Dad will be in big trouble

As the title states .. As a father I will be in big trouble with this one .. can you see the horns holding up that halo??

Check out my Flickr

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Blushing Bride Color or B/W??

As in the last post we recently attended a Wedding of a long time friend of the family. Photography is only a hobby of mine that I can do when spare time is available (like almost never).
Taking shots of everything and anything I can that day went through 3 1GB cards but when she turned her back on me I just had to take the shot .. and I had the right lens on at the right time what do you think? J.J. The back of her dress was stunning this is not to say the front was not stunning as well. captured with canon XTi nifty fifty glass at 1.8

Color or B/W with tint to age the photo?

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"Its Not Time Yet Daddy" Photo post

Was a beautiful day for a Wedding a long time friend of the family is getting married, It was slightly over cast and perfect temperature for an outside ceremony. Of course I had my camera in hand ready to take pictures. Just minding my own business when my daughter (flower girl) and the little boy (ring bearer) she was walking down the isle with came strolling by arm in arm.
Seeing that I was taking practice shots, I caught this one with her telling me "It's not time yet Daddy!".



With out a second thought I replied "You are absolutely right Honey, It is not time. You have 20 or more years to go!"

This Photo is on Flickr as well.

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Forever Sleeping PowerBook G4

PowerBook G4 Reed Switch / Hall Effect Sensor Issues
A few days ago I posted a question in MacForums and not sure if there is anything I can do.. but here is the question as follows if any one has suggestions I am open to hear them. Please.

This is my first question here. I have just recently found interest in Mac products. Have been a PC guy for bout 15 years.. I have had about 7 iBooks 3 PowerBooks that I have repaired and passed on to other folks to use.

But this one has me at a loss.

PowerBook G4 A1046 15" screen
1Ghz ppc
512MB ram
DVD/CD

It will take an install of OS X Tiger
but..... here are the issues

screen is dark when you boot up you can see every thing just the back light is not on.
Track Pad and Keyboard are disabled .. (I know they work) if I go in to openfirmware I have been able to reset-nvram and reset-all

also have booted to a Live CD of Linux and the keyboard and track pad function perfectly still have no back light ..

Reason I say the reed switch is stuck in the lid closed position is due to system properties show Clamshell Closed: yes..

Have tried reseting PMU NVRAM all the tricks 4 finger keystrokes openfirmware.. Magnets... voodoo chants... Exorcisms.. LOL

Is there a command in openfirmware to make the system think the clamshell is open.. Or something anything???

I want to make sure the system works (ie. backlight video) before I invest in a new trackpad/keyboard to get this PB to another want to be Mac person.

http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/apple-notebooks/155060-powerbook-reed-switch-stuck-os-x-reporting-clamshell-closed.html

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OS X Leopard Running from an iPod

OS X Leopard running from and iPod on and iBook G4 1.33 12" laptop. BlueTooth A2DP

With video attached

Wow 2 posts in one day that is so not right when I haven't posted in so long..

Well in the last post I noted that I have been rebuilding some Mac's and PC's to make ends meet, in some of my down time I was courious about a few things. First off was the iLife stuff that was installed on some of the iBook's that I have been reclaiming. Second was OS X Leopard (is it really that good ??) do I need to load it on the G4 iBook that I have been keeping? And does BlueTooth sterio A2DP function like it should on the iBook and under Leopard? The rest of the post explains why and I guess how... Not that this is anything new iPod's can function just like any other external Hard Drive, and be bootable with the iBook's the only things that are bootable are CD/DVD's, internal Hard Drives, and External Firewire drives. No bootable usb support.

Why would i do this? Because I can...
What was needed: Firewire cable for an iPod (used a 4th Gen. 20Gb iPod picked up for 10 bucks)
iBook G4 (picked up for cheap no screen had to put one in)
retail OS X

The real reason I did this was to test A2DP BlueTooth functionality of Leopard
(not inclded in Tiger) and was not sure if I really want Leopard yet

Conclusion: It may be the limitations of the iBook I am using but A2DP is not ready for prime-time at least on on this Mac iTunes works great but any video file be it QuickTime, Divx, or even DVD has broken sound.

Leopard actualy runs very well even with the limited speed of the iPod's hard drive This is not a recommended solution to run for any extended time period due to the nature of the iPod, it may eventualy burn out the iPod (they are not made to constantly run the hard drive all of the time)

Hope you enjoyed this first attempt at video

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Hp's DV6000 Issues with installing XP

HP DV6000, DV9000, also may affect DV2000 and DV3000 models as well. Sound Driver installation fails or will not install.

Hey there .. I know I have not posted any thing in a while. I have been really busy with rebuilding so iBook's and some PC laptops to make ends meet. Have been out of the social media stuff ie. Twitter, FriendFeed, even my photography stuff has suffered on Flicker. But I will try to start posting interesting information again as time permits.. With that said,

Picked up this poor little (not so little) DV6000 one of HP's premier Entertainment PC laptops. The motherboard was bad when I got it but all else was good. Seems that there is an issue with these systems and HP does admit that there is an issue and has extended the Warrantee 1 year past the original expiration date. Unfortunately this would not help me due to 2 things. First I am not the original owner, and second this laptop is 2 months past even the extended period. The same issue has plagued this line of laptops as well as (yikes MAC) iBook's, Evo800's, Acer Ferrari, and many others.. But that is a whole other story. If you want to see HP's information go to this link HP.

Well needless to say my mission was to find another motherboard. That took about 3 weeks to find one locally (love eBay but hate waiting for packages and can't stand paying shipping costs. Got the board home and a little over an hour it was in and the DV6000 sprung to life. Sorry I did not shoot a video or take pictures of the process (this was an after thought damn "should have done multimedia of that and thrown it out on YouTube!!")

This laptop has the COA sticker for WinXp so .. got out my copy and started installing. WOW this thing is fast with the AMD Turion and a fast 7200rpm SATA drive. Windows finished installing and now we are off to the races installing drivers. HP's web site is actually very good and it is very easy to navigate if you have the proper information to search on your model. Downloaded about 15 packages for drivers and software, including the sound drivers. All drivers installed just fine with out issues with the exception of the sound drivers.

The sound chip is a Conexant High Definition Audio chip the package from HP is SP30157. This is a good set of drivers and I have found other folks having issues installing them as well.. My first 3 tries installing with Win XP sp2 it failed with could not find media drivers to install.. I installed all of the other drivers including the Nvidia Chipset and the OpenHCD USB host controller like others have suggested to no avail. Last ditch effort was to install SP3 reboot .. and Viola the sound drivers installed with no problem..

Over all this is a SWEET machine, like other folks I am in to Eye Candy and love the glossy screen and the high gloss look of the exterior of the laptop .. over all it is sleek and just beautiful to look at and runs our very fast. Hope this help if you run in to a bind.

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Cross over to the Dark Side Mac OS X story of an iBook

Hi,

I’m a Mac actually an iBook, and I need a new home today.

I was saved by a PC guy that wanted to know what this whole Mac thing every one was talking about. He saved me from a dark computer shop I may have been doomed for the recycle bin due to an ailing hard drive and lack of TLC.

This guy that saved me, like I said is a PC guy and has been since the x86 days he has worked for one of the big computer companies in the past as a Server Engineer. So I knew I was in good hands when it came to my hardware. Software that is a whole other issue I was not sure he could help me in that aspect, but low and behold he did.*

During the process of my rebuild he placed a 30GB hard drive in me and reclaimed my OS (operating system) which is OS X 10.4.11 (I have a Tiger in me GRRRR)* off of the old hard drive was 15GB so now I have double the space. (btw: putting a fresh hard drive in me is a daunting task should never be attempted by the faint of heart… was scary there for a while seeing all of my parts strewn out on the work bench but I’m all together in one piece and working great.)

He also upgraded my memory to 348MB from the original 128MB that I came shipped with. And added an AirPort card so I am wireless now. Wahooo. Internet here we come.

I do have a light spot on my screen but it is not very noticeable when in use and my screen is bright and crisp. My keys are almost like new and so is my TrackPad. I do have scuffs and scratches from use but they are nothing unusual no deep gouges.

I am ready to go right now and have NeoOffice 3 loaded as well as IE, iLife???, VLC, and other programs.

Here are my pictures and specifications email my current owner if you want me I need a new home today I hate to leave him but he needs the $$ for more important things than my self right now.

*OS X and iLife was already on the system when it was reclaimed if there is any question to the licensing you should treat it as demonstrational purposes to prove functionality only There will be no CD’s or back up or software sold with this iBook

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OS X error mounting disk images Fix!

Fix error 0xe00002c9 when mounting disk images

After installing OS X 10.4 on a 12” iBook that was picked up as parts and rebuilt from scratch (there will be a post on that one later) I ran in to this issue where not just one .dmg file refused to open but any file I tried failed.

Google is my friend, with that in mind I started to search for help on this issue because I really did not feel like starting over with the install and re-patching the OS all over again. It was a lengthy process (not as long as an XP install and patch mind you), but I had already migrated some applications and files over and did not want to waste the time. And I think the issue arose after one of the last software updates because on the first couple of reboots all that showed up when I logged is was the spotlight icon in the upper right hand side of the screen and that was it. On the second or third reboot the system came up fine. (so not exactly sure what happened???)

A few of the posts did suggest the only viable way to get rid of this was to reinstall, but I did come across this post from LMP over at macosxhints. His suggestion was to download Security Update from Apple’s support page. Well that is great I went out to Apple and downloaded SecUpd2007-009Ti.dmg. But now what like I said previously I can not mount any .dmg files due to the fact that the system refused to mout the disk images. Also not being so familiar with Mac software just yet I was not sure if stuff-it would extract the package I needed. I did have a blank CD and Toast was loaded so I burned the disk image to a CD via the copy disk part of Toast and mounted the package from there, installed the security update rebooted and no more issues mounting .dmg files any longer. So kudos to LMP thank you very much. If you have a PC with windows, Nero, and a burner from what I can tell off of the web is that you can change the extension from .dmg to .iso and use Nero to burn the disk as well.

Here is the original post from LMP

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Why? Data Destruction Personal Security

Personal information is the key to our lives, impending attacks on our identities hover over us on a daily basis. We as a population can not open a news paper, watch TV, or open a web browser with out reading or hearing “Identity Theft”. This is why it is so important for us to be diligent in protecting our own identity with all of the data that is on our own personal computers and things we send over the internet.

I am a geek, not a computer guru by any stretch of the imagination. But I have curiosity and that is what drives me to do things normal folks would not do. If I can do this any one with a computer attached to the internet and a CD burner can do this. Read on and you will find out how easy it really is.
Last week I needed to find a very inexpensive computer for a client of mine that is on a very limited budget. As a side note I have several systems in various states of disrepair that I could put back together, but that would require more of my time than I am willing to expend right at this very moment. So off to one of my favorite perusing sites CraigsList. After a few minutes of searching “Bingo” perfect system popped up a Compaq Presario
Specs:
Intel Celeron 2.6 GHz (don’t like the neutered Intel chips but in my experiences Intel has been more compatible than any AMD chip I have used.)
512MB memory
40 GB UDMA IDE Hard Drive
CD-RW Optical Drive
Integrated Intel Extreme graphics (shared video memory) but that’s ok not a gamer machine
USB 2.0 this is critical for data transfer (for me it is)

I call the gentleman that listed the computer, his is selling the box, mouse and keyboard. All I need is the box. My first question is there an OS (operating system) loaded. No! Well I still want to look at it so I arrange a time to go look at it, Grab my tech tool kit Linux live CD’s and off I go.

Couple of quick checks:
BIOS F2 check the memory make sure it is showing 512MB the hard drive make sure it is reporting 40GB (not that it is good, but that it shows it is there) CD make sure it shows as well. Every thing checked out. Reboot to non-system disk (I knew there was no OS so not a big surprise) Reboot with one of my Linux Live CD’s it boots up cool, and the memory checks out. Run a quick check on the hard drive no initial errors and there is an NTFS partition for the full size of the drive. Every thing seems to be in order and has a Windows COA (Certificate of Authenticity) so I hand over 40$ and take the box.

Back to the shop in 15 minutes plugged in to the mouse, keyboard, and monitor. Here is where Data Destruction is critical (I am an honest “hacker” lol like I said not a Guru and not really a hacker either.) Trinity Rescue Kit http://trinityhome.org/Home/index.php?wpid=1&front_id=12
This is a bootable Linux Live CD with a lot of very useful tools and utilities **caution: this CD is mostly command line based and if you are using it on a computer you have data on that you need be very careful it can destroy anything you are trying to recover.**

I have already done my research and the box originally came preloaded with Windows XP home so I have an idea what I am looking for. What should be there are 2 partitions one should be an active NTFS partition taking up most of the disk and the other should be some type of FAT 32 partition in and around the 1 to 5 GB size.

Using the Trinity Rescue Kit there are a couple of utilities I am interested in using first is Gpart and Testdisk. First run is Gpart it finds the NTFS partition and shows errors that it can not deal with correctly. I mark it active and bootable reboot hoping to find something recoverable. Reboot to the hard drive still no good. Tried Testdisk first pass shows an NTFS partition of a smaller size starting at the 5 GB mark ran a more intensive test and let it go all the way through it found 2 partitions FAT 32 and the NTFS marked the 2 partitions and wrote the MBR (Master Boot Record) to the Disk as well as the boot partition for the FAT 32 partition. Rebooted and it went directly in to the Compaq recovery partition. WAHOO it works. Now there were still some issues with the geometry of the partitions that I still needed to rectify be for the system is really usable but at this time they are inconsequential. The system booted and the recovery partition is useable that is the main part I was looking for now the system can be restored to factory original settings when the first user received the machine. Now that all has nothing to do with the personal information right!

What does is the fact that now I have access to the NTFS partition that was there and is now there. I also have access to all of the previous owner’s personal files that were on the disk prior to some one deleting all of the partitions and creating one big NTFS partition. Not just personal documents, but pictures, music, and even internet browsing histories. And if a really devious person was to have this information they could go in to histories and pull password information for all online sites bank information any thing that may have ever been stored on that computer. Even with M$ password protected files, the file folder Owner may not be accessible via a windows based computer but Linux does not care about that and an Ubuntu Live CD will let you in to those folders view, move, and access all of those protected files. After another hour or two of fiddling and futzing with the machine I had recovered it back to original working order and removed any trace of the previous owner’s information. And created a recovery DVD incases of catastrophic disasters which is the only guarantee I can give is that eventually some thing will go wrong.

For this reason I would suggest **and this is only a suggestion** but if you are recycling any PC including Laptops, hard drives, or any type of memory disk or stick use a bootable CD like Ultimate Boot CD http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ this is a menu driven bootable CD that will allow you to use tools like Darik’s Boot and Nuke or CopyWipe which will securely shred any and all personal information from a mass storage device.

Even if you are throwing your PC away, donating, or giving it to a recycle company run a utility first to shred or wipe your information. A simple delete, partition wipe, or format will not get rid of your information “Knowledge is Power” and now you have the “Power”.

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Boulder Students to Rename School Barack Obama High

Rocky Mountain News, 9 News, and I am sure all other media outlets are reporting “The Student Worker Club wants Boulder High School to become Barack Obama High School and scheduled a news conference on campus today to make its case.”This is not any thing close to what I would normally write about. As is this is not a blog on politics or my political view point, but I do want to know peoples thoughts on the matter.

Here is the article at Rocky Mountain News.

Is it not a normal thing to wait until a President to actually accomplish something during their term be for renaming a School after them? I am all for change if something is not working, even in business if change is needed it must be done.

"Renaming Colorado's oldest high school after America's newest president could prove tough for students behind the idea."

My question is should we be even thinking about this not even 1 month into the 4 year presidential term?

Comment or vote in the poll in the right hand column Please.

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Tweet To Me

What Twitter is to me.

"These are real people I want to connect with and share interests."

I am @ceseco

I joined this thing called Twitter. If you want to know what drinking from a fire hose is like, join the community and try following people of like interests. I follow just about every one whom interests me if you follow me first I do check you out your tweets and your attached web site. If you are right or left on politics, I will follow. One thing I have learned over the years is do not let politics or religion get in the way of friendships or acquaintances we are all different and have opinions this is what makes the world interesting. If all of your tweets consist of promoting your affiliate web site and there is no personal substance there I will not follow back.

This community tweet thing has been calling my name for awhile now probably for about 6 months or so be for I decided to dive in. *side note: (as is the same for most folks I decided to make my mark on the internet with the intention of generating a little bit of income to support some of my expensive geek habits computer toys, photography stuff, and family things.) Reading through out the internet from some so called Guru’s, SEO experts, and general banter Twitter is apparently one of the top spots to get your name out and make “Millions” (Yeah Right … can you feel the satire oozing??? That and the Sh&% is getting thick need to go find my boots)

Twitter has been defined as social networking mico-blogging in 140 characters or less. So what can you really say in that amount of restricted space? Obviously quite a bit, the reason for this restriction is apparently due to cellular phone sms restrictions. Twitter set it up this way so users can Tweet via their cell phones. “Now that’s cool!” not that I will use this feature.

December 15th 2008 I finally took the plunge and signed up for their free service. After a few days of lurking and small tweets here and there I quickly found out this is a medium for actually talking to people, not just marketing. “And flush down the toilet there went all of my dreams of just marketing stuff.” These are real people I want to connect with and share interests.

@nanse was one of the first to help me out with twitter, she gave me ideas and directions to get started with new friends, and suggested some really good folks to follow.
Check her out here @nansen and here is her web site http://www.seaviewwa.com

@COasis This guy is just cool, he was also there for me in the early times with tweeting, we had a couple of good conversations on ecology and politics his writing style is just fun to read. Find him at @COasis and his web site http://conservativeoasis.com

Photography notables:
@hakandahlstrom his pictures are just fantastic and he tweets shots that he finds through out the internet not just is own “great guy to follow” @hakandahlstrom and his web site http://www.dahlstroms.com
And
@amecoli in to photography as well and a graphic designer, will possibly be doing some collaboration here soon with some backup and migration ideas. You can find her here at @amecoli and her web site is http://www.amecoli.com

Just cause she is funny, cool, and married to a pilot @sugarjones and she is a photographer as well @sugarjones and her site is http://sugarjones.tv

Last but not least. Best for last:

My favorite by far @faryl this is a person that is willing to help with any thing, hates mayonnaise math & meat. All of the above I like and have to have. Like I said makes the world an interesting place. She is the Fearless Blogger @faryl and her site is http://fearlessblogger.com/about and she wants me to move my blog to wordpress ;-)

There are many more folks that I should have mentioned and probably will in the future but if you are looking to make friends “Not followers” Tweet out loud. Just be careful it is addicting and as of today I am getting close to 300 friends and can’t keep up with all of them. Like drinking from a fire hose.
Who has helped you? Who do you follow and why?

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Google FeedBurner Leaving Users out in the cold

FeedBurner Site Visitors statistics missing after migrating to Google FeedBurner.

Larger view of screen shot
Over the weekend I noticed FeedBurner was migrating all of its user accounts to Google. I used FeedBurner on a daily basis because it would give me relatively real time statistics for visitors with the Pro and Fan option. These items were really useful to me because it would tell me how many hits I had on my sites as well as where they were coming from be it Google search or other web sites.

And this was real time information that I could use to help people that were reading my sites. Not only would it tell me from where they came from but also what pages they were looking at. Well after the 45 min migration on Sunday I was hit with this when I opened Google version of FeedBurner and immediately felt like they left us out in the cold.

Larger view of screen shot



** Warning if you utilize any of the items listed. Don’t migrate till it is absolutely necessary ***

Currently the new version of FeedBurner from Google has removed all of these nifty tools. There are no longer options for Site Stats the only thing you get are Feed Stats. Unfortunately I do not have screen shots for the previous stats to show.

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DigiMateIII required Photography Tool's

Now this is one really cool little item I think every person that is in to photography should have in their arsenal of toys. Its the DigiMateIII it will accommodate a 2.5” hard drive (laptop hard drive) right now I have 60GB drive in there. It reads Compact Flash Card (CF) type I and type II, Secure Digital (SD), Memory Stick (MS/MS Pro/MS Duo, Multimedia Card (MMC), Micro Drive, Mini SD, and RS-MMC.

But that is not the best part, it has an internal battery that will run the hard drive out in the field and copy all of the photo's taken on that card to the hard drive. All with out wires, now that is cool. If you are out taking pictures on top of a mountain some where and you run out of space on your memory card just pop it in the DigiMateIII hit copy and now you can start shooting again.

It connects directly to your computer and can be used as a card reader as well as a back up for your pictures. It can also be uses like any portable hard drive for backups and the like.

There are a couple of items you will need to over come with this handy little gadget. First off you will need a hard drive and have the capabilities of installing it. This is not difficult at all in fact they give you instructions and a screw driver to ensure you get it installed right. Second you can not just plug it in to a Windows (XP) machine and format the new drive. Windows has limits on formating FAT32 will not do anything over 32GB if memory serves correctly. You will need a format utility, one should be easily found on www.download.com. Or you can try start menu / run / cmd this will open a command line box and type: format (your drive letter) /fs:fat32 but this did not work in my situation. Just another cool little item I use consistantly.

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Water Photography

High Speed Photography with Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs (CFL's)

Another lazy Sunday spending some time with the family. Oldest had indoor soccer practice this morning and a brunch with the team. It was good to visit with some folks I had not seen in a while.

We tried to watch a movie this afternoon but did not read up on what it was, needless to say it was not even 5 minutes in to the movie and that got turned off. So we started to watch the ball games. It may be just me but unless the Broncos are playing (even then) I just can't sit and watch a game I have to be doing something else or I would fall asleep.

Grab my camera and in to the bathroom.. (lol not what you think.)






I have taken some high speed shots be for and wanted to see what I could do with water again. Unfortunately the shots did not come out as well as I would have liked. Most of the drops were out of focus. All in all I took about 300 shots till I got the 6 I uploaded to flickr.

Here is the setup, I could not get my strobe's to recycle fast enough to take these kind of pictures and it does require a massive amount of light to get anything. Back to my trusty CFL's (compact florescent lights) 5500k 27w nvision bulbs in clamp shop lights available at your local Home Depot. Side note here things look clean when looking at them with normal indoor lights. Wow when you throw that much light on something you notice its not as clean as you think.






The shots were taken at with an exif of:


Camera:
Canon EOS Digital Rebel XTi
Exposure:
0.001 sec (1/1000)
Aperture:
F/2.2 to 1.8
Focal Length:
50 mm
ISO Speed:
100
Exposure Bias:
0/3 EV
Flash:
Flash did not fire

Orientation:
Horizontal (normal)
X-Resolution:
350 dpi
Y-Resolution:
350 dpi
Software:
Digital Photo Professional

What do you think? Like I said I'm not as happy with these but it was worth the try.

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March of the Crunch Bell's

Another off camera flash photography how to / diy
with the cegeekbook off camera flash photography beginner

I don't claim to be a good photographer by any stretch of the imagination the only classes I have taken were back in High School and I will not say how long ago that was.

Just another Sunday, everybody's bumming around the house today the football games are on the boob tube, not really paying attention cause the Broncos are not in the playoffs.

I get an idea and run with it!

Poor little Crunch Bell's have been sitting in the freezer being picked off one by one since Christmas, be for they are all gone I figured it was time for them to March to their ultimate demise.

The setup is similar to any other studio setup I have studied on the Internet 2 strobes either side of the camera my cheap flash attached to the Xti providing the timing for the other 2 strobes. And here is the key I needed blank white area all around I don't have a box and have not made one. Found my daughters old toy box that was ready for the trash heap do to the fact that the bottom will not stay in and the top got ripped off some way shape or form.

Here is the set up unfortunately I share a studio space with my daughters play area in the front room. (hazards of a small house)





other pictures with the same setup






I'm sure someone else can do a much better job with this but like I said, I'm just testing things out and bumming today. If you have any suggestions shoot them my way (have noooo problem with criticism)

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Need Help Terminal Server, Citrix, and Quickbooks

Here is the configuration, Windows 2003 with Terminal Server, Citrix and Quickbooks on the server among other applications we need to run the business. Clients are dumb terminals from NeoWare. Printers are old DOT Matrix (yeah I know come out of the dark ages)

*** side note we are still using applications that require win98 so that is also running on the server under virtual machines served up through Citrix as well. I know convoluted isn't it?***

Was sitting at the front desk on Wednesday after noon contemplating the Twitter issues I was experiencing waiting for the next pearl of wisdom to be tweeted, when from over the balcony I hear “Help”. Our administrative “do all” (she is not a secretary no way I would ever call her that she does way too much) is peering over the edge looking at me. We are trying to get a jump start on taxes this year so she is desperately trying to get the W2's printed out so we can file and get them out to employees as fast as possible. We know all to well that it has been a bad year for all and when sales are down so is everybody's paychecks this may help them get a bit of relief early.

Here is the problem this is the first year of using this version of Quickbooks on the server, version 2005 had no issues what so ever. 2008 on the other hand got finicky it would print one may be two W2's and then quit while the print spooler was showing jobs still in the queue. No matter what I did tweaks or tricks I could not get it to continue correctly. And the queue would not clear out no matter what I did till I took the printer off line and reset the print server (little linksys box with 2 lpt's and a usb port network connected). Thought it might be either the printer it self or the print server so I changed to another printer to no avail. Then hooked the printer directly to the Terminal still no good. By this time it is way past time for her to go home and I'm running out of patients so I decide we will wrap it up for the night and figure it out in the morning.

My final resolution was to bring my laptop up the next morning and connect it directly to the printer and print the W2's my self. This was not such an easy task either cause I rarely use it on my laptop so I had to go through all of the updates for the application and payroll updates. So it still took 2 hours to get through it.

Hope some one has some suggestions cause I don't want to have other issues with it this year.

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I hate iTunes / iPod

Music transfer from iPod to PC

I Hate iTunes / iPod

Hate is a harsh word, but Apple has made it very difficult to change music players. Don’t get me wrong iTunes does have a nice layout, and I do like Cover Flow. But come on Apple prefers their .m4p layout over .mp3, my phone will not play .m4p and neither will any of my other music players.

So, another Christmas has come and gone and a new iPod nano has joined the family. Last year both the Wife and the oldest Daughter were blessed (cough, cough) with iPods. Wife received an iPod classic 80GB from yours truly and daughter a 4GB nano I guess 3rd gen (I think, am not so sure about the "generations" of these) from Santa (yours truly also). Things weren’t much of an issue last year because most everything was new, and did not have to transfer music or save stuff off of one. But this year when she received the new 16GB nano-chromatic I had some music to reclaim off of the old 4GB nano. Some of the music my daughter had purchased had gotten deleted off of the main computer some how and the only place it resided was on the nano.

Here is the dilemma how do I get her music on to the new iPod? I am not really familiar with iTunes, but I do know there is no option to go from iPod to iTunes their transfer is a one way street. Hop on the inet search iPod to PC millions of hits (ouch! this is going to take a while), most of the programs are pay for use or if they are free or share ware they are riddled with spyware or viruses at best. After about the 10th page of search results on Google eureka found something worth looking at, it was a thread with good reports on a program SharePod with a link to www.download.com

Downloaded SharePod 3.8.7 unzipped it (ran virus scan) plugged in the iPod ran the .exe voila there is all of her music. This is a very simple program easy to use neat and clean, once the music shows in the left column you can just click on backup iPod and dump the entire contents in to a folder of your choice (no installer just run from where you extracted it to). After all of the music was ripped off plugged in the new iPod and there is the option to copy to iPod with the exception of a few little glitches everything loaded to the new one. And now I can place all of the music in the back up folder in to iTunes folder every thing is back to normal.

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Ntldr Missing

Well in the last post I had a computer half way across the States infested with a nasty little bit of malware/spyware that was corrected with malwarebytes (great program). I also noted that that I had a bit of an issue with my personal (45 dollar laptop) rebooting with an NTLDR missing on boot. Well unfortunately I found out why I am getting this error. Apparently the hard drive ate it self, tis now toast, tango uniform, has seen its last huraaa. And so on and so on... well I do have most of the stuff backed up on an external hard drive but the most recent blog notes and some pictures are gone. I did try trusty SpinRite and it could not even start the disk check, also tried the Ultimate Boot CD 4.1.1 which has gotten me out of jam's be for. (this is a bootable linux iso cd that has a bunch and I mean a bunch of tools including NTFS tools check it out) But all of this to no avail, so I have consigned myself to giving up .. I am trying one last ditch effort to at least retrieve some of the info off by freezing it over night in my mini refrigerator at work. (secret place I keep my stash of Bluemoon) will have to see what happens in the morning if I can pull any info off will let you know.

Update: I have tried every thing in my tool kit of software, hardware, and even Hammer time!! To no avail the hard drive is DEAD.... Freezing the drive did nothing it will show up in Windows but showing I/O error. Well time to find a different hard drive for the laptop and start over with a ghost image I had be for .. THIS IS ANOTHER GOOD REASON TO ENSURE YOUR BACKUPS ARE GOOD... as I have said be for backup backup backup.

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360 antivirus, Ntldr missing

General computer issues, NTldr, Malware Antivirus 360.

Yesterday was Sunday, I get to sleep in on Sunday's (usualy) seeing that it is my only day off. Still on the 6 day work week (will be for a long time). Got a txt msg round 9:30 a.m. “computer problems again call me when you can!!”

This has nothing to do with the NTldr error that comes later. So I call her,
M: “I’m getting a message stating that I have a virus!”
Me: “ok which computer is it?”
M : “My work Laptop”

Side note when we were searching for new computers for the business we decided on Dell at the time the D620’s and D420 for her cause she hates carrying bulky items and for that reason she would never carry her Toshiba cause its way too big and bulky. The D420 is a great computer for her in fact I wish I had gone for it. Its 12 inch screen is still big enough to read everything the keyboard is good enough so that you can type on it for a long time with no issues .. and it is still very fast even with the slower processor.

Me: “OH no that’s not good what exactly does it say”
M: “360 antivirus found virus avg8.0.87.exe is infected and won’t let me close it”

Not good .. I have not loaded Norton on this machine.. I know that for sure .. to me sounds like a bit of Malware .. but you don’t dare ask where she got it .. just fix it right? And I know AVG is a good virus software and that file is good.

Me: “it’s ok everything will be fine can you open another IE window? If so go to www.download.com.”

Here is another good reason to atleast add if not use all the time FOXFIRE IMO best possible browser ever and I don't get paid referals on for it I just use it.

M:“ok I’m there. Now what?
Me: “type in Malwarebytes download it and let it run.”

Now I had to walk her through the entire process of installing and running the updates and running the scan .. but it did take care of this nasty little bit of code like it has for me when I have accidently installed something that I should not have. This process did take a couple of hours to complete, and did require a reboot to fully clear things out. It did get it handled for me .. and she’s happy.

Here is where the NTldr issue comes in … so later that night I’m blogging away (ok not much blogging more surfing than anything) had my normal 15 tabs open in foxfire and 5 tabs in IE. Something started slowing down.

*** Second side note here: This laptop is a Toshiba A95 if memory serves correctly. I paid 40 bucks for it to some guy off craigslist. Great laptop after I cleaned out the soda pop they spilled in to the keyboard and fried a couple of things. The DVD still did not work but did not need that at all anyways. ***

So tried the normal shut down restart… But it would not go down.. AAARRRRGGG

Well after 5 min of waiting tried 3 finger salute (ctrl, alt, del) to no avail. Fine hit the power button and try a cold reboot. Got up went to get a drink came back, DOH missing NTldr recover off the install cd. Sometimes things like this get to me so turned it off and put it in my bag got my other laptop and started all over again… Well now I have another project to share with you in the next post of how to recover from this issue. To be Continued. Just like the Ran out of hard drive space post I still have to complete..

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XV6700 and XV6800

Verizon wireless phone internet settings, original EV-DO settings. Pda Phone XV6700 and XV6800
Also know as HTC Apache, ppc 6700, ppc 6800

I know, I still have to finish the post Help, ran out of hard drive space. But things like this and many more keep me from finishing the series. Oh well, ok so here we are a co. worker comes to me this a.m. “I can’t get on the internet can you fix it?” yes as usual I can give me a couple of min.
Not as easy as I thought .. I use a few sites to help me out when I run in to issues like this one is ppcgeeks and the other is pdaphone. Unfortunately, both of these sites have millions of posts and is difficult to navigate and search quickly. Don’t get me wrong they are great sites with tons of valuable information and the folks who post are willing to help on anything or anyone.

So on to the issue, the XV6800 had lost the settings for #777 here is what settings I had to adjust to get the internet back.

Click on start>settings>connections then click on the connections icon.
If the #777 connection is there edit it if not you will have to
click on add a new connection Name the connection whatever you want (i.e. EVDO) if its not already there
Modem drop down should be "Cellular Line".
Click next and in the box for the number to be dialed put #777
Click next and in username put yourphonenumber@vzw3g.com and in password put vzw
Click finished and your done.

Inet should be working now
*** Warning *** if you don’t have a data contract with Verizon and you use the internet and email.. you will be charged an exorbitant amount of $$ per kilobit.. not Meg’s bits.. so don’t use it if you don’t have it .. fair warning given.

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