OK, so here's something that drives me up a wall.

I have an Internet Explorer window open, doing something important, like, say, Windows Update.

Then some other app decides it needs to access the webbertubes - so it goes to open its webpage...and it USES THE EFFIN' ALREADY OPEN IE WINDOW.

How the heck can this happen? Shouldn't there be some kind of global setting to say NEVER LET STUPID PROGRAMS THAT WANT TO SHOW ME THEIR README OVER-RIDE WHAT I'M ALREADY DOING?

Lame.

Tags: annoyances, tech

Do any of you use OneNote? I'm trying to get in the habit of using it more - wondering what your success stories are, best practices, strategies, etc.

Tags: lazyweb, tech

Disclaimer - I have nobody to blame but myself for this, and I am fully aware of that fact.

On Thursday, our landlord had an electrician come into our unit to do some work. He (the landlord) warned us several different times in advance that this was occurring, and even pointed out that since the power was probably going to be cut, we should make sure to save files on our computers, etc. Being the professional nerdbag that I am, I shrugged it off with a "sure, sure, of course, thanks for pointing that out, etc."

Well, on Thursday morning, on the way to a conference, I realized I had neglected to shut my Mac down before leaving. "Oh well," I thought. "It's survived power failures before, and I don't have anything open that I am worried about."

Sure enough, I get home that night, and when I boot up my Mac, it powers up from the backup install - my main system drive is offline. I do some investigating, and discover that one of my external FW hard drives is DOA - won't spin up.

This is the hard drive that has two partitions - one that is my main OS X system drive, and the other is my main data drive.

I've just lost my OS, applications, and my iTunes, iPhoto, and all my documents.

Well, luckily for me, I recently upgraded to Leopard, which includes a nifty little auto-backup thinger called Time Machine. So all of that stuff was totally backed up to an additional external HDD (which, fortunately, survived). The internal HD on my Mac (which I was using for a backup OS because I thought that since the external FW hard drive was 7200 instead of 5400 I'd get better performance, etc, etc) would be able to get "restored" to from the backup of my DOA OS partition, and I could restore the data partition to another extra external HD (which I had been using for iterative backups before Time Machine existed, so I didn't need it for that anymore).

Last night I fired up the Leopard DVD, and instead of running the install, I just picked "restore from Time Machine" or something like that. It took a little convincing to get it to see the internal HD, but once I did, it took about an hour to copy all the data, and then voila! I was back in business.

Well, with the system part. The data partition still need restoring.

The first thing I did was immediately turn OFF Time Machine backups - I had read that after a restore, Time Machine was not good about knowing what it had backed up BEFORE. I was able to find my old Data partition in Time Machine, and tried to restore every folder on it to my newly created Data partition.

That did not work well.

I found I had to do one folder at a time (which was no big deal, since there were only about 7 folders at the root of /Data, and some of the smaller ones I could do at the same time). The biggest problem I had was with iPhoto. I store my iPhoto library on the data partition and not in my Home directory. And somewhere along the line I had upgraded my iPhoto. When I picked just the iPhoto from /Data, it did not restore very well. But if I browsed back in Time Machine to before the upgrade, restored the iPhoto Library folder, and then restored the current iPhoto Library over that, everything worked swimmingly.

One thing that I am kicking myself for - I had my Aperture library excluded from the TM backup (because it's notoriously a bad TM-citizen) figuring "well heck, I back up the Aperture library to a vault on a different disk".

Guess what? I haven't backed up my Aperture library (since it's a manual process) since Dec 29, 2007. Oh well. Luckily I have anything important already on Flickr. I hope.

Tags: mac, osx, tech

It's should come as no surprise to most of you that I fully embrace OS X. I run it at home and I love it. Of course, I make my living supporting Windows systems, so my work environment is all Windows.

One of my major annoyances is that there are a TON of great utilities and tools that run on OS X that would make my life at work INCREDIBLY easier, however, I cannot use them, since my work environment (my laptop) runs Windows. If I had Quicksilver at work, there are many, MANY awesome things I could do. But, of course, I cannot. Additionally, having Automator available to me at work would help.

Yes, there are similar tools - for example, instead of Quicksilver, I use Dash Command (don't talk to me about Launchy; I have used it, but Dash has a bit more use for what I do). And instead of Applescript/Automator I can write VB scripts (I know Powershell is the bomb, but I haven't done ANYTHING with it yet).

The worst offender is multi-protocol IM clients. On my Mac I run Adium, which is probably one of the best applications I've ever used. There are three options I've explored on Windows, and none of them hold a candle to Adium. Here are the products I've tried to use on Windows:

The functionality that I am missing from Adium (that none of these clients can handle) is as follows:


Are there any products I am missing? Meebo is definitely been a good way for me to go, but it requires me to have Firefox open in order to get IM's and it needs the Meebo extension in order for me to get notification of new IM's (which is not terrible). My resistance to Meebo is the lack of logging, mostly.

Tags: lazyweb, osx, tech, work

So since I work from home about one day a week (and then a week at a time when I go on-call) I decided to rock the Skype for my conference calls instead of burning up my cell phone minutes (we do not have a landline phone).

My first thought was to use the Bluetooth headset I have for my cell phone with my Mac for making Skype calls. That worked great except that it totally interfered with my Bluetooth mouse. So that idea was kicked to the curb.

I instead got a Logitech USB headset, because a) it was certified as Skype-compatible, and b) it was hella cheap.

It's working great EXCEPT for the fact that the headphones are the big "over the ear" DJ-style headphones. Which are fine, I guess, except for two things:

1) I actually prefer a single earphone for phone calls - I do not need to be "immersed"
2) They act like earmuffs and my ears get warm after about 20 minutes. This will be nice in the winter, but it sucks now.

The cool thing is that Skype makes it really easy to on-the-fly switch the outputs, so since for most conference calls I am just sitting and listening, I can shut the output to the computer's speakers and put the call on mute - and the switch to the headset if I suddenly need to talk.

I figure I'll try it out for a while and see how well it works - if I really like it, maybe one day Carrie and I will invest in a Skype phone and that could save us some more dollars. Although I don't think it would; most of the calls Carrie makes from home are "night and weekends", so Skype probably doesn't help us that much.

Tags: skype, tech

Dear Lazyweb,

Does anyone else have as many problems with USB hubs as I do?

I seem to blow them out after about six months. My Dell monitor has a built-in four port (or so) USB hub. I was using it with my Mac Mini for a while, and it was quite useful.

Then, one day, the USB hub completely stopped working. No devices plugged into any of its ports would work.

Since then, I have invested in a LaCie external HDD with a built-in Firewire hub and also a USB hub. Again, worked for a while just fine, but about two weeks ago, the USB hub functionality completely stopped working.

Is this common in USB hubs? Should I just treat them as disposable?

Tags: lazyweb, tech

B&H has got a pretty good deal on the WD 1TB external drives. For under $400, you can have yerself a terabyte of storage.

http://www.dealhack.com/archives/2007/06/wd_1tb_triple_interface_extern.html

Enjoy!

Tags: deals, tech

OK, I'm bored with Vista.

It's not very useful to me to even play with inside of a VM - mostly because I can't get to Windows Update and stuff as long as I have it installed without a product key (30 day demo). And I'm not about to burn the license key for this installation in the VM.

I guess I'll just have to wait until I feel comfortable enough to upgrade the laptop. Although I'm tempted to create a second partition and install Vista on that - in theory, that won't prevent me from re-installing the same copy of Vista over the XP on this same laptop, right?

Now i just gotta go burn a copy of the GParted LiveCD!

Tags: tech, vista

My upgrade copy of Vista from Dell arrived today (since my work laptop was purchased in the last quarter of 2006, I was eligible for an upgrade DVD for the low low cost of ten bucks shipping). I'm not exactly ready to "ride the wire" and upgrade my work laptop (especially not during the week that I'm working at home since I'm on-call), so I'm installing it into a VM on my laptop.

I was pleasantly impressed with how quickly the installation process went...until I sat and stared at this screen for thirty minutes:



Then, after that, it launched this screen (which was the screen that it showed before it rebooted and hung out at the "preparing to start for the first time..." deal:



I guess the thing that annoys me is that I have NO IDEA what it's doing. Of course, previous installations for Windows weren't much better...how long did it take 98 to "install Start Menu Items", anyway?

Tags: tech, vista

So a while ago, I asked some questions and ranted about my difficulty in keeping my contacts in sync.

I think I'm 99% of the way to a solution, although I won't be able to fully test until I get home and install some stuff on my Mac. I'm going to explain what I'm doing, what I plan to do, and what I still need, in the hopes that a) someone might be able to help me fill in the gaps, and b) it might help some other folks.

For starters, here are the various places I have information stored, and that I would like to keep in sync. For purposes of this discussion, the only information I am syncing are contacts and calendars.

Devices:
Mac Mini
BlackBerry Pearl
Windows laptop (work)

Contacts:
Address Book on OS X
Gmail Contacts
Address Book on BlackBerry

Calendars:
iCal on OS X
Calendar on BlackBerry
Google Calendar - includes several calendars, which are "Personal" (main), "Work", and "Wedding" (shared)
Lotus Notes Calendar

Generally speaking, I want all Contacts in sync with each other, as well as the calendars. The only difference is that iCal and the BlackBerry should sync with all the Google Calendars, and Lotus Notes should only sync with the "Work" calendar. Lotus Notes also has no need to sync any address book information.

So, how am I doing this right now? Currently, my Lotus Notes calendar is being "synced" with the Google Calendar by hand - that is, I manually put in my meetings, information, etc. Which is fine, except that I have to remember to do it. Most of my "work" entries come from email invites, so unless I remember, I rarely will update the Gcal with any new meetings. About every two weeks I manually reconcile the calendars. Which kind of defeats the purpose of having it (the reason I want my Notes calendar on my Gcal and BB is so that when I'm at home, I can check to see if I have early meetings the next day, etc).

I don't really have a sync for iCal and Gcal right now - I have iCal subscribe to all of my Gcal calendars, and refresh every 30 minutes or so. Which gives me a read-only copy of all my calendars in iCal (which is then dumped down to the BlackBerry via PocketMac). This is not ideal, because it means that the only place I can actually enter calendar information is in Gcal directly. That's not a big deal with iCal, since I rarely enter events there, but at this point if I create/edit events on the BlackBerry, they will never make their way up to Gcal.

Luckily, I just found out that Spanning Sync has gone into public beta. This is a tool that does a two-way sync between iCal and Gcal. I will be installing it as soon as I get home tonight, and that solves a large portion of my calendar sync issues.

However, it does not help with the Contacts. Again, the authoritative source for my contacts is Address Book on OS X - which then syncs (two-way) to the BlackBerry via PocketMac. This is kind of a crappy setup right now, since I don't really like how PocketMac is working (it lacks the ability to sync over Bluetooth, and some of the sync features bug me). Luckily, the BlackBerry version of the Missing Sync is supposed to be coming out soon, and that should help with that.

So what's still missing? I need a way to sync my Lotus Notes calendar with Gcal (there's a tool out there called "CompanionLink for Google Calendar" that will sync Notes with Gcal, but it only can sync the "default" Gcal calendar, so that doesn't help). And I still need an automated way to keep my OS X Address Book in sync with the Gmail contacts.

Tags: lazyweb, tech

Dear Lazyweb,

Are there computer speakers you can get that do NOT flake out and get all "buzzy" when a cell phone is near them and active? My speakers (which are a one-off brand called "MasonWare") get this fuzzy, buzzy sound whenever my phone is active on the network. Now that I have the BlackBerry, that means that I cannot even have my phone within a foot of my computer, because it's constantly talking over the air and making my speakers buzz. I know that it's the speakers, because they buzz anytime they are powered on and the phone is near, even if they are not plugged into the computer

Is this something I just have to suck up, or can I get speakers that don't have this problem?

Tags: lazyweb, tech

So despite the fact that I am slobbering over the iPhone, Carrie and I are hooked into T-Mobile for another two years, so it's going to be a while before I can get one.

After dropping my RAZR into a glass of water yesterday, and messing it up, I visited the T-Mobile store today to get a new phone. I didn't want another RAZR, as I wasn't terribly fond of it (it was acceptable, but it had quirks that drove me nuts). I decided since I'd just gotten a fat bonus from the bank, that I could afford spending a couple doubloons on a fancy phone.

I ended up getting the Blackberry Pearl. So far I think it's pretty cool. I haven't been able to get email set up on it properly, although I did install the Gmail application, which is working just fine. I also am able to run Google Talk and Google Maps on it, which I dig.

I am going to have to restructure the address book when I get home. The dude at the store copied all of my phone numbers to the SIM card, which then imported them into the Pearl. However, numbers stored on the SIM card cannot be "grouped", so every phone number is a separate contact. This drives me crazy. I figure no big deal - when I get home I am going to sync it with my Mac anyway, so that will take care of everything (from what I hear, there's some kind of update to iSync that I will need to support the Pearl, but that's no big whoop).

I am NOT quite used to switching to the QWERTY keyboard yet - years of t9 have really made it a mindphuck to think about this phone as a "keyboard" - and as Shana and I were discussing, the model is somewhat flawed, because it's not like you "touch type" on this thing. But I'm getting better as I play, so that's a bonus.

I also elected not to get the ability to get my work email on this thing, as the "Enterprise" functionality costs an additional ten bucks a month. If the bank wanted to pay for it, that would be one thing, but they don't - and I'm not paying ten bucks a month so that I can get emails about how the monitoring filter job I ran failed :)

Tags: blackberry, phone, tech

OK, so I'm going through and configurating and installermating stuff on my new work laptop. And it's a pain, because I always forget the cool stuff that I find indispensable. And my old laptop is shut off and locked away in a cabinet, so I can't fire it up and see what I had installed. Well, I could, except that would require some effort.

Anyway, I need some tips and suggestions as for some tools that you guys all think are really useful. I'll start off by listing the things that I already got (this will be useful in the future for me as well, so I don't have to go through this again).

• Firefox
• GAIM
• Google Desktop
• NotesBuddy (feature-rich client for Sametime)
• iTunes
• PINS (password manager)

I also have the following Fx extensions:

• Deepest Sender (LJ client)
• del.icio.us (bookmark manager)
• Fasterfox
• Google Browser Sync
• Greasemonkey
• Nightly Tester Tools (for extension compatibility)
• Filterset.G Updater (auto updater for Adblock Plus)
• Adblock Plus
• BBCode
• FaviconizeTab
• IE Tab

And here are the Greasemonkey scripts I have:

• Automatic MySpace Media Remover
• MySpace Go Right Home
• Myspace custom style remover
• phpBB Quick Reply
• Google about.com remover
• Salon Premium Pass
• Gmail: Random Signature
• Flickr - People in this photo
• Flickr Camera Images
• Flickr AllSizes+

What else do you guys find important? What other tools are great finds? (This is for my Windows laptop, so OS X stuff is not really on-topic, but I wouldn't mind hearing what you had to say in that arena as well)

Tags: lazyweb, tech

So my new laptop for work was finally approved. It looks like it will ship from Dell on the 16th, so it should arrive Nov 21 or so.

Of course, that is the week of Thanksgiving, and I am out of the office the whole week. So I guess it will be waiting for me when I return on the 27th. Neat!

Tags: tech, work

My new laptop for work is in the "approval" phase. Hopefully it will go through, although I'm sure it will take a LONG time (it has to go up about five levels above MY boss to get approved). Here's what my boss ordered for me:

Dell Latitude D620
Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T7200 (2.00GHz)
14.1 inch Wide Screen WXGA+ LCD Panel
2.0GB RAM
256MB NVIDIA® Quadro NVS 110M TurboCache™
100GB Hard Drive
Bluetooth
24X CD-RW/DVD
Wifi
17" external flat-panel monitor

Considering my current laptop has 512 MB of RAM and is a 2.20 GHz Mobile P4, this should be quite the boost.

Tags: tech, work

Like mteson, I am contemplating switching from LJ to Vox. No particular reason, other than the fact that, as my life has changed, I think maybe it's time to start a new blog. My LJ has a tone that maybe I don't want anymore - not that I want to delete it all, but I think it's time for "Matt Stratton" to have a blog, not "Mugsy Malone".

Anyway, while I play around with Vox, I'll be probably posting to both. But if you want to track-a-doodle along with my Vox adventures while being an LJ person, you can always add mattstrattonvox to your flist and follow along that way.

If you want an invite to Vox, just send me an email (matt dot stratton at gmail) and I'll sign you up.

Tags: blogs, geekery, lj, tech
Current Mood: contemplative

For some reason, within the last 24 hours, I've gotten NAILED hard with spam.

From what I can see, it's mostly going to my matt at gravytrainfilms.com email address, not my gmail.

I want to figure out a new plan for harnassing spam.

Here's how my email works - the only inbox I use is my Gmail inbox. All of my other email (mattstratton.com, gravytrainfilms.com, windyhop.org) is hosted on the Windyhop server, which runs MailEnable as the mail server. We have a few antispam filters in place on the server - actually, it's just dns blacklisting. It's doing a lot, but not nearly enough.

What I would like to do is move my email domains off of the Windyhop server and put some kind of challenge/response system in place, hosted somewhere else. Have any of you had any luck with any of those kind of systems, and what would you recommend? Pretty much all of my day-to-day email is done via the gmail address - most people who email me know that email address, so slowing people down with a challenge system for the other addresses wouldn't be the end of the world

Tags: email, lazyweb, spam, tech

via Lifehacker, amongst others...

I've played with Skype every now and again (by "played with" I mean "installed it and talked to Marcelo once"). However, I know that my mother uses it to talk to her sister in Denmark.

Anyway, until the end of 2006, outgoing calls to "regular" phones (aka "SkypeOut") within the US and Canada is free. This is neat. I installed Skype again, and just tried to make a few phone calls with it (after pairing my new Bluetooth headset to my Mac).

It worked great. So, for the rest of the year, I think I have my new "work at home" outgoing phone. Which will save quite a few of the old mobile phone minutes, lemme tell ya.

Give it a try. I'm "mattstratton" on Skype.

Tags: skype, tech, voip

Recently, a friend of mine got a new iPod. And she's started asking all the same questions I get asked every time someone I know gets an iPod. So in the grand tradition of my Firefox post, I thought it was time to create one for iTunes/iPod.

First of all, a disclaimer - I am in no means an expert. I just know what works for me and what I've learned in the past 5 or so years of iPod ownership. I currently use iTunes on OS X, but I have used iTunes under Windows to manage my songs and iPod in the past, so almost all of my suggestions/experience here should work on either platform.

( All sorts of iPoddy goodness herein... )

Tags: ipod, tech

So I have a Tivo-quandry.

But first, let me bring you up to speed on my Tivo/DVR history, so you can better understand my situation.

I got my first Tivo in 1999 - Series 1 with Lifetime service. In 2003 I replaced it with a Series 2.

I loved my Series 2. I used every possible feature it had - Internet scheduling, streaming pictures and music from my Mac, and even dumping shows from the Tivo to my PC laptop.

A little over a year ago, I got a TV with HD for the first time. Since, at the time, the only HD solution for Tivo was a) only for DirectTV, and b) $999, I decided to switch to Comcast's DVR. Two tuners, plus it could record HD. I bid my Series 2 farewell (it found a home as a gift) and decided to try the Comcast route.

I hated it. I still do. But I love watching baseball (and some other shows, mostly on DiscoveryHD) in high definition.

Flash forward to the present. We're still using the Comcast DVR. It's still a pain in the ass to use. It still freezes up all thel time (this is the second unit I've gotten from them in a year - they seem to last about six months before freezing up daily).

I want to be done with this. I want to go back to Tivo.

Problem is - the Series 3 Tivo (which will do everything I want, in theory - HD recording on multiple tuners) isn't supposed to be out until "second half of 2006". Plus, I'm not sure if Comcast will offer the CableCard stuff that Tivo needs. Plus it will probably cost between $500-$1,000. There's also rumors of Comcast moving to Tivo "software" this year, but again, it's all speculation about the details/timeline.

I am really considering getting one of the new Dual Tuner Series 2 Tivos. Although they kind of suck too - I won't get HD, and I won't get "true" dual tuner functionality (the second tuner will only record the handful of analog channels I get). But for $19.95/month and $30 upfront for the box, I can have my Tivo again (I could get it cheaper per month for a longer contract, but I don't want to lock into this Tivo for more than a year, since hopefully a year from now the Series 3 will be out, stable, and affordable).

What do you all think? Is the DT Series 2 a good stopgap measure for me?

Tags: lazyweb, tech, television, tivo, tv