tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-89290316164865520152011-09-07T14:27:36.415-04:00This is a spot for me to post items of interest that I find on my daily RSS crawl. Will mostly be IT-related, will be heavily Apple-biased, will contain poorly written commentary, and will likely offend someone at some point. <br> <br> Please do enjoy.cleverusernamenoreply@blogger.comBlogger511100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8929031616486552015.post-26331676232563869452011-09-06T08:56:00.003-04:002011-09-07T14:27:36.424-04:00

Been a while, thought I'd take a stab at brushing off the cobwebs and getting back to logging my technical journey.Let's start with a good ol' rant. Blackberry Torch. I was unlucky enough to be forced to use this hunk of junk all weekend long due to an unplanned on call rotation. There's no way on earth I'm giving up my phone number to external clients, so I snuck a Torch out of the inventory

cleverusernamenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8929031616486552015.post-77837903180022446302010-05-26T10:19:00.003-04:002010-05-26T10:25:25.560-04:00

I've just done my first test using the Nexus One as a wifi hotspot and it seems to work quite well. I'm doing this post from the connection with the N1 in the desktop dock so the phone battery doesn't take a beating.Setting up the wifi hotspot was easy and seeing as how I have great signal where I am (currently showing as connected to 3G), I am very happy with this as a fallback plan when I need

cleverusernamenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8929031616486552015.post-86405469740442371202010-05-25T14:43:00.005-04:002010-05-26T10:14:07.305-04:00

OK, so since my last blog post where I was spitting venom about the Nexus One, I've jail broken my 1st Gen iPhone to work on T-Mobile. This was a dismal failure - I'd become accustomed to the GPS, speech-to-text, and a few other features on the Nexus. I was not keen to stay on the Edge speeds I was experiencing on the venerable 1G iPhone. Back to Nexus I went, fuming all the way, but resigned

cleverusernamenoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8929031616486552015.post-80376720598136564372010-04-05T08:08:00.002-04:002010-04-05T08:41:30.405-04:00

I was faced with a puzzle last week and it took me a bit to figure out. I had created a Windows 2008 VM for some dev work - it was originally supposed to be a very light requirement, so I did not give the VM much in the way of disk space on either the boot volume or the data VMDK. Not unsurprisingly, the original needs of the server changed, requiring me to install both SQL 2008 and Visual

cleverusernamenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8929031616486552015.post-34633652010186583342010-03-16T11:23:00.003-04:002010-05-04T07:06:00.726-04:00

I'm done. I admit defeat. The Nexus One is gonna get replaced the moment Apple releases the next iteration of the iPhone. Sorry, Google, nothing personal, but this phone sucks. I have been trying to put a good face on for it, but I can't deny it any longer. So, now I start the long wait and will sob occasionally when dealing with the complete mess that is the N1. I'm so disappointed.Among

cleverusernamenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8929031616486552015.post-91358182742311410832010-02-19T08:43:00.004-05:002010-02-19T12:38:00.148-05:00

I hate to report this, but the Nexus One is starting to annoy me.It's really disappointing to be saying this - I had very high hopes early on, but now I'm starting to feel that familiar pinch that occurs when you buy something and then start to regret it. I'm not having full-on buyer's remorse just yet, but it's coming...I feel it.The reasons for my angst:-Navigation: There is no provision to

cleverusernamenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8929031616486552015.post-12269635989135485282010-02-17T07:51:00.011-05:002010-02-25T08:03:32.941-05:00

I've taken a leap of faith (based on careful research, of course) in my decision to leave the warm, comfortable, known-quantity of my venerable first generation iPhone. It was a tough choice and one that I agonized over for months. The iPhone has been good to me and I almost feel sad leaving it behind, but I have been experiencing some glitches with it lately that have made me pine for

cleverusernamenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8929031616486552015.post-46455275110187083142010-01-27T20:25:00.010-05:002010-08-24T13:59:06.792-04:00

iPad. Eww. Really?I should say that I did not expect the announcement today to match the hype and I wasn't wrong.Let's hit the easy thing first - the name. My opinion is that this device should be collectively renamed by the user community to iTouch XL or iTouch Pro. I'll not indulge in the obligatory menstrual references and jokes that everyone is bandying about - I just think the name is

cleverusernamenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8929031616486552015.post-33185494594121285942009-12-08T07:23:00.015-05:002009-12-08T14:16:35.864-05:00

I have not blogged this yet, but I have been working on a project during this year that's finally a reality...the consolidation of our test lab.Whenever we make software changes or need to test a particular client load-out, we use our test lab. Without going into a long, boring diatribe on why this test lab is no longer feasible, I'll simply say that it is long overdue for a refresh. Switching

cleverusernamenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8929031616486552015.post-61959994628094188692009-10-26T10:33:00.003-04:002009-10-26T12:19:45.297-04:00

If you ever deal with Windows (and who doesn't, really?), then here is a must-have tool for you:http://ninite.com/This handy little site has a pick list of all of the most commonly used free utilities on the internet for Windows. Each utility has a check box next to it - pick the ones you want, then select the "Get Installer" button. All of the apps you selected will be downloaded into a

cleverusernamenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8929031616486552015.post-50017207363985914562009-10-26T10:12:00.009-04:002009-10-27T13:28:59.109-04:00

I finally convinced the company I work for to let me buy my own laptop instead of bringing my MacBook in to use at work. It only took me a frickin' year. Some of that is pure hatred for all things Mac at the highest levels of the pecking order, an attitude that I just can't understand. Everyone ooohs and ahhs at my laptop when I bring it to meetings, loves my Keynote presentations, and has

cleverusernamenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8929031616486552015.post-60568372850503532732009-08-25T08:34:00.011-04:002009-09-04T13:17:22.776-04:00

I've been researching data replication products for two separate projects.The first is one-to-many data replication for our web farm. I looked at several utilities that would accomplish the same goal, but what eventually led me to the RepliWeb offering was cost. The R-1 product line is what I evaluated to do replication of web content across four servers. The software is not the most intuitive

cleverusernamenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8929031616486552015.post-71740579988359650562009-07-13T08:55:00.011-04:002009-07-19T21:35:26.812-04:00

We cut over to the Kerio server on 6/29/09, leaving our hosted Exchange service behind. The transition was ridiculously smooth - we had only a few minor issues with the data migration that were easily resolved. Most revolved around user accounts with enormous mail databases - one user had over 36,000 messages in his Inbox, 11,500 of which were unread (Srsly, WTF is up with that?). Another had

cleverusernamenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8929031616486552015.post-23785016756515889892009-06-25T09:05:00.010-04:002009-10-26T12:12:24.424-04:00

Sadly, my dreams of a Linux-based email system have come crashing to the ground.I had to admit defeat and abandon Linux in favor of Windows 2008 Server for Kerio. This decision was not made lightly - I had done a significant amount of work on Kerio running on CentOS and liked the OS quite a lot. The problems that led me to make the call to go back to Windows were related to issues I experienced

cleverusernamenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8929031616486552015.post-48328228268385869982009-06-16T16:00:00.005-04:002009-06-22T16:50:22.323-04:00

I have been playing with the newest beta version of Opera and I have to say, I am impressed.http://unite.opera.com/The free browser looks nice, but has the same rendering problems that all non-MS browsers do (a brief pause here to let me raise two middle fingers to all web devs that code for IE only). I did have a few other issues with sites that did not render properly that Firefox and Safari

cleverusernamenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8929031616486552015.post-37250847809022834592009-06-16T08:28:00.003-04:002009-07-27T14:22:32.778-04:00

For those who don't know (I didn't!) that Adobe is putting together an online suite of tools, check out http://www.adobe.com/acom/. I evaluated the free version and found some pretty significant shortcomings.As with Google Docs, you can import existing documents on your hard drive up to the Adobe site. Once there, you can convert them to PDF, perform markup, and then share with others. There's

cleverusernamenoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8929031616486552015.post-89026085174218507622009-06-15T08:28:00.006-04:002009-09-04T13:21:30.593-04:00

Post withdrawn.

cleverusernamenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8929031616486552015.post-37003892371895669052009-06-15T08:02:00.002-04:002009-06-15T08:08:43.952-04:00

I got done with the upgrade on Friday and found that one of the battery modules wasn't being recognized in what is my primary host. I had to go back into the data center and re-seat everything in that server. I went ahead and reconfigured the arrays while was there so that the 512MB caching ratios are set 50% read, 50% write on both hosts. I did not do the testing on Friday.I tested everything

cleverusernamenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8929031616486552015.post-14571764116056671422009-06-12T17:12:00.003-04:002009-10-26T12:19:04.902-04:00

So, I had an annoying thing happen today.Actually, this is the culmination of several weeks of annoyance. First, some grounding info regarding my situation.I purchased two HP Proliant DL360 G5 servers to act as the hosts for my VMWare ESXi implementation. Everything works fine until you want to copy data from one host to the other - the transfer rate is horrible. The best sustanined rate I

cleverusernamenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8929031616486552015.post-71134688181043343542009-06-09T07:26:00.013-04:002009-06-15T11:58:05.276-04:00

My tag line for this blog states that I'm an Apple fan, so I suppose I should do my obligatory post about the announcements from WWDC 2009.MACBOOK UPDATES:Apple will absorb the aluminum MacBook into the MacBook Pro line and provide a general refresh to the entire MBPro line that is expected annually. Honestly, I can't imagine why ANYONE buys a laptop near WWDC time - I would be so pissed if I

cleverusernamenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8929031616486552015.post-23259228597711068572009-06-08T06:41:00.003-04:002009-06-08T07:14:11.009-04:00

For anyone involved in the creation of websites, a handy tool to have is one that will show your site on multiple browsers, operating systems, and different resolutions.You'll find just such a tool at http://www.crossbrowsertesting.com/This site offers a free five minutes on a diverse range of operating systems. Opting for the pre-paid "credits" service gives you the privilege of moving to the

cleverusernamenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8929031616486552015.post-67785929944934532412009-06-05T16:40:00.004-04:002009-06-05T17:53:25.550-04:00

I had mentioned in an earlier post that I have been working with Kerio mail server. I have just finished putting the final touches on the KMS server. I am going to start blogging more about Kerio as I am nearing the date when I make it our production email server to document our experience.A bit of history first - I've been administering email servers now for some time with the bulk of that

cleverusernamenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8929031616486552015.post-54731304074155912832009-06-05T14:08:00.005-04:002009-06-05T16:38:58.240-04:00

Well, it's over. I'm done with Windows 7 for now. As I head back to the warm, comfy OS X interface, I can literally feel the tension in my neck easing a bit. It's not that I had a BAD experience with Win7, it's just that - for me - OS X is just a better system.So much for objectivity...I need to catch up since I played hooky last week. Week 3 was a totally uneventful, short week - I only

cleverusernamenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8929031616486552015.post-69224134883105546492009-05-22T11:03:00.004-04:002009-05-22T11:46:42.281-04:00

I'm nearing the end of Week 2 of my 4 week journey using Windows 7 Ultimate. So far?I love it.There are a lot of choices when it comes to operating systems, and I have already copped to being an Apple proponent. I can't front - this OS could be a game-changer. I've looked forward to booting into the OS every day and using it is a pleasure. All of the apps I've loaded into it work exactly as

cleverusernamenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8929031616486552015.post-74224706857711537022009-05-19T09:34:00.004-04:002009-05-19T12:09:35.909-04:00

For those fortunate enough to have discovered the Pidgin IM client (nee Gaim), I submit to you a methodology for securing the client so that the pipe between you and others with Pidgin + the OTR Plugin is encrypted AND so that your log files on your local system are secured from prying eyes.To secure settings and log files in Pidgin:-Create a directory within whatever directory encryption program

cleverusernamenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8929031616486552015.post-42333078841227131442009-05-14T07:19:00.007-04:002009-05-22T11:49:22.486-04:00

Open-mindedness being a desirable trait, I have decided to give Microsoft another chance.I'm nearing my fifth year of being a Mac user in a Windows world and I am getting back to roots with a look at the release candidate of the forthcoming Windows 7, Microsoft's latest iteration of the venerable (and venereal) OS.After wringing every possible microcent out of Windows XP, it's very much time for

cleverusernamenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8929031616486552015.post-25659780936686522062009-05-13T09:29:00.003-04:002009-06-04T14:55:38.863-04:00

Had an interesting problem on a system today. When right-clicking My Computer or Network Places on an XP box, the system would crash completely and then hang until a force-quit of Dr. Watson was performed from the Task Manager. There were other anomalies regarding context-menus with the same symptom.I found an article that mentioned this problem and recommended using ShellExView to see what

cleverusernamenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8929031616486552015.post-27578320862648565762009-05-04T07:39:00.002-04:002009-05-04T07:45:40.898-04:00

Last week SUCKED. Everything that I touched seemed to just generate radiating waves of failure. Started things off by wrecking my VMWare server, then a software package that I introduced to the company for quick turnaround recovery of Windows XP started exhibiting signs that it was causing disk corruption on some of the systems. Two of them failed completely, and in keeping with my luck of late

cleverusernamenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8929031616486552015.post-62730953376693871742009-04-29T07:19:00.003-04:002009-04-29T07:26:28.189-04:00

So the last two days of my life have been spent learning valuable lessons about VMWare and how my need to be tidy can sometimes be a burden.I came in on Monday after completely setting up all necessary components of VMWare, CentOS, and Kerio and decided to do some cleaning up of the VMWare data store. In so doing, I managed to clip a critical component of the Kerio VM - the core VMDK file. For

cleverusernamenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8929031616486552015.post-31684287286441999112009-04-22T07:08:00.003-04:002009-06-04T14:56:14.034-04:00

I finally got approved for and received my first VMWare server (it's actually the second one that I've gotten, but this one is mine to set up/administer). I am in a state of something akin to panic/excitement over the prospect of learning something completely new. Add to that the fact that the intended purpose of this is to run our email on a Linux-based platform and you have a very happy admin

cleverusernamenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8929031616486552015.post-27509533292847065072009-04-13T07:48:00.003-04:002009-04-13T07:54:40.285-04:00

Gotta love Honda, man.http://fury.honda.com/I am now totally obsessed and will be trying to get my aft end on one at some point. I love the look they went with, even if it is a poser chopper - I'm sure the purists are laughing, but I care not. I am a former Shadow owner, so I'm already sold on the quality of a Honda bike. I will post again after seeing one in person.

cleverusernamenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8929031616486552015.post-66264823333628816692009-04-08T09:48:00.002-04:002009-04-08T13:22:32.131-04:00

OK. (deep breath)Now that I have a few posts under my belt, I decided to go public with this blog. I just flipped the switch in the Blogger settings to allow it to be crawled by search engines.(dons his flame-retardant underwear)

cleverusernamenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8929031616486552015.post-43455991066570644352009-04-08T09:40:00.003-04:002009-04-08T10:19:22.580-04:00

It occurred to me just now that I have never posted about one of my major obsessions - Pandora. I am so crazy about this site. Since discovering it, I hardly ever fire up iTunes.http://www.pandora.comThink of a radio station attuned to you specifically and you've got the idea. The coolest part (for me anyway) is that you can log into other computers and pull up your "stations" that you create.

cleverusernamenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8929031616486552015.post-16171978296711173402009-04-08T09:39:00.001-04:002009-04-08T09:40:45.508-04:00

Something I found interesting:http://www.appscout.com/2009/04/learn_the_value_of_brevity_at.phpThe idea is that you publish a one-sentence story and the community votes on whether it should stay or go.I'm hooked.

cleverusernamenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8929031616486552015.post-21827518883180536242009-04-08T09:23:00.004-04:002009-04-08T10:19:38.242-04:00

Another email privacy service that allows you to mask your address with another:http://www.appscout.com/2009/04/protect_your_e-mail_address_wi.phphttp://scr.imThis service offers pretty much the same thing as TinyMail and MeltMail services inasmuch as it allows you to remain anonymous to potential sources of spammage, but Scr.im allows for personalization for a more convincing facade.

cleverusernamenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8929031616486552015.post-87046897520783350862009-03-10T10:08:00.005-04:002009-06-04T14:59:56.312-04:00

I just spent some time uploading my first Flickr photostream and I had a thought during the process that was a bit depressing.I'm in Hot Springs, NC at the moment and will be attending a funeral for my wife's grandmother later today. This is a very small town and from what I'm told, I'm lucky to have a hotel with Internet access. My AT&T phone has been displaying "NO SERVICE" since we pulled

cleverusernamenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8929031616486552015.post-24395049057348806792009-02-19T08:47:00.003-05:002009-02-19T09:04:21.511-05:00

Dad pointed this out to me:http://www.evernote.com/This is a totally slick way of capturing information so that it can be accessed from anywhere. I have this now on my Macbook and iPhone. I am VERY impressed with the tight integration - I can snap pictures of items I see with the iPhone and they will be automatically synchronized to my Evernote account. Clipboard dumps and website captures can

cleverusernamenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8929031616486552015.post-61890043566592042832009-01-12T07:32:00.002-05:002009-01-12T07:34:33.874-05:00

bitRipperOnly works on WinXP, but it's free! Will review if I decide I care enough to rip a DVD...

cleverusernamenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8929031616486552015.post-22264674915908089432009-01-12T07:26:00.003-05:002009-01-12T07:28:20.077-05:00

This has got to be one of the coolest gadgets I have seen in a while. Not that I haven't seen computer-as-keyboard before, but this one is far superior in appearance and features (how cool is wireless HDMI?)Asus Eee KeyboardI need one. Now.

cleverusernamenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8929031616486552015.post-6742302959645763782009-01-05T11:06:00.003-05:002009-01-05T11:13:24.828-05:00

This process worked brilliantly on a Windows XP Home system that would not run *.exe files (including rstrui) without throwing app errors. Sys recovery would not work from Safe Mode, either. I'm sure the following would work in any instance where the GUI is not available:Check the boot priority in the Bios settings to ensure the PC will boot from CD-ROM, then boot from the XP CD. Start Windows

cleverusernamenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8929031616486552015.post-17167420021057639692008-12-31T13:51:00.005-05:002008-12-31T15:29:52.698-05:00

Do you have a need to present documents in a web page, but not allow downloads? This service packages the document in a Flash wrapper and gives you the code to embed it in a secure fashion.Cool stuff. I'll be using this very soon on a charity web site that I host. Will post feedback if I remember to do so.

cleverusernamenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8929031616486552015.post-506124014954264372008-12-31T12:52:00.002-05:002008-12-31T12:54:01.350-05:00

Ouch.

cleverusernamenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8929031616486552015.post-22961900512765549382008-12-29T15:25:00.002-05:002008-12-29T15:33:38.299-05:00

It just doesn't get any better...http://www.appscout.com/2008/12/stanza_turn_your_iphone_into_a_1.phpI was already in love with Classics:http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2008/10/28/review-classics-lets-you-touch-your-books-on-your-iphoneI am nearly through reading 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea on the iPhone and other than occasionally wishing I could vary the text size, it's been a

cleverusernamenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8929031616486552015.post-53636858589668369582008-12-21T11:39:00.004-05:002008-12-21T11:44:56.243-05:00

I'm so bummed out right now.Just watched the episode of Survivorman where he's in Papua New Guinea. Les drops the bomb as the episode is about to end - it's the last one. So sad. I love this guy. He's a bit of a personal hero to me - a man's man if there ever was one. I read that he might return on a different show where he follows in the footsteps of famous explorers and I really do hope

cleverusernamenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8929031616486552015.post-47677577065099021312008-12-18T10:20:00.002-05:002008-12-18T10:24:59.050-05:00

Free, open source screen capture utility for Windows with a great feature set. Will review and post findings here.

cleverusernamenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8929031616486552015.post-50955443151696717912008-12-18T09:00:00.004-05:002008-12-18T09:53:26.275-05:00

While you are busy killing trees printing out documents, might as well save on printer ink. This open source font supposedly saves 20% by cutting holes into the characters that compose this set. This doesn't impact readability until the font size gets much bigger. At 12pt, it looks absolutely normal in Word on both the Mac and PC.

cleverusernamenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8929031616486552015.post-21474594108894953402008-12-18T07:32:00.004-05:002008-12-18T15:16:22.980-05:00

Scary decision...interesting to note the cost savings. I wonder how much more they could have passed on to taxpayers if they had invested in a modified OSS deployment?

cleverusernamenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8929031616486552015.post-1682779222281378072008-12-17T15:23:00.003-05:002008-12-17T15:26:18.449-05:00

Whenever I fill out one of those online forms to get a trial copy of software, I often wish I could provide a generic email address that was somehow forwarded to my real account, thereby saving myself the headache of being inadvertently added to a spam listing....OH!  Wait!  I CAN.  Bless you, MeltMail.

cleverusernamenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8929031616486552015.post-10113461248448463022008-12-17T15:19:00.002-05:002008-12-17T15:21:11.685-05:00

Useful tool for removing aged or unwanted security software from PC's.

cleverusernamenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8929031616486552015.post-42428360362512820942008-12-17T15:02:00.004-05:002008-12-17T15:35:50.206-05:00

Oh, Process Explorer....how I love thee.All the process exploring goodness you will ever need...download it right now.

cleverusernamenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8929031616486552015.post-79190567671669064302008-12-17T14:55:00.004-05:002008-12-17T15:37:08.226-05:00

Oh, noes!Seriously!  This sucks.  I really enjoy my annual bout of Apple fever...I hope that the tech writers who have jumped all over this are wrong and that this move is not a signal of a shift within Apple.  

cleverusernamenoreply@blogger.com0