So I’ve aquired an IBM Thinkpad model T30. Thought it would be the perfect machine to install, test and play with Ubuntu on. Oops!

Major issue #1
You cannot install Ubuntu. Not. At all. Partitioning starts then hangs at 15%

Solution - IBM forums
Ubuntu cannot handle the extravagant 32 year old video on this space age machine. The solution is to select Safe Mode “F4″ on the install screen. Sweet, like Windows 3.11!

Major issue #2
I’m up and running and guess what, the video card and display are both “generic” and I’m stuck with 256 color 800×600 display with zero options to change. Guess issue #1 should have given me a clue eh?

Solution - aquire computer science degree and spend weekend hiding from your family. I ain’t doing it! “edit the xdork conf file using the transom converter while closing your left eye, smacking the monitor while doing a shot of tequila”.
Hey I always kinda liked 800×600… Ooops the OS doesn’t!!! Silly OS has GUI widgets with confirm/deny (yes/no) buttons off the screen!! The OS forces me to 800×600 but it’s own components won’t function at that resolution? Looks like Tequila is a common solution.

Major issue #3
No sound. Click the volume control with the big red X through it and I get this valuable feedback “No volume control GStreaming plugins and/or devices found.”
Well thanks for that awesome feedback! I guess that once again the space age nature of my T30’s sound card and drivers (so old it’s unsupported by IBM) baffles this cutting edge Linux distribution known as Ubuntu.

Major issue #4
No further major issues. I achieved the critical space where I either loose a weekend to compensate for an OS that cannot handle a six year old Laptop model used by millions or move along to more important issues like my second cup of coffee.

I’ve played with GUI based Linux installs on and off for 10+ years. Red Hat, Mandrake, Suse, Ubuntu… seems the more things advance the more some stay the same. Sad as I was pyshced to use Ubuntu.

Mac vs PC - updated for accuracy. Added Allow/deny box for realism. PC people can portray Mac people as wussies but keep in mind PC people have to ask their mommy’s permission to fire that big ole gun.

I’ve been tired of the constant iTunes updates for some time. DRM updates, iPhone updates, more iPhone updates, Quicktime (iTime?), iWank, iShank, iSpank… 40megs, 60megs, 80megs, reboots… oh and actual updates for iTunes. So when I logged in to find Apple wanted to push me Safari as an update? Safari? As an Update? Say what!?

For a music player I use Songbird - http://www.songbirdnest.com/
“Songbird is a player and a platform. Like Firefox, Songbird is an open source, Open Web project built on the Mozilla platform. Songbird provides a public playground for Web media mash-ups by providing developers with both desktop and Web APIs, developer resources and fostering Open Web media standards, to wit, an Open Media Web.”

And iUse Zune cause like I own a Zune player.

and I browse with Firefox and Internut Exploder.

Man it’s great getting to complain about kickass free software…..

“The Vista”
So I was talking to HR Block Tax Cut Business tech support (i.e. a nice lady with some docs to read from) because their product refuses to launch for me “you must have Internet Explorer 6 or higher installed”. I apparently have an MSXML issue on my machine that neither I nor her docs could repair. I was running v4 and v6, her docs said to install v3. We started from scratch, registered DLLs etc. My case has been escalated. During the course of the call the support tech asks me…

• “what operating system do you have”
• “XP SP2″
• “Oh good, “The Vista” causes a lot of trouble for us”
• “oh really” (and then she informs me…)
• “yes… at our church a member records all sermons and gives out copies to our Church members, he’s been doing it for several years. Well he bought a new computer and it had “The Vista”. “The Vista” won’t let him make copies of his videos, it says he doesn’t have rights or something. It’s horrible…”

“The Vista” protecting god fearing citizens from themselves. How much are people paying for that?

After upgrading my development system from ColdFusion MX and MS SQL 2000 to ColdFusion 8 and MS SQL Express 2005 I was getting the dreaded SQLServer JDBC Driver errors. The fix is in the Adobe link below - custom config the TCP/IP settings. In my case I used the existing “Dynamic port”

Connection verification failed for data source: {data source name}
java.sql.SQLException: [Macromedia][SQLServer JDBC Driver]Error
establishing socket. Connection refused: connect
The root cause was that: java.sql.SQLException: [Macromedia][SQLServer
JDBC Driver] Error establishing socket. Connection refused: connect

http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=kb400255&sliceId=1

SQL 2005 TCP Settings
- Protocols for SQLEXPRESS
- Set “Enabled” to “Yes” For IP1 & IP2
- Note the port for IPALL

ColdFusion Datasource
- SQL Server Port

As someone who benefits greatly from the myITforum community and the Blogs therein I was interested in the blogging software - Community Server

Having recently setup a personal learning lab 2003 SP2 test server with DNS, DHCP, WSUS 3.0, Microsoft Desktop Deployment and SQL 2005 Express I was eager to try out the Community Server software.
Well one major problem, I could not get past the Database install step and gave up.
Several weeks later and having learned a bit more about SQL 2005 during installs of Microsoft Desktop Deployment workbench and SQL 2005 SP2 I was ready to give the Community Server install another shot. Once again no go… no meaningful errors on screen, no problems with 3 other installs that required DB creation and connectivity. Then I remembered an issue with my MDD install, the name of the server. The community Server install defaults to “localhost” which is what usually worked for me with SQL 2000 and always works for me on my MySQL websites. So I tried my SQL host name, IP address etc. No luck. Then I tried the full SQL 2005 name “Serverhostname\SQLEXPRESS” and viola I’m in! This is the exact opposite of MDD, which requires the hostname only!

The Community Server install using SQL Express 2005 requires the full SQL server name like this
“Serverhostname\SQLEXPRESS”

This was exactly the opposite of my Microsoft Desktop Deployment install only days earlier which failed until I used “Serverhostname” only.

Additionally:
- Community server requires you enable “Named Pipes” under “SQL 2005 Network Configuration -> Protocols for SQLEXPRESS”
- Make sure during your SQL 2005 install you have allowed for “Remote Connectivity”, if not you can run an upgrade/repair install and enable.

Finally dumped my Netgear WGT624 v2 Wireless Firewall Router today. Since purchasing based on excellent reviews we had had issues with dropped connections and with machines returning from sleep mode being unable to connect. Talks with tech support and support forum surfing yielded that this was a common issue for DSL and Cable users. Firmware version 4.2.11 solved my sleep mode issues and provided better stability overall but we still would occasionally loose connectivity especially wireless (4.2.11 available only from the support pages, the Netgear automated system always reported I was running the latest firmware). Finally Yesterday after returning from an 8 day Holiday Tour De Indiana I fired up my my Motorola 5100 Surfboard Cable modem, the Netgear WGT624 router, my Windows 2003 Server and finally my laptop and desktop. 30 minutes in connectivity became very poor then varied from normal to null every randomly. 45 minutes in the calls can from about the house “where’s the internets!” Thinking Comcast plus 5 inches of snow (sunrise, sunset, light, dark… seems anything can affect ISPs….) to be the issue I power cycled the Cable modem and then the Netgear router. Same thing happened again. After the third time I simply hit the red reset button on the Netgear and that fixed the issue. Twice more with the red button over the next hour and I was in the car on my way to Best Buy.

At Best Buy I gravitated to the latest technology as I always do justifying it in that mad rush of flourescently lit spending adrenaline. “N” sounds nice, and it’s “faster”! But I knew it wasn’t an approved standard. It’s only on the shelves to help vendors sell more gear. But still it is faster, and it is the latest, and G seems like 20 years old right? So as I’m about to pull the N box of my choice a young lad walks up and asks the question I generally loathe at Best Buy “may I help you” which regardless of department on the sales floor often translates to “how may I embarrass myself”. But knowing that the “N” box in my hand was a bad decision I replied “yes you may”. My attention did not drift at all after the young lad rattled off spot on info about wireless spec and issues. Then he nailed me - “N” will not support some devices, like Nintendo Wii. Say that again please? No Nintendo Wii. Hell yes young lad just saved me from much teenage torture! He also confirms that he’s heard of the same issues with the Netgear though mostly from DSL users. So with “N” dumped I let him steer me to the G box of his choice. Young Lad hands me the one I had at the top of my list, the D-Link WBR-2310. He checks the price as it’s on the wrong shelf and the last one in the store - $34. It’s worth $34 to stop my sons whining about Call of Duty 4 drops let alone potentially solve my basic networking issues.

Setup was a snap
1. Power down Cable modem
2. Blow off the install CD
3. http://192.168.0.1 user = Admin, no pass
4. Setup exactly the same as my Netgear, same SSID, WPA password etc.
5. Get a connection
6. Download v104 Firmware upgrade from D-Link support
7. Upgrade Firmware
8. Disable DHCP server - FW update turned it on. (I use my own DHCP for a local AD Domain)
9. Add Port Forwarding exceptions to the Firewall (Remote Desktop etc)
10. Release/renew or reboot all machines in the house. Done!

Two days in and we’re good so far with the D-Link WBR-2310. At $34 an easy call as a device that can last me till I’m ready to go “N”… at which point there will surely be something new to tempt me!

Do your photos display with an odd brownish orange tint in Vista’s WPG - Windows Photo Gallery but look fine in any other program? Yeah me too. The issue appears to be the default ICC Color Profile Vista chooses for for video display device. In my case a perfect match appeared to have been chosen for my Dell 1907FP monitor - LCD color management and conversion - 1097FP.ICM.

The solution was to simply Remove the ICC Profile. Doing so caused no other issues I’ve noticed.

1. Check image in another program to confirm the color issues is with WPG
2. Open Control panels
3. Open Color Management
4. Highlight the “Default” ICC Profile
5. Click “Remove”
6. Close Color Management
7. Close WPG
8. Re-open an image in WPG and it should appear as expected

Problem - brownish tint images

Solution - remove ICC Profile from Color Management

Result - I can see clearly now..

As a user - I started out with Mosaic and then moved to Netscape as my primary browser. Then IE5 came out. IE3 was lame, IE4 was okay, IE5 was a sign Microsoft had finally realized the Internets actually did impact their business. I dumped Netscape (NN 4 was their last useful browser and it was showing signs of impending death…) and moved permanently to IE 5 and then 6 until 6 started to show the signs of years of neglect and alternative browsers were kicking it’s butt all over the place. I settled on what was to become Firefox as my primary browser as it decimated IE at pretty much every level.

Professionally - I’ve had to develop for and use pretty much any browser on Mac and Windows platforms. I built, tested and delivered applications that guaranteed functionality on all platforms using common browsers. Oh the joy…

Today I use Firefox for personal use and IE 7 for work - IE7 because I’m running Vista and must use 3rd party vendor tools and public sites that fell into the gulf of IE only for ease of development and can’t adopt to change because the proprietary tentacles are so deeply buried in their code. You have Macs!? (um yes about 1,500) Why would you use Opera? (um cause it kicks butt?) Fire-what? (Fire your development team that’s what!) And my personal favorite… IE7? we don’t support that. But wait IE is all you support!? Sigh the web was supposed to free us of all of this was it not?

Well thankfully IE7, Firefox, Opera, Safari have all put out strong products in the last year. Unfortunately Internet Explorer had so far to catch up it’s lacking some very basic areas.
Additionally what troubles me beyond IE7 lacking some basic essentials is the lack of follow through by Microsoft on their promise to not let IE7 sit idle and rot as they did IE6. To wit, there has been next to zero public activity by the IE team since release in October 18th 2006 save for what might possible be the lamest Major Product update ever released by Microsoft. So lame it’s almost impossible to find any information about the “update” and it’s been expunged from the IE7 homepage. The major non cosmetic change from the “update” being the ability to install without WGA, apparently to combat the continuing market losses? So what now… IE8 of course! Sigh so much for IE7!

Regardless of IE7, 8 or 9…. here’s my list

Speed, way more speed.
Not page rendering, speed of the application. Running IE7 on Vista with no other browsers for several months I installed Firefox to see if it could handle an eRoom intranet site issue for me. Wow it was like Ben Johnson vs me. Firefox was so fast to load, respond, tab etc it was like I’d doubled my CPU or my RAM. I hope IE8 is getting some tips from old Ben.

Improve the Find function
IE7 relies upon the OS based Search function, the same function that IE has relied on since it’s first version. It’s slow, it’s limited and it’s frustratingly linear. Firefox is so far ahead of IE here it’s actually a compelling reason to use Firefox.

IE 7 - Next + Previous on a single page. That’s it.

Firefox 2.x - Find as you type, Next / Previous, highlight all, case match, finds search pattern on future and past pages, notifies you if the text your typing exists as you type and more.

Improve Cookie management
Internet Explorer has made no improvements to it’s cookie management in IE7. You either delete all Cookies or manually browse a directory containing potentially millions of files and try to figure out which cookie is for what site. And this is if you’re some what savvy.

Firefox destroys IE7 in terms of Cookie management. You view all Cookies in a folder tree by originating Domain. You can delete cookies from all domains, individual domains or individual cookies from from within a domain. You can even control how long cookies last. For web development it’s beyond priceless, especially if the browser in question doubles for personal or work use.

Add spell check
IE has no spell check. Firefox has inline as you type spell check for all web forms. Priceless when blogging, commenting, submitting online forms etc.

Internet Explorer Find function	Firefox Find function

Internet Explorer Cookie management

Firefox Cookie management - click to enlarge

Internet Explorer Spell Check	Firefox spell check

Error message when Windows loads - “Logon Process Initialization Failure”
- Interactive logon process initialization has failed
- Please consult the event log for more details (I would love to but uh I can’t)

Clicking OK in the dialog above simply returns you to the same dialog.
All ur logons are belong to us?

Windows LSD - Logon Screen Of Death

Yep that’s my title for what I experienced less than five business days into testing Microsoft Windows Vista Business edition. After having issues with activation, wireless, app compatibility, UAC, system speed, memory use, and having to learn a completely new GUI I am locked out of my machine with no way back in.
The Microsoft website returns zero hits on the error dialog below.
The greater Internets returns nothing I can find beyond “me too” and “re-install Vista”.

I card into the office, snap my D630 into it’s port replicator, boot my machine, get my apps fired up (860 megs of Memory for Lotus Notes, Internet Explorer, McAfee VSE 8.5, McAfee CMA 3.6, and SMS 2003 SP2 clients) and go get some eye opener while the system settles in.
Five minutes into my day I’m browsing the Dell ImageBuilder website when my machine reboots with zero notification. During reboot Vista runs a Chkdsk and reports no errors. Then I’m greeted with my first ever Logon Screen of Death. I cannot log in and am advised to “consult the event log for more details” which of course requires logging in to do. Clicking the “OK” on ther error dialog box simply returns the error again after 2-3 seconds. Sigh.

I try safe mode. Same thing. I try over and over. No way I can log in. So I boot off a BartPE/XP custom recovery disk and run a full Disk Check - no errors. I browse the contents of my disk and everything appears fine and dandy. I go hunting for the mysterious log files I’m supposed to consult when Windows is on LSD. Well it appears Vista abandoned .EVT as the system log file extension. XML nowadays and I can’t make much headway there as of yet.

Solution: Boot from the Vista CD - select Repair