Feb 2010

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Disclaimer: The entries you find in these pages are based on my individual opinions and thoughts. Some of the entries may be just plain wrong, and others harmful. Should you choose to act on, or try, anything you find on this site, you assume any and all risks associated with your actions. So there.

On the Apple Tablet

January 3, 2010

I have two thoughts about the rumored Apple tablet, both predictions of a sort, but neither based on anything but my own speculation.

Thought one: a tablet will have to be designed to be held by one hand and used with the other. This means a new way of keyboarding. I don't know what that would be, but standard keyboards are out, and two-thumb typing is out.

Thought two: along the same lines, a novel way of setting the tablet up for viewing video will be necessary. It can't lay flat, and a built-in picture-frame type stand wouldn't be flexible enough.

Other than that, I hope I want one.

Bye Bye eCommerce

September 8, 2009

CCG has accepted credit cards for 10 years or more. Today we no longer accept them. The death blow came in two punches.

The first punch came months ago when our merchant account provider began to charge us an annual fee for Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standards (DSS) compliance. We had to prove to our merchant provider that we handled our client data securely. The only problem is that we can't do that. The reason we can't do that is that we simply don't collect client credit card data in the first place.

Our system has always consisted of a login to access your invoices. If you chose to pay an invoice online, we redirected you to Authorize.net, who collected your credit card info securely, then returned a success or failure code and an email. Our system never handled any of the required data, and only received a pass/fail notice in order to update the status of the paid invoice.

Now, in order to show compliance, in essence, we would have to begin collecting all of this data. Then we would have to store it securely and demonstrate that our security is robust. On the face of it this is ridiculous. Isn't it more secure never to collect and store the data than to do so in the first place? Still, that is not an option on the checklist. The upshot is that our provider began to hit us with an annual compliance fee and a monthly non-compliance penalty. Talk about your catch-22.

We interviewed other providers and were told that, while we would get hit with a one-time fee to prove (or disprove) compliance, we would never be hit every year and certainly wouldn't be fined monthly. Great, sign us up! Things went back to normal shortly after we switched merchant account providers, and our other fees went down too.

The second punch came this week. We got a compliance letter from the new provider. They are now charging us annually so they can check our compliance. And they will fine us monthly until we can prove we comply. How can you prove a negative? How are we supposed to prove we protect data we don't collect or store?

Oh well, so long credit card companies. I do truly appreciate your efforts to protect our privacy, really I do. But until you go about it in a sane manner, I can't be your customer any longer. Sniff... oh well, I don't need to pay you to get paid any more anyway.

Gmail IMAP Password Error Web Login Required

September 8, 2009

I have migrated approximately 500 accounts and 40 domains over to Google Apps for your Domain. Most of my clients use the IMAP protocol to access their email accounts. One of the issues that I have come across is an error on password that occurs after a few days, weeks or even months of use.

The user begins to get a password error on login. If the user reads the complete error, it will say something along the lines of "Error on Password; web login required." The cure is simple, log in to the gmail webmail site for your account. Once the user logs in, the problem goes away.

Most users have no idea how to do this, so we always setup their domain to have a simple webmail login using http://webmail.CLIENTDOMAIN.com, where CLIENTDOMAIN.com is their actual domain. But others have to use the standard Google login, which is http://www.google.com/a/CLIENTDOMAIN.com.

The other day I ran across this issue, but logging into the webmail didn't cure it. In fact, the problem persisted through logging-out, rebooting, logging in from another computer, and everything else we could think of to try. Finally I just reset the password on the account to a new password. That worked right away. It wasn't that we had the wrong password -- we couldn't have reset the password otherwise. Somehow Google just didn't like the old password.

Finding Missing Desktop Items

July 9, 2009

For a few weeks my dad had been complaining about odd things happening on his computer. Some things were missing, downloads weren't findable, and he was getting a few odd error messages. He was also having problems opening some Quicken files, which is what prompted me to take action. He uses Mac OS X 10.4.x.

In the case of the Quicken file, when you tried to open it, it would prompt for the password, which we absolutely knew we had correct, then give an error about not having permission to view the file. It was NOT rejecting the password, just refusing to let us in. This was puzzling. Before I went off to restore from backup, I started poking around. A behavior that tipped me off to the problem was his not being able to download/read PDF files. I tried this, and after downloading a PDF, which should have gone onto the desktop, I still couldn't find it. I figured that maybe his download folder had gotten set to some other folder, but upon checking that, it was definitely pointed at the desktop.

Thinking disk corruption, I decided to take a quick look at the directory from the terminal before rebooting and running Disk Repair. I su'd to root (bad habit, I admit, but things would have gotten stranger had I not in this case) cd'd into the Desktop folder ( cd ~/Desktop ); it was a good thing that I use ls -la by habit (list files, long attributes, show hidden). I noticed that the permissions on the Desktop folder were d-wxr-xr--. Woah, how did his account, the owner, not have read access to his own Desktop folder, yet still had write access? I quickly changed permissions ( chmod 755 . ) and in an instant dozens of lost files appeared on his desktop.

Wrapping up, I rebooted from the OS X CD and ran Disk Utility, doing first a Disk Repair, then a Repair Permissions. No other trouble seemed to crop up, but it's good to do this after weirdness, just in case.

Google Apps for Your Domain Groups Problem

March 27, 2009

I switched my company to Google Apps for Your Domain, Standard Edition, not quite a year ago. There are many reasons to love it. There are many who are very wary about it, some with legitimate complaints, others not so much. On the legitimate side are concerns about privacy and security, most of which I think border on the ultra-paranoid. Don't get me wrong, some people have genuine reasons to be paranoid, and not all of them are pornographers. Still, for me and my clients, those concerns are in the realm of the extreme. Overall I have enjoyed being a Google Apps user. In fact, when there have been downtimes (4 hours one time), I have actually been encouraged that I have not been the only one who has had issues with hosting email!

Now on to my cautionary tale. About two weeks ago my wife and I realized that we were no longer getting faxes via email. My office accepts faxes and sends them to an email group that consists of my wife's and my email addresses. I checked the folder where the computer stores new faxes, and sure enough, there were several faxes we had missed. (Now, I know, I know, why in the world are we still getting faxes? Well, SOMEONE has to get the junk vacation, timeshare and benefits faxes, right?) For all intents and purposes, it appeared that the group simply wasn't working. Test emails were not going through to it -- unless I emailed the group directly from my (member) address. The group settings indicated that anyone could send it email -- so I was stumped.

Today I figured it out. In researching this on the web, I saw some comments about Google spam filtering group email BEFORE delivery to group members. Where do those filtered emails go? Nowhere. This is a change Google made, probably about March 1st. Prior to that, my faxes would sometimes land in my junk folder, but after that they just went off into la la land.

What is worse, is that my brother's company new-leads email address, you know the one the website sends new leads to, started doing the same thing. That has resulted in three weeks of lost leads, which is potentially 4 a day, which is potentially 84 lost leads. He is a realtor, so even if one of those leads converted, you are talking a lot of lost revenue.

Now, both of these email addresses were being used by web servers. The sending addresses were "legit," but Google seems to be cracking down on non-mail servers sending mail. I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I hate spam, on the other, it is unreasonable to expect the mail server of your own domain not to send email. There are DNS tools to indicate who are the legitimate senders of mail, and they are good things, but I won't go into that here, mainly because it doesn't address all of the potential troubles and won't until it is required for mail delivery, which isn't happening any time soon.

In the case of my fax problem, I simply have the fax computer send the faxes to our individual addresses. And we retrieved the "lost" faxes from the archive folder. In the case of my brother, well, he's hosed. I have converted his leads address to a nickname, so now it can only go to one person, but that's a lot better than going to no person.

The take-away here is that if you have emails going to a Google Apps group address, where those emails might come from your web servers, or they are mission critical, you need to have a backup. If nothing else, BCC the emails to a real account, as well as the group. You might get duplicates, but that is better than getting squat.

Chuck Norris

March 17, 2009

Recently it was Chuck Norris's 69th birthday. In honor of this, here is a neat little piece of fun. Do the following:

1) Go to http://www.google.com/

2) Type in "Find Chuck Norris".

3) Click "I'm Feeling Lucky".

That's it. Courtesy Chuck Norris.

Ergotron LX Dual Desk Mount Arm Review

February 23, 2009

I recently was offered an Ergotron LX Dual Desk Mount Arm for review. It was offered to me after I wrote my last blog entry, Sit Better, See Better. I have lived with the new setup now for a few weeks, and am ready to give an opinion. The short version is that the Ergotron has freed up a good deal of space on my desk, despite my unusual setup. It might free up even more space for you. If you find yourself with a desk crowded by a large display, consider one of the Ergotron Desk Mount Arm systems. Before I go further, some background on my setup is necessary.

For the past six years I have used an old Hamilton motorized drafting table (E-Sized) for my desk. It doesn't go up and down any more (needs a fan belt -- really), but it tilts and has a pen and pencil trough that is a great substitute for a drawer. I keep it tiled at about 10 degrees, which puts the keyboard of my laptop at a perfect level for typing.

I have a 17" MacBook Pro connected to a Dell 20" LCD Display (secondary display), and a Windows computer with a 17" Fujitsu LCD. The secondary display sits behind my MacBook Pro, both centered on my desk, with the display high enough so that the bottom is level with the top of the MacBook Pro display. The Windows display sits to the left of this.

My non-computer working area consists of the space to the right of my laptop in front of a file box, and to the left in front of the Fujitsu, about 3.5 sqft total out of 15+ available sqft. Most of the back of my desk is wasted space behind the displays. Clearly I am not making efficient use of my space.

My Mac desktop is set to span from the laptop upwards to the secondary display, so that the Mac menu bar is smack in the middle of the two displays. For Windows users who aren't familiar with the Mac menubar, it is a permanent fixture across the top of the screen. If I move my mouse above the menu bar, it pops up onto the secondary display which is sitting above my laptop display. This seemed odd at first, but makes for a compact working area.

The Mac controls the Windows computer via a VNC server. To control the PC, I move my Mac mouse pointer to the left of my Mac display, which kicks in the VNC software, and the mouse on the PC jumps to life at the corresponding location on the right of PC display. Thus, the PC acts as if it were a seamless part of the Mac Desktop (see this article for the setup). This setup makes the three displays seem like one oddly-shaped large display, and two computers seem like one.

When I am working on web programming projects, I drag my browser windows and other visuals up to the secondary display, and leave my email and text editing windows on my laptop display. I use the PC for testing my code against additional web browsers. In this way, each display serves its own purpose, and they all need to remain clustered together in order for my workflow to go smoothly.

Lastly, I am an oddball in that I prefer the keyboard of the Macbook Pro to other keyboards, and I prefer to use the trackpad over a mouse. This is not a good fit for Ergotron, in that most of their solutions seem to be targeted at getting your displays up off of your desk, including your laptop, freeing the space underneath. Such an arrangement would hang my laptop above my desk, and take away my favorite keyboard. The assumption they have made is that most people with laptops will want a separate keyboard and mouse on their desktop, taking up valuable extra space. I don't fit in that pigeon hole, but most of my clients with laptops do, and all users of desktop computers fit there too.

Ok, now that you have the picture of my setup, how has the Ergotron changed my working space? For the better? I have a dual-arm model from their many offerings. One of the arms has a VESA mount, and the other has a laptop tray. One of my displays, the Dell, supports the VESA standard mount, whereas the Fujitsu does not. So I decided to see if the laptop tray would support the Fujitsu, and put the Dell on the VESA mount.

While unboxing the Ergotron, the first thing I noticed was the build-quality. These are no plastic arms, but heavy, metal, arms with very strong springs to help them hold their position. The number of parts in the box is pretty daunting, but as you pull them out, it becomes obvious how most things will fit together.

The kit I received had three separate sets of instructions. I was confused at first as to which set I should use -- I still am, actually. Two sets provided English language instructions, plus some other languages, with one set of completely non-English language instructions. The two English sets appeared to offer identical instruction, but were also obviously different documents. A clearly marked "Start Here" booklet would have been nice. I guess I am too used to Apple who goes out of their way to make things clear, even at the opening of boxes level. At any rate, I picked one set using Eeny-Meeny-Miny-Moe and forged ahead.

It was fairly easy to put the whole setup together. The main parts of the arms simply slide one on another, and on to the base. Almost no tools are required, except for the supplied allen wrenches, which are used to tighten joints and fix the heights of the arms on the base. If you are not mechanically inclined, I could see how putting these together may be frustrating, because the arms are relatively heavy. But overall I found it straightforward, if time consuming.

If I had one comment about the assembly process, it would be to plan ahead where you will mount the base. Think about how the arms will articulate, and where the displays will go. And think about it for a while. In my case, shortly after assembling the entire thing, I realized that I needed to move one display to the other side, and move the entire assembly two feet to the right. I made the mistake of simply trying to duplicate my existing setup, which I assumed was optimal. I was wrong. By using these arms, I had possibilities that I had never considered. So I had to partially disassemble, move and reassemble the whole setup. Had I thought about it in advance, I could have saved some time. Total assembly time (first time): just over an hour. Add 15 minutes to re-do it.

I was successful in using the laptop mount for the Fujitsu display. It is not optimal, and I had to use the laptop stabilizers in a way they are not intended, but it is secure. This novel setup allowed for me to move the Fujitsu over to the right, instead of to the left, and off of the side of my desk.

The end result is that the Fujistu is now suspended partially over my trashcan, and not directly above my desk. This allowed me to shift my laptop and secondary display to the right, so that they are both to the right of center, leaving almost half of my desk totally clear. That's right: almost half of my desk is totally clear of gear.

So now my working area consists of two main areas. 1x2' (2 sqft) to the right of my laptop, where I now keep my coffee warmer, misc pads of paper and a photo desk accessory. It's perfect for misc items, including mail. I now have 2.5x3.5' (8.75 sqft) of area to the left of my laptop free and clear. I moved my filebox from the right back corner to the left back corner, which consumes 1.25 sqft of space.

I know, I spent way too much time measuring this stuff. But having a huge area of your desk free and clear is great. Of course, I promptly filled it with pads and junk, but at least it all can move. And speaking of moving, the two arms have a great range of motion. I can swing either of them up and totally out of the way, and the space behind my laptop, where the secondary display stand sat, is empty. It can now hold those items I like to keep on my desk, but don't use often.

Overall the Ergotron system is versatile and strong. The arms articulate easily, but stay put when you need them to. You can tweak away at display position with little effort. They do get things up off of your desk, but the space below is just that: space below something else. The usefulness of that space will largely depend on what you want to put under there. With a little creative thought, though, moving a display or laptop off of the side of your desk, instead of over it, will greatly increase your useful square footage.

Final thought: If I were the type of person who used a separate keyboard and mouse with my laptop, these arms would give me back much more space. As I said in the beginning, it might free much more space for you. Either way, if space is at a premium on your desk, and whose isn't, these arms are for you.

Sit Better, See Better

January 7, 2009

I often hear complaints about neck, shoulder and back pain from my clients. Typically, they will have a very large computer display that is sitting on top of a stack of books or some item on their desk -- with the center (top to bottom) of their display even with their eyes. This is trouble. My advice is: the top of your display, not the center, should be level with your eyes, so that you are slightly looking down as you use your computer. If you have to look straight ahead, or worse, up, to see your menu bar, you will have constant neck and shoulder tension, which could result in long-term neck and back issues.

Don't take my word for it, here is a great tool to figure out how you should setup your workstation:

Ergonomic Workstation Planner from Ergotron.

This is not an endorsement of their products, and I really do not know much about this company. However, on first site of this tool I instantly recognized it as fitting within everything I have learned about ergonomics in my 20+ years of computer consulting.

Clients also complain about difficulties seeing their displays, or blurry vision after extended use. My advice to those using computer screens for long periods of time is to take hourly breaks where you stare off into the distance. Your eyes were not designed to remain focused at short distances for long periods of time. Just like trying to hold your arm out straight without moving it, keeping your eyes focused at the same distance causes tremendous fatigue. This results in eye strain and blurred vision, and can even cause harmful long term effects.

In addition to taking breaks once each hour, where you focus your eyes well beyond 10 feet or more, computer glasses are a great option. Reading glasses DO NOT substitute for computer glasses. Reading glasses are designed for reading books you are holding, which is a distance of about 18". Most computer displays are just outside of this boundary at 20" to 30" away -- some farther. The result of using reading glasses (and, yes, bifocals) is that you cause minor strain on your eyes in the opposite direction you are trying to correct.

Computer glasses are designed for use in the intermediate zone of vision -- right where your computer display is. It is a good idea to measure the distance first, so that your doctor can make the prescription for the right range of distance. Again, don't take just my word for it, here is a site that discusses this issue:

Computer Glasses for [correction of] Blurred Vision.

Again, I don't know this company, nor endorse them or their products. Their information falls within what I have learned over the years, and know to be true.

Disk Utility Bit Me

January 2, 2009

I know you have had one of those days where everything went wrong. Even if you haven't you have probably had an experience where exactly the wrong thing happened. Mine happened yesterday (1/1/2009 -- doesn't bode well for the new year).

I was cloning a drive in a PowerBook G4 to a larger drive. I had booted from CD and was using Disk Utility to Restore the internal drive to the new hard drive, connected via an external FireWire case -- I do this all the time. For whatever reason it failed.

As a normal course of action, I erased the external drive using the Zero All Data option. After trying again, it failed again, but with a different error. I thought that maybe I should have rebooted between tries, so I did, then re-erased the drive. At that point the new drive had the same name as the old drive. They appeared under different device profiles, so I know I selected the correct one (FireWire), but I noticed that both drives disappeared when the erase began. The upshot is that Disk Utility erased the internal drive. All I can imagine is that somehow the clone worked well enough to make Disk Utility confuse the two volumes -- for that matter, it may have been one of the earlier erases (when I hadn't rebooted) that did it.

Either way, I was hosed -- total loss of data. At least we had backups to go back to. Still, it is a TON more work to rebuild from scratch rather than clone.

Moral of the Story: if you run into issues cloning a drive, do not go back and erase the new drive using the same machine. In the future I will remove the drive and use a different computer to erase the drive (booted from the internal HD and not a CD so that Disk Utility CAN'T erase the boot volume). Better to be safe than sorry.

On the Apple Tablet

January 3, 2010

Bye Bye eCommerce

September 8, 2009

Gmail IMAP Password Error Web Login Required

September 8, 2009

Finding Missing Desktop Items

July 9, 2009

More Google Apps Problems

June 9, 2009

Google Apps for Your Domain Groups Problem

March 27, 2009

Chuck Norris

March 17, 2009

Ergotron LX Dual Desk Mount Arm Review

February 23, 2009

Sit Better, See Better

January 7, 2009

Disk Utility Bit Me

January 2, 2009

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