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Dude, I dont even want to talk about this nasty ass weather.
Friday – 3 inches
Saturday – at least 5 more. I went out three different times on Saturday to shovel about 8 inches or more of snow out of the driveway.
Tuesday – At least another inch or two. Shoveled that plus shoveled the walk (which had about 9 inches of snow), not to mention all the crap from the street that magically landed in our driveway after they plowed.
Yesterday and Today – maybe another inch or snow.Grand total – somewhere around a foot.
Here's a better version of the changes being made in Windows 7. I came across this article this morning while reading. Even includes screenshots, for those who want to see what the features actually mean.
Again, UI changes are the biggest improvements so far, that I see.
The wiring closets at Walsh looked about like some of these, as there were cables EVERYWHERE. And I have to tell you that reorganizing is a huge pain in the ass and is tedious work.
Couple of tips.
Plan ahead – If you have an idea of what its supposed to look like when its done, it will make things a lot easier.
Label – If you have something that needs to be labeled, LABEL IT. Dont try to remember where it goes. Especially if you have a lot of wires, its helpful to label. Use a sturdy label that is going to withstand some time.
Prepare to do it again in a year or two – Keep in mind, you're probably not the only person who is in the wiring closet and unless you're gonna be a network closet nazi (if you have time to do this, you're not busy enough), then you'll probably be back in there in a year or two fixing the mess from the last two years.Also, these tips apply when installing a new network, which I had the opportunity to do last year. Between my wife, my boss, and myself, we was able to finish it in about 3 weeks worth of weekends. Keep in mind that this was pulling the wire, installing all of the RJ45 Jacks, and connecting everything to the patch panel. Lets not forget testing each wire. I will say this though, of the 80 some connections we put in this place, only 2 were bad. Thats a pretty damn good percentage for someone who hadnt done a lot of wiring in about 5 years prior to this project.
Another good tip for testing network connections. If you dont have the fancy cable testers, just grab two laptops. Hook one laptop up on each end and then ping the other computer. If you get a reply, the connection is working. If not, time to start tracing the problem.
After reading through some articles, I feel I need to comment on some of the changes in Windows 7. This is by no means a complete list, just some thoughts and comments I have.
User Account Control
Im glad Microsoft is adding some level of control to the User Account Control. It appears as they will give you a slider that will allow you to control how often you receive warnings, with the default being to only receive messages when installing applications. I have to tell you that this will be a huge improvement from the constant “Cancel or Allow” messages when working in Vista. While the UAC is a good enough idea, and is actually somewhat of an idea ripped off from the Unix/Linux community, I think Microsoft was a bit overzealous thinking they could add so many popups. For example, not only do I get the Cancel or Allow message, I would also receive messages saying that a program was attempting to install and did I want to continue or cancel. There is really nothing that can be done to deter users from doing what they want to do, but prompting them multiple times turns into a huge annoyance, especially as they become more experienced.Libraries
Microsoft is now adding a level of obscurity to the mix by adding the concept of libraries, which are essentially virtual directories designed to organize specific types of files that could possibly be spread throughout the system. While Im all for organization, if Microsoft doesnt give you the ability to back up files within a library, then the point is almost lost. Finding the files is one thing, but recovering them when something happens to the system is something else. Libraries, in my opinion, only allow the user to become more lazy than they already are, relying on a system that could possibly come back to bite them later if they dont know where their data is when their system crashes.Jump Lists
This isnt actually a bad idea. Basically what this is is a list of common tasks that can be accessed from within the start menu or next to a running program so that when minimized or not running, you can simply click on the list and it will give you the most common tasks associated with said application. Where I find this to be useful is with running IE as it would give you a list of your browsing history, so that you can open a specific webpage right away rather than opening the browser and then sifting through your history as a second step. Legacy applications may take a hit here, but as new software is released, this could be a huge time saver for those commonly used applications.Homegroups
This is a concept that Im not really sure about. It feels way too much like a workgroup to me. Workgroups essentially allow you to network computers together so that you can access files and resources across the network. Homegroups are essentially the same thing, except by default, they are password protected by a single password, instead of by user account. The one thing Im not too happy about is that the software auto generates a keycode and wants you to write it down so you dont lose it. However, if you do lose it, there is a way to obtain said key code from within the system.Conclusion
While UI changes are great, I dont think Im all that impressed with Windows 7. Im not thrilled about re-learning where things are. From a personal user standpoint, these changes may make the user experience better. However, from a business standpoint, having technical users relearn everything is NOT a good idea and only slows down their ability to support these systems. Better organization is good, but there is such a thing as too much organization.Keep reading, Im sure there's a ton of stuff I missed.
Here's a link to a story Ive been keeping up on about another who is making the switch to Linux. The comments are an especially nice read.
Day 3:
Today didnt turn out to be too successful for the wireless. Rather than dwell on it another day, I decided to say screw it for now and go with a patch cable. For some reason, now the damn wireless wont authenticate. I dont know what the problem is, but its on my list of things to check out over the next couple of days. I wanted to focus on a couple of other things. I was able to accomplish a couple of things.
One, I was able to map to a network drive to the PC I have all of my music on. However, I was only able to map it with Read Only, as the drive is formatted in NTFS. Linux and NTFS dont mix too well without some configuration. There is a driver (NTFS-3G) that you can get that will allow you to obtain read/write privileges but I wasnt able to get it to mount properly. However, I did mount the share using CIFS (Common Internet File System) which at least gave me read rights.
Ubuntu also comes with a program that will allow you to play media(Rhythm Box). However, Ive always been a huge fan of Winamp for its simplicity, so I had to download XMMS, which is an OSS replacement. This wasnt a hugely complex task, but wasnt necessarily easy either. I had a couple of options. 1) Compile from source – NO! 2) Add a repository to Ubuntu so the package manager would allow me to download it – WAY BETTER OPTION. After browsing through the site that hosts XMMS, I found the entry I needed to make and by using the Synaptic Package Manager, was able to install XMMS. The only thing it didnt do for me was add an entry to my applications menu. Not a big deal though. By browsing to /usr/bin/ I was able to find the XMMS executable and get it running. Another road block though was that Linux will not play proprietary formats such as MP3 by default. So as a result, I had to install the Ubuntu Restricted Extras package, which gave me MP3 codecs, Flash, and the Java Runtime Environment, among other things. Once I installed those, I obtained successful tunage.
Note: I have found myself using the command line ALOT in the last couple of days. A lot of the instructions found online encourages it. This leads me to one conclusion: Linux still isnt ready for the desktop if I have to use the CLI this much. Granted, I probably could have found GUI instructions on how to do the things I did today, but I really shouldnt have to. This will definitely be something on my list to accomplish is to move away from the CLI and toward the GUI. As someone who is fairly comfortable with a CLI, it doesnt bother me horribly. However, a user who is used to a GUI isnt going to be able to accomplish the things I did today easily without it. Now, having XMMS was a personal choice. BUT it should be a lot easier to obtain and install than adding a repository (which no ignorant user [no offense] is going to understand).
Still a long way to go.
I'll tell you what, for the money, those Walmart CD's were pretty damn good. I still have a stack of those CD's I bought at the computer show we were at….although I havent burned anything to them in awhile.
I rarely burn CD's but when I do, they usually work. I'll have to try them at a slower speed and see if that has any effect. Could be Windows as well. Its kind of a flaky install. Once I get a decent CD to burn, I ought to be in good shape.
I went browsing through some of my old stuff awhile back. Remember the flame looking theme the MT site used to have back in 2001 or so? I still have all of that stuff, along with the articles I wrote about file sharing apps. That was back in the days where I was working heavily on that banner script that seems to have become obsolete due to the advances in AJAX technology as well as the heavily dependent database usage that most sites seem to have now.
Wouldnt be a bad idea to compile all of that stuff into some kind of archive though.
It is rather interesting to me that even though we talk about how we protect our computers from the elements by keeping them in places where the elements wont affect it, Ive really never seen anything built into the case to protect it. For example, maybe there needs to be some kind of shield placed over the components of the case, in addition to the side panel. The only issue I see there is air flow, as well as something else to take off. But in all seriousness, there really should be some way to better protect a PC against elements such as pets and dust and whatnot. We seem to make great strides in CPU power and disk space and all of that, but nothing in the ways of reducing dust, allergens, etc. Or for that matter, preventing your cat from spraying all over the place without getting them fixed.
Im with ya on the case swap, but I doubt it'll do any good in the long run. The only thing I could really think of is that once you switch cases, maybe tuck it somewhere where the cat wont have such easy access to it. I know thats hard to do, considering the room and whatnot, but just a thought.
I have a spare drive if you need it. Maybe try swamping them out and see if it has any effect. Let me know.
Chances are, its probably the board. Im willing to bet that if you changed out the drives, you'd find the same result.
