Recently in Technology Category

Hows this for a blast from the past:

All comments: help@counter.li.org

Your record was created: 1999-04-23 05:07:09
Person info last modified: 2006-03-12 08:33:53

//PERSON
name: Alan
usage: Home, work
started: 1998
homepage: http://arcterex.net/blog/

//MACHINE 52939
cpu: Pentium 75
# Interpreted as Pentium/75
disk: 2000
memory: 48
network: Ethernet
source: debian.org
distribution: Debian
country: CA
accounts: 3
users: 1
purpose: WWW server, File server
# Interpreted as File server, WWW server
sysclass: workstation
mailer: smail, Smail 3.2.0.102


[Some entries highlighted for interest]

Wow, P75 with 48mb of RAM and a 2G hard drive, that's some smoking machine. Course, that 1999 entry was created a good 5 years after I started using Linux.

Oh well, guess it's not always a perfect world in Apple support-land.  The battery in my laptop has been less than steller lately, so I headed to the Apple store armed with this article hoping to get a new battery from them gratis. 

Sadly, it was not to be.  After explaining to the guy there about it, quoting the "80% after 300 charges" spec that they have, the guy hoooked me up to their battery diagnostic and pronounced it was "consumed", and not a bad battery at all. Unfortunately I had to go through the pretence of being interested before this and found out all sorts of good housekeeping tips for laptop batteries before he got to what I really wanted to know, that is, were they going to give me a free one.

Ah well, guess it can't turn up roses all the time, and I'll just keep on using the battery I have until it can't make it from home to work on a charge and have to look at getting a new one.  Not a huge deal now, as most of the time it's plugged in at home and I sit in a seat with power on the Vancouver to home leg of my commute.

After spending a while hitting the limit of my laptop hard drive, and being annoyed with being forced to actually cull my data and videos and music to make it all fit, I finally realized that for under $100 I could almost triple the storage space I had in it with little or no worries (other than possibly voiding the warranty, not an issue in a 2.5 year old machine).   It was actually pretty easy to do, other than one or two minor blips.  There's lots of information online about how to do it, and other than the minor detail of needing a computer to read the instructions on while you have the computer open with it's guts exposed, it was up and done with no muss and no fuss.

First things first, reading resources. 

• This Extreme Tech article is great, and being the first hit on google was nice.
• When I did run into one thing I needed confirmation on, this video showed that there were minor differences in the versions of the hardware (or at least from the first article).

So for $79 I picked up a 500G, 7200rpm laptop drive, and a few dollars more I got the SATA to USB connector kit that would let me connect the drive to the computer as a USB drive.  This was needed to make the upgrade smooth. Oh, and a T-6 Torx screwdriver as well, as per the article.  Seems apple can't leave it at just one type of screw in their bodies....



When I got home I made sure my homebrew time capsule backup was current, and nuked a few un-needed big files from the desktop.  I assembled the SATA drive and adapter and plugged in the drive, formatted it, and then I broke out Carbon Copy Cloner.  CCC is an awesome utility that basically will clone one drive to another and make it bootable if needed, so for me the theory was clone old drive to new drive, swap out drives, boot up on new drive, with all my data in place and no issues.  In theory.

Unlike most stories about me and hardware, this time the theory was the reality.  I assembled a bit of paper to keep track of which screws went where, consulted the webpages a lot for each step, got a little scared with the sticky cable attached to the top of the drive, and in the end, reversed the whole process to put it all back together.

End result, computer working properly, more than twice the disk space, and only about $100 spent on tools, adapters, and the actual drive.  Well worth saving the random "dangnabbit what else to I have to delete now!?" yells.

Shaw called me up yesterday and asked if I was wanting a digital cable box for the low-low price of $0 (for the next 6 months) to "make my picture and sound better" because they were "trying to get their customers onto digital picture and sound" or something like that.  I talked to the guy for a bit, and it seemed like not that bad a deal, free for 6 months, then $2.50 or so after that (should we decide to keep it of course and not accidentally forget).  Not bad I told him, but how about a PVR.  No no, this is just the digital tuner.  OK, but it is HD right?  No no, not HD. 

Eh?

Ok, not much use to me.  Basically outside of a few more channels (and lets be honest, I have 60 channels of crap now) it gave me nothing but another box and remote to deal with and a new interface to change channels with.  So not that great a deal, even for free.  But I told him, if you can get me the same deal with an HD tuner box, let me know and I'm all over that (hey, free is free, and I'd rather watch 60 channels of crap in HD than not in HD you know).  Also I doubt they could do anything for me but it doesn't hurt to ask, especially if there's nothing to lose.  Anyway, they said they'd call me back today.

So in typical big company fashion, communication was off and when I did get the call today I was cheerfully asked "so, you called asking about HD PVRs?"  After I explained what was going on, and what I was offered and what I wanting, they offered me the following deal:

• HD Tuner with PVR rent free for 2 years
• Extra HD movie channels for 1 year
• Shaw home phone service with voicemail etc and 1 year free Canada / US calling
• Home phone number stays the same with no costs for porting it from Telus to Shaw
  

All for $20 a month less than what I pay now.  That's not counting the fact I'd be able to stop my Telus service of $30-40 a month.

Now of course the devil is in the details. If I forget to cancel the various extras added on after 1 year they I get dinged at least a month of them before I cancel, and there are three different programs and two different anniversaries to remember if I want to back down to a lower rate after.  But even if I left things as is after the 1 year promotional "loyal customer" promotion ends, I'm still going to not have a Telus bill that means my costs are at minimum $10 a month cheaper.  And in theory if I nuke all the services back to minimum and either buy out the PVR ($400 ouch) or send it back I'm back to where I was or lower, even after all the promos are ended. 

I asked a bunch of people on twitter and facebook about Shaw home phone and other than one guy who said that he got crappy and spotty service with it, the response was overwhelmingly "it's fine, no problems".  Might even fix the crackly line we get on the home phone too.  Only minor downside is that in a power outage the phone doesn't work (one person mentioned they have a 24 hour battery on theirs), but quite frankly I have that right now as our phone base station is powered.

Even if after a year I switch everything back and go back to exactly how it is now, a year of saving $50 a month means $600 in my pocket, which at the end of the day, makes sense.  Unless someone out there in Blog Land has some really good reasons to not go with a deal like this, I'll probably take it.  Apparently I get a recruiting fee if I pass it on to someone else too, so anyone who might be in the process of moving for example and are planning to get some brand new Internet or Cable TV service at their new home, make sure you make sure to tell them that I sent you :)

Short version: got up early, didn't get one, bummed.

Here's the long version though. I've wanted an iPhone 4 for a while, accuse me of being a fanboy or silly or whatever, but I have. My current iPhone is two generations old now, and is starting to feel like it, and with the official Canadian release of the iPhone 4 coming July 30th (that'd be today), I was amped, ready and prepared.

Last night I was up late (I blame the tea) and couldn't sleep, wondering if I should be one of those crazy people who camps out the night before, telling myself I'm not that crazy, then envisioning myself as person #11 in a lineup outside a store with only 10 phones and wondering if I should just go and drive to Abbotsford to check. My compromise was to set my alarm a bit earlier and go to sleep.

After tossing and turning till about 1am, I finally got to sleep, or at least I must have. Then at 4am I started hearing a strange noise, strange enough and loud enough to wake up up. Got up and found it was my laptop making the odd noise, not the hard-drive it seemed (thank the computer gods) but it must have been the fan. In my groggy state I had enough presence of mind to shut my laptop down and go back to bed.

Of course, now at 4am my cats saw me awake and figured now was the time to talk to me, so the next 40 minutes was more tossing and turning while being head-butted, pawed, cuddled, and purred against by various furry critters. At 4:40am I gave up (as my brain was now asking me if there weren't crazy people who may not line up outside a Rogers store in Abbotsford the night before, but first thing in the morning?) and just got up, got dressed, and headed out. I hit the store where I was at for the first iPhone line I was in at and there was thankfully no one there.

I filled up with gas, got a coffee at Tim Hortons, and drove back, still no one there.

I took my rightful place in line as person (fool?) number 1.

About 30 minutes later two other guys showed up and we chatted for a while, then another, and another, and we got to know each other and were happy to be with "our people"... those who were perfectly self-aware of their shiny-tech-gadget lust. We talked about rumours we'd heard, guessed as to the various numbers of phones that would be at the store, and everything else. All through this I kept on realizing that no matter what happened, even if the low number of 5 of the version of the phone I was wanting was true, I'd still get what I wanted as I was #1 in line.

A couple of hours pass now and there are about 7 people in the lineup, and we start to notice that there were people actually inside the mall, sitting right outside the Rogers store.

To clarify, we (the "real" lineup) were standing outside one of the mall entrances that was closest to the Rogers store, but there were 5 other entrances, and there were a group of old folks who walked the mall in the mornings who go in through a service entrance.

So it looked like the two people inside the mall got in there through either the service entrance or another set of doors. The inside group grew by a couple more and people started to get a bit nervous and annoyed. Finally a mall-cop came by and was nice enough to let us in.

Now the douche-bags came out. First of all there were about 7 people ahead of us (the "real" line) inside already, and they some how multiplied to about 13 as others glommed on. In particular there was Douche-bag In The Hat, who was around 8th in our outside lineup, went to the front of the line to chat, and then just sort of stayed there when the Rogers people came out. Then there's Douche-bag With The Popped Collar who came late and just stood ahead of me, saying "don't freak out, I'm just here for my brother" when someone complained, even though he didn't seem to be with anyone and there was no younger brother nearby. Turns out he was standing behind his brothers girlfriend or wife, and his brother came later as well (isn't it nice you can come to the line up at 9am and end up ahead of the people there at 5am?). I have no problem if you're there cause you need to co-sign a cell phone contract, but if suddenly there are now 2 extra people in front of me that's also 2 extra phones disappearing.

So when the Rogers people arrived I had somehow gone from first in line to 13th. I could say I'd be ok with being 3rd, as there was a guy there with his wife who got there at 11am the night before. Still, 13th? *sigh*.

In the end though, the store only got two of the 32GB models (which after all this I wasn't going to compromise and not get exactly what I had come for) so they were gone by 9:45 when the 3rd or so person went in. Of course, the Rogers network was also down from the demand on it (my buddy Bryan has yet to have his phone which he got in Vancouver activated as of mid-afternoon), so people weren't actually getting phones to take away, just a phone reserved in the store for them until the activation tools were working again.

A couple of people came out of the store ahead muttering about "no more 32G versions", and I decided not to just go home and try next week, but stayed just in case there was a list to put my name on. Turns out that was a good move, because there was a list, and I am (trumpet call) number 3 on the list of people who will get called when more 32G versions are in (monday or tuesday maybe).

So that's a long way to spend a morning to get nothing.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm ok with not getting a phone. It's just a phone, and I have a perfectly fine working phone now (shiny as it is). Really, I am. What I'm pissed off at is not getting a phone EVEN THOUGH I WAS FIRST IN LINE. I feel a bit cheated, and have to say will not be going to this store for the next "event" and will instead go to a Rogers store that has a single entrance.

The rest of the morning (now approaching afternoon) wasn't much better:

• Cost me $150 to have the fan on my laptop fixed, or at least the part ordered and pre-pay the costs.
  
• Have my doctor tell me my bad cholesterol is down (yay), good cholesterol is up (yay), and blood pressure is perfect (yay).
  
• Coming home and poking at my laptop the noisy fan seems to have fixed itself, but of course they won't cancel the ordered part and refund me the money. *sigh*
  

Now I'm tired, a bit cranky, but still hopeful that new stock will get me a shiny toy to play with before the new work week appears. There's still time for it all to turn horrible though...

So in 2003, I reported Bug #123796 in the GNOME bug tracking system. Three years later it was marked as duplicate of Bug #340180. Finally over 3 years after that (today), it was marked as confirmed.

It's a relatively simple bug, easy to reproduce, and while not a huge important bug, it's annoying and I'd say at least one out of ten people with dual monitors has probably come across it at some point. Yet it's sat mostly ignored in the GNOME bug database, as have most of my other reported bugs.

Ah well, I guess there's a chance that it will be fixed now, should someone step up and actually fix the code that is.

My PS3 all of a sudden started acting up (where "acting up" means "shows nothing on the screen"). Tried different cables, different HDMI ports, and waiting for a day in case it decided to magically fix itself, but no go. After a week I took it down the road to plug it into someone else's HDTV to see if it was the PS3 or the TV. I expected nothing less than complete failure, letting me send the PS3 away to Sony to fix it.

And it worked perfectly. Grrr.... OK, must have fixed itself over the week of sitting. Bring it back home and...

Same exact thing. *brain explodes*

Next step is to bring someone else's PS3 in and see if a working PS3 will suddenly stop working on my TV or if it is indeed my TV. Luckily while I was screaming and raving about technology and how it hates me, I started poking into the TV menus and after twiddling a couple of knobs, all of a sudden it magically started working. Wooo!

So I got a copy of the new, yet-to-be-released-but-finished, Windows 7 from my favorite company, Microsoft. I've actually been getting a bit excited about this, as it's heralded to be a newer, better, less sucky version of Vista. And even some of the hardcore tech bloggers and personalities are getting a bit excited about it.

Now I haven't had that many issues with Vista, but I tend to tell people that it's bi-polar. Half the time it works fine, smooth, easy, no issues at all, but the other half of the time it's stalling, crunching away, not able to delete files, sitting and doing nothing while blocking me from doing things, etc. But then you reboot (or reboot several times) and suddenly it's back to being completely normal and working beautifully.

So I managed to shanghai a legit copy of Windows 7 from my buddy in the Microsoft camp, and after finishing 3 triple redundant backups of my system and photos, I was finally ready last night to do the install. Memories of my Vista install were coming back now.

I opted to not upgrade as my Windows install was 3 years old and had, as Windows tends to do, accumulated a fair amount of software cruft, and a clean install felt like the right thing to do.

Read on....

OK, long, sad story coming up. Bail out now if you need to. Dad called saying his computer was doing strange things, not booting right (starting up a linux boot screen), messages about a drive failing, etc.

Oh, and Dad, this is not a reflection of you asking me to help you with your computer, but my own personal failings and reasons that I have started to wonder how I can put my socks on in the morning by myself. Since you don't have a computer right now you won't be seeing this until after I've explained in person the problems I had with it.

Anyway, you'd figure any moron with 15+ years dealing with computers and PC hardware could deal with the issues, right? Throw in a disk checker (such as SpinRite), use something to clone the bad disk to a new one, do some cleanup, upgrade everything, install all the patches and updates, done in an evening right? Heck, I even had an older USB hard drive that, when taken apart, yielded a nice 230G PATA drive to use (and being the computer is 5+ years old, with C: being a whopping 13G drive, even this small-by-today's-standards drive would be a huge improvement). Even better I even had a better (not by much) video card to put in.

So I started.... here's a list of what went wrong to start with.

• Spent lots of time mucking around and cloning the wrong drive. Cloned C: to the new drive instead of E: (clearly written on the paper that I got) which was the one that was failing.
  
• Spent lots of time plugging drives in and out figuring out which was which and what names windows (XP) would give the drives if they were plugged in and out.
  
• Finally decided to just get rid of the E: all together, re-install / move the data on E: (which was where program files were being moved to as the 13G C: was 90% full), and leave F: (digital photo storage) alone (other than re-partitioning it, as it was a 40G drive with 10G of NTFS available and the rest old linux partitions!).
  
• At some point a wayward IDE cable made it's way into the CPU fan unnoticed, and the system ran for a while with no CPU fan, until it slowly crashed and (almost) burned. Left it overnight at this point to let everything cool off nicely to stop the warbling motherboard alarm from going off and telling me the CPU was slowly sizzling itself to death.
  

Ok, finally got things all figured out, booting up on the new 230G drive, yay! Now the long and horrible task of updating everything to SP3 + patches + patches for patches + extra software + patches for extra software. New video card went in so it needed new drivers, I had to re-install some software to make sure that the now-not-there E: location was updated properly, etc. All time consuming in the waiting, but fairly standard.

Almost all done, just need to swap the new drive in and done!

Now up until now the computer had been sitting sideways on the floor, with all the old drives still in it (just in case I needed to remember where one was plugged in or something) and the new one sitting on top.

You other geeks can see what's coming can't you? Yea....

I moved the new drive just a tiny bit on the top of the case and heard a tiny little "pop" and that smell that no computer person wants to smell, the smell of the magic smoke escaping.

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!

Now this was mid-day today, after 2 (calendar) days of working on this.

And there was no luck for me here, no drive magically working afterward, it was dead, dead, dead. Completely setup, updated, patched, and not-recognizable by the BIOS at all. My wife can attest that I had none-too-kind words for myself after that.

Did I mention that yesterday I was out at the lake with some friends and got myself nicely sunburnt? Not even a nice all over burn, instead it's all blotchy. Bleah. And hurts.

OK, back to the computer. What to do. OK, start over again.

• I found another older USB hard drive, only 160G but still usable. Nope, won't boot, dead and old. Pitch into the garbage.
  
• Last shot was a nice 500G external that I have (sorry Brian). Complete overkill for Dad, but it'll work.
  
• Repeat the same steps. Clone the drive to start.
  
• Clone done, swap cables.... drive starts to boot to windows and reboots. WTF? OK, maybe 500G is too much for the BIOS to handle. Re-jigger some things and try the clone again, oh, and there it goes again working. Odd (more on this later).
  
• Reboot, ensure it's booting the right drive, backup the bad drive to it, do the Windows Update and Patch Dance^tm. Software moving, re-installing, re-updating, etc.
  

Now it's almost midnight tonight, everything is tested and rebooted to make sure things come up properly, and it's ready for the final re-jigger of the hard drives (I've been using a magazine to keep the drive off the metal case to be safe).

OK, so the motherboard was one of the first ones with ATA100 PATA ports, and it actually had 4 IDE ports on it, 2 "standard" ones and 2 that show up to a secondary SCSI BIOS. For best performance I figure C: is master on the first ATA100, the pictures drive is master on the second ATA100, and the DVD drive is primary master on the "standard" IDE ports.

Plug it all in and boot up. Computer goes "beee woooo beee woooo". Hmm.... not good. Unplug DVD drive, computer starts booting. Weird. OK, lets boot up without the DVD in at all. Boots, windows boot screen comes up, aaaaaannnnnnd....... reboots.

Again with the screaming at the sky.

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!

Another hour or so of fucking around with it it looks like something either in the form of a drive incompatibility or maybe the magic smoke got let out of the the SCSI controller. Re-do the drives so they're all on the "standard" IDE ports, reboot (pray), see it working, shut down, reboot again to make 100% sure, it boots, and shut it down and get it ready to go back to it's home tomorrow.

Yay.

Then of course there's my other buddy's computer that he wanted re-installed, so that was started next.

All's well that ends well at 2am on a Friday :)

Funny introduction to twitter in the video twouble with twitters. Thanks for the link Len (who doesn't get it either).