LowTechHiTech.com blog about technology

3/11/2008 Leopard iCal Publishing Bug

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0400

Apple Discussion If you have an iCal calendar published to A Private Server (webDAV), AND you have a .Mac account, you may find that your calendar stops publishing to the webDAV server, and starts publishing to your .Mac account. What is worse, if you DO NOT have a .Mac account, but you DO have the .Mac account info filled-out (say, you used the trial and let it expire), this can happen too you as well. Only, in this event, the calendar will no longer be published anywhere, since .Mac won't accept invalid credentials. I discovered this at a client's office where, literally years ago, everyone signed up for trial .Mac accounts. They found it not to be useful, and so let everything expire. Due to the very wonderful Migration Assistant, all of that account info has moved forward throughout the years. Last year we installed an Xserve and have used it ever since as a webDAV iCal server. After upgrading everyone to Leopard last month, many people's calendars stopped updating. The common thread has been that every one of the problem calendars suddenly showed that they were being published to .Mac. Those clients where, at some point, I had gone in and cleared out their .Mac into, were not affected.

3/11/2008 Repartitioning to Upgrade

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0400

Recently I have had to do several Mac OS X system upgrades (to Leopard) where the hard drive had to be repartitioned first. The previous system administrator had partitioned the drives into three parts: one for system and apps, one for data, and one for archive. He must not have realized that the Users home folder would be on the System Partition, and would slowly grow, or he would have given this partition the largest share. The upshot was that these systems had only about 3Gb of available space on the system partition. The big problem was that these drives had more data than would fit on my 100Gb portable drive -- the one I use for this kind of thing. The client had a server, though, so I decided to use this to backup the hard drives. My plan was to create a disk image of each of the three partitions, then restore the primary image back to a single partition on the drive, verify that it was bootable, then perform the upgrade on the newly expanded drive. As an aside, you might think that backing up over the network would be slower than using an external drive. Nope. This network was gigabit ethernet, and it was actually faster. I ran into trouble right away. While the Leopard Installer DVD allows you to browse the network, it will not allow you to authenticate to a resource. So, I had to setup a public folder on the server that was accessible to guests. Then I used Disk Utility to make a Disk Image of each partition, and saved it into the public folder. The next problem I ran into came when I went to restore the system disk image to the newly partitioned hard drive. Disk Utility gave me the error "Restore Failure: Could not find any scan information. The source image needs to be imagescanned/scanned for restore." My heart sunk because I though the disk image was somehow corrupt. The fix, however, was simple. I poked around the menus in Disk Utility, and under Images was "Scan Image for Restore..." Thinking that it couldn't be that easy, I gave it a shot, chose the disk image, and bingo, it appeared in the left column, ready to be restored. After that, the install went flawlessly -- well, almost. See my next post.

2/10/2008 Back to My Mac on Bellsouth

Sun, 10 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0500

According to Apple's documentation, in order to support the .Mac "Back to my Mac" features, your router must be an Apple router, or be able to support UPnP (Universal Plug and Play). It's not quite that simple, at least not with Bellsouth. This assumes you have more than one Mac, and that you have paid for .Mac, and that you have configured .Mac on each Mac. The short version is this: your Bellsouth Modem/Router doesn't support UPnP, but you can buy a second router that will work with it to do this. I use a Linksys WRT54G. The trick is to setup the Bellsouth modem/router NOT to do it's own PPPoE. Instead, you configure your second router to do the PPPoE. Then you can configure the second router to enable UPnP and it works. If you want an overview, keep reading. This requires a bit of TCP/IP knowledge, so this is not for novices. You will also need to have a second router in hand -- brand new out of the box is fine. If you don't have a passing familiarity with configuring basic home routers, stop and call the 11-year-old next door to help you.You will need your Bellsouth login and password, so do not proceed without this. Here are the basic steps: 1) Your Bellsouth router should already be configured and working. Make sure you can get to its config page (check your TCP/IP settings to find the router address, and plug that into your browser address bar). Note this address. 2) Now, disconnect your computer from the Bellsouth router and Plug the WAN port on your second router into the LAN port on the Bellsouth router. Then plug your computer into a LAN port on the second router (or access it wirelessly). If your Bellsouth router was configured properly, you should be able to get on the internet after you do this. a) If you can access the internet, go on to step 3. b) If you can't access the internet, unplug the second router from the Bellsouth router, but leave your computer plugged in to the second router. Power cycle the second router. Now access the router config page (check your TCP/IP settings to find the router address). On the main page, change the third number in the "Local IP address" to 10 (actually, any number from 0 to 254 will do, so long as it is different from the current number). Save the change, then connect it all back up and try again. 3) Now you should be able to access the internet. Check to see that you can access the Bellsouth Router's config page (the one your noted in step 1). Also check that you can access your second router's config page (check your TCP/IP settings, AGAIN because they have now changed, to find the router address). If you can access them both, you're ready for the next step. If you can't, you've got something else going on I can't cover here. 4) Log in to your Bellsouth router config page. Go into the advanced configuration. Look around for the passthrough-mode, or the bridging mode (varies). Enable this mode, choosing to pass through to your second router (it should be the only available device). Save the change. After you do this, you will probably not be able to get back on to the Bellsouth router config page. Don't worry, move on to step 5. 5) Access the config page for your second router. Configure the internet connection type to be PPPoE, and plug in your Bellsouth login and password. Save the settings. 6) After the router restarts, your will probably NOT be able to get online. Disconnect the ethernet cable from your computer (or turn off your wireless), wait a few seconds, then plug it back in (turn it back on). Now you should be able to connect to the internet. 7) Go back to the config page for your second router, and find the Admin page (Linksys Administration). Poke around until you find the UPnP setting -- enable it and save the settings. That's it (that's enough!)! Now, when you leave your household and get on a normal internet connected network, you should be able to see your other, home, Back to My Mac computers under "Shared" in your Finder Sidebar. I said "normal" because some public networks block this. Have fun.

2/10/2008 AT&T Kudos

Sun, 10 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Ok, so my last entry was about my problems with AT&T Rebate Debit cards. That was resolved to my satisfaction, but it did take the wind out of my overall good experience with them. Still, I really must say something good about AT&T. I know, I know, they are the Death Star... still. When I got the iPhone, I expected to be paying more per month than I had been doing for years. I decided that it would be worth it. Then I discovered the Unity Plan. The AT&T agent told me about the Unity Plan when I went in to get my wife and an employee's phone numbers ported to AT&T. He explained that the pricing for the Unity Plan was the same as the regular pricing, but it required that you put your wireless phone on the same bill as your home phone -- of course, that means you must have an AT&T home phone, which we do. The real kicker, though, is that the Unity Plan makes all calls to AT&T phones free. This includes wireless AND wireline phones. A quick mental survey, and I figured this would cut my minutes in half. So I jumped on the plan. It was easy to port the two phones, and I got all of the paperwork and purchases completed in under an hour. After I got my first phone bill, I wasn't sure what minutes were what. So I let a couple of more phone bills come. Then I took a good look at just how many plan minutes the three of us were using. It was definitely half of what we used to use. In fact, less than half. I called up AT&T to reduce the total number of shared minutes on the plan. My target should be about 1,800 minutes per month. But AT&T only offers 1,400 or 2,100 minutes. Since I had a BUNCH of rollover minutes accumulated, I opted for the 1,400 minute plan. When, if, we burn through the rollover minutes, I'll flip to the 2,100 minute plan. The good news is that my phone bill has actually gone down. On SunCom I used to pay for four phones. Now, with three phones, my bill works out to be less than the amount I would have paid for three phones on SunCom.

2/10/2008 AT&T Rebate Complaint

Sun, 10 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Shortly after I got my iPhone, I flipped my wife's and an employee's phones over to AT&T. I got them both Motorola RAZR phones, each with $100 rebates ($200). After a few weeks, I got four (4) AT&T Rebate Debit cards, each worth $50. I thought, wow, cool, this will be easy to spend. The first time I used a card, all went well. Then I realized that, in order to spend all of the money, I would have to track the amount spent for each card. So I put each card in an envelope and kept track of the balance on the front. I looked like a dweeb pulling them out, but I was determined to spend every penny. The first time I tried to use two cards to cover a transaction was at the grocery store. I was successful at spending down to the penny the first card, but the second card, which had more than enough remaining balance, was rejected. I had to use a third card to cover the bill. Then I had two partially spent cards, which really bugged me. The next time I tried to use a card was at a restaurant. The card had about $5 more available balance than the tab -- but it was rejected. I had to use my debit card because they could not let me use two cards to cover the bill. At a gas station, I tried to use a card, but it was rejected. Next I tried to use a card to pay for chinese take-out, and it was rejected. In five attempts, four rejections. By now I was totally put-out. So I called up AT&T customer support. I got a very nice gentleman on the line. I promptly chewed him out, stopping to apologize and explain that, while I thought he was great as a person, I was completely pissed with AT&T. Nothing personal. BTW: I think this is a very important thing to do -- tell them you aren't pissed at them. It diffuses the situation, and helps them to want to help you. He explained to me that many businesses, especially restaurants, have to authorize more than the total of the bill in order to accommodate tips, etc. I knew this, but this still didn't explain the first rejection at the grocery store. I asked him to give me a credit for the remaining balance and just be done with it. He told me he could not do that. I read the riot act again, and again I explained that it was AT&T, not he, that was the target of my wrath. Then he said a very smart thing. He suggested that I just use the cards to pay my bill. Oooo, I was completely defanged. I thought "what an elegant solution, why didn't I think of that?" I thanked him and hung up. When my next bill came, I called up the pay-by-phone line and explained what I wanted to do. After hearing me out, the customer service rep explained to me that there would be a $5 service charge FOR EACH CREDIT CARD TRANSACTION. That would be $20! What!? If I pay my bill with AT&T's own debit card, they charge me for every transaction? I immediately asked her to close out my account. I told her that if they had such a ridiculous rebate system, and an equally punitive set of fees to use their own cards, I simply couldn't remain a customer. No way was I going to pay $5 per transaction. After all, it was their own card paying their own bill. Thankfully, she decided it would be better to waive the $5 fees and just take the cards. So, one by one, I depleted the balances of my three remaining cards, and stuck the total remaining balance on my company credit card. So, the next time you see a rebate offer, beware that you may be receiving a debit card, and not a check. Avoid trying to use the card at restaurants and gas stations, and ask other types of vendors up front if they will have to authorize for more than the exact value of the transaction.

2/5/2008 Wall Street Journal Mac Ad (sort of)

Tue, 05 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Send by a friend who subscribes to The Wall Street Journal.

1/1/2008 Happy New Year!

Tue, 01 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0500

The photo says it all. I wish you and yours a great year!

Happy New Year!
Originally uploaded by billread

12/6/2007 iPhone Mail and Calendar Integration

Thu, 06 Dec 2007 00:00:00 -0500

Of course, I installed Mac OS X Leopard the day it came out. I was really hoping for a bunch of new goodness and integration with the iPhone, but was pretty disappointed that no new secret stuff appeared. Over time I have discovered a few nuggets that have proved to be useful-- especially if you are an iPhone using GTD fanboy. Everyone knows: - that iCal syncs to your iPhone - that there are no To Dos on the iPhone-- not even an app - that the iPhone notes app doesn't have a Mac counterpart Everyone (that means me) really hoped that Leopard would miraculously incorporate all of these things. But it didn't. At least not totally. However, THERE IS A WAY. If you use IMAP for your Mac and your iPhone mail, you can can get both Notes and To Dos from your computer on your iPhone. The implementation still needs work, and I think that Apple will eventually get around to this. But for now, it is very useful for your GTD system. Under Leopard in Apple Mac, you now have a button for Note and a button for To Do. If you are working inside one of your IMAP mailboxes, such as your inbox, and you click one of these, the item is automatically added to that mailbox on the IMAP server. This means the iPhone will see it. To view the notes on your iPhone, just look through your mailboxes. Notes will appear as emails "From" you, but with subjects being the first line of the note, and the body being the whole note. Pretty cool. To Dos show up differently. In Apple Mail, when you create your first To Do (within Mail, while in an IMAP folder), a new IMAP folder will appear, titled Apple Mail To Do. This folder will now appear on your iPhone. There is no real interaction with To Dos on the iPhone, other than reading the To Do, or deleting it. But this is great for those of us who need to get our To Dos on our iPhone. I don't actually use the To Dos, just the notes, but I plan to play with them. Currently I am using Vitalist to manage my projects and actions. My plans are to create a set of IMAP note folders, organized by context, and migrate my GTD system into it. Now, if Mail just had tagging....

11/18/2007 Interwatches on eBay

Sun, 18 Nov 2007 00:00:00 -0500

Ok, so I'm generally not one who complains, leaves negative comments, or rants about a company after a bad experience. Yes, there are some exceptions. Well, Interwatches is one of them. Earlier this year I bought my wife a Ladies Rolex from Interwatches via eBay. We have been very happy with the watch, but Interwatches was odd to deal with. For an added $120 Interwatches offered a water resistance test, along with a water resistance guarantee. I bought this because my wife wanted to swim with the watch. Once I won the bid, I got an automatic invoice from Interwatches. I wrote them to ask for the water proof test, and went back and forth before finally getting an email from them telling me to just add the extra $120 to my payment, which I did. The watch arrived, but did not include the certificate. Also, it arrived a little earlier than the delay that "water proof test" should have added. I called and they assured me the test had been done, and they promptly sent me a certificate. It left me wondering. As it turned out, my wife didn't swim with the watch for several months. Then, when we were up on a lake in the SC mountains, she went swimming. When she got out of the water, the face of the watch was completely fogged. Annoyed (and, yes, suspicious that it was somehow her fault-- a fault of my own), I checked the screw-down crown, which was firmly in place. I unscrewed it to see if the seal might be visibly damaged, but couldn't really tell. I secured it again, and told her not to swim with it again until we could return it. When we returned home, I called Interwatches. They acknowledged that we had a guarantee. They told me to ship the watch to them right away, and they would take care of it. A few days later I received a call from them. The agent, clearly foreign and with halting English, told me that their jeweler determined that the crown had not been screwed down completely, and this was the cause of the water breach. He explained that it was therefore not covered, and would cost me $85 to be serviced. Now, I am 100% certain that this is not true. I'm not 99.9% certain, but 100%. I checked that thing. I've owned a Rolex with a screw-down crown for 20 years, and I know how it works-- this is why I checked the thing when it happened (because I wasn't so sure she knew it). I went ballistic. I explained to him the events, and told him that I had in fact checked the watch immediately upon discovering the problem. I insisted that there was NO WAY this was true, and that he needed to fix my watch under the $120 guarantee. We went round and round for 20 minutes, and he finally told me he would speak with his manager, who was conveniently "out." When he called back the next day, I stood my ground. In fact, I insisted that if he refused to fix my watch under the warranty, that he should refund the $120 to me. He could take the $85 out of the refund. Again, he had to call me back. Then I began to think: they've got my watch held hostage; it's only $85 to get it back, fixed. Standing on principle at that point might just cost me the watch. Then I hatched a plan: pay for the repair via American Express, then dispute the payment when the watch arrives. I called Amex to ask them about the situation. They explained to me that, even if I disagreed with the $85 extortion fee, so long as I agreed to pay it initially, I couldn't really dispute it-- not without lying about it. The upshot is that I wasn't going to lie about the situation-- that was what they were doing, and I wasn't going to stoop to their level. I decided to pay the $85 just to get the watch back. I've chalked it up to experience, and I'll never do business with Interwatches again. Feel free to let me know if you have had a different experience.

11/17/2007 A Little Help from My Friends

Sat, 17 Nov 2007 00:00:00 -0500

It's nice to know that once-in-a-while you can provide someone with a little help. This email came from a post of mine about the VoicePro VP206, VP208, VP412 Programming Manual PDF download.

Here it is almost 2008 and the link still comes in handy for some of us. Our NEC DS2000 system is acting up amd it requires a professional programmer with special software to troubleshoot and do it justice. I've had a VP408 on standby for years. Can't find the manual, can't find the power supply. So, I hacked a computer power supply to get 24 volts (it wrks fine though the box says it needs 28 --- I'll buy a 28V regulated later). Then I hit Google and kept coming up with the adverts for that printed manual. After a few search word changes your BlogSpot page popped up in 8th place on page 1. (Searching on "voicepro programming manual".) Thank you!!

Love it!

10/5/2007 Beware Expiring Product Links

Fri, 05 Oct 2007 00:00:00 -0400

So I needed to recommend a replacement hard drive for a client's laptop. It needed to be a 2.5" ATA hard drive (not SATA). I did the research, and found a great deal on a 160Gb ATA hard drive. I sent the client the link to the product info page where he could just click "buy." I double-checked the link before I emailed it, as I often do, by copying and pasting it into another browser (not another window, but another browser altogether, in this case Firefox). The client followed up on my email about 3 days later. He duly bought the drive, and called me when it arrived. When I opened the box and took out the drive, the drive was an SATA model!?! It was otherwise identical to what I had spec'd, but it was SATA and not ATA. Initially I thought they had just shipped the wrong thing, so I checked my original email to follow the same link. The link took me to the same drive he received-- I immediately thought I must have made a mistake. But I knew I had checked and double checked on this one. I decided to investigate further. I looked for the same drive on the website by following a search on the site (rather than following my own link). Sure enough, I found the same drive-- but with a different link URL. I compared the two URLs to find that they were both using the manufacturer part number for the drive. The only difference between the two part numbers was that the SATA version had a "C" at the beginning. The upshot is that the seller had run out of the desired model, and when their website responded to the link with the part number in it, it found a match in the newer model drive. Granted it was a partial match, but a match none-the-less. I plan to contact the webmaster to explain the error. But I don't expect to get very far.

10/1/2007 Apple Repairs in Charleston, SC

Mon, 01 Oct 2007 00:00:00 -0400

Charleston, South Carolina, now has two Apple Authorized Repair centers. While my company does just about all kinds of Macintosh troubleshooting, support and consulting, we don't do "repairs" (defined as repairing hardware components under warranty). For years Charleston has languished without an Apple Authorized Repair center, the closest one being Savannah, Georgia, or Columbia, South Carolina. Earlier this year L2 Technologies, from Beaufort, SC, moved into the Charleston area, near Red Top (why there?!?). I've blogged about them before. Now in addition to L2 Technologies, we have Tech Plus. Tech Plus (Tech +?) has been around a long time, and I have referred many clients to them to get Mac repairs when out of warranty. I am ecstatic to report that they are now and Apple Authorized Repair Center, and can to repairs of Macintosh computers under Apple Warranty, or Apple Care. In addition to repairs, both companies offer the full line of Apple Macintosh products for sale. Finally Charleston has a reasonable alternative to driving two hours for repairs. Plus, people can actually go somewhere and see Apple Products for sale here in town.

9/12/2007 Recover from a dragging issue in Disk Utility

Wed, 12 Sep 2007 00:00:00 -0400

I think this is an issue with Intel Macs, but it may be all Macs with a 10.4 Installer DVD. Apple has a support document, Unable to drag and drop in Disk Utility while started from install DVD, that explains a bug in Disk Utility found on some 10.4 Install DVDs (including my MacBook Pro's). I ran into this when my hard drive failed, and I needed to clone it to send it off to Apple for replacment -- and now again that I want to upgrade to a new 200Gb 7200/16Mb internal hard drive. There is a workaround beyond those provided by Apple, assuming your internal hard drive has Disk Utility on it, it's in the normal place, and you are willing to use Terminal. After you boot from the Installer DVD, and are on the first installer screen (just past the language screen), go to the Utilities menu and choose Terminal. In Terminal, type:

cd "/Volumes/YourInternalHD/Applications/Utilities/
Disk Utility.app/Contents/MacOS/"

Replace YourInternalHD with the actual name of your internal hard drive. Press Return, then type:

./Disk Utility

That's it. Disk Utility will launch off of your internal hard drive, and now you can drag within the Restore portion of the program.

9/3/2007 IMAP Lesson

Mon, 03 Sep 2007 00:00:00 -0400

I blogged earlier about using IMAP on your computer and iPhone, and there is one more lesson to add. I have now set this up on a couple of other people's iPhones and in their Apple Mail. You may have problems in Apple Mail with one of the folders you are saving to the server. The error will be something like "error - cannot save message." If this is with your drafts, you can't then save your drafts. If it is with something else, say, sent mail, this is a big problem. The cure is simple. First, make sure that you are using an IMAP setup (see link above). If so, then select the IMAP (Drafts or whatever) folder in the Mailboxes column. Then, in the Menu bar, choose "Use this mailbox for..." from the Mailbox menu, and select accordingly. That's it. Mail just needed to be told which folder to use. This works for Trash, Sent, Drafts, or whatever, and you can use any folder name on the IMAP server you wish.

8/23/2007 iCal and Address Book

Thu, 23 Aug 2007 00:00:00 -0400

If you use iCal, you are probably familiar with the ability to invite others to events, and send yourself email reminders of events. If you aren't familiar with these features, you should get to know them. First, check your Address Book (Blue or Brown book icon with an @ on it), and find your "My Card" entry (under Card-->Go to My Card, or Make this My Card). Make sure you have filled out your email address here, or none of this works. Today my wife asked me to set up an email reminder for her, in my iCal. I have an event every three weeks that she doesn't need on her calendar, but needs a heads up reminder a couple of days in advance. Well, you can't do this. iCal will send reminders only to email addresses on your My Card entry. So, being the clever guy that I am, I decided to add my wife's email address to my card, and mark it spouse. That did the trick. I was able to set up an email reminder for her after that. Then she changed her mind, and wanted the event on her calendar-- she asked me to invite her to the event instead, and she'd just set up the reminder herself. Fine, so I removed the reminder and stuck her name in the Attendees field. Only problem was, iCal no longer allowed me to send her invitations. This puzzled me. It was showing her name when I brought up the attendees. After staring at it, quitting iCal and tinkering for a few minutes, it dawned on me that iCal was thinking that the invite was to myself, since the email address was on my card. Sure enough, I removed her email from my card, and immediately afterwards, I was able to invite her to the event. One last thing. She won't be able to set up reminders on the event I invited her to, since I control the event. What she will have to do is accept the event, and add it to her calendar. Then she will need to copy the event, and paste it a second time into the calendar. Then she will have to delete the original event (and choose do not notify back to me). Now she will be able to edit the event and add a reminder. Sure would be nice if Apple allowed you to set a reminder on any event that appears in your iCal, regardless of how it got there.

8/15/2007 Whose iPhone is That?

Wed, 15 Aug 2007 00:00:00 -0400

I was reading through these iPhone tips over at O'Reilly when I remembered one of my own. Even if you use the "ICE" contact book entry, it does you no good if you lock your phone with a passcode. However, the Desktop picture for the iPhone appears behind the passcode screen-- so anybody who turns on your phone sees that. Use your favorite image editing app (Photoshop, Gimp, etc.), and stick your name and emergency contact numbers (not your iPhone, of course) on it. Sync that image to your iPhone and set it as your desktop.

8/11/2007 Apple Please Give Me Text Selection

Sat, 11 Aug 2007 00:00:00 -0400

The list of things people want on the iPhone is l o n g, but most of them are things that I really can live without. For instance, no voice-dialing; I only ever used this for primary contacts, and the Favorites feature more than makes up for this for me. However, not being able to select text and copy-and-paste is killing me. There are a number of times when I am composing an email, and need to delete entire blocks of text, or at least rearrange blocks of text. This is normal stuff people. Give us text selection. The other place I find the lack of text selection annoying is surfing. Often I'll come across a comment entry on a website where they put a URL in the text, but it's not a link. Normally I would just select this, then copy and paste it into the address bar. But I can't do this on the iPhone. I hope Apple is hearing this one, because it is a huge productivity killer, and a gap that must be filled on the iPhone.

8/11/2007 L2 Technologies

Sat, 11 Aug 2007 00:00:00 -0400

I noticed a few people visiting this site were searching for L2 Technologies, a local Apple Dealer, and Apple Authorized Repair Center for both warranty service, and out-of-warranty service. Here is their contact information: L2 Technologies (843)573-2202 3874 Savannah Hwy, Unit 8 Johns Island, SC 29455 If you are looking for them, you must head down Highway 17 South, and pass Bee's Ferry Road. They will be on the right in a small strip mall about 500 yards past Bee's Ferry Road as you head south. Use them if you need repairs, or are looking to buy new Apple computers and accessories. My Own Plug: If you are looking for troubleshooting help, or advice without the pressure of sales, you can contact my company, Computer Consultants Group, Inc. We specialize in supporting Macintosh computers, Mac OS X, Windows and Unix; and we do not sell products, so our advice is unbiased by vendor relationships. Computer Consultants Group, Inc. (843) 722-7607 email at ccgnet.com

7/30/2007 Using IMAP in iPhone Mail App

Mon, 30 Jul 2007 00:00:00 -0400

Tomorrow will be three weeks of living with an iPhone. It is every bit as delicious today as it was when I first fired it up. I am using it a ton for browsing the internets. I do most of my mail on it. And I have found a new must-have app, Google Maps; how did I live without this before? Of course, all this instant, at-hand, digital wonder means I'm online more. Not sure if that's a good thing. Today I want to talk about Mail. I mentioned using IMAP previously, and this is really the deal-maker if you want to use the same account on your iPhone and computer. Let me go over my setup. If you setup your mail account(s) via the sync feature, you're in trouble if you play with your settings. You will soon discover that after a sync the settings will revert. This should be no surprise if you give it thought, but it caught me out. This can wreak havoc on your Sent, Drafts and Trash folders. Don't do this, instead setup the mail account manually on the phone. Trust me on this-- there is no real benefit to syncing the account that I can see. Let me tell you my setup so you can get the picture. I want my computer to be my primary location for archived and filed email. I want my iPhone to have access to my primary email, and email that is in my GTD system, but no more. With that in mind, this is how I set up my IMAP in Apple Mail on my MacBook Pro. Drafts: Under "Mailbox Behaviors" I checked "Store draft messages on the server" so I can start a message either on my iPhone or computer, and finish it on the other. Sent: I unchecked "Store sent messages on the server" because I also set "Delete sent messages when: Never." I keep over 6 months of sent mail at all times, not including what I've filed away. This would put me WAY over quota on the server, so I have Mail file it away on my hard drive. Junk: Next, I uncheck "Store junk messages on the server" and have junk nuked after 1 day (I review it daily). Trash: Lastly I check "Move deleted message to the Trash mailbox" but uncheck "Store deleted messages on the server." I like to keep 6 months of trash (history as far as I'm concerned), and it is surprising how often that is not enough. So that's my Mail setup on my Computer. In setting up the IMAP on the iPhone, under advanced, I had to specify the IMAP Path Prefix as "INBOX" (YMMV, so check with your ISP). Then when I checked Mail, the iPhone showed all of the folders that had been created by Apple Mail. Good so far. But I still needed to give the iPhone a way to store Drafts, Sent mail, Trash and processed Junk. These folders (except Drafts) had not been created by the Mail App on my computer, because it wasn't using them. So, in Mail on my computer, I manually created three new IMAP folders, Sent, Trash and Junk by selecting the IMAP inbox, and just clicking the + to make a new folder. After having successfully verified my folders were found by the iPhone Mail app, I popped back into the iPhone Mail Settings, under Advanced, and pointed the Drafts, Sent and Trash to the corresponding folders on the server. Now, the way I use these folders is important, because they are different folders than my computer is using. So, as I use the iPhone, it accumulates Sent mail and Trash in the IMAP folders. On my computer, I have to file the Sent mail away into my computers Sent folder. I do this at least daily. Also on my computer I open the IMAP Trash folder, select-all and press delete -- they go to the right place. As for Junk, since the iPhone has no junk mail filtering, and I still want my computer Mail app to learn the junk, I file junk mail into the Junk folder. Later on my computer I open the IMAP Junk folder and mark the mail as Junk (some will actually already be, and I just move those). One very cool thing is that I can leave Mail open on my computer, and it will busily mark and move a lot of my Junk mail out of the way as it checks mail. Eventually I hope to have an AppleScript working with a Rule that will move the Sent, other Junk and Trash. Working on that.

7/30/2007 iPhone Mail Issue Recovery

Mon, 30 Jul 2007 00:00:00 -0400

Ok, so in my last post I mentioned that syncing your Mail accounts to your iPhone could burn you if you tweak those settings. Specifically, if the locations of your Sent, Trash and Drafts change, you can end up with mail filed away on your iPhone, with no practical way of retrieving it. If you change your settings back to filing these folders on your IMAP server, you apparently lose the mail altogether-- the iPhone versions of those folders just disappear. The fix is a simple one, although it takes a few steps. First, on the iPhone, change your settings back so that you are filing the mail on your iPhone. Now you can get to the "lost" folders. Since the IMAP versions of these folders will also be available to your iPhone mail, you can now move your mail into the correct location (one-at-a-time, ugh). Once you are done, change your settings back, make sure you UNCHECK syncing the settings for your mail account, and you're now safe.

7/21/2007 iPhone Break

Sat, 21 Jul 2007 00:00:00 -0400

Ok, I have had my iPhone for almost two weeks, time for an update. First, if you have an email account that supports IMAP, you really need to use IMAP for both your computer and your iPhone. Mail was of no real use to me until I did this. IMAP let's you create and use folders that are stored on your mail server- so you can keep some mail on the server and have access to it at all times. I set up all of my GTD related folders in IMAP, leaving the rest of my filed mail in Apple Mail on my MacBook Pro. This increased the usefulness of mail on my iPhone by an order of magnitude. Safari on the iPhone is clearly version one. It quits on me frequently. Mind you, not as frequently as Netscape or Internet Explorer used to back in the day, but that ain't saying much. Still, my iPhone has definitely replaced my MacBook Pro as my casual surfing tool. For reading blogs and generally exploring the web for news and fun, it is a pleasure. I am now a frequent user of SMS, something that before was limited to the occasional quick note. Twitter is largely responsible for this. I am now a twitter addict. It is a great excuse to get to know the keyboard. The keyboard is still tripping me up. I am a pretty good touch typist, and learning to thumb type is difficult for me. A recent surprise was that I am better using the smaller version of the keyboard (the one you get with the screen in portrait) than the larger version. I think this is because the keys are closer, ironically. I do not use the iPhone as an iPod much, mostly for podcasts. But today I was trying to listen to some Talking Heads and the iPod function just plain quit on me, twice. I have found that when this happens with Safari, it is best to turn the iPhone off and back on (reboot). This seems to cure the quits for both Safari and the iPod application. Overall, I am far more pleased with iPhone than I expected. The keyboard is my greatest challenge, and I am eagerly anticipating the day when I finally "get it."

7/14/2007 iPhone Update and Impressions

Sat, 14 Jul 2007 00:00:00 -0400

About a week after I wrote my last note about the iPhone, my father offered to buy one for me "for services rendered" (Dad often stokes me some cash after I've resolved some issue on his computer). Anyway, after debating it for a day, I knew I couldn't resist that offer. Of course, I despaired of getting one because there is no Apple Store in South Carolina, and by all accounts the AT&T stores were sold out. On a whim, and with 1/2 hour to kill, I swung by the AT&T store near Town Centre in Mt. Pleasant, SC, to see if they might have a phone or two. They had just gotten a whole shipment. 15 minutes later, I walked out with my 8Gb iPhone. Of course, I had an extra long appointment right after that, so the shrink-wrap didn't come off for another 4 hours. I've had it now for a little over three days. It's great, but has definite room for improvement. Everyone is blogging about their iPhone now, so I'll keep my impressions short. First, Wi-fi rules. Edge is Ok, and certainly tolerable on normal web pages in a pinch, but no match for Wi-fi. For the built-in services, such as SMS, Stocks, Maps, and Weather, Edge is just fine-- fast even. Second, Safari is great on this thing. Apple has made the small screen highly usable for this. No Flash is a bit of a drawback. But then, I'm not a Flash fan, tending to develop using open standards, so that part of me actually cheers this decision. Form data-entry needs a bit of work, though. As a phone, it is great. This is the first phone I've had where I could actually decipher and use the call handling features. I used to drop people all the time, and now I don't. Visual voice mail is almost how it should be. Voice mails are actually downloaded to your device, so no connection is necessary to review voice mails. The downside is that you cannot do anything else while listening to voicemail-- not even take notes. That is a problem for me. Mail is usable. But it needs to be able to rotate so you can use the larger keyboard. I assume that will come in an update. Maps rock. I'm sure Treo users will think it old-hat, but Apple's implementation is stunning, and it works great over Edge. Lastly, the keyboard is hard to use at first. Everyone says this, and they also say after a week you are cruising. I'm already light-years better with it than day-one, but with a ways to go. The technology behind the keyboard is nothing short of astonishing. Check out the keyboard video.

6/30/2007 Got an iPhone Yet?

Sat, 30 Jun 2007 00:00:00 -0400

I'm on the fence on the iPhone at this point. This is mainly because AT&T will charge me $119/month for a service plan that will give me the number of minutes per month that I currently get at SunCom for $60/month. Ouch, that's $720 more per year for the privilege. That said, I'm also waiting to figure out how to integrate it into a GTD system. It won't be very useful to me unless I can take my Projects list and Contextual next-actions list with me. I'm currently working on a web-based GTD widget, and that may suffice, but for now I'm stuck with my laptop. So, to rub things in, my buddy calls me at 3pm Friday to tell me that he's 8th in line at the store in Atlanta. Well, his KIDS were 8th in line-- he was off running errands. Then I get the first email about how awesome the phone is-- from the phone, of course. Still, $1,320 for my first year of service, including the phone, is steep. In fact, it's as steep as the three phones I and my employees now have.

6/9/2007 AppleCare Redux

Sat, 09 Jun 2007 00:00:00 -0400

A while back I wrote an entry about getting AppleCare. My main premise was that, in Charleston, SC, at least, it was the only way to get local hardware repairs. And it was onsite too boot. Not any more. Charleston finally has it's own Apple Authorized Repair center, L2 Technologies. No more onsite repair� you have to carry it in now. Darn. But at least we have someone local. If I ever find a website for them, I'll link it.

6/9/2007 Getting Things Done

Sat, 09 Jun 2007 00:00:00 -0400

I'm definitely not a self-help book reader. Being a Christian, I have a healthy suspicion of things under my own power� but that is a different blog. Anyway, being a non-self-help book reader, I have avoided the whole "Getting Things Done" genre of things. But, a friend of mine gave me a copy of kGTD. Not knowing what the initials meant whatsoever, I took a trip to the kGDT website. Upon arriving, I decided to view the intro video, linked from the page (above). What I witnessed left me in awe. Not that the software excited me, it did not. In fact, it looked more cumbersome than I would have hoped. No, what excited me was the very simple concept of making Tasks Lists based on the Context in which the task can be done� then doing items grouped by context, not project. Since that is mainly how my life operates already, except my model is based on interruptions more than anything else, it was a profound moment. It was profound enough for me immediately to look at and buy (on Amazon) David Allen's Getting Things Done. I finished the book today, and it has already changed my outlook. Will I transform my world by it? I'm not sure for how long, but I can say that I have already cleared my desk and set down the road toward a more directed method of handling my day. The key concept that brought me here, the one of organizing by context, is not the one that will keep me here. It is nice, but I found when I tried to implement it in my own way, it fell short. So I determined to read the whole book before I tried to re-order my world. Right away Allen introduces a concept that I know will work for me. That is one of keeping your head entirely clear of the tasks of the day/week/month/year/life� and at that point he promises the rest of the book will teach you how. He had me at "clear." I have spent the last several years trying to get my inbox in front of me, or "in my way," so that I will deal with it. I knew that 1) I would never remember to do things on time, and 2) as many times as I tried, I never looked at "To Do Lists." Those two problems pretty much shot-down the whole idea of generalized organizational tools� such as my unused Palm Pilot and software. Oh sure, I use a calendar, and that has been sacrosanct, but it never successfully incorporated a list of things to be done that didn't have specific dates and times. So, I put things in my way. That means physically placing things where I would trip over them, or have to move them. It also meant directing things to my email inbox. My inbox is the one place I consistently review, and I somehow developed the habit years ago of keeping my inbox down to a single screen. I constantly tell people "you can't tell me anything, email it to me." Even my wife caught on. If it lands in my inbox, I deal with it� eventually, anyway. Allen sets out the concept that you have to have an inbox (or inboxes, but not many) that you process regularly. Then you either define projects from items, file items away or trash these items as you process your inbox. This is very similar to how I already handled email� I just needed to think about paper and other things in a similar fashion. Allen's premise is that you must get all of these inbox items into an external system that you trust in order to get them out of your head. If you haven't gotten them out of your head, your head will constantly remind you of them (at all the wrong times) and your conscience will create a growing, non-specific, burden upon you. Sound familiar? No more for me. I knew that if what he was teaching would help me clear my head, and trust my external system, I would do it. So, I set up an Outliner program with my Projects Lists, assigning a Next Action to each item, and a Context to each Next Action. Then I expanded the concept of my Projects Lists to incorporate everything in all aspects of my life. Ok, not everything, not yet, but everything that has occurred to me so far. I treated my entire desk as an inbox, and processed everything into my lists, or filing, or trash. I still have to tackle my bookshelves and countertop, but all of the stuff that is related to current things in my life has been touched. You won't believe how freeing it is.

5/7/2007 128Gb is Enough

Mon, 07 May 2007 00:00:00 -0400

A client had a failing hard drive, on a PowerMac G4 Mirrored-Drive Doors. He bought a 300Gb replacement drive, and I went over to install it. Upon trying to format the drive, the drive appeared in the Disk Utility as a 128Gb drive. Huh. Odd. The last time I saw something like this had to do with a boot disk not supporting a bus in the system� but this was a newer installer DVD and should not have had the problem. So I decided to call the HD manufacturer, Seagate, to see about returning the "defective" HD. I mentioned my concerns about the computer itself maybe being the problem, and he did some research. Turns out that the computer simply didn't support drive sizes larger than 128Gb, and it would be Ok to use the drive if we were willing to live with the smaller partition size. Turns out that still gave us 3 times the storage as before, so no worries.

5/5/2007 Are You a Photographer?

Sat, 05 May 2007 00:00:00 -0400

I'm an enthusiastic amateur photographer. A fellow photographer and friend pointed out Strobist.com, written by David Hobby, back in January. After perusing the site a bit, I started reading his Lighting 101 section. Boy, was that ever an eye-opener. I am a sucker for stuff that is written by people in my demographic (Hobby and I are about the same age, born in the mid-'60s), and Hobby's style and know-how gripped me from the start. Starting June 4th is Hobby's Lighting 102. This gives you fellow photogs enough time to read up on Lighting 101, get your Flickr Account and join the fun. I can guarantee you that you won't read another blog and join another group that will be more informative than these. You will learn more, even if you are an advanced pro, from this great group of people, than you will learn anywhere else. Oh, and while you're at it, check out my Flickr pages.

4/16/2007 Browse the Network

Mon, 16 Apr 2007 00:00:00 -0400

I had a user with a brand-new MacPro who could not browse her local LAN. She had all other services, email, web, ftp, printing, etc. But when it came to using the Network icon to browse, all she got was a list showing Applications, Library and Users. This had been going on for weeks, and persisted through a reboot. Hmmm... I looked at the top-level of the HD in the terminal, and noticed that the date on the folder named Network was over a year old. So, I nuked it using the sudo rm command. After a reboot, all was fine again. Yay!

4/11/2007 Reboot D@&nit

Wed, 11 Apr 2007 00:00:00 -0400

So I get a panicked voicemail from a user who can't print. When she tries to print, it's spitting out the correct number of pages, only they're blank. Her project is so urgent that she's grabbed her files and gone to another computer to print, not waiting on a return call-- good idea, btw. What she didn't try before calling was a reboot. These, of course, are the first words out of my mouth: let's try rebooting. Guess what? It worked.

4/10/2007 Google is Serious

Tue, 10 Apr 2007 00:00:00 -0400

Webmasters: Have you ever read Google's Webmaster Guidelines? Have you ever thought that, "Hey, they're just guidelines and that bit about being removed from their index is just to scare me?" Think no more: one of my own sites got removed for using so-called hidden text. The front page of my company site was created way too long ago, and violates all kinds of rules I preach about every day. The primary one is that there was no content on the page, just a picture and image links to inside pages-- horrible for any kind of search engine optimization. So, because we did have a little bit of content inside the site, we stuck a blurb of sorts on the front page in tiny black-on-black text. And it worked; search engines, including Google, found it and us. That was literally years ago. Today it came back to bite me. I got a form letter from Google informing me that the site was being removed, and it quoted the actual hidden text. At first I thought it was a hoax, or possibly a scam. But the mail headers proved the mail originated at Google. I had no choice but to take it seriously. Fortunately, it was no big deal, as the text was perfectly Ok to appear on our home page-- we just decided to hide it years ago because we liked the photo-only look. I updated the text, which hadn't been touched for years, gave it some space so it would appear below the scroll, and made it visible. We can now say we practice what we preach. Well, mostly.

4/10/2007 Mac OS X Rules

Tue, 10 Apr 2007 00:00:00 -0400

My laptop has been needing repair for a while. I'm writing this on my kids iMac because my MacBook is at Apple right now, waiting on parts (a new DVD drive). While I am tethered to a desktop/keyboard/mouse, I feel rudderless. When you get used to having all of your info, email, documents, software, everything, in a bag with you everywhere you go, having it all sit on a desk is quite limiting. That said, Mac OS X simply rocks. Before my laptop got shipped off, I copied my user folder over to an external hard drive I keep handy for just such operations (actually, I just xeroxed the complete hard drive using Disk Utility). Then I created a new user on the Kids iMac, performed a tiny bit of magic in Netinfo Manager, mapping my user folder over to the external drive (don't do this at home), and bingo, I am able to log in to my own desktop-- email, calendar, address book, everything in one fell-swoop. And what's even better is that with the data on the external, portable, drive, I can perform this same operation on any other Mac OS X computer in about 2 minutes-- almost as good as having the laptop with me. Thanks Apple for making it so easy, even for us IT guys.

3/7/2007 Low Tech Solutions Rule

Wed, 07 Mar 2007 00:00:00 -0500

Ok, so the name of this blog is LowTechHiTech.com. Why? Because often us IT guys take the long way around to solve a problem, when it could be more easily solved (and cheaply) by other means. After all, why use a small word when a diminutive one will do? Case in point: a client had need of a more reliable internet connection for managing their own website. Their internal LAN connection has a horribly slow firewall that restarts all the time, but the IT department won't rid themselves of it because it does, after all, protect the Windows PCs. But marketing uses Macs, and so can get away with a separate connection not behind the firewall. The only problem is that the internal Lotus Notes mail server must be gotten to on the LAN. No problem, Macs can effortlessly support multiple simultaneous connections on different (or the same) network interfaces. Enter a second internet connection on an Airport network. So now the Mac users are connected to both the wired LAN, and a much faster wireless internet connection via an Airport base station. Of course, every solution introduces another problem, and, in this case, their backup became the new problem. We use Retrospect, and it seems to have a problem when two networks are available-- often not "seeing" the backup clients which are clearly available. The solution was for the users to turn off their wireless network before leaving at night. Of course, this meant they had to remember to turn off their Airport. Enter Radio Shack. I bought a simple "coffee timer" for $10 at Radio Shack, and plugged the Airport base station into it. I set it to turn off at 7pm (before the backups begin), and on at 7am (before anyone arrives). Problem solved for $10. In retrospect it seems so obvious, but consider that I had spent 30 minutes writing an Applescript to turn off/on their individual connections before realizing that there was a much easier way.

9/4/2006 More on Backups

Mon, 04 Sep 2006 00:00:00 -0400

A well thought-out contingency plan (for disaster, emergency, fire, theft, employee sabotage) can be summed up in one word: backup. If you have a good backup system in place, one which includes rotating your backup media off-site, you are pretty much covered for disaster. This includes hurricanes, fire, and theft. Here are a few of my thoughts on this: 1) Software. I prefer Retrospect. I know there are plenty of detractors of this software, but I have been using it for over 15 years (yep) and it has never failed me. Oh, I have had plenty of backups that failed-- but it has never been the software that caused it. Failures are caused by inattention, bad media (which, if you are attentive, you catch), and procrastination. 2) Automation. One of the reasons I love Retrospect is that, once set up, it does everything but switch out the backup media. My experience is that fewer than 1 in 20 clients, if left to determine when the backups should be run, will actually do it. This is why I design backup scripts to backup every day. For Mac OS X users, I have Retrospect backup "User folder and Prefs." With Windows, it's not quite as easy, but documents, desktop and the email files are easy enough to define for the backup. Plus I use "Backup Server" mode. This is a feature of Retrospect that allows it to backup 24/7, use any available backup media, and track what files need to be backed up to which backup set. Leave it to the user, and you'll never have as good of a backup. 3) Redundancy. A single backup is not, in and of itself, sufficient. Firstly, what happens if you have a fire? But, more to the point, many times I have to go to a backup not to restore a failed hard drive, but because a user screwed something up. With only one backup, often enough, the "good" file is gone, replaced by the screw-up (even with incremental backup, when you backup to external hard drives, you have to start over periodically). Having 2 or even 3 drives in some kind of regular rotation gives you the grace to choose from many different versions of files when you restore. 4) Off-site storage by a principal of the company. If you want to be safe from disaster, then you simply must have one of your backups stored off site. Don't make the mistake of giving it to some employee to do, because s/he won't have the investment in safety that you, a principal, will have. Yes, I have had a client get burned because an employee he had to terminate just so happened to be the keeper of backups. Due to stupidity, he gave her a chance to "copy" some of her files before making her leave. She trashed their entire project folder, then went home and cut the ribbon cables on the backup drive. We were blown away-- no one expected this person to respond this way. But people are seldom what they appear to be. 5) Don't be too ambitious. Yep, you heard it. I am paranoid when it comes to backup, plus a cynic. Paranoid in that I think about disaster. I've seen theft, sabotage, failure, lightening.... pretty much everything. But I'm also a student of human nature, and understand business dynamics, thus I'm a cynic. People are the least attentive when they are under pressure, and what causes pressure in businesses is being busy. When you are the busiest, you generate the most work, you push your equipment the most, and you have the least amount of time. If backups require too much of your precious time, you won't do them. Although it may cost more to setup in terms of hardware, I always recommend a dedicated backup system-- an entire computer devoted to this. If a user's workstation is the backup computer, backup will get blown off when the company is the busiest; and if you backup too much (systems and apps for instance), the backups require too much storage, and therefore more maintenance, and eventually become a nuisance. So balance is achieved by not being too ambitious. 6) Backup to hard disk. Tape and CD/DVD media are a nuisance. In the case of a server with over 1Tb (terabyte) of storage, you have no choice. But most small companies won't face that kind of storage requirement. External hard drives, from 250Gb up to 1Tb are ideal. They are portable, and easily swappable. Buy two, and swap them out once a week (not daily, see #5). Assuming you keep one off-site (see #4), even in the worst disaster, you can't lose more than 1 week of data-- acceptable by most standards. If you can't stand to loose that much, you can do other things (daily swapping, etc.), but then, you're not the target for this entry. So, the contingency plan for your computer systems becomes this: when the storm comes, leave town with the backup drive in your possession. That's it. You may think that you need to plan/prepare to protect computers, etc., but in reality, this is folly. If you have plenty of time, and won't risk life or limb, go get the other backup drive too. In the event of a truly devastating event, such as a Katrina (or a Hugo, more dear to us in the Lowcountry), there isn't much you can do to protect the hardware. And the idea of taking hardware with you is foolishness. Also, the idea that you should make employees do the same is even worse. Abandon the hardware (except the backup drive(s), of course). Take your family, your photo albums and heirlooms; let your employees do the same. Since you haven't burdened your employees with anything but their own worries, you'll have more loyal employees, because they know you have a plan to put it all back together-- a plan that doesn't encumber them with your problems. The idea is that computers and software are covered by insurance (if not, you should look in to your insurance), and are easily replaced (sometimes preferably replaced, as in older hardware). If your backup is done right, and you lose everything at the office, you can be back up and running in the time it takes to get new hardware (usually days), and restore the data (another day or two). The assumption here is that if you are facing total devastation, this timeframe is more than sufficient because of all the other stuff you are facing (new location, no power, etc.). Now, this is not to say that you should not take steps to secure your computers and building. Of course you should. You don't want minor damage needlessly taking out your systems. Shut things down, unplug them, move them to safer locations in your building. Do this under the advisement of your computer support provider (you don't want to be dismantling RAID drives, or other things that might literally be damaged by your acts of protection). Bear in mind that I am not addressing non-computer related files and paperwork-- you're on your own for those. (But it's all digital now-a-days, right? A real argument for digital document storage, in my opinion.) I won't go in to all of the potential ins-and-outs here, because every company will be slightly different. But I'll leave you with this advice: think about the reality of total loss. Consider having no building, no computers, and no power for a few weeks, and people scattered around while their personal affairs are dealt with (because it is just as likely that their homes will be similarly affected). How does a small business cope with this? If you have your data, and loyal employees, all else can be put back together.

9/1/2006 More on Power

Fri, 01 Sep 2006 00:00:00 -0400

We had a little storm blow by, Ernesto, a tropical depression/storm/hurricane wannabe, on Thursday. I have a love/hate relationship with storms like this. On the one hand, they are a nuisance / menace, on the other hand, they can be good for business. Many people go around in a panic right before such a storm, doing things they otherwise wouldn't do. This can be totally avoided with a simple, well thought-out contingency plan. More on that later. Anyway, on Friday I got a call from a user who had unplugged her iMac on Wednesday in preparation for the storm. She came in to find it wouldn't start up. I see enough computers that spend their lives always plugged in, and left on, to know that many of them are temperamental if they have been left unplugged for a day or so. I told her to be sure that it wasn't the outlet, and to have a bit of patience. In other words, keep trying what she was doing-- in this case, unplugging it, giving it a rest, plugging it back in, holding down the power for a few second, etc., etc. A couple of hours later, she called back, and had given up. So I swung by. 30 seconds later her computer was merrily booting up. I wish I could have told her the "trick" I used. But, really, it was just a tiny bit of patience. All I did was what I told her to do, which was try a different outlet, and hold down the power button for just a couple of seconds. She was flabbergasted. Most of the time, when I perform a bit of "magic" for a client, it has nothing to do with expertise or knowledge. It's just a bit of patience and clear-headedness. I'm constantly telling people to plug and unplug, wait a bit, look at their watch to make sure they have waited 60 seconds (or 5 minutes, whatever). And I am astonished at the number of people who just won't do this. I guess I should be happy-- after all, I make a ton of money from people like this. Still, I hate to make money this way, and I the more I help people like this, the more dependent they are upon me. I have a family-- I don't need any more dependents. See my next entry for more on backup.

8/18/2006 Power Adapters Matter

Fri, 18 Aug 2006 00:00:00 -0400

A friend of mine had been having a terrible time with his internet connection and his Airport Express Airtunes/iTunes setup. It all started when he got hit by lightning and had to replace his router. The setup was like this (--> means wired connection): Config 1 Cable Modem--> Linksys router (4-port switch) Linksys router --> iMac Linksys router --> Airport Express Linksys router --> Airport Extreme After reconnecting, and finally getting the internet working again, he could no longer "see" either of his Airports from his iMac. We beat our heads against the wall for quite a while over this, but I eventually had him go buy an ethernet switch to use in place of the switch in the router. So, the new setup looked like this: Config 2 Cable Modem--> Linksys router (4-port switch) Linksys router --> Ethernet switch Ethernet switch --> iMac Ethernet switch --> Airport Express Ethernet switch --> Airport Extreme This solved the problem. I'm still trying to figure out if the router switch was just plain bad, or somehow was filtering the Airport connections. But then he got hit by lightning again, and blew out the second router. This time he bought a Linksys Wireless router to replace it. He plugged it all back in just the way it was in Config 2, but could never get it to work. He could plug the iMac into the cable modem, and that worked, but no other setup seemed to work. So, he sent me out to his house to have a look. The first thing I noticed was that he had laid out all three routers (the two dead ones which were identical, and the wireless one) for me to look over. Upon examining these, I realized that there were only two power adapters-- one connected to the second dead router, and one connected to the wireless router-- with one still in the box. The power adapters were, to the casual eye, identical. I checked the voltages on the power adapters, and sure enough, two were 9 volt, and one was 12 volt. The wireless router had a 9-volt power adapter plugged in to it. I couldn't find the spec on the router itself, but guessed that it must be 12 volt, based on process of elimination. My friend had left the old power adapter in place, and just plugged the new router in to it. So, I plugged in the 12 volt power adapter to the new router and that solved the problem. Moral of the story: replace it ALL when you have to replace something. I still don't know why the the Linksys router somehow blocked or filtered the connection to his Airports. If you know of a reason, I'd love to hear from you at "bill at metatation dot com."

6/3/2006 MTR (Matt's Traceroute)

Sat, 03 Jun 2006 00:00:00 -0400

Matt's Traceroute is one of the best traceroute/ping utilities I've ever found. But I couldn't install it on my new MacBook Pro :-( I scoured their website http://www.bitwizard.nl/mtr/ Matt's Tracereroute MTR and found a simple fix that worked. It was listed as a fix for version 0.56 on Mac OS X 10.3, but I took a shot and it fixed the install problem. Download the latest mtr (as of now 0.71) from their site, and before you run configure, edit the dns.c file. Add the following line at the top of the #includes: #include <nameser8_compat.h> Then do your ./configure, then make, then make install (I used sudo for all of mine, but you may not have to). Now you have your mtr compiled on your nice new Intel Mac.

6/3/2006 LG LST-3410a Troubleshooting

Sat, 03 Jun 2006 00:00:00 -0400

I noticed a bunch of searches in my web logs for the title of this entry, so I figured I'd share my experiences. My PVR is an LG LST-3410a, sporting an ATSC digital tuner and HDTV from a rooftop antenna. It gets its TV Guide info over the air, which allows you easily to record upcoming shows. It also allows you to schedule regular timed recordings for stations that might not be on the guide. TV Guide The first thing to know is that TV Guide is ANALOG-- not digital. This means that your recorder must have one or more of your local analog stations in the channel lineup in order to receive TV Guide. Those stations must be ones that carry the TV Guide signal-- which you may not be able to determine without contacting TV Guide (which I had to do). In my area, Charleston, SC, the only reliable source is the local channel 4. This happens also to be the weakest of the stations I receive. So, do NOT do what I did and remove all of the analog stations from your channel lineup. I did this because in my town all of the analog stations also broadcast in digital, so I never have a reason to watch the analog version (except in rainstorms, bah). If you do this, you will discover that within a few days you will lose much of your TV Guide information. Also, although your guide setup allows you to change the channel for a particular station (in my case analog 4 could be changed to digital 4-1), do NOT change the one that your TV Guide comes in on. Because if you do this it will cause your tuner NOT to search the analog signal for the TV Guide. If you do this, you can lose all of your guide info. Grab TV Guide Manually Sort of. Ordinarily, the LG will download the TV Guide data only when it is off. This is because the tuner must switch to the analog channel for your guide-- which it can't do if you have the unit on and in use. If you know the analog station that locally broadcasts your TV Guide, and you happen to want to watch it, tune to that station and your unit will immediately begin downloading TV Guide data while it is on. This is a great way to jump-start the download process. You can even do this while watching a recorded show. Invalid Channel for Scheduled Recording Because the recording of programs relies on date and time info, if your LG date gets out of whack due to a power interrupt or something else, you can get this error. Sometimes, a regularly scheduled recording of a weekly program can cause this. I suspect it happens with the program drops off the schedule for a week because it was preempted. But, this can just happen for no apparent reason. When this happens, the TV Guide will no longer come up, and you'll get this error every time you turn on your unit. In my experience, it will not cure itself, and you won't get your guide back without intervention. The fix is to turn off your unit, then unplug it for 15 seconds or so (long enough for it to lose the time). Then, when you turn it back on, as soon as you can, go to the TV Guide. If you can't get in, unplug it again and start over. Once in the TV Guide, go in to your scheduled recordings and delete everything. After you've done that, power off the unit, then power it back on and set the time manually (or tune it to your TV Guide analog channel and let it set it's own time).

5/26/2006 Box.net

Fri, 26 May 2006 00:00:00 -0400

Just found a free online storage site (1Gb of storage for free) that works with WebDAV on your Mac. Once you have your account setup, go to your Finder and choose Go-->Connect to Server... and enter the following: https://www.box.net/dav Enter your login and password and your Box.net files appear on your desktop in a volume named Dav. Pretty cool. The Dav features are a little buggy, but they work and can only get better over time. I'm using it to store installers and stuff that I often need at clients, but don't always have with me.

5/18/2006 Voice Pro VP206, VP208, VP412 PDF Manual (updated)

Thu, 18 May 2006 00:00:00 -0400

[7/12/2006, Since writing this I have been contacted by the publisher of the printed manual I refer to below. Apparently they have updated the manual a bit, correcting some problems people have had with this original manual. He wasn't specific, so I don't know what those issues may be. If I get another update, I'll add that too. So, $20 might not be a bad deal after all; also, last I checked, the price was $15.] My Voice Logic Voice Pro VP206 is a great voice mail and office attendant. I use it as an announce only system which transfers calls directly to my employees cellphones. It's great. Too bad the company that makes it is gone. My system needed to be reprogrammed after a power failure earlier this week (the internal battery is dead), and I needed access to the manual. My manual was at home, a 40 minute round trip away, so I figured I could Google it to get a copy. All of the Google results point to this website that wants to sell you a print version for about $20. That's just wrong. After frustrating myself for a few minutes trying to find another version, I realized that I had a PDF version of the Voice Pro manual stowed away in my documentation folder. I had downloaded it when I was investigating purchasing the unit several years ago. So, here it is in all it's FREE glory, download the Voice Logic Voice Pro Installation Programming Manual for models VP206, VP208, and VP412 (PDF, zipped, 3.8Mb). This also includes the Quick Start Guide and the Voice Pro Addendum SWV 2.02. Enjoy. Please, if you grab this, shoot me a quick note using the email link at the very bottom of this page to tell me how you found me. The feedback will help me to decide whether to leave this file available. Well, since I've posted this, many people have downloaded the manual. Thank you for your emails. While we're on the subject of the Voice Pro, the battery in mine went dead. It never lasted the 6 hours indicated, more like about 1. But now it's completely toast. The remedy is quite simple: buy a USP, like an APC BackUPS Pro or similar. If you plug only the Voice Pro into it, you should get 2-3 times the advertised life of the battery backup you purchased. I did this (bought a 650VA version) and my Voice Pro can survive hours and hours after a power outage (a problem where our office is).

5/18/2006 MacBook and Photoshop CS2

Thu, 18 May 2006 00:00:00 -0400

If you have a MacBook Pro (mine is the 17") and want to install Adobe Photoshop CS2, you'd better do it before you install the Security Update 2006-003 (Intel). If you try to install it after this update, it will lockup you entire computer right after the install begins. Installing Adobe Photoshop CS2 on a MacBook Pro If this happens to you, reinstall Mac OS X 10.4.5 from the installer disk that came with your computer. Then, before you do anything else, install your Photoshop software. After that, update Photoshop completely. Then update Mac OS X. I hope this saves you some time. This probably is the same for Adobe Creative Suite CS2, although I haven't tried that.

4/6/2006 Apple Does NOT Mean Business

Thu, 06 Apr 2006 00:00:00 -0400

If Apple really cared to compete in the business world, it would act as though its computers were the mission-critical tools of business that most of their customers require. The average business user can no more function without his computer for 2 days than he can function without a telephone. Ok, maybe that's a bit too harsh, but think about this: what if you could not access any computer for a week? I don't mean while you're on vacation, but I mean during the normal business week. I don't know about you, but I would effectively be out of business by the end of the week. Why am I on about this? AppleCare. While other top-tier computer makers all offer on-site warranty, Apple has a half-assed version. At best. AppleCare offers on-site repair only if you are outside of a certain radius of an Apple Service center� I think it's 50 miles. But even then, you have to meet certain criteria in order to get the support. Dell just sends someone out. Yes, you jump through a few hoops, but they send someone. Why? Because they understand that if you are without your computer, you are losing revenue. Apple? Well, since everyone who uses Apple must be a raving fan, it's a privilege to have one, and if it breaks, well, it's no trouble at all to wait a week, or 2 or 3 to get it repaired. Or not a problem to drive 2 hours to get it repaired. Bunk. I live in Charleston, SC. The nearest Apple Authorized AppleCare or Warranty service center is in Savannah, Ga. That's 2 hours away. If I have to truck a computer down there for repair, that's a total of 8 hours in a car (4 down and back to take it, 4 down and back to get it). I could FedEx it, too. So, warranty repair costs either $150 round-trip, give-or-take, or 8 hours in a car. Now, to Apple's credit, you can get on-site repair, if you jump through the right hoops. I have done it for a number of clients, on G5s, iMacs, and others. I typically have to spend 3-4 hours total on the phone to get this to happen. (See my blog entry Enroll Your AppleCare for more on how to make it harder.) But today I really discovered just how hard Apple can make it. Here are the facts: iMac G5, purchased 4/29/2005 that has AppleCare on it. It began to Kernel Panic for the user last week. I did all of the normal troubleshooting, the short version: swapped out the RAM with an identical twin iMac's RAM, erased the hard drive and zeroed-all-data and reinstalled from scratch. The thing still Kernel Panics, sometimes even trying to boot from the install CD (which works flawlessly in the twin). There's much more, but suffice it to say that I and the Apple Tech agree it has to be the logic board. Here's the rub: the RAM is not Apple original, we replaced the original (upon purchase) with 2 x 1-GB chips� and threw away the 256Mb chips (from it and the twin). Ok, fine. We swapped the RAM from the twin, which works fine with either set of RAM. So it's clearly not the RAM. But since we don't have the original chips to put in, even though clearly it's not the RAM at fault, Apple refuses to dispatch a repair person. We must carry it in for service. If we had the 256Mb chip, they'd send someone out. Oh, and Apple no longer sells 256Mb chips for the iMac G5. The upshot is that the Apple Tech was very nice and is shipping me a "replacement" 256Mb chip to use. Of course, it will cost me $150 if I don't send it back. With that in the iMac, I will be able to call back. Assuming it fails� is there any doubt?� they will then send out a repair person. Let's summarize: I called yesterday, 4/5/2006 with the issue; I had to call back today after swapping the RAM (which didn't help my situation). Now, it will be 4/12/2006 (earliest) when I get the dispatched RAM; then I'll call back; it will be 4/14/2006 (again, earliest) that a dispatch comes out. In reality, it will be 4/19/2006 before the system is repaired. That's 2 weeks. That's 2 weeks for a computer with an extended warranty which is supposed to be on-site. Now, I ask you, does this make you think Apple cares about the needs of a business user? Not me. AppleCare is meaningless, and in this case worthless. The 2 weeks of downtime for the user is FAR more than the value of the computer� maybe as much as 10 times. Yes, we actually have another computer to use in the meantime; after all, we actually care about our business, and that of our customers, unlike Apple. Update: 4/19/2006 Got the 256Mb chip and the Mac does not fail. But it fails with any of the 4 (3rd party) 1Gb chips, all of which work in the other identical iMac G5. Apple said no dice, it is the RAM at fault. So we bought a 1Gb RAM chip from the Apple Store. 5/3/2006: When we finally got it, It failed in the iMac G5. So, IT WAS NOT THE RAM. Finally, Apple relented and sent someone out, who replaced the logic board. He was nice enough to put the 2 3rd party 1Gb chips in for us. Now all is working perfectly.

1/24/2006 Bellsouth Email Issues

Tue, 24 Jan 2006 00:00:00 -0500

Bellsouth has been having worse and worse problems with the sending of email over the past few weeks/months. I finally had a chat with their online support. Here is the transcript. me : We send via mail.bellsouth.net me : This happens to everyone I know. Is there something wrong with the bellsouth mail servers? BellSouth eAgent : Hello. You have reached BellSouth FastAccess DSL eChat Agent Beverly. I am happy to assist you with this issue. May I please have your DSL phone number to access your account information? me : (my)phonenumber BellSouth eAgent : Thanks BellSouth eAgent : We have had issue with the email servers the past few weeks. me : Any ETA on a solution? BellSouth eAgent : We have also upgraded the email servers which did encounter a few issues. BellSouth eAgent : Everything should be complete later today. me : So all will be well sometime later today, and you've put in new servers in the recent past. Got it. Thanks. BellSouth eAgent : Is there anything else I can assist you with today? me : No, that's it. Thanks BellSouth eAgent : Please visit our online resources at http://help.bellsouth.net/bellsouth/asp/home.asp. Yeah, right. Well, hopefully their problems will actually go away. We'll see.

12/28/2005 Enroll Your AppleCare

Wed, 28 Dec 2005 00:00:00 -0500

Wow, sometimes the hardest part about obtaining service is the paperwork. I'll give you the short version first: if you buy AppleCare, you must enroll it to obtain service. And God forbid that you should throw away your AppleCare box. This is exactly what one of my clients didn't and did (respectively) do. The PowerMac G5, dual 2Ghz had always been quirky (this PowerMac G5), and I'd always suspected hardware problems. The main symptoms were that the fans would run hard when the G5 was barely working. If you did something really challenging, it sounded like it was going to take off. Often it would kernel-panic, and many mornings we found it with the fans running full-blast, but a dead screen. Plus a myriad of other problems (some of which are discussed in the above link). At any rate, the G5 had been through every software fix possible (archive install, reformatting, etc.). So, it needed fixing. The trouble with this, though, is that the G5 was a production machine, and always in use. A few crashes a week were more tolerable than a few days of downtime. So all of my previous repair attempts had to be completed within a fairly narrow window. As luck would have it, we finally got a real server (Xserve) installed for this client and the G5 was replaced with the old server (an identical G5). With the G5 now "spare" I had the luxury of bringing it down for extensive testing. We took the hard drive out of this G5 and put it into the old server, putting the server HD into this G5. Since they were "twins" this was a great troubleshooting step. In one move we eliminated any possibility of software problems, versions, etc. But the machine still crashed, even when doing nothing. Gotta be hardware. Of course, the Apple Hardware Test (AHT) turned up no errors; darn. Since the G5 had AppleCare, I knew that Apple would be much more helpful and more ready to listen to my complaints. The thing you have to know is that Charleston is 2 hours from any authorized service provider. Without AppleCare you are driving to Savannah, GA, or Columbia, SC. With AppleCare, you miraculously find out that there is a local warranty repair company who will come out to service your Mac. Well, it had AppleCare, and I had an invoice to prove it, but the box was nowhere to be found, and it had never been enrolled at Apple. This would have been a total loss had we not bought it directly from Apple. Since they had records of the purchase, they were willing to work with me. Of course, it took 3 hours on the phone to get all of the paperwork found and the product enrolled. After that nightmare (4 total hours on the phone over a 5 hour period in two phone calls), I finally got a dispatch for a technician to come out an service it. Yea!

12/28/2005 More Blogspot

Wed, 28 Dec 2005 00:00:00 -0500

What is it about the coming New Year that make me want to write in my blogs? Well, most of my activity from now on will be found at my blogspot blogs, here: http://billread.blogspot.com/ - My Tech Machinations http://blogatrip.blogspot.com/ - Our 2005 Vacation Out West (and later other trips). http://19640922.blogspot.com/ - Odd stuff and memories

10/29/2005 It's a Small Blogsphere

Sat, 29 Oct 2005 00:00:00 -0400

I read a handful of blogs, and sometimes send items in that I think are of interest to the blogger. I did that a while back at one of my favorite sites, Gizmodo. I sent in an entry for Playmotion having to do with interactive displays (in this case, walls). Well, today I get an email from a high-school classmate, who is an owner in Playmotion. She got a new lead and they told her they found her website on Turbulence.org, credited to me. Turbulence.org went so far as to link my reference to Computer Consultants Group, my main business website. What I think is so interesting is that I submitted the info to Gizmodo, but somehow it ended up over at Turbulence. At least they credited me with the info and provided a link. That's mighty nice of them.

6/22/2005 Grand Canyon, Here We Come

Wed, 22 Jun 2005 00:00:00 -0400

Tom & Billy, originally uploaded by wsdr.

It's been 35 years since I went to the Grand Canyon as a kid� August of 1970. It was one of those ......long...... road trips with the parents and 4 kids in a station wagon, plus a camper in tow. I remember my brother walking me piggy-back up to the edge of the canyon. That must be shortly after this picture since in it I'm not screaming in terror. Even though I was only 5, that trip is burned into my memory. We travelled by car from South Carolina zigzagging across the nation. We made stops in Texas, New Mexico (the Painted Desert was cool), Arizona and on to California (yea Disneyland). We turned north and met my grandparents in Seattle, WA, visited Canada and zoomed back through Yellowstone Park and the Grand Tetons. It was one hell of a trip. And now my family of 5, plus my parents, so 7 total, are doing something similar. This weekend we're flying into Phoenix, AZ, and picking up a minivan (or van, I guess) and heading North. We're going to see Sedona, the Grand Canyon, the Painted Desert, Mesa Verde, Natural Bridges, Dinosaur National Park, the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone National Park. And we're doing this all in two weeks and three days, in the van. All seven of us, ages 3 to 75. Yep, I'm playing dad� or my wife is playing mom, depending on your perspective. Tons of photos, and probably video when we return. I'm liking Flickr more and more.

6/11/2005 Blogspot.com

Sat, 11 Jun 2005 00:00:00 -0400

Bill Read's Blog on Blogspot.com (billread.blogspot.com) I finally decided to give Blogspot.com a try. It works well. I'm going to keep this blog, and double-post to Blogspot.com as well from now � on.

4/27/2005 Analogies

Wed, 27 Apr 2005 00:00:00 -0400

I love using analogies for computers and technology. One that I particularly like� enough that it is one of my sigs� is attributed to Albert Einstein as follows: You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat. When asked by a client to describe how DSL can be provided by the phone company over the same phone line as his home phone, yet not use up his dial-tone, I came up with the following. DSL is like a string between two buildings. You can tug on the string on either end and use Morse Code to communicate. But you can also attach a can at each end of the string and use the cans to speak between buildings. The tugs are your phone, and the cans are DSL.

4/4/2005 Please Keep Your Fonts

Mon, 04 Apr 2005 00:00:00 -0400

I had to reformat and reinstall everything on a PowerMac G5 a couple of weeks ago, and was nervous that all of the problems were hardware related, even though Apple Hardware Test turned up nothing. On Friday the user complained that her Suitcase software was quitting for no apparent reason. I troubleshot it a bit remotely, but being late in the day, I told her I would take care of it on Monday. All the time I'm thinking, this thing is toast and going in to the shop. When I walked in Monday, it had gone from bad to worse-- damn. It was booting up to a blue screen with a flashing menubar at the top, but nothing else. I went in to Single User Mode (command line) and disabled autologin. Upon reboot I never got the login screen; rather, it progressed to the point just before the login screen, then bailed to a command-line login. What?!? I could log in to the command line as the user-- very odd. I spent two hours trashing prefs, caches, and various other things to no avail. So, then I was definitely thinking it was hardware failure. Double-damn, and it had been working prefectly for over a week. Finally, after all that, I did an archive and install of Mac OS X 10.3.4, then proceeded to do all of the updates-- fully expecting it to go belly-up in the process, signaling the trip to the shop. In the middle of all of this, the user casually mentioned that in the process of trying to troubleshoot it herself (!), she had removed all of her fonts-- the thinking being that Suitcase was crashing because of a bad font. Nice idea-- only she had removed ALL fonts, including the ones in her user folder, plus the main System and Library! .... "Um, and you didn't think to mention this to me -- the VERY LAST THING YOU DID BEFORE THE WHOLE THING CRASHED?" Well, I kept calm. Really, I did. She didn't know any better, after all. And I learned to look for one more thing when troubleshooting bizzare behaviour (missing fonts). Also it more-or-less meant that the hardware isn't a problem, so that is good. Oh, and now I have a really good excuse to give her a hard time.

1/29/2005 Mail Message Not Downloaded Error

Sat, 29 Jan 2005 00:00:00 -0500

Apple's Mail program keeps each inbox or folder in a separate MBOX format file on your hard drive. If you are one of those people who leaves everything in your inbox (as opposed to filing it or deleting it), you will eventually begin to get the following error: The message 'xxx' has not been downloaded from the server. You need to take this account online in order to download it. What is going on is that your inbox has gotten larger than the RAM available to Mail for handling it. You must quit Mail, re-open it, then proceed to delete as much email as you can bear, and file into other folders as much email as you can. Regular filing of email into other folders, and regular clean-out of your sent mail (file or delete these as needed), and trash, will give you a faster, more responsive, Mail program.

1/21/2005 Address Book and iSync

Fri, 21 Jan 2005 00:00:00 -0500

I was setting up iSync and the iSync Palm Conduit on an iMac running 10.2.8. When it came time to set up the sync preferences in iSync, I clicked on the Palm icon, but the iSync window would not expand to show the settings. The odd thing was that if I then clicked on the .Mac icon, the Palm settings would briefly appear, only to be replaced with the .Mac settings screen. Clicking back on the Palm brought up a blank screen. After nuking every preference I could find, I resorted to moving the user's entire ~/Library to the desktop. After that, it worked, although the user now had no data. I migrated all of the newly created preferences into the old Library and then put it all back in place. After a logout/login, the problem came right back. That pretty much narrowed it down to the Calendar or Address Book files. A quick look at the Calendar revealed nothing amiss. When I looked at the Address Book, I noticed a Group in the list that had no name� it was blank. I renamed it and deleted two other groups that had no members. That worked. iSync opened the Palm prefs just fine. I was able to choose the calendars that needed to be synced, and perform a sync with no troubles.

1/10/2005 HDTV on DVD

Mon, 10 Jan 2005 00:00:00 -0500

No, it can't be done. DVD is strictly a 4:3 format. Those "anamorphic widescreen" DVDs you see in the store, and play on your player, are really just stretched 4:3. Not content with my HDTV PVR and its 120Gb of storage (only 12 hours of HD after all), I investigated throwing the content onto my PowerBook. After a couple of Googles, I found out that in my Developer folder I already had what I needed: Virtual DVHS. This handy little program can record HDTV onto your hard drive right from the FireWire feed, and play it right back out. My LST-3410a has FireWire out. So I plugged it in to my PowerBook, fired up Virtual DVHS, and fiddled for a few minutes trying to figure it all out. It worked, but after attempting to record an hour onto the HD, it turns out that it craps out after about 3 minutes. Damn. I fiddled for hours, but nothing. I would get 3.5 minutes of stuff from the hard drive, but then it would either flip off, or record whatever station it was currently tuned to (but it recorded that). I called LG and got a very unhelpful support person. I dropped them a note off of their website, and got a very helpful response about how to return the unit. I called and couldn't believe it when they offered to cross-ship (it worked otherwise, after all). The new unit did the exact same thing. Turns out that there was a buffering problem in Virtual DVHS. Oops; sorry for the shipping costs, LG. They were real champs. A simple pref setting later and I got my recording. Holy Moly, HDTV on my PowerBook HD. I could play it back to the PVR, and play it on my screen, but it was agonizingly slow to open the file using MPEG2Stream. And it turns out you have to convert the video to get it to a DVD. Let me save you some time (hours, days even): don't bother. Converting takes forever � and what you end up with is pretty worthless anyway. It will have bad interlacing at best, or not work at all at worst. Instead, I plugged in my Sony Media Converter (s-video/composite to FireWire) and recorded into iMovie. I used letterbox format before realizing that the PVR would play back in "squeezed" mode (Anamorphic Widescreen). Recording in squeezed mode and burning to DVD gave me a playable disk that scaled properly to the full-width of my HDTV screen, with the correct ratio, but with a lower resolution-- it is still beautiful, though, compared to the original. One irony is that DV video, even though far lower resolution than HDTV, is a larger file size. One hour of HDTV was roughly 7Gb on disk, whereas one hour of DV recording was 11 to 12Gb (or more).

12/17/2004 Privileges Are Nice

Fri, 17 Dec 2004 00:00:00 -0500

A client was having a strange problem in Safari. As soon as she tried to type into any text field on a website, such as a search field, Safari would abruptly quit. I suspected auto-fill, but it was all off except for using her address card. I took a peek at her address book, and it abruptly quit as well. I thought major corruption, and so did a quick Disk First Aid. No problems. Hmmm... let's go look at the address book files, found in ~/Library/Application Support/Address Book. To my surprise, her ~/Library/Application Support/ folder was empty. A quick check of the permissions in the Get Info box revealed that the folder was owned by "system." I changed that, and everything worked just fine after that.

10/11/2004 HDTV PVR

Mon, 11 Oct 2004 00:00:00 -0400

Ok, so for my 40th birthday my wife decided to pander to my maleness. She teamed up with my parents and bought me a Sony 30" Wega HDTV, Sony 6.1 Surround Sound Receiver, and an LG LST-3510A HDTV Tuner/DVD Player. Being the luddite that I am, I refuse to get satellite TV or cable TV. Actually, I'd LOVE to have either, or both, but I don't leave the house enough as it is. So, we had to have a terrestrial tuner (using an antenna, not cable or satellite). The LG is an awesome unit that allows you to receive HDTV programming over-the-air using a standard UHF Antenna. I use a $50 Radio Shack antenna in my attic and get GREAT reception in my area. A little known fact about Digital TV is that many TV Stations already broadcast Digital TV for free over-the-air-- right now. Many of these stations also offer HDTV programming as well. In my market (Charleston, SC), the stations that carry ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, Fox and UPN all broadcast Digital TV over-the-air right now. Plus, ABC, NBC, CBS and PBS all offer HDTV content during prime-time. And Fox broadcasts NFL in HDTV too. But in under a week of use, I developed an urgent need to have Tivo capability as well. You know, the ability to pause live TV, record it, fast forward or rewind-- also known as Timeshift TV. As I scanned the offerings from Tivo, my heart sunk as I learned that none of their offerings support HDTV (except one that is tied to a satellite service). So, I began to look in to building my own unit, based on Linux, of course. These are known as DVRs or PVRs (Digital Video Recorders or Personal Video Recorders). After spending the better part of a day doing this, I came to the conclusion that I'd spend about $1,000 on the hardware, plus probably about 10-20 hours getting it all set up. Quite a lot of work. Daunting even. So I googled PVR HDTV one last time. And I found this: LG LST-3410A. Holy airwaves Batman, it's my tuner with PVR built-in. It arrived Friday. It's awesome. Here's the list: Over the air Digital TV; HDTV Supports regular TV Supports Cable TV, and can control your cable box 120Gb Hard Drive Timeshift Record 120 hours normal TV Record 12 hours HDTV Built in TV Guide; 7-day schedule; free Firewire input and output; so you can archive recordings to tape, or record to HD/watch DV footage My LG LST-3510A is now up on eBay.

9/24/2004 Retrospect Server/Timed Scripts

Fri, 24 Sep 2004 00:00:00 -0400

It never ceases to amaze me how much I don't know about stuff I work with every day. I'm sure my clients don't want to hear that, but it's true. I've used Retrospect for over ten years, both personally and professionally for my clients. The past few years we have been leaning heavily on the Backup Server mode of operation (where Retrospect is on 24/7, and backs up individual network clients when they need it as they are available-- it pretty much rules). Today I learned that you can have Retrospect both act as a backup server and run timed scripts. Additionally, you can have a timed script always back up to whatever device is available (something that is basic stuff for the Backup Server Mode, but you do have to tolerate errors). Here's how: Set up your backup server script as you need it, with it's sources, multiple destinations, criteria and on/off timings. Then create whatever specific timed scripts you need as well, and schedule them. It just works. Now, if you want your timed scripts to run on whatever available media there is, set up your schedule as normal, except, for every scheduled execution, create an entry (at the same date/time) for each destination you have. For example, we have a server that backs up 10 workstations plus itself. The workstations are a mix of desktops and laptops, so availability is unpredictable. The server must shut-down a particular process in order to backup successfully-- this happens at 2AM. So , I have two scripts. Script 1 is a Backup Server script, and it backs up the Network Clients Container to Backup HD A and Backup HD B. I'm using pretty much the default settings, which means each client gets backed up as soon as they are available, any time after 24 hours after the last time they were backed up. We set Retrospect to back-up only folders and files that are Labeled Green. Script 2 is a normal Backup script, and it backs up only the Local Desktop Container to Backup HD A or Backup HD B. It is scheduled twice each day at 2:05am, right after the server process shut-down, once to Backup HD A and once to Backup HD B. Since only one backup HD is available at a time (the other one being taken off-site), only one of the scheduled executions will execute successfully, the other will fail. But the data does get backed up, and on schedule without fail. A bit difficult to comprehend at first, but flawless.

9/22/2004 Playing Around with VNC

Wed, 22 Sep 2004 00:00:00 -0400

So I've been spending a lot of time working from home, doing web projects and generally messing around. My latest obsession is VNC. This is old-hat to many *nix geeks out there, but I've been stuck in a world of Timbuktu. If you haven't used it, you should. Find your flavor here: sourceforge.net. I've been playing with GMail, and I like it. It has a long way to go, but the idea of a 1-Gb of online storage is pretty awesome (think emailing yourself critical software and keeping it stored on a Google website). And the way it threads is second to none. I've got a couple of GMail invites, so if you want one, send an email to the address at the bottom of the page. Oh, and be polite and give me your name (required). No, I won't spam you. I learned a very cool thing about iDVD: how to make a DVD auto-start and auto-loop. Just click on the Map and drag your MooV directly to "Menu" and click on the little loop icon on it. Burn it and you're done.

8/16/2004 Mac OS X Combo Fixer

Mon, 16 Aug 2004 00:00:00 -0400

Some people just have crappy luck. A client switched from a Dell laptop to a 15" PowerBook (Aluminum) a few weeks back. Things went swimmingly for 48 hours, until some punk broke out his passenger window and sprinted off with it. The thief just got lucky, since his car windows were blacked-out tinted� no way Mr. Thief knew what was in there. So the new replacement arrives and we did the data-migration from the Dell to the Mac one-more-time. The very last thing we did before leaving for the evening was run Software Update to do the multi-meg upgrades that were waiting. The next morning Mr. Client returned to a kernel-panic. Uh oh. It was hosed� fsck and Disk First Aid failed to help; so did Disk Warrior. An Archive Install didn't bring it back. So, a reformat and zero-all-data was done, and we started all over. It lasted a couple of weeks until this morning, after running the 10.3.5 and associated Software Updates, which all ran just fine, then the client rebooted. The PowerBook booted up to the Login Window, but then dumped him out to a command-line console login. fsck reported no errors. Poking around in the system.log and nuking the com.apple.loginwidow.plist and com.apple.windowserver.plist didn't bring it back. On a hunch we booted in FireWire Target Disk mode and plugged it in to another Mac. Then we downloaded and installed the Mac OS X 10.3.5 Combined Installer. It didn't boot, but hung right away. So we booted from a 10.3 Installer CD and ran a Repair Permissions. Then it booted up After logging-in, it threw an error from the AppleSlewClock.kext. So we just copied one over from another 10.3.5 install, changed ownership and permission to match the rest of the extension. We were back in business.

8/10/2004 Automatic Migration

Tue, 10 Aug 2004 00:00:00 -0400

Moving an OS X user from his old Mac to a new one is pretty easy, if the user has stuck to his home folder. All you have to do is copy/install any software and copy his data over to the new home folder (assuming you matched the short names). But Apple has made our lives even easier now. Booting up a brand-new eMac, the first question it asked was whether I had an older Mac from which I wanted to move my data. I answered "yes" and it walked me through booting the old Mac in FireWire Target Disk mode and connecting it up. Then the eMac asked me what data I wanted (User folders, installed Apps, other data), and it did the rest. I was done with the migration in 15 minutes, as opposed to the typical 1 to 3 hours. Brilliant!

7/23/2004 Two Heads, One Set of Hands

Fri, 23 Jul 2004 00:00:00 -0400

I've discovered the coolest way to work with both my PowerBook and Dell on my Desktop. The fact that I'm late to the game is beside the point (others have done the same thing for quite some time), it's still very cool. I'm using TightVNC on the Dell (VNC is an open standards protocol for controlling one computer from another, like the commercial PC Anywhere or Timbuktu) and osx2x on the PowerBook. TightVNC is great open-source software, and is dead-easy to install and configure. osx2x does both VNC and X-Windows connections, and is embarrassingly simple to setup and use as well. What is so cool about osx2x is that instead of bringing up the remote PC in a window on your local computer, it "attaches" the display of the remote PC to one of the edges of the local display. So the remote PC screen sits to one side of your local display. Which means that the "remote" PC can't really be remote because you need to see its display. To control the PC, you simply move your mouse to the edge of your local display... and keep moving... the mouse will appear to popup on the remote PC. At that point all mouse movements, clicks and keyboard strokes are sent to the remove PC. It is so smooth it is as if the remote PC display is a seamless part of your local display� you can move between the two with a flick of the mouse. One mouse, one keyboard, two computers, two displays and your hands never have to move! Beautiful! And the best part is that I can use my PowerBook trackpad (or Mouse) with all of Apple's glorious smooth-motion algorithms on my Dell! (Sorry, but Windows mice, even the best of them, simply suck at their acceleration and movement around the screen� Apple is the indisputable champ there).

7/13/2004 Troubleshooting Order Matters

Tue, 13 Jul 2004 00:00:00 -0400

Many of our clients, both home and business, have cable or DSL internet connections that are shared via a router, wireless or otherwise. We see many problems where a connection is lost, seemingly permanently. While we can never know what happened prior to our arrival, all too often it seems that lack of patience has turned what should have been a temporary problem into a permanent one. This is my theory of how this happens. You see a network, while it uses wires to connect you (ok, sometimes they are wireless), does not behave like an on/off circuit. Just because it's all connected doesn't mean it's going to work. The flawed analogy I like to use is one of a chain-of-command. Each person in the chain gets his orders from the person above him. If one of the people fails to get his orders, then everyone in the chain below is also left out. Now suppose an underling calls for his orders, but is told there are none. Now also suppose that right after this call, his subordinates call him for their orders; he'll tell them there are none. Now further suppose that he calls again and this time he gets his orders, but his subordinates have given up, assuming that there are no orders. They're going to fail at their task because they aren't aware of it (Ok, the superior should call them, but I said this was flawed). The orders are there, but no one knows it. Now where this parallels networking is that each piece of the connection is like a person. There's the ISP, the Cable or DSL Modem, the Router and finally the computer(s). If the ISP has a problem, the Modem will fail to give it's info to the Router, which in turn fails to give it to the computer. The user goes in and fiddles with devices, turning them on and off and generally trying to Make It Work. The user gives up, and 30 seconds later the ISP comes back on line. But now the Router has bad/wrong info, and so does the computer. The router doesn't know to ask for the "orders" again, and neither does the computer. But while the problem has been solved, the user has given up trying, and in the process of trying made things worse. So, how do you approach this type of trouble? While troubleshooting, always proceed down the chain-of-command. If you reset the modem, then you need to reset your router and reboot your computer as well (Ok, OS X and Win XP should "get it" but they don't always, so you really have to reboot to be sure). By "reset" I generally mean turn-off/turn-on. Otherwise, your modem might begin to work, but your router won't ask and therefore can't tell your computer. Make sense?

7/12/2004 Lightening Strikes

Mon, 12 Jul 2004 00:00:00 -0400

It's been a busy week today.... we had the typical over-the-weekend lightening storms that are so common along the East Coast during the summer. On Monday the phone began to ring with various complaints of dead or damaged computers. One poor customer (Victim A) who got struck this weekend had also been hit a year ago � almost to the day. Another client's (Victim B) practically new G5 appeared to get burned. Victim A was almost in a complete panic and depression � can't say I blame her. Poor dear is supposed to be on vacation this week. An iMac and a G4 lost their network connections after the storm. I asked her to try a different, known-working, network port before we wrote-off the NIC. She called back and said she had ordered a new NIC for the G4 (the iMac was a lost cause, since the NIC is built-in, so back for repair it went). My technician went out, installed the NIC card and it failed. He moved the cable and it worked. Hmmm... so he tried the built-in NIC and it worked too. So much for her bothering to try a different network port. Now she is the proud owner of a new network card and has a bill for an on-site visit � both of which could have been avoided by plugging a cable in to a different port in the wall. I hate it when that happens. Moral: When we ask you to do something that seems stupid or redundant to you, it's because we want to save you money, not because we enjoy making you do things you don't want to do (which we DO enjoy, but only on our dime). Victim B arrived in his office Monday to see the white light on his G5 on, but no other sign of life. He turned off the surge protector, and turned it back on and the white light went off and right back on. Pulled the plug, same thing. Don't lose hope, I said, there should be a reset button on the logic board that just might fix it. Since I haven't yet had to find the reset on a G5, I asked him to call Apple. Sure enough, he emailed me a couple of hours later from his working G5. Apple walked him through finding the switch and that fixed it (but he let me in on the secret of where it is, dad-gummit). Moral: There really ARE magic buttons inside your computer we can press to make things work (or fail?).

7/5/2004 Gotta Cruise

Mon, 05 Jul 2004 00:00:00 -0400

Just got back from a 7-day cruise in the Eastern Caribbean. What a great time! I won't call it a blast because it was so relaxing. If you have never cruised, you simply must do it. Where else can you go places yet never leave your bedroom behind? Where else can you see new things, but not have to worry about how good/bad the food will be? Where else can you go and walk from a Las Vegas show to a movie, then to a piano bar, then a casino, then a nightclub, then stroll back to the Privacy of Your Room and always have a roof over your head? You gotta do it. Formal Dinner Pictures from the Cruise

5/11/2004 Zap the PRAM

Tue, 11 May 2004 00:00:00 -0400

Sometimes old tricks just do the job. If you've got a PowerMac G5 that seems to power up, but the screen never turns on, zap the PRAM. Do this by holding down the APPLE-OPTION-P-R keys right after you turn the computer on (at about the time you hear the bong, not too long after), and keep them held down until you hear a SECOND bong. Let go and you just may get your screen back.