XPfails – luggable – Recovery?

Sunday, April 15, 2007

Well, dodged a bullet today. (Maybe?)

The registry was reported corrupt and the pig won’t boot. Repair didn’t.

Argh!

I had tried the rescue disk that came with the platform from Dell. It didn’t do anything good for me.

So I dusted off one of my XP installation disks and ran “repair” using that. It threw the box up into checkdisk, which ran. Didn’t report any errors. May or may not have fixed anything. But it did then allow the box to boot into WXP. (Yeah!)

On the theory that this might be my last chance to visit with my data. I pulled out my WDDRIVE with WDSYNC on it and took a back up. (I usually do my weekly backups on Monday!)

Now, I fearlessly did a cold restart.

That worked but it wasn’t not connecting to the home lan. I tried using WXP, the Intel ProSet Wireless utility, and the VWBBIE (Verizon Wireless Broadband utility also manages the WiFi). Nothing worked.

Argh! Squared!

So I power cycled everything in sight. Ran the Intel Wireless debugger.

Couldn’t think of anything else to do, so on a hunch, I changed the WiFi SSID. Shouldn’t have made any difference. Changed the password as well. (Big deal. Any script kiddie can bust this “security”!)

Disabled PGP. Disabled ZoneAlarm.

Power cycle everything.

Argh! Tripled!

Verified that the BackRoom DELLDESK could connect thru the wifi router to the net. Verified that the OLDDELL notebook could get to the net via the wireless.

So it made me focus on the LUGGABLE as the problem.

Deleted all the Intel configurations. Went to the DELLDESK, changed the SSID and password again. Rebooted the router. Power cycled everything in sight again. And then readded the Intel configurations.

And, voila, the pig put on its roller skates and took off!

So, that wasted a Sunday. Sigh.

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Posted by reinkefj

XPFAILS – LUGGABLE: Catastrophic error

Sunday, April 15, 2007

The registry reports corruption. The pig won’t boot. Repair doesn’t. Argh! Operating from old desktop. Standby for news.

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Posted by reinkefj

TECH SERVICE: An unnamed service has a bug

Saturday, April 14, 2007

FROM AN EXCHANGE OF EMAILS WITH A DEVELOPER

***Begin Quote***

From: A DEVELOPER
Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2007 10:49 PM
To: r @ reinke
Subject: RE: Where did my name go?

Try clearing your cache and cookies and then restarting your browser (I see “reinke” within the green badge and after “Profile:..”.

If that doesn’t work, please reply back.

*** and ***

vs: Still the same. Wanna try sacrificing some chickens next? ;-) Like I hadn’t tried that or seen at a different computer. Why does every PC support person insist on a cold reboot? BTW, since last night was my night to do “microsoft maintenance”, I was forced to do a cold restart. So, perhaps there’s some crud in a table somewhere on your side of the wire?

***End Quote***

If I have learned one thing in testing software (which I think is “fun”), it is don’t annoy users with obvious stuff that has no hope of solving the problem. Or, at least ask it, or propose it in a way that is “softer”. Remember I am unpaid help, or worse I’ve paid for this mistake. At least with “free software”, you haven’t paid to debug someone else’s code.

It’s like that nameless isp that always wants you to power cycle your setup when it’s obvious to the world that they have a dns problem.

About the only thing worse is having paid no support at all. Buying a product and getting no support like IBM, Nuance, Microsoft, and that ilk! (There’s special circle in hell for them.)

Sometimes it would be better to have no support than long phone queues, “dumb” people (Yeah, I know they are working from scripts!), or autobots that just fire back meaningless canned answers.

At least with the new web20s services, you can usually get to SOMEONE.

Argh!

The next round of email I included a screen shot where I MSPAINTed three big orange circles about the problem. (I’m getting pretty handy with that tactic!) That exchange ended with “we have a bug”! Yeah, DUH, you do! I think I said that. Double Argh.

I deliberately didn’t name the SERVICE since they are trying. Let’s give them some time to work before we award them a negative review. Fair is fair.

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Posted by reinkefj

TECH SERVICE: HIGHRISE a crm solution from 37signals

Friday, April 13, 2007

http://www.highrisehq.com/

Highrise

Your address book doesn’t do enough. Traditional CRM software tries to do too much. Highrise is the just-right solution.

***Begin Quote***

Your address book doesn’t do enough. Traditional CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software tries to do too much. That’s why we built Highrise. It’s the just-right, more thoughtful way to keep track of the people, conversations, and tasks that are the lifelines of your business.

***End Quote***

Well it ain’t cheap that’s for sure. Too steep for me.

I gave it a quick look and though that only VCFs in would be a problem.

But what do I know.

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Posted by reinkefj

TECH SOFTWARE: Process Tamer is available for free

Thursday, April 12, 2007

http://techsupportalert.com/issues/al_current.htm

Gizmo
Ian Richards

***Begin Quote***

6.1 A Free Utility That Stops Programs From Hogging Your PC

It was driving me mad. My laptop would sporadically run at 100% CPU utilization and lock up. It defied all attempts at analysis as the PC was seized and I couldn’t do anything. Only a hard reboot was possible, but on rebooting the problem was gone.

Eventually I solved it with a superb little utility called Process Tamer, written by “Mouser” over at Donation Coder. Process Tamer is a monitor that watches the CPU utilization of all running processes. Once the usage of a single process gets above a certain level (by default 70%) Process Tamer reduces the usage by lowering the process priority.

It’s a simple idea and Process Tamer implements it immaculately. With Process Tamer installed, the next time the problem occurred on my laptop it didn’t totally lock up but rather just ran very slowly. This allowed me to do a quick diagnosis. The problem turned out to be simple but non-obvious. Two programs, Diskeeper and X1, had been accidentally scheduled to start at the same time and were getting into an embrace of death. It was unexpected, as these two normally peacefully co-exist. Simply re-scheduling the programs to start at different times solved the problem.

I couldn’t have solved the problem as easily without Process Tamer. However Process Tamer has much broader application than just this kind of problem.

It’s a great tool for preventing any one program from hogging your processor. Every user has experienced the situation where their PC has been slowed down to the point of being unusable, by a background program such as a desktop search program, that starts and takes all the resources. Process Tamer will stop that from ever happening again.

For the same reason it can also help speed up your Windows Startup. Make sure though, that you enable Process Tamer to start automatically with Windows. By default it does not, but it’s easily changed from within the program’s options.

Yet another use for Process Tamer is intra-server load balancing. It’s near ideal for this task.
If you actually want a program to able to use all available resources, such as a digital editing program, you can set the program to be excluded from Process Tamer’s watchful eye.

I was so impressed with Process Tamer that I’ve permanently installed it on my laptop. It takes only around 6MB of memory space and its own CPU usage is so low I could barely measure it.

Process Tamer is available for free from the Donation Coder site. They use a novel licensing system: you have to register to get a free license key which allows you to download any number of programs on the site. This key lasts six months after which you must return to the site to download another free license key. After a year you are given a permanent license. Alternatively, you can make a once-up donation of any size and get a permanent key straight away. It’s a clever and ethical way to encourage users to recognize the work done by freeware authors and I support it fully. I donated generously and I hope you do too.
Donationware, Windows 2K, XP, 2.23MB

http://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Mouser/proctamer/index.html

***End Quote***

Hmmm, may be useful to put in place.

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Posted by reinkefj

TECHNOLOGY: NETWORK WORLD TOP DOG

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

email header

http://www.nwwbetopdog.com/

NETWORK WORLD TOP DOG

***Begin Quote***

The Network World Technology Opinion Panel is a group of technology professionals who evaluate, use and/or purchase technology-related products for the organizations they work for. Panel members represent a wide range of industries, company sizes and areas of expertise. This diversity allows us to gather information on a variety of technology topics from different perspectives.

***End Quote***

I don’t think I ever exposed the fact that I’ve been on this panel for a while. At least for two jobs worth! (Heck of a way to rekon time!)

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Posted by reinkefj

TECH SOFTWARE: PGP not for me

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

http://www.pgp.com/

Rest Secured

***Begin Quote***

The PGP Encryption Platform delivers comprehensive enterprise data protection. Rest Secured.™

The PGP Encryption Platform enables organizations to address a broad range of business and regulatory data security and privacy requirements with solutions that are flexible, scalable, and easily deployed and managed from a single, unified management console.

PGP solutions allow enterprises to deploy gateway- and desktop-based encryption based on specific requirements for data security within the organization. PGP products can secure internal and external communications, data stored on servers, desktops, and laptops, and automated backups and data transfers.

***End Quote***

Yes, but … …

… … assuming you can get the trial software down from their web sites.

(I followed their instructions, kept getting “url not found” message using the url in their email, gave up yesterday. After replying to the email “ng”. No response.)

Came back to it and the software downloaded. Hey, making progress. (You think?)

Installed it. With the required reboot. (Argh!)

Then comes activation!

Like Microsoft, you have to activate it. It doesn’t. Says “no connect to the inet”. Right! No link to support. No options to appeal. And, nothing in the help that “helps” or identifies how to contact them.

So, if I have all these problems (again) when they are trying to SELL me their software, then what will be my experience after I start using it?

If I get my data secured with their software and it locks up, then what would I do?

Nah, not for me.

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Posted by reinkefj

TECH SERVICE: A dynamic blogroll

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

http://feevy.com

A dynamic blogroll

***Begin Quote***

Replace static, boring blogrolls with dynamic content and transform your blog into a web portal for your network of friends

***End Quote***

Bzzzz! Can’t use javascript on the free version of wordpress. Is there a workaround? It’s a neat idea.

UPDATE 12APR07

One thing I love about the Web20 paradigm is that you actual hear back from real people. Try that with Nuance, IBM,  ScanSoft; Microsoft, Dell, or any big company. Here’s feevy’s response.FROM: Alexandre Girard
Re: [Feevy Problem] Signed on but get “down squirrel”

 We’re testing a sidebar widget to include your Feevy on free version of wordpress, we will tell you as soon as WordPress Team include it on their website admin.

Current workaround is to use RSS widget, and give it your Feevy RSS url:

http://www.feeyv.com/code/your_code/rss.xml

This will not display the proper Feevy, just an updated blogroll of your Feevy Feed.

Cheers,

Alex

Ain’t that terrific! Real people with a real solution in under a lifetime!

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Posted by reinkefj

TECH SERVICE: JOTT (a Voice Phone Call to email service)

Monday, April 9, 2007

http://jott.com/

Voice Phone Call to email
a public beta

***Begin Quote***

Have you ever …

… felt like you don’t remember things you should? Gifts to buy, a stroke of genius, a song to download, a cab fare?

… wanted to send an email or text message to somebody while in your car (and not take your eye off the road)?

… needed to get a message to a group of people, but couldn’t (or didn’t want to) make a bunch of separate calls.

At Jott, we’re simply trying to give you more access: to your ideas, to people, and more.

We do it using things you trust that are already in your life: an ordinary cell phone and your voice.

To Jott, just make a phone call.

The way we figure it, if Jott gives you time back, let’s you connect or get more done, we’ve done our job.

***End Quote***

I heard about this. Tried it. And thought that it might be very useful to have sometime. While it probably will switch to some non-free mode, it might be “handy” to have in reserve. Especially if it is cheap.

From using real dictation to a steno and things like ViaVoice, I know one can dictate much faster than type. And, in some circumstances all you might have access to is a quick phone call. Given that the input is the basic voice phone call, it could be a real “saving shot at the buzzer” sometime.

FWIW

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Posted by reinkefj

TECHNOLOGY: Robin Good summarizes the WEBOS niche

Sunday, April 8, 2007

http://www.masternewmedia.org/operating_systems/
web-operating-systems-virtual-desktops/
best-web-os-and-virtual-desktops-guide.htm

http://tinyurl.com/2l7ocz

title

April 8, 2007
Web Operating Systems And Web Desktops: A Mini-Guide

***Begin Quote***

Wikipedia defines Web Operating Systems (aka WebOS) as:

“A software platform that interacts with the user through a web browser and does not depend on any particular local operating system.”

***End Quote***

Robin Good summarizes the WEBOS niche. As only he can.

I’m always impressed with what he produces for us in the way of technology direction posts.

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Posted by reinkefj

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