TECH: “MOZY” got itself kicked to the curb for bad behavior

Wednesday, August 9, 2006

MOZY was in the running to displace the XDRIVE now from AOL. I don’t like to reward bad behavior so I have been entertaining replacements for AOL’s XDRIVE. And, MOZY was certainly in the running.

HOWEVER, today it took itself out of the running.

It did an upgrade on itself and, when I didn’t allow it to restart the platform, (thanks MSFT for a crappy architecture), it seized 98% of the box and wouldn’t let go. Eventually I had to restart costing me a30 minutes of my life, what I was doing at the time, and loss of position (i.e. all the balls I was juggling dropped).

So in recognition of the PPP, I uninstalled it. Arghh!

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Posted by reinkefj

TECH: MICROSOFT activation … one more reason why I’m going to Linux

Tuesday, August 8, 2006

My old desktop has always been balky with the wireless networking. I stop and start the zero wireless configuration or restart the wap and it usually works. This time it’s not. AND, somehow — by doing nothing — I have triggered the dreaded Microsoft activation! Arghh. I can’t activate cause I can’t get the wireless working. I gave up my dial up inet account besides the phone line in the room ain’t working either. (I’m a mess!)

SO I may be going to linux sooner rather than later!

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Posted by reinkefj

TECH: Yahoo adds a search control

Tuesday, August 8, 2006

Offer specific searches on your web site. (This wasn’t what I thought when I read their write up?) But, I did one for Jasper Jottings and it seems to work. Now what’s the difference between this and site:www.jasperjottings.com I don’t know. Aggh, so much to learn and grok!

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Posted by reinkefj

TECH: “LINKEDIN” … a good tool … but there are some process issues

Tuesday, August 8, 2006

Imagine my chagrin when I thought that I nailed a bug in LinkedIn, but was wrong!

My vampire process detected a “silent” change. Someone had shifted up a position. Immediately I was on the hunt for the “missing” record. I visually compared my two lists. And found the “lost” one.

Ahh hah! I had proof of them losing a contact’s record. I complained to LinkedIn support, and notified my counterpart.

A return email from the contact, told me he had nuked me to “eliminate my messages to him”.

How embarrassing!

Now, if he had been amenable to some question, the I would have like to ask him:

(a) What do you expect to get out of LinkedIn if you don’t want to have a conversation?

(b) How does nuking it prevent me from emailing you? Not like I am going to forget your email address. IF you had responded “buzz off”, I certainly would have honored your request. If I wasn’t on top of my game, you’d still be getting my email.

(c) I sent you exactly one personally addressed individual message. Politely, offering some ideas and extending an invite to engage in a networking conversation. And that is “too much” email. What are your expectation in networking?

Now, I am still undecided as to the value of LinkedIn. All though I did sign up for an upgraded plan, it has yet to show benefits. But, I’m hard headed enough to keep trying. I know those benefits are in there somewhere.

I did take away some lessons.

Lesson #1: Investigate the entire list to confirm that there is more than one defect. If I had done that, I’d have been more suspicious if I found every thing else was right. I jumped to a conclusion.

Lesson #2: Try to extract what people’s expectations are up front. Perhaps this fellow thinks that LinkedIn is like the yellow pages.

Lesson #3: LinkedIn’s removal process is flawed. (a) It’s a manual request. (b) It’s “silent”. They mess with my data and I don’t know about it. (c) They have a bug since it didn’t take it out of the search result set that showed him still in my contacts.

Hmmm, jury’s still out.

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Posted by reinkefj

TECH: Running a batch file … one of 72 commands … one in the middle did NOT execute?

Monday, August 7, 2006

Strange!?! If I wasn’t watch it fail I’d not have believed it. The ones if front and in back all fired. Rerunning the batch job worked perfectly. Hmm. Ghost of Bill Gates!

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Posted by reinkefj

TECH: One of my website “goes bad”

Monday, August 7, 2006

http://home.comcast.net/%7Ev2y2r0n27rhj6y/TURKEY/index.htm

It displays correctly in IE, but not in Firefox or Opera. It used to?

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Posted by reinkefj

TECH: Many search algorithms are flawed

Saturday, August 5, 2006

They don’t parse a search string with a blank in it correctly.

Here’s an email that I send a lot of sites:

To whom it may concern:

I think you may wish to reexamine your search code. I publish an ezine for my fellow alums of Manhattan College. Hence, I visit a lot of sites and do searches. My search string is “manhattan college”. When I executed it at XXXXXXXX, it searched as if it was “manahattan or college”. I see this behavior a lot. Just thought I’d call it to your attention.

Fjohn

I get many interesting responses. Some actually say thanks and fix it. The bigger the site the less likely it is to get fixed. Interesting common oversight.

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Posted by reinkefj

TECH: What is a blog?

Wednesday, August 2, 2006

http://community.eons.com/blogs/index/17146

***Begin Quote***

What’s a blog?

A blog is like an online journal that allows somebody to share their thoughts with the public in the form of blog posts. This page shows recent posts on whatever topics are of interest to the author.
***End Quote***

I’m not so sure that this is the best definition. But, it’s a good start. Currently an internet blog is a collection of DIKW of one or more people around a topic or theme.

I would assert that when it is done by one person alone. It becomes a “personal web log”, a plog! It then is an online journal of sequential musings, ramblings, rantings, or opinions about one or more topics. It does have privacy issues. For example, in my blog, I say I am “lazy”. Does that make it so? How would a potential employer, family member, friend, or acquaintance react to something in my plog? Can I assume an identity in a plog that isn’t really me? Remember Ghandi’s thought about “departments of life” and spillover. Interesting?

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Posted by reinkefj

TECH: “EONS” a site for old folk has an obit search that’s broken

Wednesday, August 2, 2006

http://www.eons.com/

I track news of Manhattan College alums. It interested me that perhaps this might be a resource I could use. Unfortunately a search with “manhattan college” fails with a ruby error message. Searching for a well known obit by name returns no result. Maybe the dbs aren’t loaded yet? Hmmm. Maybe the “what I want to do before I die” section will work better.

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Posted by reinkefj

TECH: PLAXO syncs email address books for you

Saturday, July 29, 2006

You may wish to consider Plaxo. It is a free internet service that sync address books between different people who “know” each other. In exchange for the information you share with them, which I am sure they have various ways of making a profit on, you not only get up-to-date info on fellow Plaxo “members”, but you get a usable web-based address book which is a backup of the address book on your computer. It will even sync multiple machines. I have found it a great tool. Some call it “Faustian”, but:

(1) They are upfront about they reuse data. Everyone does it but are not honest enough to admit it.

(2) I seeded my address books with fake people (i.e., my non-computer literate elderly uncle complete with an isp email address). If spam was to show up in the email boxes for my “fake people”, then it could have only come from them. And, I’d rat them out to the inet community. If it sounds like “trust but verify”, it is. I did a few tours in security, so I am very skeptical of stuff on the net. Wanna see my tin foil hat?
FWIW

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Posted by reinkefj

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