"Murphy was an optimist!"
Incommunicado November 14, 2009 10:45 pm
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Communications, Daily Life, Gadgets, Hardware, Technology , add a commentMy phone has died. If you are trying to SMS me or call me, I am not receiving your messages. Please contact me through Twitter, Skype (djuggler), or Cathy. You can try my Google Voice number 865-686-8693.
If you have the next killer iPhone app idea that could make you millions, I’ll happily build the app for you in exchange for a MacBook Pro and an iPhone (say, $5000).
add a commentThe local area network issue October 7, 2009 8:57 pm
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Hardware, Technology , 1 comment so farMy home network has my development servers on it. One is an antique Windows 2000 server which is currently out of commission for bad memory, and the other is a Ubuntu Linux workstation tweaked to run SAMBA, PHP, MySQL etc. Used to be any machine on the LAN could open up Windows Explorer (or Ubuntu’s Places) and surf to another machine: My Network Places -> Entire Network -> Microsoft Windows Network -> Workgroup and then see all the machines on the network and browse to a shared folder. Now I get an error message:
Workgroup is not accessible. You might not have permission to use this network resource. Contact the administrator of this server to find out if you have access permissions.
The list of server for this workgroup is not currently available.
And from Linux (Places->Network->Windows Network):
Unable to mount location
Failed to retrieve share list from server
It’s conceivable that the Windows 2000 server was acting as a domain controller but the LAN is setup on workgroups not domains. Let’s assume the source of this problem is the now semi-retired Windows 2000 server. My home router is a D-LINK DIR-615. So the challenge is to get either the router or the Linux box to fill whatever role the Windows 2000 server used to perform to make my network browseable. Please note that if I refer to the machines specifically, I can still work with files from that machine. So \\mickymouse\familypics would still allow the family pictures to be seen all over the house. The problem is the same for printer sharing. I cannot browse to a shared printer but if I know the \\machinename\sharename I can setup a remote machine to print to the shared printer.
1 comment so farYes, I’m a geek that works on computers September 18, 2009 8:30 am
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Daily Life, Hardware, Software, Technology , 2commentsI primarily work with people who have clients that need digital magic to happen. The tag line on my business card is "I solve problems". For the longest time, I was drawn to projects that started off with descriptions like "We’ve had 3 other developers fail to get this done" or "That expert in Florida says this can’t be done." I liked these projects. I liked the challenge and I could usually get it done. However, they are high risk and often not very profitable. Usually the reason three other developers fail to accomplish the task has less to do with a programming problem and more to do with a management problem. It is hard to pay the mortgage with "man that felt good!"
I still work with people who have clients that need things done. Effectively I build web applications for businesses but I usually go through a middle (wo)man. In the past this middle person has been a venture capitalist trying to launch his clients with the greatest of success. It has been other developers with too much on their plates. Most often, designers/artists that need functionality programmed into the website. Imagine you had a bookstore and wanted to sell your books online. I’d be the person who writes the shopping system that allows your customers to browse books online, add them to a shopping cart, and make the purchase online. The part of a website like that which most people never see is the inventory control part. That’s where the employees log in to add or remove books from the system. It’s just a big a project as the front end where the shoppers go but instead of thousands of people seeing it, 2, 3 or 10 people use it. Of course, you cannot sell books online without a tracking system for shipping so I would write the code that generates shipping labels, ties into UPS or Fedex or the post office, and tracks the packages. Then if your bookstore decided that it wanted to manage it’s human resources through the web with a punchcard system for managing when employees clocked in and clocked out, scheduling of employees, and payroll (tying the system into Quickbooks), I’d write that. Next if you decided the punchcard system wasn’t efficient enough and you wanted the employees to wear RFID id badges and used those for clocking in and clocking out, I’d write that.
Now there isn’t a computer person alive before the time of the Geek Squad who didn’t say, "wow! I need to create a business repairing people’s computers." The Geek Squad was not an original idea. I know I had the vision of teams of nerds running to people’s homes fixing computers. I did it for awhile. I know I have friends who had the same vision. But Best Buy had the resources that we lacked to launch. Tthere is not profit in repairing computers. Computers have become disposable. What holds value is data. If people would move their work primarily to The Cloud or create and understand a backup system that removed the dependence upon a particular machine, then instead of paying a geek to repair your computer, you could just buy a new one! The Geek Squad doesn’t make money on repairs. It makes money on upsales. When you get a repair and they sell you an Antivirus program or a new hard drive or another memory stick then they make money.
I do fix computers for friends and family. I charge a flat rate of $135 which is less than what you will pay the Geek Squad. I don’t know if it is true but I’ve read that the Geek Squad will also put in a limited number of hours and then declare that the computer needs reformatting. I won’t do that. Usually I put 5 hours into a machine plus I run some diagnostic software overnight and dust out the computer. It’s a nice thing to do on a weekend. My effort amounts to substantially less than I charge hourly for programming but there is a good karma to making sure someone’s computer is functioning correctly.
However, sometimes I get bitten. I took in a friend’s laptop because it was hanging/locking up. I was thinking some malware had a hold of it. A week later the computer is still with me and starting to get in the way of my real work and my friend is becoming frustrated. It may have some defective hardware but the diagnostics I have run have not found any physical problems. It might be a driver problem but downloading the latest drivers from the manufacturer’s website didn’t help. This is a Dell Inspiron 1525 running Vista with service pack 1. Any attempt to install service pack 2 takes an hour to install and at the very end of the process, the installer announces "failed" and reverts back to sp1. Right now I’m sitting on a BSOD:
A problem has been detected and Windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer.
IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
If this is the first time you’ve seen this Stop error screen, restart your computer. If this screen appears again, follow these steps:
Check to make sure any new hardware or software is properly installed. If this is a new installation, ask your hardware or sofware manufacturer for any Windows updates you might need.
If problems continue, disable or remove any newly installed hardware or sofware. Disable BIOS memory options such as caching or shadowing. If you need to use Safe Mode to remove components, restart your computer, press F8 to select Advanced Startup Options, and then select Safe Mode.
Technical information:
*** STOP: 0×0000000A (0×00000018, 0×00000002, 0×00000000, 0×81C590FC)
This screams bad hardware or a bad driver. However, I’ve read that this goes away by installing service pack 2. That would be the thing that installs 100% then reverts back to service pack 1. Oh the irony!
2commentsThe Hard Drive Chronicles September 6, 2009 4:15 pm
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Daily Life, Hardware, Technology , 2commentsAfter moving the 60 GB hard drive to the Linux box, I was able to get a raw copy of all data without errors. If Ghost fails, I will try either 1) formatting the 500 GB hard drive and then copying the data and setting the master boot record or 2) installing a fresh copy of Windows then overwriting the installation with all data from the 60 GB hard drive (I know the problems with that approach). If Ghost and the raw copy approach fail, I will simply start over fresh.
2commentsThe Hard Drive Chronicles September 6, 2009 12:36 pm
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Daily Life, Hardware, Technology , 1 comment so farThe saga continues. The new Hitachi 500 gb drive tests fine. The old 60 gb drive has been thoroughly exercised with chkdsk /f /r. Clonezilla failed to make the clone off the image I created previously so I tried a disk to disk clone and Clonezilla failed there too. Even ntfsclone –rescue bombs on the bad sector. I can still see all the data on the 60 gb hard drive so I’m mounting it in my Linux box and will copy everything from the hard drive to a backup drive. Next step will be a last ditch attempt using Ghost and then finally I will simply reinstall Windows and my critical applications on the 500 GB hard drive. This ends today.
1 comment so farThe Hard Drive Chronicles Continue… September 4, 2009 3:24 pm
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Daily Life, Hardware, Technology , add a commentMy RMA’d Hitachi 500 GB hard drive was received by Newegg and the replacement drive arrived today. This time they packaged it with great care with the drive wrapped in bubble wrap in a box that was wrapped in crumpled papers within another box. I feel a little like they may have seen my recent picture of their previous package. Using Hitachi’s tools (a live CD) I have inspected the drive and it passes all tests. Now I am using Clonezilla to restore the image of the 60 GB drive that has been my life blood for much of the past decade. Fingers crossed I can resume working in my dungeon in a few hours and my son won’t have to keep loaning me his laptop. (that laptop has spoiled me…I want one!)
Update: Fail. The dreaded 89%. I have access to the data. Nothing is really lost. I’m just faced with reinstalling Windows and a enormous number of applications.
add a commentWindows won’t boot past the logo August 30, 2009 11:20 am
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Daily Life, Hardware, Software, Technology , add a commentIn trying to clone my 60 gb hard drive to a 500 gb hard drive, I ran some utilities on the 60 gb hard drive to fix bad sectors and find missing data. Apparently in the process, I damaged something in Windows. Right now the drive will not boot beyond the blue screen with the Windows XP logo in regular mode nor in safe mode. I’m documenting my steps here because the usual troubleshooting steps have failed and I need to make sure I’m not repeating the same steps twice. (more…)
add a commentToday’s Technical Feat August 27, 2009 1:16 pm
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Gadgets, Hardware, Technology , add a commentToday I am installing openssh server on Ubuntu’s Hardy Heron 8.04 LTS which is remarkably easy so that I can use Clonezilla to make an image of a hard drive from one machine, across the network, to Seagate FreeAgent Go 500 GB USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive
The Hard Drive Chronicles August 25, 2009 8:53 pm
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Daily Life, Hardware, Technology , add a commentI work on a Frankenstein computer. No, that’s not some geeky brand of elite super computer. It is spare parts held together with bailing wire and dust. It is an new piece of hardware fit into an old case with the help of a Dremel and a cutting blade. It is just enough memory to do what I need but not quite enough to do what I want. And it is a 60 gb hard drive that floats between 500 mb and 2 gb of free space.
I finally squirreled away enough from my budget to purchase a new 500 gb (p)ATA hard drive. (Being honest with myself this was less about budget and more about martyrdom. I buy things for the kids before myself.) Additionally, Newegg had a great special on a USB external drive. Since I vowed to free myself from being bound to a single computer, I jumped on the special with plans to install a bootable OS such as Ubuntu and keep my entire development environment on the USB drive. As such, I should be able to work anywhere on just about any machine with enough memory.
The upgrade plan was simple. Make a backup of my workstation to the usb drive, then clone the 60 gb drive to the 500 gb drive and I’d be done. Unfortunately, the 60 gb drive came dead on arrival and had to be RMA’d. I couldn’t wait so I started the cloning process but ran into read errors. So 2 days of drive testing and using different bootable CDs with a variety of partitioning and cloning software turned into 3 days and then it happened. Everything quit working! I powered down and haven’t had the guts to return since. I could have just potentially lost a significant amount of data related to the success (if you want to call it that) of my freelancing career and the support and operation of my family. No, despite my rhetoric about the importance of backups, particularly offsite backups, I do not practice what I preach. The quantity of data I manage long outgrew my ability to create meaningful backups of every bit and byte. Instead I grab what is viewed as essential and make sure it is in a few places. For instance, I drop a couple of dollars each month to make sure Amazon has a copy of all our family photos in addition to the subset of photos that make it up to Flickr. I am not prepared to lose entire hard drives.
Next immediate plan of action: Determine damage-Test components individually. If neither drive works by itself, assume the IDE controller fried and test in another machine. If I can show the drives are both good and pass a chkdsk, then I have one more big gun of a partitioning program and an equally big gun of a cloning program that I have not tried. I expect them to be successful and this debacle to be over. Oh..but I have to watch Warehouse 13 first!
Update: My 60 gb drive has been confirmed functional with data. My current suspicion is that the primary ide controller has failed. This could be a good excuse to buy a new computer 
Update: 60 gb drive okay but no longer boots. IDE controller is fine. 500 gb drive approved for RMA. Next step, clone the 60 gb drive to some backup space then tinker with the master boot record to see if I can get the drive booting again.
add a commentIn yesterday’s mail August 1, 2009 10:54 am
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Hardware, Of Interest, Reviews, Sex, Technology, Touchy Subjects , 1 comment so farThe Stigma
Apparently there’s some stigma around bloggers, particular mommy bloggers, doing product reviews. There shouldn’t be. I understand the stigma’s origins. The stigma comes from those ridiculous pay-per-post services where the participants are encouraged to write shining reviews in return for the product and/or money. They are disingenuous. The advertiser is not paying for the post. The advertiser is paying for search engine ranking. The 200 people who read that paid post, or even if it was 10,000, are not going to pay for the cost of the advertising. What pays is when someone searches for the product and the multiple paid posts have given credibility and ranking to the product in the search engines. As a matter of personal choice, I do not participate in pay-to-post programs.
Should product reviews be on a blog? Absolutely! The Internet is a reflection of the real world. In the real world, if I try a product I like, I will probably tell others about it. If a company wrongs me, I will warn others. It is only natural to extend that to the Internet. Some bloggers will even ask companies to send them products. They have the audience and clout to get this benefit. Reviews don’t have to be positive. The catch is that if you get a reputation for giving negative reviews, no one will send you their product. Mike Arrington recently accused Leo Laporte of Twit.tv of getting a pre-release Palm Pre in exchange for a glowing report and Leo took great offense.
I have products sent to me. I’ve had the best intentions of reviewing them but never have. Until someone starts BlogHim and lets us daddy blogs have cat fights over swag, I think I’ll accept products for review. Joan Goldner, a wonderful person!, sent me The Busy Body Book when my Covey planner had run out and I forgot Cathy’s birthday. I never posted a review of The Busy Body Book but it remains one of my favorite organizers despite being a Covey fanboy. I’ve been calendarless for 2009 but am just about to order a Busy Body Book. Read about it on their blog.
Yesterday’s mail
Yesterday I received two products: a bidirectional IDE to SATA or SATA to IDE Adapter and a LifeStyles premium polyisoprene Skyn "closest thing to wearing nothing" condom with Excite female stimulating gel. I’m looking forward to reviewing both of these products! The adapter I ordered from Hong Kong for $4 which included free shipping. It comes with a circuit board, power cable, and a SATA cable. I recently tried to buy a SATA cable locally, just the cable, and it was going to cost me $20 plus tax! The condom was a surprise and comes with a survey asking for feedback on the Excite female stimulating gel. I think I’ll be able to find a volunteer to help me fill out that survey (pseudo related note: We bought Watchmen last night). Now I’m off to plug a cable into something.
The Review
Here’s your quickie review: The Excite female stimulating gel product..let’s just wow! No, let’s say that twice..WOW! WOW! As for the Skyn condom, anyone with a LATEX allergy who has been horrified by a polyurethane plasticized baggy as an excuse for protection can be happy to know that your polyisoprene condom lives up to its marketing. Not only is it as comfortable and flexible as a latex condom, it truly is almost like wearing nothing.
1 comment so farUltimate Boot CD for Windows 3.50 out with 1 error June 26, 2009 8:50 am
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Hardware, Software, Technology , add a commentIf you ever have to do some serious troubleshooting on a Windows XP machine, you need the Ultimate Boot CD (Linux version) and the Ultimate Boot CD (Windows version) (see also Ben Burrows blog). The windows version recently released version 3.50 and may have an error. If you get the following error message:
Section:SourceDiscsFolders.2600
Cannot find folder: wnt5
Section:SourceDiscsFolders.2600
Cannot find folder: wxp
Then follow these instructions. In summary:
add a commentClick the Plugins button.
Select # DriverPacks.net – BASE
Press the EDIT button.
Change: CONFIG=DPs_BASE.exe /API: /settings:
To: CONFIG=DPs_BASE.exe /settings:
[Source, ubcd4win forum, hilander999]
Ubuntu Accomplishments – Wacom Tablet May 26, 2009 7:07 pm
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Hardware, Technology , add a commentI have two Wacom tablets that I use for my art. My first tablet ever was a Wacom UD-Digitizer II serial tablet. I’m not even sure USB was around back then. This tablet was unbelievable at the time! Felt like I was writing on paper with a real pen or brush. Being able to use an eraser on the computer was remarkable. However, there were certain problems with its size, roughly 5×7, so I bought a Wacom Intuos serial tablet that is more like 12×10 inches. Tablets make computer art fun!
When I set aside a new machine for a replacement Linux server for my in-house development, I decided to actually use Ubuntu Desktop 8.04 and install Apache-MySQL-PHP on it afterwards. I’ve found myself using the Linux Desktop more and I think I can eventually migrate completely from Windows. Unfortunately, the computer I chose to do this with uses a mechanical mouse instead of an optical mouse. You know, one with the mouse ball that constantly needs cleaning. The mechanical mouse holds me back more than anything else from making the switch. Ergo, I decided to pull the Wacom Digitizer II out of the boneyard and see if I could get it to work. It was surprisingly simple.
Two support documents helped make quick work of getting the tablet functioning. 1) The community documentation for Wacom and 2) The community documentation for Wacom troubleshooting. The first gave me this simple line:
sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-input-wacom wacom-tools
The tablet failed to work. The second explained that I needed to update /usr/bin/dexconf which would then rebuild /etc/X11/xorg.conf with these lines:
Section "InputDevice"
Driver "wacom"
Identifier "stylus"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/wacom" # USB ONLY?
# Option "Device" "/dev/ttyS0" # SERIAL ONLY
Option "Type" "stylus"
# Option "ForceDevice" "ISDV4" # Tablet PC ONLY
Option "USB" "on" # USB ONLY
EndSectionSection "InputDevice"
Driver "wacom"
Identifier "eraser"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/wacom" # USB ONLY?
# Option "Device" "/dev/ttyS0" # SERIAL ONLY
Option "Type" "eraser"
# Option "ForceDevice" "ISDV4" # Tablet PC ONLY
Option "USB" "on" # USB ONLY
EndSectionSection "InputDevice"
Driver "wacom"
Identifier "cursor"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/wacom" # USB ONLY?
# Option "Device" "/dev/ttyS0" # SERIAL ONLY
Option "Type" "cursor"
# Option "ForceDevice" "ISDV4" # Tablet PC ONLY
Option "USB" "on" # USB ONLY
EndSectionSection "InputDevice"
Driver "wacom"
Identifier "pad"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/wacom" # USB ONLY
# Option "Device" "/dev/ttyS0" # SERIAL ONLY
Option "Type" "pad"
Option "USB" "on" # USB ONLY
EndSection# Uncomment the following section if you you have a TabletPC that supports touch
# Section "InputDevice"
# Driver "wacom"
# Identifier "touch"
# Option "Device" "/dev/ttyS0" # SERIAL ONLY
# Option "Device" "/dev/input/wacom" # USB ONLY
# Option "Type" "touch"
# Option "ForceDevice" "ISDV4" # Serial Tablet PC ONLY
# Option "USB" "on" # USB ONLY
# EndSection
Naturally I would have to comment out the USB references and uncomment the serial references. Then the serverlayout section had to look like:
Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Default Layout"
Screen "Default Screen"
InputDevice "stylus" "SendCoreEvents"
InputDevice "eraser" "SendCoreEvents"
InputDevice "cursor" "SendCoreEvents" # For non-LCD tablets only
InputDevice "pad" # For Intuos3/CintiqV5/Graphire4/Bamboo tablets
# InputDevice "touch" "SendCoreEvents" # Only a few TabletPCs support this type
EndSection
I rebooted and nothing happened. I realized /usr/bin/dexconf was a script and ran it. Upon rebooting I was stuck in VGA mode. This was looking like a failed experiment. On a whim I decided to make the changes directly to /etc/X11/xorg.conf and surprisingly, the tablet came to life! GIMP is suddenly fun to use!
add a commentHardware/Software Support March 28, 2009 10:28 am
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Daily Life, Hardware, Software, Technology , add a commentA service I provide to friends and family is cleaning up their computers when they start reporting, "it’s moving so slow!" or "I keep getting these popups." or error messages or whatever. Usually they are having a virus, spyware or malware issue. I’ve published my trade secret on how to fix this yourself. It takes me roughly 5 hours to clean a machine thoroughly. Granted, I usually do it overnight by sitting the computer beside me and taking breaks between programming tasks to evaluate the problems. You take smoke breaks; I take computer repair or social media breaks. For the service of cleaning a machine, assuring it has adequate virus protections, and making sure all the latest security patches are in place, I charge $135. In addition to software/hardware upgrades, I have replaced keyboards on laptops and even re-soldered a power connector on a laptop to its circuit board.
Yesterday a friend brought her computer and speakers by the house so I’ve added a service…speaker repair (I’d recommend just buying new ones).
add a commentTechnologies to come March 4, 2009 5:10 pm
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Gadgets, Hardware, Software, Technology, Touchy Subjects , add a commentSomeone titled this "Microsoft’s Vision for 2019" I don’t know if that is true or not. What I do know is that much of what is presented in this video is already in the works. I’ve seen some of it demo’d. I know we have the technology to be deploying some of it today but necessary infrastructure improvements and profit margins stand in the way. For instance, if Nokia has a plan to release version A B C D and E of a phone there is a good chance that while were are using version A that B C D and E are in the works if not already developed. If B and E were developed at the same time Nokia could sell E but would miss out on all the profits by release B then waiting awhile to release C and awhile longer to release D and so forth. It doesn’t make fiscal sense to jump ahead. If money were not the issue and the technology improvements were solely about the advancement of society, you can bet we’d jump from A to E.
2019 is too far away. We need these technologies today! Freeze me and wake me in 100 years.
Update: Take a look at how AT&T envisioned the future back in 1993. Pretty amazingly on the nose!
add a commentCoding Horror Appears To Be Hardware February 2, 2009 8:18 pm
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Daily Life, Hardware, Programming, Technology , comments closedThe other day some bizarreness slipped into my code. It made no sense. The problem could not be reproduced on the production machine but all the recent changes had not been migrated to it. I examined and tested and pulled hair out and pounded head against wall after wall. Finally, I went to the old staging server and cleaned it up, removed all the code, wiped the database, then made an exact copy of the development code and data on the staging server. Surprisingly enough, I could not reproduce the problem. On examining the development server, I noticed that the hard drive was almost out of space. Could this be a swap space problem? Doesn’t matter. This development server has done its time and needs to be retired. I need a new machine! On the positive side, I can quit chasing ghosts and start moving forward on my application again.
comments closed
