I’ve mentioned a few times how much I love Windows 7.  I liked XP well enough for about a million years, embraced Vista when it came out, and adopted the Windows 7 Beta back in January of this year.  I was on the beta for a few months and then went to the Release Candidate Microsoft made available and have been on it since recently.

I was worried when I switched jobs that I might lose some of my Windows 7 accessibility.  I was IT Director of a large ISP, in charge of technical things like Operating Systems and our Microsoft Enterprise Agreement and bypassing the Internet logging… so not only was I in the know, but I had access to everything.  In my new job, however, I’m not IT anymore – I’m a dreaded and lowly “user”.  Now *I* have to create helpdesk requests and wait for things to happen instead of laughing at users waiting for things to happen.

Fortunately, the IT crew at the new job is cool and let me use Windows 7 even though they hadn’t prepared on rolling it out yet.  In fact, I’ve been testing some of the various apps like virus protection and the new game and I’m glad I can help.   I especially like testing out games.  WOO to the HOO.

I have Windows 7 on my work desktop and I just recently loaded it on my work laptop.  I already have Windows 7 on my home desktop and loaded it last night on my home laptop.  Is that enough computers for you yet?!?!?!

While there are many cool things about Windows 7 I could expand on here, I’m going to specifically mention Windows Easy Transfer.  I will mention it, and then I will trash it publicly.

Normally, this tool is incredible. It’s awesome.  It’s so much more than “Files & Settings Transfer” was in XP.  It’s better than USMT (User Settings Migration Tool) if you’ve used that on the Enterprise side.   It’s so much better than ‘Cats’.

What it does is take your files and settings (and in some cases, applications, but only in certain situations) from one computer and transfer it to another computer.   This is a fantastic boon for people who customize their computer a lot and have more than just a couple directories of files to transfer.  I, for example, and one of those people.  In fact, I customize my laptop so much I’m more like three of those people.

For the first four or five times I used it, it worked flawlessly and quickly.  However, in my most recent quest, transferring from a Windows 7 Release Candidate 1 laptop to a Windows 7 Enterprise released version laptop, I’ve been having issues.  HEadsup – I might need a hug.

Here’s some eye candy fer ya to help ‘splain my issue.

(click to embiggify)

Note the transfer time.  btw, “Transfer time” indicates how much time is LEFT.  btw also, I started this transfer Monday morning and here it is Wednesday and it’s still chugging along.  Also, that “transfer time” sometimes says “1 day” and sometimes says “8 days” and everywhere between.  The disk lights on the laptop and the external firewire drive are still blinking, and the green bar is advancing some every few hours, or so it seems.  Just in the time it took to write this blog post, it’s changted from 2 days, 10 hours to 1 day, 9 hours, to 6 days, to 2 days 14 hours.

I should point out that there are a few quirks in my particular set up.

1. Different versions of Windows
   I am using a migration file taken from a Release Candidate version of Windows 7 and importing to a Released version of Windows 7.  I don’t know if that is supported – who knows, it might not be, or it might be buggy.  I can’t blame Microsoft for that part if it’s true.  In fact, they go out of their way to put in disclaimers on their beta software.
2. The migration file is huge:
   My migration file is 127.5GB and the user profile itself is > 140GB.  Maybe it’s supposed to take this long?  I don’t have any hard data to compare to on this front.  Perhaps I can blame Microsoft for that? Nahh.
3. I’m changing domains. 
   The profile was taken from a domain that doesn’t exist any more, and I’m importing to a new domain.  The docs show that this is supported (yay Microsoft for adding this!) but who knows, maybe it has a problem too.  If so, that’s Microsoft’s fault.  But we don’t know yet.
4. Power interruption on the first try
   The first time I tried the import (last Friday), there was a power interruption to the USB drive and the migration failed.  So I blew away the profile on the new laptop, rebooted again, removed from the domain and re-added, and then tried again.  While that shouldn’t be a problem, maybe there’s something wrong.  I did notice that when I logged into the account after the failed import and before blowing it away, there was about 90GB of files in the profile, so at least it did something.  There could be a problem on the external drive, or there might be some setting on my account somewhere from that failed first try.  Anyone feel like helping me blame Microsoft for the power interruption?
5. Domain account locked interruption
   There were some domain account issues on the new domain, where the account got locked for other reasons.  Since the process has to authenticate as that user during the migration, maybe it’s stuck somewhere and can’t do anything.  This was on the current try. (more specifically, I started migration the 2nd time on Monday morning, and the domain got locked twice Tuesday afternoon).  Stupid locked domain accounts! ALL MICROSOFT’S FAULT AND BUSH’s TOO!

I’m thinking that if it doesn’t get somewhere today, I’ll have to interrupt it again, blow away the profile, do a disk check on the firewire drive (due to the power interruption) and try it again.

Hey.  Now it says only 1 day, 10 hours left.  Maybe it’s worth waiting for?

While I wait, I think I’ll compose a lolcat for the situation.  Wait.  Dang Office Assistant got in the way.

I tweet a lot.

A lot.

Because I have Twitter cross-posted with Facebook, this means my “wall” (or as I like to call it, my “whall”) fills up quickly.  For those who don’t know about “cross-posting”, just know that it’s basic integration betwen social networking systems.  It’s a way for the different social mediums to work together, like Twitter, Facebook, Utterli, ping.fm and a hundred others, so that none of them hog you all to themselves.  In fact, the more a social medium shares (ie, cross-posts) with others mediums, the more likely people are to use it as their primary interface.

It’s like love.  The more you share, the more you have.

Or fire.

Anyway, I’ve gotten a couple of comments a few times from my Facebook friends that I’ve spammed up their news feed, or that my status updates have hogged up their home page.  For that, I apologize.

I’m not likely to reduce my twittering, however.  So, I’d like Facebook to listen up and see if they can come up with a way to solve this.  I have two ideas in this area:

@replies should be a comment, not it’s own update

When I put in “@username” in a status update, I’d like facebook to make my a reply in that person’s status update, if they also have a Facebook account integrated with Twitter.  It takes up so much less real estate and helps promote that person’s facebook page as much as, if not more than, my own.

If they don’t have a Facebook account, then maybe they could just make it look like the following example, but instead of “status” say “tweet” and have it link to the actual tweet. 

Threads should be recognized and put into comments

This is very similar to the first one, but is different enough.  If I do a status update, then someone replies to me on Twitter, then I reply to that reply, I want Facebook to figure that out and put BOTH updates as comments on my original status update. 

Even if the other person isn’t on Facebook.

Yes, I know facebook would have to go searching for the tweet.  But computers are good and fast.

For example, I might have the following conversation on twitter (shown in reverse chronological order here)

In Facebook, this would typically turn into five (5) different status updates with my picture and everything. (actually, it appears as though maybe it’s not doing that anymore – is Facebook blocking @replies as status updates now?).

Instead, I’d rather it show up like a threaded conversation. 

I see that there’s a facebook app called “Selective Twitter” that allows you to add a hashtag (#fb) to tweets to determine whether or not to actually update facebook.  I think that’s a good first step, but I’ve noticed tools such as TweetDeck (my desktop and iPhone tool of choice) allowing me to specify, per tweet, if I want to update facebook as well.

Once my ideas are implemented, hopefully I can be nominated for the Nobel Peace prize.  I could use the $1.4 million dollars.  Oh wait, the government normally taxes at least 50% of all “winnings” so I guess the prize isn’t that high. I know the prize is tax exempt in Hungary and several other nations, but I don’t know if it’s tax exempt in the US.  Anyone know?

I’m going to take a little time right now to declare my gratitude for technology.

Watching old stuff

Today, I took Jaden to Extreme Fun, one of those unlimited-bouncy places where he actually gets a ton of exercise and loves it.

While he pumped up his adrenaline, made friends and sweat it up like a 7yr old should, I was able to watch episode 3 of The Fantastic Journey on my laptop.  I’ve written about this old 70′s TV show before, and I’m FINALLY making the time to catch up on it.  There were only ten episodes made of this show, and I remember it from my childhood.

I’m thankful that technology lets me do this kind of reminiscing.

iPhone video

I’ve mentioned a few times the lack of mobility my wife has due to recent knee surgery.  It still sucks, but she’s healing up about as fast as you can from that kind of thing.  Because of this temporary mobility impairment, she can’t see everything she normally would, like Jaden having fun being a robot.

Jaden is a robot on 12seconds.tv

 I was able to take all sorts of video with my iPhone of Jaden sword fighting, lazer tagging, robot-ing, and a bunch of stuff like that.   My wife would never get to see those moments, and it was kind of special, laying in bed that evening and me showing her a bunch of video of Jaden having a great great time.

I’m thankful that I can share these memories with my wife.

Online school things

Our school district gives us three cool online things – GradeSpeed, MyMealtime and Transfinder.

GradeSpeed gives us a login to see our kids grades and homework.  I can interact with their teachers, see what test scores are, homework scores, and evaluate everything that makes up my kid’s report card.  I can nip problems in the bud, and there aren’t any surprises come report card time.

MyMealtime allows me to deposit money in their school lunch account and get alerts when it runs low.  I can also set limits.

Transfinder is the online bus routing system that gives me reports, notices, weather and alerts about our kids’ bus.  We can even get notifications for late arrivals.

I’m thankful that our school district is ahead of where I thought they would be by this time.

What technology are you thankful for?

I recently upgraded my Trillian Astra 4.0 beta and when I was done, it told me to go vote in a polldaddy poll.

So I did.  And then my brain does what it does so often: it locked up due to overthinking.

I actually answered without thinking at first, picking the only IM client on the list that I knew.  I’ve been a Trillian user for, sheesh… a looooooong time.  I’ve probably been a Trillian Pro user for 7 years, and I recently upgraded to Trillian Astra.  I’ve been mighty impressed with it, I must say.

Anyway, the question got to me because… did I mention I picked the only IM client on the list that I knew?  Since I’ve never used the other ones, how can I definitely say Astra was the best?   (to be honest, I’ve heard of Pidgin but never seen it in use).

Sure, it’s the best for me.  But I feel a little icky inside with answering because I don’t think it’s a fair question.  Had the question been “Which IM client do you use?” or even “Which of these IM clients have you always been dedicated to?” it would be more clarifying. 

Problem is, I’m happy with Astra and don’t even have an inkling of an urge to try something else.  My buddy list is > 1000 people long, built over more than a decade of adding, tweaking and organizing.  I use AOL, Yahoo, MSN, IRC, Google Talk, and JABBER.  Oh, and Astra connects to Facebook.   I still chat with some of the people on my list on a frequent basis, and I added them to my buddy list in 1998.

So can I get some forgiveness from the Internet?  I could use it.

As I’ve mentioned before, time labels fascinate me.

At the moment I post this, it is

12:34:56

7/8/9

Well, it would be, if WordPress let me edit the exact second a post is published.

Unrelated to the time, anyone care to help me caption this?

This store is right across the street from the Apple Store at The Domain here in Austin.  Have you heard of this store?  At first I thought it was called White | Black and that someone added the “house | market” as a joke.

As promised, here is a more detailed description of my journey into the choice of getting the iPhone 3GS over keeping my older Blackberry 8700C.

Summary: It’s a better phone + PDA + music + social media tool + web browser + gadget.

Details are in the extended entry.

(more…)

This past weekend, I bit the bullet and installed Windows 7 BETA on my work laptop, replacing Vista.  This is pretty big, given that at work we’re still standardized on Windows XP.  My move to Vista last year was an important leap of faith as it was, so going to Windows 7 (aka W7) marks an even more risky foray into the world of Microsoft Operating Systems.  And going with beta makes it risk combined with cavalier abandon.

I have survived.

And it’s been pretty fun.

Here are some of the things I’ve noticed so far that are worth mentioning.  I should point out that some of these may have been there in Vista and I just never noticed them.

To save on front page space, the rest is in the extended entry.

(more…)

Our home computer, you know, the one for the family in the kitchen-nook-cranny area, has served us well for a long time.  However, for the last, oh…. six months or so, it’s been annoying to most of the family.

It doesn’t annoy me directly, because I have a kick-butt laptop that is almost always awesome-like in its sheer coolness.  On the contrary – it annoys me indirectly.  I say “indirectly” because it annoys everyone else in the family, who then come to me because I’m Mr IT Director and “fixing computers at work is what Daddy does.”  

Yeah right.  I “fix computers” kind of like how a a skilled surgeon “kisses booboos.”  

Still, just as the cobbler’s children have no shoes, the performance and effectiveness of our family computer at home leaves a lot to be desired.  Sure, I do some decent basics, like each family member has a “Limited” XP account so as to cut down on spyware and viruses.  I have a personal firewall installed.  I have antivirus installed and updated.  I use products like CCleaner, HijackThis, Adaware, Spybot Search & Destroy, Microsoft Defender and a few others to keep the system running smoothly.  I do the immunizations, checks and prayer vigils that I believe I’m supposed to do.

But over time, the computer gets bloated.  Slower.  Buggy.  I frequently get inconvenient notices, usually in the form of an across-the-house yell, like “DAD! THE COMPUTER’S BROKEN!”  This commonly comes when Jaden is trying to watch iCarly or something off of Nick’s site.  I sometimes work on the issue, but I just get fed up, reboot and the problem goes away.

What do I do at work?  I work on computers, networks, servers, SANs, firewalls, gateways, web sites, databases, printers, laptops, desktops, blackberries, switches, phone systems, call centers, badge readers, camera systems, IP phones, wireless access points, IP KVM, monitoring sytems, terminal servers, ssl certificates, VPN concentrators, UPS systems, generators, server cabinets and that’s just my main job.  I intimately know TCP/IP, UDP, UNIX, Win, MOSS, DHCP, ATM, DHCP, LAN, MPLS, FTP, DNS, NIS, AD, RPC, SMTP, SNMP, DNIS, NTP, MIB, SSH, VOIP, H.323, RDP, X11, IOS, SIP, HTTP, VDN, ESX, OSI, VPN, SMS, HBA, SPS, WAN, PBX, UTM, PRI, DSL, Frame, and 8xx.

But do I want to do anything remotely related to those things at home?

In a word – NO.

So imagine my joy at getting an upgraded computer.  Well, let me clarify. Our previous computer was about 8 years old.  Our “upgraded computer” is only 3.5 years old.  In computer years, that’s like a 75yr old marathon runner getting a new 30yr old body.  It ain’t perfect, but boy is it nice!  A brand new computer, on the other hand, would be akin to a 21yr old body pumped up on amphetamines.

Kind of like this guy, but if he was 21yr old, had a good body and did drugs:

Now my family has a screamingly fast computer (compared to the old one) and everyone’s happy.  In technical terms, it’s has a 2Ghz CPU, 2GB ram, 2×1.5TB SATA drives running in a RAID1 plus another 500GB extra non-RAID drive, and it’s running XP Media Center.  It has a CD/DVD burner with Lightscribe, and it has one of those built-in multi-media card reader thingies, where I can directly put in SD ram, MicroSD, sony memory sticks, CF cards, etc.

Life is good.

Let’s hope it lasts.

Note: This blog post is also available via audio.  It is read by the author on Utterli.

My 14yr-old daughter is a little spoiled.  She got an iPhone for Christmas.

Let me explain.  The iPhone was not given to her, as you might justifiably think after that first paragraph, and that’s not why she’s spoiled.

In order to get most of her gadgets or relatively expensive things, she saves up and buys them herself.   And she doesn’t get an allowance.  So how does she get these things?

Well, she babysits, for one.  She also does pet sitting.   But that’s not why she’s spoiled.

She also earns money for grades.  You might think she “gets money for grades” but it’s more complicated than that. 

I probably should explain that one also – it’s a “grade earning agreement” we have.  She earns a set dollar amount for A’s and has to pay a set dollar amount (1/2 of the amt for A’s) for B’s and below.  She gets a bonus (50%) for 100′s.  Now that’s incentive, right?  And she always makes money every report card.  She has 6 grades per grading period, so that means she has to make 2 A’s and 4 B’s and below just to break even.

We as parents provide necessary clothing, household items and things a kid “need” to be a kid.  However, anything extra she wants beyond that, like designer clothing/shoes, going to the movies with her friends, going to the mall and buying stuff from top*kopi or whatever it is, comes out of her money.  I got this idea from my parents (kudos to them).

The iPhone definately falls into the “extra” category.  This 16GB iPhone 3G was $299.  She was able to contribute $212 towards the purchase, but she really really really really really wanted it.  She already agreed to sell us her 8GB video iPod nano for $60 (part of the $212) because I wanted a good MP3 for my wife, and she was already familiar enough with the iPod.   That still left $70+ to pay.   I offered to pay for the difference if she gave me her existing phone, the Palm Centro, and then I’d take the risk of selling it on eBay but I get whatever money I make from it.   (btw, she also paid for the Centro herself when she got it earlier in the year)

She agreed, and she got the phone.

She loves that phone.

We all love that phone.

We have a win-win situation here.  Mom gets a like-new ipod nano for way under market value, daughter gets her new iPhone, and dad makes some money selling off a Centro.  There’s still 4hrs left in the auction and it’s already selling for $40 more than I “paid” for it.

And that’s why she’s spoiled. 

Wait, maybe *I’m* the one who’s spoiled.

A couple of weeks ago, I asked you to put your hands in the ay-yer.  I think I only counted 12 people doing so.  Now, I don’t know if it’s that you can’t hear me, or if you’re just “not interested” but a slightly better attitude would be appreciated.  

Sycophants of the world, UNITE!

Why?

Because I TOLD YOU TO!

A very useful engine

Many of you know that Thomas the Tank Engine is a “very useful engine”. Jaden loves Thomas movies, action figures, train sets, computer games, and I blogged last year about the Day Out With Thomas, which he and I both loved immensely.

But this post isn’t about Thomas, as much as it’s about a “very useful computer gadget”

A co-worker of mine picked up a couple of these at Altex and I must say, it’s gotta win some kind of product award. It’s incredible!

For those of you who do computer support, you’ve  probably run into the problem where a hard drive won’t boot. It still spins up, and it still has data, but it just won’t boot for this reason or that reason, usually a problem with Windows.

In the past, we’ve just used some special hardware to try to slave or mount the drive on a desktop machine with ribbon cables and room for extra drives. This was easy with desktop drives, but we had to get a special adapter for the laptop drives. It wasn’t pretty, but it did the job.

Then came along SATA, the way-faster and way-simpler connector but made it harder for us to do the drive slaving. We had to use a SATA desktop or one of the cool combo units Dell sold for a while that had both EIDE and SATA. But still, it was a pain, and generally involved “open heart surgery” on the PC we used as the diagnostic system.

This adapter he picked up allows for just a simple USB connection and it supports all desktop/laptop PC drives – desktop IDE, desktop SATA, laptop IDE and laptop SATA.   When connecting IDE, you don’t even need a separate power adapter!  For SATA, there is a separate power cable you have to plug in, but still, all of this beats doing it manually.  Best of all, since it’s USB, you don’t have to open up any PC’s.

Plus, it’s all hot-swappable.  With our old way of doing things, we’d have to shut down and reboot every time we disconnected or connected a drive.

Kudos, VANTEC!

Marching Band is still cool

Caitlin, our eldest, joined “the big time” this year by reaching freshman high school age. Now she’s with the Big Time band, the Cedar Park Timberwolves. This band is something else, lemme tell ya.

Last night was the “LISD Festival of Bands” where all the Leander Independent School District bands (middle school and high school) perform to a very populated football stadium.  I shot some video that I might upload at some point.  Let me know if interested.

Last year, the marching band put on a show called “Pursuit of Happiness” and even ended the show with a winking smiley face:

The official videos of this year’s band are still secure and for staff/band/family, so if you want to see them, get in touch with me directly and I’ll send a link.

Best of LOLCats