New Hardware
Posted on 30 May 2010 | No Comments
I’ve been meaning to pick up a rack for my server for a while, but could never find an affordable option. I didn’t feel like spending $500 on a 4-8 unit box when I only had the one server so far. So when I came upon an ad on UsedVictoria for a 42U Server Rack for far below the asking price of a unit 1/10 the size, I could hardly pass it up. Granted instead of overshooting my current load by four times, this overshoots it by about twenty times, but you can’t beat the price. The enclosure would have been approximately $1500 new.
You can view the specifications at the link below but the gist of it is that it weighs in at around 350 lbs, and stands 6’10” tall.
http://www.apc.com/products/resource/include/techspec_index.cfm?base_sku=AR1000A
In the long run I’m hoping to fill it with servers for various purposes: storage, hosting, backups, media streaming. In the short term I’ve loaded in my hardware and it doubles as an excellent sound dampener.
On another front, a good friend provided me with a brand-new 46” Sony Bravia that I had placed on my office filing cabinet for a time, but now that I need more space, I wanted to put up a wall mount. I managed to do so and I’ve been enjoying it as a secondary PC display for my office system.
Finally my office is coming together. It’s got a long way to go but I’m starting to see it develop.
Out On My Own
Posted on 25 April 2010 | No Comments
I was just browsing through my last few months of posts and realized two things:
1) That I haven’t written nearly as much as I should… as usual…
and
2) That I haven’t said anything about my work situation since I had a “positive” interview back in mid December.
Well, let me tell you.
I had three more interviews at the same venue over the course of a little over two months. Then they decided to go in another direction. At first I shrugged it off and said to myself “better luck next time”, but honestly – that was just rude. Don’t waste two months of my life if you’re not fully intending to follow through.
Disillusioned, I decided the only person I could rely on professionally was myself, so I decided to strike out on my own. Right now the focus of my business is mobile tech work, which I will write about (and have written about already) as it comes along. Programming will likely be less frequent but it’ll still happen.
In the meantime I’m keeping very busy promoting my business by day and delivering pizza by night to fill the gaps.
Password Protected File Sharing Issues
Posted on 22 April 2010 | No Comments
I recently had the pleasure of working on a particularly stubborn issue between a Windows Vista and a Windows 7 PC.
I used Microsoft’s “Easy Transfer” program to capture the profiles from an older XP system, then applied it to their brand-new Windows 7 system. Easy as pie.
The problem presented when I tried to reconfigure the printer and file sharing that had existed on the XP machine previously. I tried to connect via the network browser on a Vista laptop to the Windows 7 box, but was presented with a password dialogue box. I couldn’t very well leave it in a state where the printer doesn’t work over the network until you login first, so of course I immediately went to the “password protected file sharing” option in the “Network and Sharing Center”, and disabled it.
The problem persisted.
After a while I was getting annoyed. They were both in the same workgroup, no firewall issues, nothing came to mind. After a bit of reading on Google it appeared as if the Guest account may have somehow picked up a password (which was a possibility since the XP machine was a bit of a mess). So I went in and reset the password to blank.
Still, the problem persisted.
I knew it had to have something to do with the profiles I migrated over. I could feel it instinctively.
What I eventually realized was that the laptop I was currently on had the same username as one of the accounts on the PC did, however they both had different passwords. So when I tried to connect, the remote system recognized the user but not the password, and so prompted me to fill out my username and password.
There wasn’t much on Google that addressed my situation but I now suspect that it must be fairly common, so I felt obliged to document my experience.
Form Submit Var Doesn’t Exist When You Use Enter Key To Submit Form
Posted on 24 February 2010 | 1 Comment
I hope the title is clear enough to help people search for this.
I’ve spent the last few days creating an application for myself to keep track of services performed and clients. I was making a simple “client search” form when I found I was getting inconsistent DB results. Sometimes the results would show up, sometimes not. I won’t go into the full story and how ridiculously long it took me to notice that I wasn’t submitting the form the same way every time. Sometimes I clicked the submit button, sometimes I just hit Enter.
I was invoking the search function based on a cfif tag.
Originally I’d coded this:
<cfif isDefined("FORM.Submit")>
<cfinvoke component="client_tracking.functions.dbactions" method="searchclients" search=#FORM.search#>
</cfif>
I did a relatively extended Google search since I wasn’t entirely sure how to word the question properly, but eventually I discovered a better way of checking if the form had been submitted.
Namely:
<cfif structKeyExists(form, "search")>
<cfinvoke component="client_tracking.functions.dbactions" method="searchclients" search=#FORM.search#>
</cfif>
This new code checks the form structure and the search key to check if it has value. It works both clicking the submit button and hitting the enter key.
Thanks for Ray Camden for having this figured out ages ago.
Microwave VS Wireless Network
Posted on 17 February 2010 | No Comments
One of my favorite perks of my job is that I am constantly learning something new. Even the most seasoned computer expert will never be short of new material.
Today, my lesson was that yes, a microwave can bring a wireless network to its knees.
It was hard to believe at first, but after a few tests it was most certainly the microwave to blame. It seemed to me that this should be a cause for concern and that this sort of radiation could be a sign of something perhaps dangerous. Later, I began some research. According to this article, tests indicate a Microwave oven can degrade network performance by up to 85%. In the case I experienced today, it killed it entirely. However, the article also notes that Microwaves operate at a fairly narrow frequency range, which allows us to alter the WIFI frequency channel to compensate. Often, routers do a scan themselves to see which channel is the clearest, but unless the microwave is running while it does this scan, this will not help.
Some cordless phones are known to interfere with the spectrum as well. Wireless b products operate on the same frequency as older cordless phones (2.4 GHz – close to the same frequency as Microwave ovens) and thus can cause heavy interference. Newer “digital band” cordless phones are available in the 6 GHz range to combat this phenomenon.
Wireless N routers – the newest wireless format available and undoubtedly the best – can eliminate this issue by operating in the 5 GHz range instead of the 2.4 GHz, but all devices in the home would have to be Wireless j technology. Unfortunately, the technology is so new (the technology standard was only officially ratified in October of 2009) that most consumer devices are still b or g technology unless manufactured late 2009.
Most modern wireless routers should have an option to change the frequency channel. For information on how to do this, consult your device documentation or a local computer technician.
How To Remove “Encrypted Archive” Context Menu For UPEK Biometrics From “My Computer”
Posted on 12 January 2010 | 2 Comments
I wrote recently about some correspondence I had with UPEK support to remove the “Encrypted Archive” menu items from the context menu of the whole file system. I thought it was a bit of a nuisance and wanted it removed, so UPEK immediately provided me with a registry key to delete that would solve my problem.
A couple days ago I noticed that although the registry fix effectively removed it from the menu when I right-clicked files, that fix apparently did not include the root drive context menu. If I were to right-click any of my drives in “Computer” (or “My Computer”), the menu returned.
So I eventually got around to contacting UPEK again, and once more they responded immediately. I must say I’m not used to this level of support. And I also appreciate not being coddled. I always hate dealing with support when they assume you know nothing about computers. I always have to assure them I’ve gone through all these troubleshooting steps. In this case I suppose there’s no troubleshooting to be done, but still the fact that they gave me a very straightforward registry edit made me very happy.
So here it is:
Delete the "HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Drive\ShellEx\ContextMenuHandlers\SafearchiveContextMenu" registry key.
Putting Windows Live Messenger Back In The System Tray In Windows 7
Posted on 6 January 2010 | 1 Comment
It didn’t bug me until today but alas, it eventually got to me.
Windows Live Messenger on Windows 7 has a new home in the quicklaunch area and I’m not the only one who has found it annoying.
Want to put it back in the system tray (at the bottom right where other notifications show up)? All you have to do is go to the msnmsgr.exe in C:\Program Files\Windows Live\Messenger and right-click it, then go down to properties, then click the compatibility tab.
Fill it out as above (Run this program in compatibility mode for: Windows Vista), hit OK, and you’re done. The next time you start the program, it will return to the system tray where it used to be.
How To Remove “Encrypted Archive” Context Menu For UPEK Biometrics
Posted on 5 January 2010 | 1 Comment
A fairly specific title, to be sure.
I recently wiped my laptop and used this opportunity to streamline much of my system as well as to officially upgrade to Windows 7.
One of my favorite features of my laptop – the Dell XPS 1530 – is the built-in UPEK biometrics fingerprint scanner. Unfortunately, the dell-supplied drivers are incompatible with Windows 7, so I was forced to download the latest version directly from the site – which makes it sound like a bad thing but I actually prefer the “retail” version rather than the OEM stuff vendors get, so I was happy.
However, I eventually noticed something that always rather bugged me behind the scenes back on Vista as well with the OEM drivers/software. In the context menu (right-click) of any file, I was presented with two additional buttons: “add to new encrypted archive” and “add to existing encrypted archive”, neither of which I have used or will ever used. And if you’re like me, you prefer no clutter.
There’s an option inside the UPEK program to eliminate the “file safe” from the desktop and “My Computer” windows, but there is no option to remove the context menu. So I did what any responsible person with a complaint about a software product would do – I sent feedback to the developer. And I am quite glad I did, because their support staff gave me a response within just a few hours with the key to removing it. In this case, quite literally a key for the registry (I have no fear of the registry and had removed a number of UPEK-related keys previously, none of which worked – but I put them back).
To remove the FileSafe context menus just delete the following registry key:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\AllFileSystemObjects\ShellEx\ContextMenuHandlers\SafearchiveContextMenu
Super easy, once you know where to look.
Thanks, UPEK. I’m very impressed with both your concise response and response time.
Ribbon Interface
Posted on 3 January 2010 | 4 Comments
I’m a bit late to the game here, but after reformatting my computer to officially upgrade to Windows 7, and installing OpenOffice because I don’t want to deal with Office 2007 licensing, I realized how much I prefer the ribbon interface.
I looked around briefly to see if there was a “skin” or something similar for OO since it’s open source nature lends itself to that sort of thing. Alas, nothing to be found but rumors of Sun Microsystems working on a ribbon interface of their own.
Which was an enlightening discovery since reading the comments and reviews revealed almost universal rancor towards the ribbon interface – an attitude I fail to understand or agree with.
To me, the ribbon interface represents a logical solution to a big problem (especially with word-processors), namely feature-creep. There does not need to be a button for every function since there are so many. I don’t need four different visible buttons for left, center, right and justify. Of course I don’t believe the ribbon interface is necessarily appropriate for every suite and program available to the PC, but there is something to be said for a design standard.
So I guess for anyone reading this I’d like to hear your thoughts.
Spoons Are Weird
Posted on 2 January 2010 | No Comments
Today I remembered an old conversation I had years ago which involved looking for common but weird words. Some of these words weren’t weird until you thought about it. Like ‘spoon’. Then while remembering this, my brain turned it into a bizarre English lesson. Keep in mind all of this came to mind while driving home from work, and for some reason I was overwhelmed by the compulsion to document it for posterity.
Observe and despair at my brain in action.
Spoons is a weird word. This sentence is wrong because you can’t refer to a plural noun in the singular, and so it could technically read “Spoons are a weird word” but of course that doesn’t make sense either because we are not talking about a plural noun, but rather the word referencing the object – ‘spoon’. The exception to this rule is when abstracting a plural into a singular collective noun, such as “group” or “bunch”. However in this case you could not say “Spoons are a weird bunch” and get the same meaning as was intended in the sentence starting the paragraph.
Of course you might also say “Spoon is a weird word”, which removes the confusion resulting from the plural noun, but even this is incorrect because neglecting to quote a word makes it the refer to the object instead of the word itself. I found the plural form of the word ‘spoon’ especially highlighted the issue when read or spoken aloud. So to say “Spoon is a weird word” would also be incorrect because it would be stating that a spoon is a word, which it is not – it is rather a utensil used to assist in the act of eating.
The only valid form I can imagine is “’Spoons’ is a weird word”. Notice the single quotes around ‘spoons’ which excludes it from the rules associated with proper noun use, and abstracts the “spoons” into a singular quoted subject.
