There is Hope for Me Yet….
Ok. Unless you have been living under a rock, you have seen this already. And, you may have even seen this a few years back. Which brings me to the following thoughts:
- WTF? England gets this, and we get David Cook?
- Gee….people seem to like good music.
- You truly can’t judge a book by its cover.
- “Britain’s Got Talent” isn’t nearly as Draconian about You Tube as some other companies are.
- In re: #1, “America’s Got Talent” doesn’t count!
- I still have a chance!
And, for once I agree with Entertainment Weekly.
iTunes Has (Almost) Met Its Match
If you are like me (and if so, please return my wallet), then you have multiple songs/albums that are missing the important tags that make iTunes useful. I had a ton of mp3 files that…um…fell into my lap off of a truck…<ahem>…that didn’t have the necessary information to make finding/sorting easy. While I could use a product like Shazam for the occasional puzzling musical entree, it didn’t work for the whole meal service.
Hmmmm. I’m suddenly hungry.
In any case, enter TuneUp…an iTunes add-on that actually seems to do what it promises. While it isn’t instantaneous, and it is a little too wishy-washy if it cannot find more than one song from an album, it does what it should; find and tag my music. It will do up to 500 songs at a time, but if you through that much at it, be prepared to wait, and wait, and wait….
But, I am very happy with it, and it will even work on multiple libraries! Just be sure to get the lifetime option, rather than the monthly payment.
Requiem
One of the interesting things about being an IT consultant, is that you get to work and interact with a variety of people. I like people (which seems to be an oddity in the field I am in), and I like discovering new things about people and machines.
I have found that clients (and I am talking about individuals here, not businesses) fall into two basic categories: those who want you to come in, get the work done, and then leave with a minimum of fuss; and those who want to deal with you on a personal and technological level.
It is these latter people who not only want to get their computer problems solved, but who also want to talk to you as a person. They discuss what the Giants did that week (or will do in the upcoming year). They find out if you share a common TV show connection, like 24, and then help conclude if Jack Bauer really is that kick ass (hint: he is). They will introduce you to interesting new music, like Bob Dylan’s Theme Time Radio Hour. They will challenge you to work on some products you like (an HP MFP, for example) and others you don’t (like AOL), with a sense of humor and understanding that sometimes it works like magic, and other times it just doesn’t.
Jeff Rosen was such a guy. And, today, he lost his battle with cancer.
I leave with you with Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms, the second movement. I sang this a few years back with the San Francisco Choral Society (not this MP3), and it is one of the most beautiful choral pieces written.
Chichester Psalms, 2nd Movement (click this to listen)
Psalm 23
Adonai ro-i, lo echsar.
Bin’ot deshe yarbitseini,
Al mei m’nuchot y’nachaleini,
Naf’shi y’shovev,
Yan’cheini b’ma’aglei tsedek,
L’ma’an sh’mo.
Gam ki eilech
B’gei tsalmavet,
Lo ira ra,
Ki Atah imadi.
Shiv’t’cha umishan’techa
Hemah y’nachamuni.
Ta’aroch l’fanai shulchan,
Neged tsor’rai
Dishanta vashemen roshi
Cosi r’vayah.
Ach tov vachesed
Yird’funi kol y’mei chayai,
V’shav’ti b’veit Adonai
L’orech yamim.
Psalm 2, verses 1-4
Lamah rag’shu goyim
Ul’umim yeh’gu rik?
Yit’yats’vu malchei erets,
V’roznim nos’du yachad
Al Adonai v’al m’shicho.
N’natkah et mos’roteimo,
V’nashlichah mimenu avoteimo.
Yoshev bashamayim
Yis’chak, Adonai
Yil’ag lamo!
(Donations can be made in Jeff’s name to the Alameda County Food Bank or the American Jewish World Service organizations)
SBS 2008 Printer Update
So I got the SBS 2008 printer issue resolved (see here for some background). To sum up, while I was able to get the HP printer drivers in both 32-bit and 64-bit flavors, I could not get the Konica-Minolta 2300DL color printer to play nicely. The fix?
Install the printer driver locally on each machine.
Oh…and also make sure that the IP address is hard coded in the printer itself (I apparently was using DHCP mapping on this machine).
A New One
I got a call from a client this weekend. Their server stopped responding to network traffic. I checked remotely…yep; no access.
When I went on site this morning, I did the regular checks (IP Sec causing the problem? Nope. Cable the issue? Nope. Wall port issue? Nope. Funky network driver needing a new install of driver? Nope.)
It turns out that a block of ports (5-10 and 17-22) on their year-old Linksys SR2024C router failed. All at once.
Fortunately, a quick (relatively) call to Linksys resulted in a RMA and advanced return of the device. Within the week they will be back up and running. In the meantime? Thank goodness they only needed 12 of the 24 available ports!
Just when you think you have seen it all….
Resolution and SBS 2008
SBS 2008 Migration
Two things:
1) I’m going to try to blog more often.
2) I did my first SBS 2003 to SBS 2008 migration this weekend.
I have done several SBS migrations in the last couple of years. Migrating from SBS 2000 to 2003 was Painful (with a capital P and that rhymes with T and that stands for Tool…oh, wait. Reverse that. Anyway, back to our regularly scheduled program). Migrating from SBS 2003 to SBS 2003 was either very painful (if you following Microsoft’s instructions) or somewhat painful and more long winded (if you followed the very excellent instructions from the fine people at SBSMigration.com.
While Microsoft hasn’t hit it out of the park with the SBS 2003 to SBS 2008 migration document , it is certainly easier than any other process they put together. That being said, it still took the better part of a weekend to move less than 100 gigabytes of data plus the associated Active Directory (AD) information from one machine to another while using gigabit Ethernet! Some items to be aware of if/when you have to do this:
- While the Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2007 migration is so much easier, it still takes a long time, especially if you have users who hold on to every email they have ever received.
- I wish there was a much easier way to forklift the shares from one server to another (with all permissions intact)…especially if you don’t have any shares that have special permissions (like only a subset of employees can access that share, which tends to be true in a small office). Why you can’t just point a wizard at the old server and have it create a similar share on the new server with the documents is beyond me, since presumably the new server knows the AD rights for every user.
- I like the old SBS 2003 console SO much better than the new 2008 console.
- There is going to be a tsunami of issues with running a 64-bit OS print server with primarily 32-bit clients. I already had to jump through hoops to get an HP printer to load both sets of drivers (hint…open up the Printers folder on the server from a 32-bit client, and then from File/Server Properties install the 32-bit server), and I have a Minolta printer that just doesn’t want to play along at all.
- Having 21 days to finish the migration is both a blessing and a curse. I suspect I will be running to the wire.
- Why robocopy hasn’t been built into every version of the Windows OS since it came out is beyond me.
- Don’t bother having it look for updates on install, as it will just fail and require that you look for updates after. Plus, doing that extends the “sitting around” time at the beginning of the process.
- The POP3 Connector is not any where near the Exchange Management Console. It is under the Network Connectors portion of the SBS Console.
- If you had My Documents redirection set up on the old server, you will get false “offline” warnings on the clients. Still trying to work this one out.
I’m sure there will be additional issues that will crop up…stay tuned.
Proof That the Internet Can Change a Man’s Life
If there is anything that has been proven over the past few weeks, it is that the internet can change a man’s life.
Now, you may think that I am referring to Barack Obama and his historical win, fed in some part by his amazing internet presence. Or, perhaps even John McCain’s amazing lack of one.
But, no.
It is the fact that Rick Astley was at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, based soley on a funny-at-first-and-then-increasingly-tiresome internet practical “joke“.
But….this was always funner:
Microsoft….WTF?
Ok. Let’s say (for the sake of argument) that you are a small business. Say……less than 50 employees. In that case, Microsoft’s best suggestion for you is Small Business Server 2003 (now SBS 2008). With SBS 2003, you have the ability to create a self-signed certificate for SSL communication.
Now, with the release of Windows Mobile 6.0 (and 6.1), the support for using self-signed certificates goes out the window. Note this: “Exchange ActiveSync does not support using a self-signed certificate to connect to Exchange 2007”
Come on, Microsoft! What is the point of this? A small business should be able to “bless” the ability for any device to easily connect (assuming the authentication is there). The whole point of SBS is to make it as easy as possible for stuff to work together.
Sigh….
Someday My Voice will Change
To the surprise of all, I went to computer camps as a kid. In fact, if you have the People magazine with the cover that has this version of Annie on it, I am in one of the pictures.
I bring this up, only because I was reminded recently of one of the counselors. He had a “black box” that would fake the electronic sounds a coin would make when dropped into a pay phone, thus allowing him to make free phone calls. Needless to say, we all thought this was the coolest thing. He also could program a computer to play Eleanor Rigby.
I was reminded of him only because on more than one occasion, the pitch of my voice has caused a voice mail system to erase my message and start over again…as if I had pressed a button on the keypad.
Now, if only I could figure out which word/pitch combination I used, and I could rule the world!
Or, at least learn Chinese.
Not Yet at Kaczynski Levels….
If you ask most people who know me, they would agree on one thing. That I am devilishly hansome.
But, if they had to pick a second thing to agree on, it is that I like gadgets. I loves me the electronics!
However, I had a chance to travel back to a kinder, gentler time. A time when buggies were all the rage. A time when Federal Express was run on ponies. A time when you could travel without standing in a security line for 2 hours.
I’m referring, of course, to train travel.
A couple of weeks ago, I had to travel up to Sacramento. And, while I could have driven, I decided to take the train. And, I am sold! It was comfortable, clean, reasonably fast (2 hours station-to-station), not terribly expensive, and I could relax, work, read, stare out the window, or all of the above. In fact, for part of it I didn’t even take out my laptop!
I wasn’t quite Ted Kacynski, but I could start to see his point. Except for that whole “blow people up” thing he had going on.
Now; if only they would add that WiFi!