So my car has been overheating often and in the winter this is an odd occurrence. It overheats just as I am about 5 minutes from home and stuck in traffic waiting for a left turn onto Cypress Street off of Route 9. So I finally decided to take it into the local auto shop this morning figuring they would be too busy to look at it. They told me to leave it there and they would call me back. So I walked home and figured I would do some maintenance tasks while I was waiting. The main maintenance task I have is to migrate from my DELL laptop to my new HP laptop that is faster and doesn't have the history in it of all the crap that has been installed or uninstalled. So I have been spending the bulk of today trying to figure out how to install everything I need to run on my old PC onto my new PC and to migrate all of the data files from one to the next. I know there are tools that do this sort of thing but I wouldn't trust them. My circumstances are particularly bad because I act as a software developer, graphic designer, and business person. That means I need all of the Adobe tools, all the Microsoft developer tools, all of the MIcrosoft desktop tools, VPN connections and tools for key customers, various things like Crystal Reports, and it is best that I migrate every email or contact I have ever had in case someone wants to know if I know somebody at company X. This doen't even start to deal with the idea of wireless networking on private networks.

Of course all of these things are somewhat intertwined where some report runs inside of an Excel spreadsheet to connect to a database that also runs against Crystal Reports. So not only will it take me a long time to copy everything but even longer to make sure that it all works. I feel like a hermit crab trying to get out of one shell that I had outgrown and scuttling into a new shell that I hope is bigger and safer. I can't help but imagine that the whole exercise is futile but I am doing it anyways. My plan is to try to use the new laptop for everything for a week and only grab the old one if I need to pull off some piece of data or configuration. I'll shut down applications hopefully more than one at a time with the first being Email. I might feel more comfortable if I could make a perfect disk image of the old machine and use it when needed. I already have used about 3/4 of the disk space on the new computer just moving files onto it. I should have gotten about 10X the 80Gig that is in the machine now!

At least the migrating from one machine to the next is easier than actually working on something useful.

Posted by Dan Housman at 01:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

To whom it may concern,

The camera (PowershotSD 700 IS Digital Elph) that I purchased on October 1st has a problem where the lens will not retract. I had placed the camera into my pocket and the lens extended while in my pocket. When I then went to retract it by turning the camera off the lens would not retract into the camera. It gives a message like “Lens error”. I am unable to do anything that eliminates this error or allows the camera to operate.

I spoke with a customer service representative who suggested that I send the camera to this address for repairs or replacement as it is still under warranty. Enclosed with this letter is the camera with its original accessories, the sales receipt, and a copy of the warranty card. Please call me to confirm receipt of the item.

Posted by Dan Housman at 04:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As often happens when I try to use my computer as a television I ran into a glitch tonight. I was looking to watch an episode of an HBO television show on my PC. I opened the file in Windows Media Player and it was incredibly choppy whenever I increased the size to "Full Screen". So Sarah and I watched at the smaller window size and got stiff necks trying to stretch into a position where we could see the little TV box on the monitor. I tried solutions like increasing the priority of Windows Media Player in the task manager and killing processes that didn't look useful and stopping those things like Skype that always start on the boot but had no luck in resolving the problem.

So I got up in the middle of the night thinking maybe a defragmentation would resolve the problem. I went to defragment and since it is a Windows 2000 Pro box with 80 Gig of disk space I had a lot of time on my hands. So I looked around for how to stop things from starting-up. The best solution is the tool called System Configuration Utility. It doesn't come with Windows 2000 but seems compatible. I downloaded a version of msconfig.exe and used it to uncheck / disable all of the pesky things that boot with the computer including a couple that looked like they had malware objectives. I rebooted and checked the file that was choppy in Windows Media Player and lo and behold it wasn't choppy. So hopefully it is resolved for now and I don't need to rebuild the whole PC just to watch a TV show on it.

Posted by Dan Housman at 01:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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Posted by Dan Housman at 02:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So I'm in my flash class today and I got there late because I decided to eat dinner with Jeremy at an Indian restaurant. When I get there the only machine left is the same one that I had last time. It had this weird quirk that the keys didn't line-up to the right control characters. So useful commands like a /* would come out to be (| . I looked at the person next to me and rather than paying attention to the teacher was playing with the help file for regional preferences. As it turns out she was frustrated by the settings on the computer as well but instead of wanting the american style keyboard she was busy switching hers to a Dvorak Norwegian keyboard. So I figured out where she was changing things and switched my keyboard back to the US keyboard. But now I have no idea how to make my example pre-loader work.

Posted by Dan Housman at 08:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I probably shouldn't be angry with Google since everything they offer is free but today they ticked me off twice because of their free but only available to certain special user policies. My basic response is that if they want to have free services available only to some people then I should be one of them... or I will do mean things to them like write that they are doing evil things with respect to Gmail and Google Analytics.

They offer a free analytics service but you need a special invitation code to get into it and you can only use Gmail with a different invitation code. In order to test a desktop search feature I needed a gmail account but I couldn't get one because they aren't freely available.

"You cannot log into Gmail using your Google Account username and password. Gmail is in a limited test period and is only available to a small number of people who are helping test and improve the service before it is made more widely available. If you have been asked to test Gmail and have not yet created a Gmail account, please click on the link in your invitation email."

Posted by Dan Housman at 02:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

OK. I learned my lesson with Movable Type. When I originally set-up the MT version of the blog I created it as a file using Berkeley DB. This file got corrupted for some reason a little after the last post on December 9th. The result was that I had to rebuild all the entries after reinstalling the application with a mysql database. That, and the constant needs of my little girl, explain the delays on updating the blog. But now it resides in a nice and stable mysql database which is hopefully less prone to problems and it runs on the latest version of MT which hopefully is better able to resist trackback spam.

Posted by Dan Housman at 11:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Worst install of the year: TurboTax2004
So I remembered why I didn't manage to get my taxes done this year on time. It was because TurboTax 2004 refused to print them for me. The problem it had was that it wanted to update one of the files for the tax returns since it didn't have the right information on time for it's Dec. 2004 shipment date. This should have been fine since they invented a system called "One click update". This one-click update mechanism pops-up when you reach the last step of your return and you go to print it or when you first load the software. So I hit that one-click update button and the system went into what Turbo Tax support refers to as the "TurboTax 2004 update loop". In their own words....

This issue presents itself as a seemingly endless "loop" and occurs after you've downloaded a TurboTax update. It begins with the following message, which appears after starting TurboTax:

Updates not installed. There is an update for your TurboTax. Would you like to install the updates now?

Basically this leads to constantly being asked to reboot your computer with the only solution to forcibly remove this program and anything that ever touched it from your computer. I have now done so and will attempt to reinstall it (plus the Free state add-on) having to enter the memorable code 9481C5EA93F62103 and the last eight digits of the credit card I paid for this software in order to activate the installer.

It is ironic that the company that makes this very frustrating user experience is called Intuit, as in Intuitive, since this process is far from intuitive.
Wish me luck...

Posted by Dan Housman at 07:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I learned last night that the baby doesn't like to give those big kicks to Sarah when I am watching her belly or putting my hand on it.

Today I found another bug when trying to finally accept that the new build was ready for prime time and kept finding a problem with each successive new release. This experience once again proves Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entymology: There's always one more bug. I haven't found the law for fetal non-kicking but my guess is that this Lubarsky guy is somehow involved.

This afternoon I have dedicated some time towards the August 15th holiday of National Procrastinators Tax Filing Day. I heard from Jeremy that the government is organizing a march on Washington to support the war. So they are organizing people to march to them to show their support. It sounds a bit egotistical and Jeremy thinks it is the beginning of a totalitarian Animal Farm state. I just thought it was a little awkward that they could take money the people paid them to protest that the people were protesting the war that people were paying them to vote to carry out that the people are paying for and dying for. At the moment though I am trying to figure out how to make my ink jet work well enough to print the paperwork that I need to prove that I paid the right amount to them to carry out all this effort in Washington. Unfortunately with all of the billions of dollars spent in Iraq, I am still getting ripped off by the Epson corporation for spare ink cartridges.

Posted by Dan Housman at 05:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My Canon PowerShot S410 broke while I was at the wedding this weekend. Just as we walked into the church at exactly the time the wedding was supposed to start and we sat down the zoom lens made an awful crunching sound and then proceeded to get stuck halfway between out and in. The camera suffering from an unfortunate priapism then squawked in pain with a beeping sound that was fine before the processional music began but was then deemed unacceptable once the violinists started to play. I tried forcing the lens back into it’s home with some pressure and it went inside again but upon attempting to get it back out it had erectile dysfunction and only peeped out a few inches. It was impossible to get it into the discernibly turgid state necessary to take a photo and instead offered me the consolation of the error code E18 on the screen on the back of the camera. I then pulled at it to get it out of the position but the tiny peeping eye didn’t give much room for yanking on. So I declared it dead for good, pushed the lens back into it’s socket and declared to Sarah that we would have no pictures of this wedding from my camera. Luckily they had a full paparazzi gallery of wedding photographers complete with a man wearing a women’s suit and bleached blond hair working to focus the flash bulb above the bride and groom.

But for me it is a painful and effeminizing feeling to have a camera that can’t shoot so I was not feeling myself for the whole weekend. So this morning I decided to call the Canon corporation to ask them whether they had a little blue pill that could make my camera work better. Apparently Raphael Palmeiro’s blue pills have been working well this weekend as he hit three homers in three games for a 3 of 4 win rally by the Orioles over the Red Sox. So I called and quickly got through to a service representative. The first question I had expected was to identify the camera by the serial number. I don’t have any idea where the serial number would be. This wasn’t their question. The man asked what the problem was and I then told him that the lens wasn’t protracting and retracting normally. He told me to pull the battery out, wait a few seconds, and then try again. I didn’t do this but instead just pressed the power button to turn it on. Of course, without all the pressure to film a wedding, my camera had overcome the stage fright and the lens extended normally. I then went through the paces to try the zoom and this worked well. Next I tried turning it on and off ten times and the lens worked like a champ opening and closing.

Now I am certain that it is broken and this is a short lived phenomena since this lens problem has been happening off and on for a long time with the camera. But if I mail it into the shop without the problem being apparent they will likely mail it back telling me I suffer from a common mental disorder potentially leading me into ruin rocking in the corner in a scene from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. So, despite the fact that the camera will celebrate it’s one year anniversary in mid-August and thereby be ineligible for repairs of blue pills, I am not yet able to send it back to the Canon Corporation. It is probably for the best. I couldn’t find the receipt in the half hour routing around the apartment that I did. It is also good to know that cameras operate by the same principles of most sickness and injuries that I suffer from. When I invest in fixing it by going to show it to the doctor, dentist, electrician, mechanic, or editor - it mysteriously goes away.

Posted by Dan Housman at 08:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Does everything always have to break?

I had annoying car troubles on Friday night. I was pulling my standard freakish 180 degree U-Turn to park on St. Paul street in front of the condo when I heard a loud pop and suddenly could barely turn the steering wheel. I managed to get it into the space and was grateful that I had car trouble near home so that I could go inside and ignore the problem for a while. Later in the evening I tested the car and got it to drive all the way to the parking lot but with great effort to turn the steering system. It didn't take the folks at car talk for me to know that the most likely culprit was the power steering system somewhere. I figured a belt, gear, pump, or something like that had slipped or broke.

On Saturday morning I decided that I needed to fix this problem so I called the local mechanic at the Gulf Station and he said he couldn't look at it until Tuesday. So I decided to enjoy the weekend. Sarah took her car to Valvoline and they took 40 minutes changing her oil, checking an engine light that was on because the gas cap wasn't screwed on tight enough, and finding an oil leak that had been going on for years. I drank a big Coolatta from the neighboring Dunkin Donuts along with a bagel. Because the Valvoline folks were helpful and useful I decided that I would take my car to them to fix my belt, pump, fluid, whatever problem. They identified that there was a belt that fell off it's pulley in the power steering and changed my oil. Unfortunately they couldn't fix the belt and told me to go to a mechanic. I had another Coolatta during this experience as well so I was pretty high on caffeine at this point.

I then drove to the Mobil station and they seemed very busy but interested enough to take a look under the hood. They poked around and then told me that the pump for the power steering had broken, which had caused the belt to slip off. It was a $500 job minimum and they couldn't even see how anyone could get access to remove the pump so they instructed me to call the dealer instead and had me drag my power steering-less car in a painful three point turn back to the top of the long driveway to the garage.

The people who I rented my parking space from called to hassle me because I hadn't mailed them the check on time and continued to give me a lecture about how it isn't worth their time to track down parking space renter checks. I profusely apologized and promised that I would impress them with the promptness of payments in the future. I may need to do another parking search soon enough. I actually turned down a parking space offer today while I had fifteen minutes to prepare for a presentation to an analyst and was on the line via Skype to a partner in the Netherlands. I did manage to patch together a miraculous pair of people offering spaces, one who had one from the first through the fifteenth and the other who had the fifteenth onwards to replace the evil space we were renting. The space was evil both because the woman who owned the space got into an argument with Sarah when Sarah complained that the 24hour spot was blocked by deck construction 10 out of every 24 hours during normal parking hours. We then got late notice that we were going to be towed on June 1st if the car wasn't gone so we hunted the new spaces using a cheesy sign I made in Illustrator and an agressive hunt on Craigs list.

On top of all this trouble my mom was mad at me for not having responded to the pictures that she had sent me and the folks at the video store only had the VHS copy of Attack of the Clones which was crappy. Sarah and I went to Home Depot and bought lots of home fix-up stuff like new lamps, dimmers, and a screwdriver bit. It was a really long Saturday. So today I am off to the dealership to get answer#3 on the broken power steering. My guess is that it will be about $900 to fix the damn thing and they will determine that my flux capacitor is also broken and that will cost even more.

Posted by Dan Housman at 08:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Why I can't use Blogger anymore, the trail of support queries. It has been since Tuesday that I heard from Blogger and they still haven't fixed the bug. I also have problems with my Movable Type installation on Netfirms but at least it posts!

========
Oohh... a response giving me hope from Blogger support!

- Dan

-----Original Message-----
From: Blogger Support [mailto:support@blogger.com]
Sent: Tuesday, May 31, 2005 8:50 PM
To: Dan Housman
Cc: dan@danhousman.com
Subject: Re: FTP port problem with ISPs/remotely hosted blogs (port)

Hi Dan,

Thanks for writing in and for your continued patience. A bug is being
addressed by the development team to resolve the issue you're having.
Please be assured that the bug will be fixed soon. I apologize for any
inconvenience it may have caused.

Sincerely,
Christine
Blogger Support

Original Message Follows:
------------------------
From: "Dan Housman"
Subject: FTP port problem with ISPs/remotely hosted blogs (port)
Date: Sun, 29 May 2005 11:45:42 -0400

I unfortunately have to report a critical problem to Blogger.

I am having trouble with my blog from Blogger and can't fix it from the
ISP
side because Blogger apparently changed a setting with regards to FTP
ports
near May 17th. The problem is that any posting errors with the error
"Broken
Pipe". This error is entirely new as it hadn't occurred until after the
last
post I had made which was on May 17th in my blog
http://www.danhousman.com/blogger/ .

The report back from the ISP is as follows below. The standard support
forms
do not reply with any information even after a week of waiting and I don't
see that this is listed in the knowledge base for support anywhere. I like
using Blogger as a service but if the blog doesn't publish it will force
me
to switch to a service that I can post to and have the blog publish.
Netfirms is not a minor ISP but has 2 million web sites hosted. Please
advise me whether this is a problem that the blogger team can/will fix or
if
I should switch to another service.

Unfortunately as a service .... having the system work well and then
suddenly not work and not responding at all to requests for information
seems to break Google's motto of not being "evil" which is why I chose to
work with Google's services in the first place.

- Dan Housman
dan@danhousman.com
617.216.9921
Skype: dhousman

-----Original Message-----
From: Netfirms Support [mailto:support@netfirms.com]
Sent: Friday, May 27, 2005 11:47 AM
To: Dan Housman; dan@danhousman.com
Subject: RE:{Interaction#002-003-364} [us-en] FTP/Publishing -
www.danhousman.com

Hello,

Thank you for your e-mail.

Please be advised that the Netfirms FTP servers accepts FTP connections in
passive mode (standard) which covers a port range of roughly 49000-65000.
That is, these ports are kept open on the firewall to receive these
connections.

When blogger.com connects, it seems to ignore the suggested range and
tries
something that is blocked by the firewall (<49000). As a result, the data
connection is never made and the FTP server sends a broken pipe error via
the control channel.

Normally, a renegotiation takes place, but these too seem to be failing.
We
suggest that you contact blogger.com support to resolve this issue with
them
as it appears that their configurations may have changed recently.

Tutorials, demos, and answers to over 90% of your questions may also be
found immediately at our Self-Help Support Centre:
http://www.netfirms.com/support/

Regards,

Todd
Netfirms Inc.
www.netfirms.com

Posted by Dan Housman at 08:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)