views. Not bad.

Hits
Total Hits	1,607,524
Average Hits per Day	4,380
Average Hits per Visitor	5.87
Cached Requests	132,924
Failed Requests	157,190
Page Views
Total Page Views	737,197
Average Page Views per Day	2,008
Average Page Views per Visitor	2.69
Visitors
Total Visitors	273,988
Average Visitors per Day	746
Total Unique IPs	49,647

It looks like my previous pagerank of 4 has been dropped to 3.

This kinda stinks. I would rather be going up than down, but it isn't that big of a deal.

Ironically, one of my other websites that was getting a lot less traffic than this one just jumped from a 3 up to a 4.  Go figure.

Google frequently tinkers with their settings, so I'm sure these numbers will not be static.

Ok so the other night I was working late, and thought to myself... hey, I have some new music on my iphone, why don't I make use of my Klipsch iGroove speakers (as I had heard that most ipod accessories work with the iphone).

So I walked over to the speakers and dropped in my iphone. It fit perfect, as expected. I hit the power button... nothing. Ok, maybe I need to turn on the iphone. Nothing. Ok, maybe I need to hit the menu button... nothing.

I take the iphone out and try to power it up... nothing. I hold down each button for 10 seconds, and then try holding down both for 30 seconds. Nothing.

The iphone starts to get really really hot (almost too hot to hold) and I realize I am screwed.

So that is the bad part. The good part is that I was able to make an appt with the local Apple store within an hour, and they replaced my iphone with a new one.

So as stupid as it is that you could plug in an iphone into some ipod speakers and it would destroy the unit, it was nice that I was able to get a new phone as quickly as I did.

I will not be using any more ipod accessories with my iphone.

I am about 90% happy with my iPhone, but in order to sync it I have to use iTunes, so I have moved my podcasts and a small subset of my 450GB of mp3s into iTunes to sync it with the iPhone, and I just have to say.... what an awful piece of software.

I mean, it DOES a few things that are nice, like trying to find album art for you, but the usability of this piece of junk is about as bad as any piece of software I have ever used.

I won't go into it, but it really ticks me off when I am trying to do something sooooo simple and it takes me 15 minutes of screwing around and a few trips to google in order to find a way to do it.

So, in conclusion, iTunes sucks.  Oh, and I hate pretty much all the software on my wife's new Mac. 

That is all. 

I am about 90% happy with my iPhone, but in order to sync it I have to use iTunes, so I have moved my podcasts and a small subset of my 450GB of mp3s into iTunes to sync it with the iPhone, and I just have to say.... what an awful piece of software.

I mean, it DOES a few things that are nice, like trying to find album art for you, but the usability of this piece of junk is about as bad as any piece of software I have ever used.

I won't go into it, but it really ticks me off when I am trying to do something sooooo simple and it takes me 15 minutes of screwing around and a few trips to google in order to find a way to do it.

So, in conclusion, iTunes sucks.  Oh, and I hate pretty much all the software on my wife's new Mac. 

That is all. 

Here is a little dos script I wrote to rename all files in the current and subdirectories to have a different extension.

for /f "tokens=1 delims=" %a in ('dir /s /b /ad') do if exist "%a\*.old" ren "%a\*.old" *.new

If you run this from a bat file you will need to replace % with %%.

Now that I am using an iPhone, I am kinda forced to use iTunes, which I happen to think is a total piece of junk.

The only redeeming quality of iTunes is that it downloads your album art.  I'm sure it does other stuff nice too, but it does so many things poorly that I try to avoid it at all costs.

But now that I am forced to use it, it was really really really ticking me off that it was not grouping songs from the same album into same album group.

These are not some random collection of MP3s, these are all songs from the same single RIP of a single CD, with all the same information in the ID3, and still iTunes can't figure it out.

See this picture for a good example of this.  Feel Good Hit of the Summer should be grouped with all the other ones.  Click the image to see a larger view:

So after screwing around with this for a period (way too long), I finally figured a way to get it to work.

Warning: this is dumb.

Edit the song that is not getting merged (the first one).  Change the album title to something stupid like "X".  Save it, then change it back to what it should be.

Then iTunes will finally merge the songs into 1 album.

 

Edit: It turns out that the areas listed below are the 77 official "Community Areas" of Chicago.  Each of these areas can be made up of multiple neighborhoods.

For example, the "Near West Side" is made up of the West Loop, and Greektown, among others.

http://www.answers.com/topic/community-areas-of-chicago

----------

This is not really a definitive map, as I see some places that appear to go by different names than are listed on this map, but this is the best one I could find.

 

Everytime a program on my computer hangs or crashes, dumpprep.exe spins for a long time getting a dump report ready for microsoft.  Only problem is, I never send the report, because I need to get back to work.  So all that time is wasted.

Thankfully, you can turn off this time wasting "feature":

1. System Properties (Either via System in Control Panel, or Getting Properties on My Computer)
2. Advanced Tab, and choose "Error Reporting". Set to "Disable Error Reporting"
3. You could also Select "Startup and Recovery" - Settings button, and change "Write Debugging information" from complete to none.

Credit goes to Peter Collinson www.clieuk.co.uk.

From www.theDailyWTF.com. 

I have all but given up on Code Checkin Policy in TFS.

For me, running the policy checker against one of my solutions takes about 30 minutes.

That is unacceptable.

But, there is still some hope of running the static analysis on the back end, so I am still looking around at the goings on in this area.

A new Code Comment Checking Policy has been released, which would be really nice way to force the people to comment their code.

The "flag for later" feature in Outlook is really nice, but the down side of it is that you can easily put stuff off for later, and end up with a task list like this:

These red items are ones that are overdue.

I guess I need to put an entry in my task list to go through my task list.

The other day I got some notification that updates were available for some apple products.  Like an idiot I didn't read it over very carefully.  It looked like it was going to update Quicktime, but I had installed the Safari beta also, so maybe it was going to do something with that as well.

Well it now looks like it also decided to download and install iTunes, a TERRIBLE product that I avoid like the plague so much that I bought some other software to connect my new iPod to I wouldn't have to install that garbage product.

Not only did it appear to intall iTunes, but it also installed an outlook add in 'outlook itunes sync addin' , which crashes outlook when you try to run it.

Here are some more people like me who are pissed off by this.

 

This is pretty cool.  Simply alter the search parameters for some Amazon.com URLs and you can filter the results to only show things that are 90% off!

Nice!

I love seeing new things; innovations in existing markets.

In other words, things that make you say "Wow", and compel you to tell your friends about your experience.

This is exactly what Hollywood Boulevard is doing for the movie going experience.

Forget the fact that the place is decorated really cool.  That's a nicety, but nothing to write home about.

The innovation comes in the theater experience.  Forget cramped seating, this place has individual executive leather chairs that recline.  There is a table that runs in front of each seat so you can sit your drinks on it, AND they have a full restaurant and staff that takes food / drink orders during the movie.

We had chicken fingers and fries with a diet coke for 12 bucks.

And the movie prices are cheap too: $8 for an adult ticket.

Click here for more images of the place.

I will be going back for sure.

 

Dare Obasanjo has a post on the "Three Things I Learned About Software in College," to which Scott Hanselman followed up with Three Things I Learned About Software WHILE NOT in College.

So here are my 3 from each category:

Learned in college:

1) A lot of people getting a CS degree will never be able to write a real program (as I was getting my degree in structural engineering (CE)).

2) New features and scope creep can cause projects to be never ending, and end up not being released at all.

3) How to really work hard, really study hard, and really focus on a task with a fast approaching deadline.

Learned OUT of college:

1) Just because someone has "Sr." in their title doesn't MEAN they know anything, but they might.  If their logic sounds flawed, don't assume it is because they are "Sr" and you are "Entry": you are probably right.

2) "Expert" can mean different things to different people.  You can be in the top 2% of one company, but a middle of the pack guy in another.  Avoid calling yourself an "expert" (or acting like one) unless you know who you are talking to, and you actually are the expert.

3) There is no "Best" way to do most things.  I had thought that if I looked hard enough and studied enough examples, I would know the "best" way to do things when I arrived at them.  But one groups "best practice" is something another group will not touch.  See the current OR/M arguments for a perfect example, or if you prefer just look at divide over using Datasets. 

That being said, there are definitely some agreed upon "Worst Practices", so avoid these at all costs.

I saw a link from Scott Hanselman's site to DreamInCode.net, which is looks like a community site for programmers.

I have been looking for a forum for software consultants like myself, so I will have to check out the forums:

http://www.dreamincode.net/forums/

There is the "Caffeine Lounge", which sounds like the perfect place for me.  When the guys at starbucks start your order before you say anything, you have probably been in there too often.

So last nigth was the Dark Side of the Moon Live concert and it was really cool to see.

I started to really like Pink Floyd in college, which of course was after they had been broken up for years.

So even though Dark Side was one of my all time favorite CDs, I figured I woudl never have an opportunity to see it performed.

It was really cool to see this!

During the last 2 tracks, a rotating pirzm composed of lasers appeard above the crowd. 

Then for the last track, the fired a spotlight out of one side of it, and a colored laser spectrum out of the other.

In other words, they created a 3D rotating version of the logo seen above. 

It was amazing!  Now I have to decide if I want to go up to Wisconsin and see the show again in a month.

 

I am thinking of getting some flooring for my garage. 

These seem to be the places that sell them:

http://www.racedeck.com

http://www.swisstrax.com/

http://www.locktile-usa.com/

http://www.jnkproducts.com

http://www.garagefloor.com/

 

http://silverlightdemo.com

There internet is filled with places to do reverse phone lookups (who called me 5 minutes ago).

But, most of them now ask you to pay for the name of the person or business.

I happened to find one that didn't:

http://www.whitepages.com/10001/reverse_phone

 

I found this list of the top secondary market ticket resellers:

http://www.ticketnews.com/view/TopSecondarySellers

Thu, 04/26/2007 - 11:12am — TicketScoop

This service is down right now, but it looks like it might be very useful!

I have been fighting with this lately, but here is something I haven't tried... rewriting the interface that is giving me problems.

Not sure if this will work, but I will give it a try.

More in the souce...

I came across this offer where you get $50 free (I haven't read the details) for using Microsofts adCenter (just like adwords I guess).

http://www.startadcenter.com/lcoff/

 

Web development is number 2 of the most indemand skills for 2007:

http://www.hotgigs.com/pdf/contractworkforce2007_d.pdf?src=cwremailconsultantb

When they break down the web development category, I have extensive experience in almost but 1 of the top 10 sub categories, with my main area of expertise being the top item: ASP.NET development.

Good to know that I made a good decision to not focus on Fortran! :)

DST will come a few weeks earlier this year, and this could screw up some computers.

Microsoft has put together a site to explain what you need to do to make sure your computer is up to date:

http://support.microsoft.com/gp/cp_dst

I wasn't included in Crain's list of Chicago based web development consultant firms.

Seeing as how I am basically a 1 man firm, I don't really expect to be on these types of lists, but there are a few on there that I measure up well, and others where I am clearly more profitable.

Maybe they will include me next time :).  But if not, who cares?

I was online trying to buy some baseball tickets the other day and I started poking around looking for some sites that offer presale info.

Here are some of the sites I found:

http://www.presalenow.com/how.asp

http://www.snaggem.com/

http://www.presalecodes.com/

http://presalepassword.net/

http://eventexperts.presalepassword.net/

http://presale-codes-passwords.blogspot.com/index.html

 

Here is an article that shows how you can enable outlook to let you get some of those "unsafe" attachments, like a .vb file.

Here is a page showing some of the commands you can run when you want to shutdown or restart windows.  This works well when you are in a TS session or something where you don't have access to the normal shutdown buttons.

 

The Bears just squeeked out a win against the injury ridden Seahawks, 27-24 in overtime.

What did we learn from this game?

We learned that

• Grossman was able to play at a decent level.  i.e. He didn't throw up all over himself.
• The defense really has fallen off.  Some suggested that the Bears defense was on auto pilot the last few games, and that is why they had such bad performances.  We can now say for sure that this defense is FAR from the unit that was shutting out opponents early in the year.  The Bears now are frequently giving up 25+ points a game, and they couldn't stop the running game to save their life (not to mention the 8 yard passes that were available, and taken, all game long).
• Robbie Gould can come through in the clutch.
• Wesley is obviously trying to set the single season record for most obscure 15 yard penalities on punt coverage.  This week he interferred with the returner.  A few weeks back he refused to come back into the field of play (another 15 yard penality).
• Devon Hester shouldn't be on the field.  I don't care what up side this guy has.  His chance of dropping the ball, or making the dumbest play on earth (like touching the ball after deciding not to play it on a punt) is FAR greater that his chance for a good return.  This guy had 3 fumbles today!!!  If I were the Saints I would kick every ball to him.  He will drop at least 1.
• Bensen is not going to get much playing time.  I had hoped with the display he put on last week someone would wake up and realize that this guy needs to be on the field, but it looks like are sticking with Jones on the key plays.
• Bensen will continue to out perform Jones.  He had a higher yards/carry again this week, w/o the benefit of some of the nice big holes Jones had.  Jones can't move the pile.  He can't move individual players for that matter.  And in the open field, he is too slow to out run anyone, and does too much hopping around to pick up positive yards.  When given a chance, Bensen stays on his feet and pushing forward for extra yards.  Frequently Bensen would have what looked like a "poor" play.  No real hole, just running into people.  But when they spotted the ball, he had picked up 4 yards.
• The O-Line can't protect Rex.  When the other team is sending just 3 guys, the QB should have a little time before getting hit.
• Rex can't avoid the pressure.  Rex continues to not setup up in the pocket.  Being a short guy, you would think he would want to move up and get some better visibility of the field.
• Deuce McCalister and Reggie Bush are going to run all over this bears defense. 
• I should have bet on this game.  I thought the Seahawks +8 was a lock.  I would also take the points in the next game (+3 for the Saints).

I have been wanting to switch off of TMobile for a long time due to the lack of high speed data they offer.

I was looking at Verizon, who I currently have my PC card with, and Cingular, who I am currently demoing the 8525 with.

I just looked up their data coverage, and found out that Cingular has a much smaller footprint on chicagoland when compared with Verizon.

See here for Cingular and here for Verizon.

Not the biggest issue, but I do have some clients out West where Cingular would drop me to their slow network.

Update: As far as I can tell, the Cingular 3G network is terrible.  Browsing on it is no better than my 56k max connection on TMobile.  Bandwidth tests show good results, but acutally trying to get websites to show up is terrible.

Ichiro Suzuki has a cannon for an arm.

I wish this guy was on the Sox!

I think this is pretty cool.

Check out the image below.  Then use the link below to open up just the image in a new browser window.

Resize the image (make it smaller) to see the secret message.

 

secret.gif (139.54 KB)

 

I have no idea why I have such a hard time remembering composed vs comprised.

• A car is composed of many parts
• The parts compose the car.
• A car comprises many parts

 

Bret Martin and Katie Kniss

Bret Martin and Katie Kniss are getting married

I am going to see if I can get a googlewhack on Bret Martin and Katie Kniss, linking to this page.  Technically a googlewhack is 2 words that are in the dictionary, but I am expanding on this to include names.

Putting their names in some H1 and H2 tags at the top here should help with the Googlebot.




Actually, Katie is probably getting the raw end of this deal, she is going to have to put up with Bret for years to come. 

Same goes for Kathleen.  Sometimes I wonder if knew what she was getting herself into.  . 

The wedding is this summer in St. Louis, and I hear they are spending their honeymoon in Peoria.  Well not just Peoria... East Peoria. 

Update: Well I got my home page number 1 on the major 3 search engines:
Google
Yahoo
MSN

But they are only indexing my homepage right now, not the actual article link (Bret Martin and Katie Kniss).

This website is awesome.

I have been telling everyone about it, but I guess not many of them are downloading yet. Oh well I think its the best.

Over the winter I was accepted into the graduate school of the University of Chicago, which may I please point out, is not UIC.

I am pretty excited about going to such a prestigious school. Northwestern is the only other school in the area who can compete with U of C, but they don't offer a Masters program for Computer Science, U of C was the only place I applied to. I attended the DePaul open house but left feeling very unimpressed. For example, DePaul has "Web Programming with ASP.NET", U of C has "Object Oriented Architecture and Design Patterns" (a great class). The course on parallel computing will get students access to the super computer facility at Argon Nation Labs. How sweet is that?

Anyway, it isn't going to be easy with all the work I have going on, but if I don't do it now I may never get back to it.

And I feel so inferior to my wife with her Masters degree! :)

Well we completed the move a while back, but getting updates to my site was not a very high priority for me, but I figured it was time.

Aside from all the crap with moving the house, I have been working a ton, and so has Kathleen. On top of that I have started back going to school for an MS in CS from UC, OK? But that is another blog post.

More to come.

I have been thinking about getting a white board for my room now for a while.

Here and here are a few places that sell pretty big ones for not a lot of cash.

Here it is...

This is a review by motor trend of a group of radar detectors.

This company sells software for coaching different sports.

I am not sure what to get...

But I have an idea.

This page is a great tool for calculating all kinds of stuff for loans and mortgages.

It is really robust, and with all my recent mortgage, and now car loan stuff, it has been really handy.

I didn't need to link to it before because it was number 2 on google for "Mortgage Calculator, but for some reason it has fallen to page 2 of their rankings.

I need to get a new car....

• Camry
• TSX
• Altima
• Eclipse
• Mazda 6
• G35
• Sonata
• Accord
• TL
• CL
• Maxima
• Saturn L
• Impreza WRX
• Camry Solara

This is funny as hell!!!! Everyone and their mom should watch this clip. I don't know how long it will be up there.

Available here for Windows Media Player.