The Commodore 64 is back!

Well, sort of. In the 1980′s the Commodore 64 was the most popular home computer. Commodore sold millions of them, and many of their users became programmers or other technology workers.

While Apple got most of the glory, the Commodore 64 was of the “blue collar” computer.

I wasn’t aware of this, but a company recenly bought the rights to the Commodore name and put up a new web site, http://commodoreusa.net just last month.

The new Commodore 64 is actually a stand-alone computer that looks like the old Commodore 64 on the outside, but inside is a computer from today. It comes with a mini-ITX motherboard and a Dual-Core 525 Atom processor. Not exactly a speed burner, but it’ll get the job done.

The rear of the machine has the usual modern complement of USB ports and DVI video out. A Blu-Ray capable DVD R/W is optional from the side.

The unit comes with a version of Ubuntu Linux, and eventually you will be able to boot into the old Commodore operating system. It looks like that feature is not ready for prime time as yet/

Apparently, you’ll be able to load Windows on this computer, too. When you boot up, you’ll be able to choose which operating system to use.

Related articles

• Commodore 64 Returns as More Powerful Machine (shoppingblog.com)
• The New Commodore 64 (hardware.slashdot.org)
• Commodore64 – The New Hotness! (nerdjunkies.com)

GMail SmartLabels not setup correctly for Google Apps

Update 04/11/11 – Google has fixed both of these issues mentioned below. It appears that they fixed it by upgrading the Google Apps version of GMail to the version that free GMail already had.

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Google recently rolled out a nifty new feature for GMail Labs called SmartLabels. Since they are in the Labs section, you have to go in and activate it in order to make it work. Be forewarned, however, that the SmartLabels function in any GMail account that is attached to Google Apps is missing some key pieces that are essential if it’s going to work right. We’ll highlight that in a moment.

According to Google, SmartLabels will help classify your incoming email for you, somewhat like the Priority Inbox does. While the Priority Inbox highlights email in your inbox that it feels is more important, SmartLabels takes incoming email and classifies it as “Bulk”, for things like advertisements, “Forums”, for forum or mailing list email, and “Notifications” for things like announcements. It then moves those emails under those labels for later reading.

Right out of the box, SmartLabels makes some pretty good guesses, and Google tells us that we can filter around it and notify them of misclassified email. That right there is the problem with GMail accounts attached to Google Apps. Even though you can activate SmartLabels in a GMail account attached to Google apps, both of these pieces are missing.

Read more…

Blogger Buzz: Introducing the Blogger Android App

Blogger Buzz: Introducing Blogger Android App

I finally got around to trying out the Blogger Android App, It became available in the Android Market recently. After trying  a few test posts on a test blog that I have, I have to say it’s a useful tool for those on the run.

The things I like:

1. Being able to switch easily between accounts and blogs. I  only have two Google accounts and the both share the same blogs, but someone with a setup that’s more complex would find this easy to use.
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2. Nice large buttons for publishing, savings as a draft or deleting
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3. It’s nicely integrated with the camera in the phone, so you can take a picture and immediately post it to your blog.
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4. It’s also nicely integrated with the my Android phone’s built in browser. Anytime you’re browsing and something on a page catches your eye, just go to the menu and find the share option and and you are ready to type up that post that you know that everyone wants to read.
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5. It’s very easy to view all of your posts, whether they are published or still in draft form.
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6. Last but but not least, the app is smooth and responsive. That makes it a real pleasure to use.

Once again – you can get it at the Android Market. Try it! I think you will like it.

Sprint HTC EVO 4G – My Review

A few weeks ago, I decided to buy a Sprint HTC Evo 4G and leave my venerable Blackberry Tour 9630 behind. It was a tough decision because I’ve been a Blackberry guy since 2004, except for a brief and disastrous flirtation with a Windows Mobile Verizon VX6700. I still shudder to think about it

To the left, you can see the “tub” that the EVO comes in, rather than a box. I bought this online from Radio Shack and the ordering process was smooth and fast. Delivery was also quick, considering that I had bought it just before New Year’s day

A quick inspection of the contents showed everything to be there, and in good shape. No scratches and no dents. Documentation was fairly brief, which is the norm nowadays, as most of the detailed documentation is a PDf file on a CD or online

Size -

After taking it out of the box, it was obvious I was going to have to adjust to the larger size in comparison to my old Tour.

I had held one in the store, but actually owning one now, I was thinking that I might have made a mistake. Writing this now a few weeks later, I can say my fears were quickly overcome. In daily use, it’s size is actually not that noticeable. I don’t use a holster or case, it just goes right in my pocket. That helps keep the size down. I do not have large hands either, yet it is easy to hold.

Performance -

After using the EVO for a few weeks, I can say that the performance blows the Tour away. I was used to the cramped, slow browser of the Tour, so I was amazed at how smooth and fast the EVO’s stocl browser was. And you know what? I rarely use the 4G mode, as I find that browsing under 3G is still considerably faster than the Tour.

I haven’t had to reboot the phone too many times, but the reboot times easily beat the 6-8 minutes of the Tour. Apps from the app store manage to install themselves without having to reboot the device, unlike the Tour.

Lastly, even though both devices are on the Sprint network, the radio in the EVO consistently pulled in a better signal than the Tour. I went to a number of locations where I knew that I had either gotten no signal or a weak signal with the Tour. In each instance of where the EVO got no signal, the EVO pulled at least a fair signal or even a good one.

So, for all you Tour owners out there, Sprint’s network may not be to blame for your weak or no signal problems.

The elephant in the room -

Yes, I’m talking about the battery. Face it, I knew going in that the battery was not going to last me as long as the Tour’s. And I was right. If there is a downside to the EVO, you have to be get used to watching your battery levels.

Shortly after I got the EVO, I purchased a SEIDIO 1750 mAh battery. That made a considerable difference. With quite normal use, the battery lasts me all day. If I have to make a number of calls, I throw it on a charger for a half hour and I’m good to go.

One other feature where it doesn’t outshine the Tour is in handling email. If you’re on an Exchange server, as I am, the stock mail handler doesn’t handle email as seamlessly as a Blackberry. It does do it though. I’m going to be looking at some of the third-party apps to see if I can improve that.

Bottom line – I like the EVO. Its advantages over the Blackberry outweigh the few disadvantages. The transition was a lot easier than I thought it would be. -SM-

Dropbox – My Experiences

About 10 or 12 years ago, there were a number of sites selling storage on the web. One of them I used for a while was XDrive.

At the time, I thought it was pretty cool. You could get up to 100 megabytes of storage for free! Courtesy of the Wayback machine at archive. org, here is what XDrive’s web site looked like back in 2000.

Here is what their web site looks like now. As you can see, they’re no longer in business. Myself, I stopped using them and their competitors after a while because in most cases, the interfaces were clumsy and really not all that easy to use. It became more convenient to use a flash or thumb drive, which were starting to get popular and less expensive.

That’s pretty much how I operated over the years. I would see other online storage operations come and go, and I didn’t pay much attention. About a year and half ago, I read about Dropbox and didn’t really think much of it at the time.

Recently, I was reading an article in MaximumPC magazine where they showed how to keep track of your passwords using a combination of the open source password tracker program KeePass and Dropbox.

In working through hows this should work, I decided to sign up for the basic 2Gb free Dropbox account.

Read more…

Change SSL Certificate from 1024 bit to 2048 bit on II6

Just a short posting in this subject. I needed to renew our SSL certificate on one of our Windows Server 2003 machines. We’ve always used GoDaddy, and never had a problem renewing in the past.

This time around, GoDaddy no longer issues 1024 bit certificates. You have to replace those with a minimum of 2048.

I attempted to just replace the 1024 bit certificate with a 2048 bit replacement and found that I could not do that on II6.

Save yourself a little aggravation. You have to remove the old 1024 bit certificate and then install the new 2048 bit certificate in its place. Doesn’t take too long at all.

Why I stopped using Blogger – Redux

As I posted on 3/29,  I had finally come to the conclusion that Google’s Blogger service was seriously broken.

Since that time, I’ve continued to read the Blogger help forums (it’s actually like not being able to look away from a car accident),  and searching blogs continues not working.

Additionally, it appears that if any appreciable change is made to a blog, such as changing from the generic blogspot domain to a custom domain, for example, you get treated to having your comments disappear. Sometimes they come back, sometimes they don’t.

The one issue that bothers me the most, is that blogs continue to be deleted as spam blogs, when they aren’t. It’s been said by Google and some of their unofficial support staff that this happens because the spammers are just too good and that in a lot of cases they are scraping legit blogs which makes it difficult for Google’s automated spam checker to tell which is spam and which is legit.

I think it’s more of a case that Google just doesn’t have their act together. I’m seeing more and more cases of private blogs (not visible to the public) getting whacked by their spam checker. Here is a case of a poor soul with what he thought was a blog visible only to him getting deleted as a spam blog:

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/blogger/thread?tid=5197024060933acb&hl=en

Shoddy operation, Google, just plain shoddy. Obviously, this content can’t be scraped by spammers, and if the content is not available to the public, why is Google scanning it?

It just amazes me that Google can be so good at something like GMail, and yet so entirely bad with something like Blogger or Google Groups, which is a subject for another day.

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• When Google Bans Its Own Discussion Group (googlesystem.blogspot.com)

Platinum Tools Precision Screwdriver Set

When working on a desktop or notebook computer, it’s alway advisable to use quality tools. There is nothing worse than having to do a screw extraction because you used an inferior screwdriver and managed to strip the screw head. It’s definitely time and money lost.

I’ve been looking for a quality screwdriver set, particularly for working on notebooks. During my search I came across what looked to be the answer, the Platinum Tools screwdriver set – 33 piece.

I bought it at   Cyberguys, and it was reasonably priced at $27.44 with shipping.  Here’s what you get:

Pozi Drive PZ1 and PZ0

Phillips 000, 00, 0, 1

Slotted 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, 2.5, 3.0. 3.5, 4.0

Torx 4.5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 15, 20

Hex 0.7, 0.9, 1.3, 1.5, 2.0, 2.5, 3.0, 4.0

M5 Socket, M6 Socket, M4 Shaft

The screwdriver itself has a soft handle (which I like), and the tail end rotates, so you can hold it there and stabilize it even while turning the screwdriver. As you can see from the pictures, the screwdriver itself can be extended to a 9.5″ length. None of the pieces in this set look or feel cheap and look to last a long time. I’ve already used it during a couple of recent projects and was impressed with the quality.

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• 12 Tools Every Man Must Have (lewrockwell.com)

Clear Wireless Broadband Review

Just recently, I signed up for Clearwire’s Wireless Broadband Service. It’s known commercially as “Clear“.

I got the $55 home and mobile setup. Sadly, I wasn’t paying attention and missed out on a $50 per month for life on the same setup.

Rather than be tied down to a 2 year contract, I purchased the modems for each service outright. I did the sign up on line, giving them my credit card information and a couple of days later, received two boxes at my doorstep.

One box contained the The CLEAR Modem – Series M, for my connection at home,

and the other contained the Clear 4G Mobile USB adapter, for “on the go” usage.

The Mobile USB Adapter came with a universal joint type extender. I guess you would use that if you were unable to get to your USB port directly. I could see that as an issue as the Mobile Adapter  was huge.

They also included a miniature USB drive with the Clear Connection Manager software. Nice touch, but I didn’t really need it as I had already downloaded the software from their web site.

The Series M Modem didn’t look much different than a regular DSL or cable modem. This also was a little bigger than I thought.

One confusing thing occurred. When you buy the two modems as I did, you actually have two accounts under your name. A little hard to describe,

but it was confusing during the setup, until I called their tech support line and it was explained to me. It does make sense when you realize that each modem is for a separate account as you could cancel either one and still maintain service.

Setup was painless. With the Mobile USB Adapter, you load theconnection manager software. Stick the adapter in the the USB slot, and after a moment, the connection is made. This being wireless, your location is going to be important for how you connect. Using this adapter at home on my notebook, I managed to get a consistent 6Mb/s down and 1Mb/s up. Pings were about 62ms. Not bad at all.

Taking that same notebook into my office, in an office inside a building, I had widely variable results for download, everything from 900k/s download to 2.5Mb/s download. Uploads seemed to stay at around 1Mb/s. Pings were averaging around 100ms. Not  bad but not great.

The Series M Modem at home didn’t even need the connection software. I just hooked it to one of my desktops and got a clean 6Mb/s down and 1Mb/s up with pings in the 60-70ms range.

I’m not ready to make these guys my primary provider, but so far, the service has been good.

One thing I have to mention, and the last picture does not do it credit. The connection light on the USB mobile adapter is as bright as a searchlight! And as you use the connection, it constantly flickers.

I had the lights off in the one room while it was on, and it looked like a light show was going on. I found it very distracting while trying to use the notebook. I could only imagine how it would look to someone sitting next to you on a commuter train. Reading the Clearwire forum at dslreports.com, provided me with a solution. I used a felt tip marker and covered the connection light. It does not eliminate the light, but it cuts down the brightness considerably.

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Why I stopped using Blogger

I first joined Blogger back in 2004. I didn’t start blogging in earnest until last year. The nice thing about Blogger is that it’s free. Unfortunately, the bad thing about Blogger is that it’s free.

That may seem to be a contradiction, but it’s true. Blogger is free and there are a lot of great tools that they give you. This also attracts a lot of people who attempt to use Blogger as a spamming tool. Blogger is a huge operation and they use automated tools to try and stop the spammers.

While using Blogger, I was a frequent reader of their help forums. I learned  a lot just by reading the questions and answers that were being given. It was there that I found out that I was not alone with not being able to search my blog posts. This problem has gone unsolved by Google since last July. This was my first reason for not using Blogger any more.

Over time, I saw an increase in people complaining about there blogs being deleted as spam blogs. I started looking at the cached version of their blogs on Google search.

I found that in a lot of cases, the blogs being deleted did not appear to be spam blogs. Of course, a lot of them appeared to be just that, spam blogs.

Read more…

Microsoft Security Essentials Upgrade

I’ve been using Avast for my anti-virus program for the past few years on the various notebooks and desktops that I use. When I bought the Latitude D620, I decided to load it up with Microsoft Security Essentials, the free successor to Windows OneCare. OneCare never had a good reputation and you actually had to pay for it.

I’ve been using it for a few weeks now and it’s really performed well, working in the background, and updating itself effortlessly. It even fired off a couple of warnings on a couple of admin tools I had on a USB stick when I plugged it on.

So today, I get a pop up telling me to upgrade. These days, I’m a lot more suspicious and decided to check the Microsoft forums to see if there was talk of an upgrade, and there was.

Also, when I brought the program up, there were notifications (see the picture) to upgrade. After upgrading, I had to go through the usual restart. Over all, the process was painless and shouldn’t cause even the least experienced user any problems.

At this point, I have to say that Microsoft has done something right, and after some more testing, I may deploy this to some of my other computers.

Centering Sidebar Titles in Blogger

After making the switch back to Blogger as my host (even though they still haven’t fixed the blog search!), I used the same template that I had used before. It’s the Grey Blogger Theme from lawnydesigns.com . I didn’t like the default color, so I had changed that some time back.

Once I was moved back in, I decided that I didn’t like that the titles for the widgets in the sidebar were all left justified. I wanted them all to be centered, as I thought that would be a cleaner look.

I went to Edit HTML in the Layout section and looked through the code and found that the side bar widgets could be surrounded with a div expression:

The picture shows how it looked in my case. All I did was look for “sidebar” in the code. Your template may have a different design, but I think it could be made to work just the same.

Update:

I’ve switched to one of the new Template Designer templates that Blogger came out with on 3/11. I don’t know at this time whether I’ll keep it or not. (03/15/10)

Update 2:

I’ve switched back to my web hosting account and WordPress.  What I mentioned above still works for Blogger templates, though. (03/17/10)

EZ Upgrade Universal

I like this product and would certainly recommend it to anyone who needs to hook up a notebook drive to an external enclosure.

Google Buzz

Google appears to be getting serious about social networking. According to Google “Buzz” is for “starting conversations about the things you find interesting. Share updates, photos, videos and more with your friends.”

It seems like Buzz is tied to your GMail account, and from what I can see, it appears to be a combination of Facebook and Twitter. I’ll admit to not being a big social networking guy (although I do Facebook and Twitter) so I don’t know how successful this will be.

Facebook and Twitter do have a large head start, and I can’t help but think that having it tied to GMail is not going to help. I can say for certainty that most of the people I know from Facebook are not going to want to open a new email account to use Buzz.

Buzz appeared on my GMail account this morning, so I’ll have to experiment and see what else Buzz can do.

Windows Key Shortcuts Revisited

When Microsoft introduced Windows 95 on August 24, 1995, they also created a new key that was to be used henceforth to control various Windows functions. It still exists today, as can be seen on my Dell Latitude D620 -

It’s looked slightly different over the years, but it’s still functions as a special key that when pressed along with another key, will perform some function.

No, I have used a notebook for most of my work and leisure since 1995 when I bought my first IBM Thinkpad. The reason I bring this up is that until recently, IBM was a hold out in putting Windows keys on their ThinkPad line of notebooks. IBM was very committed to keyboard design and there was never room for that Windows key until recently. I don’t know if it had something to do with Lenovo buying the IBM personal computer line, but all Thinkpad do have the Windows key. Anyway, because of this, I never developed the habit of using the Windows key, even though I saw it on the occasional desktop or notebook that I might use.

Since my Thinkpad T42 is waiting for me to repair it, and I’m now using the D620 full time, I decided to learn more about the Windows key.

Here’s a brief rundown:

Windows Key by itself-
Opens the Start Menu

Windows Key + “Break”
Display “Systems Properties”

Windows Key + “D”
Display Desktop

Windows Key + “M”
Minimize open windows

Windows Key + “E”
Open Windows Explorer

Windows Key + “F”
Search for files or folders

Windows Key + “F1″
Display Windows Help

Windows Key + “L”
Lock the computer

Windows Key + “R”
Open the Run dialog box

This one is for Vista and Windows7 –

Windows Key  + “TAB”
Cycle through open programs on the taskbar by using Windows Flip 3-D (I like this)

These are for Windows 7 –

Windows Key + “Space bar”
Preview the desktop

Windows Key + “Up Arrow”
Maximize the current window

Windows Key + “Down Arrow”
Minimize the current window

Windows Key + “Left Arrow”
Maximize the window to the left side of the screen

Windows Key + “Right Arrow”
Maximize the window to the right side of the screen

Windows Key + “Home”
Minimize all but the active window

Windows Key + “Shift” + “Up Arrow”
Stretch the window to the top and bottom of the screen

Windows Key + “P”
Choose presentation display mode

Windows Key + “G”
Cycle through screen gadgets

Windows Key + “U”
Open the Ease of Access Center

Windows Key +X”
Open the Windows Mobility Center

So, there you have it. Not using a keyboard with the windows key for the most part, I really was not aware of some of the great functionality that is available using that key. I think that was what the makers of the Thinkpad eventually realized.

Windows 7 Taskbar Progress Bar

As my ThinkPad T42′s fan was dying I decided to pick up an off lease Dell Latitude D620. Nice machine and pretty low cost, too. It came with Windows XP SP3, so I blew that away and installed Windows 7 Ultimate. As I was transferring files from the T42, I noticed a feature that I had not noticed on my Windows 7 desktop, probably because the desktop has a high resolution display with a lot of room. Here’s what  I noticed on the D620 – if you’re like me, you tend to multi-task a lot and windows that you are working on can get hidden behind others and get forgotten. For example, one of these types of windows -

Can get hidden behind another window, and if it’s a very long operation, you can forget it and not realize that the operation has finished. Since the screen on the latitude is not high resolution (1280×800), I had a number of windows open and the window above was well hidden while I was working on on other things.

While I was working, I happened to glance down at the taskbar, and found out that Windows 7 has a feature that let’s you keep track of the progress bar, even if it’s hidden behind other windows. Notice the green shading on the windows explorer icon on the task bar -

As the file transfer occurs the green shading actually moves across the icon and then finally disappears when the transfer is over. This was nice touch added to the Windows 7 interface by Microsoft.

CAPS Lock – don’t forget about it!

I just thought I would highlight this old chestnut. As long as I’ve been in this industry, the caps lock has been a problem. We have to access resources on a network outside of our own. In order to do that, our users have a VPN client, which uses it’s own user name and password.

One of our users claimed he was locked out of the VPN. Following the normal procedure, he called that network’s help desk to have his password reset. After much back and forth, he called me over and had me talk to their help desk. I entered his password a couple of times, and sure enough, it wouldn’t allow the log in. We verified that the password was correct.

As I was entering the password a third time, I noticed that our user had his caps lock key on. After turning that off, he was able to log in. Simple for sure, but it’s those simple things we sometimes forget to check!

Roku HD XR Review

(04/03/2011) This is an update to the review I wrote back in February of last year. Things worked well with the Roku until the first week of May. At that point the Roku was about 4 months old. Then, it just flat out failed. It wouldn’t connect at all. Nothing I tried would get it back on line. I called Roku and asked for a replacement unit as it was still under the one year warranty. Things got a little messy at that point.

Roku wanted proof of purchase, and since I bought it from Amazon, I had to fax my Amazon receipt to them. Once that was done, I got my RMA from them and shipped my Roku back to them. They did ship another Roku. To my surprise, it was just shipped in the original Roku box, with just an address sticker slapped on it. I was not impressed. You can see a picture of the type of box I’m talking about in the original review below.

Luckily , the unit was not damaged. Setup again was very easy and since that time I have not experienced the problems the original one had. Now that I’ve used the Roku for sixteen months, I have to say it’s been money well spent. I do use it mostly for viewing Netflix, but there have been a lot of other channels added in the last year.

Do not forget to check the Channel Store on occasion. It would also be a good idea to subscribe to the forums at at Roku – http://forums.roku.com as there is information about using the Roku and things like setting up private channels that don’t show in the Channel Store.

Lastly, the HD XR came with an USB port. In February of this year, Roku activated it. You have to go to the Channel Store to do it (USB Media Player), but it works!

What follows is my original review from 02/10/2010 –

Just before Christmas, I decided to purchase a Roku HD XR. Netflix has been offering online video streaming for some time and I had just gotten interested. I was planning on eliminating my Comcast subscription and then using OTA (Over The Air) viewing to be supplemented with online video streaming. Luckily, I am close enough to get very good HD signals over the air for a large number of stations with an indoor antenna.

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For those of you unfamiliar with the Roku, it’s a small appliance that you connect to your television in order to receive video streamed over your internet connection. The Roku offers a variety of ways to hook to your television inputs, and you can connect to your network either via an Ethernet cable or wirelessly. The XR model comes with wireless-n built in and also has an USB port, for future expansion.I purchased the Roku unit from Amazon (Super Saver Shipping!) and received it via UPS a few days later. At the end of this post, there are a number of pictures of the “unboxing”. I have a

DSL connection and use a wireless modem, so I wanted to use the wireless connection.

Setting up the Roku was as easy as they claim it to be. I connected the Roku to my television using the component video connectors. It was a good thing that I had the component cables that I used for my Comcast DVR as the component cables supplied by Roku were woefully short, as you can see from one of the photos below. My television is an early HD model that sports DVI, composite, component and S-Video connections, no HDMI. I turned the television on and there was the Roku setup screen.

To set up the Roku, you use the simplistic remote control that comes with unit. I had my doubts, but using the remote to choose the type of connection and input your SSID and security key proved to be easy.

Now comes the not-so-good part. After watching about one half hour of video, the broadcast stopped and I was informed that the Roku had lost connection to my network. I went back into set up and I could no longer see my network to be chosen. To make sure it worked, I ran a 50 foot Ethernet cable from the wireless modem and was able to set that up easily. Video functioned flawless with that set up. Not to be deterred, the next day, I tried again was able to set it up wirelessly, only to have it halt again a short time later. From the set up menu, I returned the Roku to factory default without success.

I went to the Roku forums (http://forums.roku.com/), and saw that some other people were having a

similar problem. One of the suggestions was to use the hardware reset on the unit. I found a tiny hole labeled “reset” on the bottom of the unit and using the obligatory paper clip, I did a reset. That worked for a short while, and then I had the wireless disappear again.

Back to the forums, and I found one person had done the reset, but also reset again while the first reset was occurring. I decided to give this a try, and amazingly, I’ve not had a problem since.

Once I had the unit working, it’s been a pure pleasure to browse and play the Netflix streaming catalog.

 

I have actually watched all five seasons of “The Office” via Netflix, and now I’m a fan.  I have 6 megabit DSL connection, so I have been able to watch movies and television shows without any annoying pauses or reloads. My ancient HD television tops out at 720p resolution, so the video quality of the streaming is just as good as DVD in most cases.

The Roku also offers Amazon Video on Demand, MLB.tv and a number of other web based video web sites. I’m probably going to explore some of those eventually. Once I was sure that the Roku worked properly, I called Comcast and canceled my subscription and returned the Comcast digital DVR box.  Which brings me to my next project. Since I no longer have a DVR, I plan to build an HTPC (Home Theater PC) which will allow me to record shows and rewind and pause television, just like I used to do with Comcast. I’m putting together the parts now, and will report on that when I’m finished.

God Mode in Windows 7

This has been circulating for a few days now.  Someone found what is being called a God Mode in Windows 7.  If you’re a gamer, you know that God Mode gives you special powers something like unlimited ammo or supplies or stops you from being killed.

Well, this God Mode for Windows 7 is nothing like that. Here is how it works. Create a new folder anywhere. The rename it with this:

God.Mode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

Once the folder is renamed, the icon for the folder will change into that for the Control Panel. That’s because what you are doing is creating a view for the Control Panel in list view.

So, I wouldn’t consider this a God Mode, but it certainly puts a lot of the things you can tweak out there for easy access.  My list view showed 274 different items.  I like this because I have never cared for Microsoft‘s iconized presentation of Control Panel, and would always put it back into classic view.

By the way, this doesn’t have to be named God Mode. You can call it anything you want, just so you have the period at the end of the name and before the first “{“.

This will work under Windows 7 32bit or 64bit. It will also work under Vista 32bit, but will crash Vista 64bit.  I understand that someone has come up with a work around. It definitely does not work in Windows XP.

So, definitely not God Mode, but this is useful for someone who likes to experiment and tweak their settings.

No Flash for IE 64-bit

I’ve had a desktop with 32-bit Vista, which I upgraded to Windows 7 32-bit. I have not really had time or the need to mess with the 64-bit version of either.

When one of our users came to me and said that she had bought a notebook for home that had Windows 7 64-bit installed and was unable to install Flash, I did some checking and found out that Adobe had not come up with a 64-bit version of Flash. When they do come out with a new version, I hope it’s not as much of as resource hog as the 32-bit version is, God help us.

I was astounded to say the least. I also found out that each 64-bit version of Vista and Windows 7 has a 32-bit version of IE installed. It can be found in the All Programs, “Programs Files x86″ folder.

RWW and Least Priviliged Users

When using RWW (Remote Web Workplace) on Windows Server SBS2003, you’ll have to change a setting on the user’s worksation in local Group Policy or the user will not be allowed to log in remotely via RWW.  I found this out when changing over all our users to not having administrator privileges on their desktops. They now only have user rights. after logging onto the workstation with administrative rights, you’ll need to add the user to “Allow logon through Terminal Services” :

Normal Dot Settings – Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word uses a file – normal.dot, for storing settings for Word documents.I had noticed for some time in our network, normal.dot errors when creating new templates for users. It finally got annoying enough that I decided to do something about it.

We have a standard setup, with workstations for users and they have a common drive for templates. It turns out that we had our Word settings for templates wrong. Normal.dot is a read only file and we had user templates pointing to the shared drive, so we would get errors every time we created a new template.

The settings for each user should have user templates pointing to the users My Documents folder on their workstation. The Workgroup templates setting should point to the shared drive where the actual templates are stored. You settings may be slightly different, but this worked for us.

Internet’s First Registered Domain Name Sold

I just ran across a story about symbolics.com, the very first registered domain on the Internet being sold. It was originally registered back in March of 1985.

Hothardware.com has the story. I’ve always been fascinated about how domain names work. I registered my first domain back in 1995, tvvbbs.com, for the “The Virtual Village”, a bulletin board system I was running at the time. I was able to provide my users with Internet email boxes – cutting edge at the time. Unfortunately, I had to shut down the BBS and I let the registration lapse.

Heck, the domain name I have here, azb.com, was registered by me back on 02/08/98. I had wanted something short for email, and that’s what I had been using it for all these years.  It’s only recently that I decided to do something substantial on the web with it.

DOS Tricks in XP and Windows 7

The other day, I was helping a user over the phone with an operation involving numerous CSV files that had to be combined. The best way to do this is by good old DOS copy commands. She had the files in a folder on her desktop. I had her open a command prompt and then I stepped her through on how to change directories, drilling down to where that folder was on her desktop.

After we finished, I thought that there might be a more efficient way to do the same thing. I created a folder on my desktop and then opened a command prompt and typed in “cd”, plus a space -

Then I left clicked on the folder on my desktop and dragged it to the command prompt and dropped it there -

As you can see, the whole path to the folder is filled in for you, complete with the quotation marks that people usually forget. All I had to do was hit enter and I was in the folder at the command prompt -

This does not work in Vista, it was disabled by Microsoft. Interestingly, I tried it in Windows 7, and it works just like it did in XP. Go figure.

Blackberry Tour Spring Lock Case

I stopped at a Verizon store today to see if I could pick up a spring lock case for my Tour. I had stopped at two Sprint stores the other day and they did not have any. I don’t like the case that comes with the Tour on either Sprint or Verizon. The Verizon store did have one, and I paid my $19.99 and left without opening the package. When I got back to the office, I was in for a surprise. This was my own fault for not paying attention, by the way.

When I bought my spring lock case for my Verizon Curve back in April of 2008, $19.99 bought me a Seidio spring lock case with a beautiful rubberized outer shell, and a cloth lining inside. It felt solid and the belt clip felt like it wouldn’t break off very easily.

The model they have for the Tour at Verizon is not a Seidio, and is made of a very lightweight translucent plastic, and there is no lining inside ( can you say “scratched screen”).

Worst of all, the belt clip looks and feels like it wouldn’t take much to rip it off. I’ve shot some pictures (below) to try and show the difference. This one will be going back. Looks like I’ll be spending $29.99 to buy the real deal from Seidio.

Sprint Blackberry Tour 9630

I just picked up a Sprint Blackberry Tour 9630. In doing so, I also moved from Verizon. The Tour is a large step up from my Blackberry Curve. The screen is only slightly larger, but the resolution is 480 x 360 in comparison to the Curve’s 320 x 240. The Tour is slightly longer, wider, and heavier than the Curve, but the difference is minimal. The camera in the tour is also 3.2 mega pixels compared to the Curve’s 2 mega pixels. The difference in the resolution is considerable when looking at pictures taken by each camera. I’ll be posting some pix taken with the Tour soon.

Woot! Server Migration

I finished our server migration yesterday. We had been running Small Business Server 2003 Standard (OEM – Grrr, don’t get me started, wasn’t my choice). This was migrated to new hardware running Small Business Server 2003 R2 Standard (Not OEM!)  I used Jeff Middleton’s “Swing Migration” fromsbsmigration.com . Well worth the money and very easy to follow.

There are a lot of settings and permissions that need to be brought over, and it is very time consuming using Microsoft‘s standard methods. Since I am the only IT resource in our agency, this was a life saver. When we migrated from Small Business Server 4.5 to Small Business Server 2003 four and half years ago, we hired a consultant to “help” and it was a 2 day marathon.

I Won!

Last Friday, I attended a BBQ hosted at one of the local FOP (Fraternal Order of Police) Lodges. Lots of good food and there was a “bags” tournament. They also raffled off a few items and I won an Electronic Evidence Field CollectionKit, a first responder kit for seizing electronic evidence. Apparently they are produced by a local firm, E-Kit Training and Supply . Needless to say, I will find this useful in my forensic work and I’ll have to see how it works on the next case.

Blackberry Server Move

As part of my job as network administrator, I installed a Blackberry Professional Server a couple of years ago. Blackberry Professional Server is the lightweight version of RIM’s Blackberry Enterprise Server. Either version of the server allows a business to synchronize their Blackberry devices with an Exchange or Domino server.

In my case, I installed it on our SBS2003 server. SBS2003 is an “all in one” solution for small business that has Exchange server as part of it’s installation. Everything runs on one server. I am planning on moving the SBS2003 to a VMWare server that I am currently running on a new Dell 2950 with 32GB of memory. Lots of room for virtual machines!

In preparation for the move, I had to move the Blackberry Professional Server to it’s own virtual server. The first roadblock I ran into was that the Blackberry Professional Server would not run on the Windows server 64bit virtual machine I had set up. I had to trash that setup and recreate under Windows server 32bit.

I found an excellent writeup in the Crackberry forums for moving a Blackberry Enterprise Server using the “knife-edge” (minimal down time) method:

http://forums.crackberry.com/f50/moving-blackberry-enterprise-server-exchange-new-server-74177/

This guide proved invaluable to me and resulted in a successful move with minimal downtime. The only thing I would change ( and where I had a problem) was instruction number 2 under “Move the database”.

While the instructions were “osql -E”, I had to change it to:

“osql -E -S windowsservername\sqldatabaseinstancename”

in order to get it to work. Other than that, easy-peasy.

Google Voice

I got my Google Voice invitation the other day. As part of the sign up, you are able to pick your own phone number. In my case, I was able to get a phone number in my area code, with an exchange located in my town and the last four numbers match my home address!

Google bought the old Grand Central system and has contracted with Level 3 for the phone numbers. I’m excited about this as Google’s system allows you to route all your phone calls, home, mobile, work, etc., through one phone number.

You can access Google Voice with a mobile app and read your voice mails on line., because Google actually transcribes your voice mails. of course, you can listen to them, just like any other voice mail system. The service I’m looking forward to is call screening and blocking.

http://google.com/voice

Google Apps

Around May 6th, I changed the email over on this domain to Google Apps. I now access my azb.com email through a GMail interface. I have to say that I have been pleasantly surprised. As I have been a GMail user since it first came out back in 2005, it was an easy transition. I’m using the free version, which is more than adequate for me.

As with GMail itself, you can set up your domain to be accessed through a POP or IMAP client such as Thunderbird. Since I’ve owned the domain since 1998 and have been using it for email just as long, there is a butt-load of junk mail that comes in everyday. When I first set up the domain under Apps, I turned on the “catch all” in order to see what email came in. If you have a “catch all” turned on, you will receive every email that ends with your domain name.

The result was just as I expected. The first few days, there were several hundred emails every day to just about every made up azb.com email address that the spammers have been using for years. I turned that feature off and just have the one email address that I’ve used since 1998. What’s nice is that Google allows you to alias that one address in case you want to use another email address. All of this mail goes into one email box under the free version of Apps. Since I turned of the catch all, I only receive about 75-100 junk emails a day, which GMail catches and throws in the trash for me. Since I can archive all my email locally through an IMAP client, I have the best of both worlds. Access to my email everywhere, even through the Gmail Blackberry application, and a copy of all emails stored locally on one of my computers at home. Highly recommended.

http://google.com/a

Printing Web Pages

If you’re like me, once in a while you may want to print a web page for some reason. What I have found, is that some web pages don’t print very well, and you wind up with a mess, or you spend a lot of time cutting and pasting to create something readable.

I’ve found a tool at http://printwhatyoulike.com that really works well when you want to print those complex pages. You can just enter the link on their page, or you can use their javascript tool on your Firefox bookmarks toolbar. Either way, it works great

Test Post

This is from iGoogle. Let’s see how it works.

(originally published at http://azb.blogspot.com)

Test post from a Blackberry

This picture of a Meerkat was taken with my Blackberry Curve on 5/29/08 at the Peoria Zoo.

(originally published at http://azb.blogspot.com)

Another test post by email

Just testing how to post by email. This should be pretty easy to do.

Ubuntu

While I’m a dyed in the wool Windows guy, making my living supporting Microsoft products, I have to admit that I’ve been playing around with Ubuntu Linux and have been very impressed. I first tried out Linux (Red Hat) way back in 1995 and have tried out other packages but always came away disappointed.

The disappointment was mostly about usability. Right now, I have Ubuntu running on an old Dell C610 with 256MB of memory and it’s pretty snappy.

Passed Microsoft 70-290!

Took the Microsoft 70-290 “Managing and Maintaining a Windows Server 2003Environment” certification test this last weekend. Passed it with no problem. This was my first test using Prometric, which handles all of Microsoft’s certification exams now. I had formerly used Pearson Vue. My experiences had always been good with my certification exams at Pearson Vue and I was concerned that Prometric might not be as good.

My fears were unfounded as the equipment and staff were all top notch. It was good to see that Microsoft is adding questions to the tests that are not part of the score. Maybe MS will eventually put the brain dumpers out of business, or at least prevent them from making as much money and diluting the certifications that honest people work hard to get.

If you want more info on how brain dumpers and “hired gunmen” hurt the quality of the certifications that honest people work hard to achieve, seehttp://www.certguard.com

Trojan Dropper in Usenet Binary File

Sprint Mobile Broadband

I purchased a Sprint Mobile broadband card not too long ago. I was going on vacation and wanted to have a reliable internet connection while I was on the road. Yeah, I know you can get free Internet at most hotels now, but in my experience either the hotel limits you to a cable in the wall ethernet connection or their wireless connection just plain sucks.

Right off the bat, when I checked into the first motel with “free wireless Internet” (this was a road trip via car), their connection would drop frequently and was excruciatingly slow. I stuck the Sprint PC card in the notebook , and even thought this location didn’t have access to Sprint’s high speed EVdo network, the 1x connection was better than the motel’s wireless. While on the road for 10 days, I only found one location where I used the free Internet connection. The other advantage, is that I didn’t have to worry as much about the security of the connection when I used Remote Web Desktop to remote back to the servers I administer at work. At $69.95 per month +taxes, it’s not cheap, but I’m going to keep it for future road work and as a backup for my home DSL connection.

AT&T Mobility (Cingular) IRDB

A friend of mine called me the other day with a Blackberry 8800 problem that her carrier, AT&T Mobility (formerly Cingular) had been unable to solve. When she was at home, she would lose her data connection, sometimes for hours on end. This meant she was unable to send or receive email. As she was in a position where immediate access to email was critical, this was not acceptable. After suggesting a battery pull and refreshing her network registration didn’t work, I was able to find out while browsing blackberryforums.com (highly recommended!) that there had probably been a new 3G (newer technology) tower install in her area. The forum posting detailed how a Blackberry (particularly the 8800 model) could have trouble deciding whether to connect to the newer 3G tower or the older EDGE technology tower. It seems that at some point, the Blackberry would just give up, thus no data connection. What I found out was that AT&T has a database for its towers called the IRDB (International Roaming Data Base).

What had to be done was for her to call AT&T and request and “over the air” update to the IRDB. This causes the Blackberry to restart and when it comes back up, it has a new copy of the IRDB. In this case, her data connection problems also disappeared. This only applies to AT&T Mobility customers. Other carriers have other (in most cases, simpler) ways to update their tower databases.