Matthew S. Dippel - The Official Blog

AppliancesConnection.com (and GE Capital) ... Adventures (and failures in) User Experience (Updated 1x)

2011-12-22T16:14:00.000-05:00

Background

After two service calls to fix an old dishwasher, I decided I'd had enough of my beautiful bride having to hand-wash 3/4 of what came out of our failing GE Profile dishwasher. I did some research and landed on a Bosch model that was both highly rated by its owners and recommended by Consumer Reports. The problem is that no local retailer carries this specific model. Being sensitive to the fact that I purchased the last dishwasher without enough research, I wanted this model. And heck, I buy everything else online, why not a semi-major appliance?

Solving Cart Abandonment at the Expense of an Angry Blogger

A lot has been written on preventing cart abandonment, and I won't say that they got it all wrong. I clicked "Add to Cart", did a quick retailmenot.com look. They actually have coupon codes named RETMENOT??, I saw this as funny and won't take issue with the whole "why don't they just offer that as a deal" element. Clearly they know a lot of customers are going to use that service to find coupon codes. They also didn't require me to set-up an account, and instead just e-mailed me a password (we'll skip the security implications -- that they're likely storing this password in plain-text in a database -- for another post).

When presented with payment options, I was offered 12-month financing if I filled out a quick credit app. I had intended on doing the equivalent of paying cash (I pay my credit cards off every cycle), but when offered an option to simply pay it off in chunks over a few months with no interest, my weakness to loss aversion kicked in and I told myself that funny little lie that somehow I'll pocket a small discount due to the interest earned with that money remaining in my investment account for a few months.

After completing my order and printing my authorization form as instructed (I felt dirty doing this, but I was on my bride's laptop which didn't have PDF Creator installed but did have a USB Laser printer attached). Then, I headed out for a small trip with the family. Upon returning, I discovered the order was on hold and I was required to submit proof of identification and fax or e-mail my authorization letter from GE Capital to AppliancesConnection.com. This seemed bizarre. I've got three other online accounts that I signed up and used same day and I've never been asked for such a sensitive piece of documentation. Coupled with the fact that they e-mailed me my account password, I was not confident about how this sensitive information was going to be stored. The inconvenience of having to scan this all in (and redact most of my drivers license) on what was in my mind "a done deal" was enough to make me cancel the order. Or, that's what I should have done. This dishwasher is hard to find, and it's the one I wanted. They were the only retailer of three that carried it and the only one with a delivery timeframe that was acceptable (my bride's poor fingers!). I'll likely never do business with them again, but they got this one.

Moan and Complain, that's what the Internet is for. STFU, how would you solve this?

This is a solved problem. Amazon.com, buy.com and newegg.com have figured it out. Amazon even uses GE! Granted, I don't know AppliancesConnection.com's balance sheet and negotiating position with their payment provider, but if this is GE saying "pay us more to eliminate hassling your customers" and they're doing so claiming that the fees are to offset additional fraud, they're lying. It's a revenue booster. I could have easily forged the parts of my license they required me to send. And in the end, they were delivering to my billing/home address, which GE verified during the credit check. At some point, a dude is going to be walking this product into my foyer and I'll be signing for it.
Shop for credit providers and find one that isn't stuck with policies pre-2002.
Negotiate a better or equal solution that isn't quite such an awful user experience. While still messy, AppliancesConnection.com could have requested a secondary credit account with matching shipping/billing information, and only require the added scrutiny if the item is not being shipped to a matching billing addresses. This seems like it would be more effective than asking for my ID with everything but my name/address redacted. Even that seems unnecessary, though.
At a minimum, ... prepare your customer for this. What followed after submitting my order was this strange progression of e-mails, one of which claiming that I had opened up a support ticket with the order (I was puzzled reading this on my phone). The credit authorization did have a section at the bottom informing the merchant to treat the transaction as they would if it were done face-to-face (laughable). I half wonder what would have happened if I had just ignored the e-mail. Would someone have called eventually?

So you jumped through the hoop anyway, STFU

You're right. At this point, I've attached the required information with the bits redacted. With how clumsy this was, I'm having second thoughts even as I write this. Will delivery scheduling be this messy? If one other thing ends up odd about this order, I'm cancelling it and probably going brick-and-mortar with my second choice dishwasher carried by a local retailer. I have a truck.

The difference: A delightful user experience

User Experience is the new customer service. If I complete a transaction and it's easy, or even delightful, it's the equivalent of being rushed to the front of the line and having a sales associate offer to help you load the product into your car. If, then, something goes wrong between the payment processing point and delivery that requires me to call customer service, I'm going to be far more forgiving and assume it's a one-off. Based on how that turns out, I'll probably do business with that merchant again. In fact, if the inconvenience is handled very well with discounts or other perks to offset the inconvenience, I may seek that retailer out first because they've now proven they know how to make things right when things go wrong. They'll be predictable if something like that inevitably happens again.

User Experience will probably be the only Customer Service I encounter when interacting with you. Do it like everyone else and I'll have my only incentive will be seeking out the best price. Do it right, and I'll start at your site and pay more for a product knowing the results will be predictably good.

Send weird, cryptic e-mail messages from do-not-reply addresses and make unusual requests for documentation, and you might get an ugly blog post on a blog nobody reads. Still, I've probably told at least 8-16 people about my only marginally bad customer experience.

UPDATE . . . 6:15 PM same day as post

The mystery solved

I kept thinking about this and it seemed so off that I had to review everything again.
After reviewing my approval documentation more closely, I discovered wording that implied I had actually applied for a more generic credit card (think Visa, Master, American Express or Discover card if nobody had ever heard of them). It's a GE Capital card (Ta Da!). So my card is accepted wherever GE Capital is accepted. Wait, what?! Where exactly? This is why I was asked for additional documentation during checkout. AppliancesConnection.com did what they'd be required to do if they were presented with a Visa/Master card that was in the just approved but not mailed yet non-card card state, so they were instructed to use the rather traditional protocol of requiring additional documentation ... except that method doesn't work online and it works even worse when the customer thinks they've just performed part of the check-out routine. Being a familiar, though infrequent experience, I would have understood what was going on if the GE Capital card was a Visa/Master/American Express/Discover Card. Perhaps there's a really good incentive (zero fees?) for landing in on the negative side of both a generic and a retail store-branded credit card, but I can't find one. Feel free to convince me.

This post was proof-read by my dog. Unfortunately, she died several years ago.

My dad, predictor of the ubiquity and often decline of technology

2011-07-10T16:33:00.004-04:00

This is a post dedicated to my father. He does not have a blog, nor does he read my blog, so it will go completely unnoticed. But I caught a trend the other day that troubled me.

My dad, without any direction from his geeky son, purchased an Android phone (of the HTC variety). Ironically, this was also at almost the exact time that I reluctantly* purchased an HTC Thunderbolt.

My father has owned the following devices. The one thing that they have in common is that he purchased them at the beginning of their decline (whether obvious or not at the time).

1) A Palm OS non-smartphone PDA by Handspring. He is an avid Franklin Planner user (to this day, I believe, and being a successful business owner and very organized, I'd say it's worked well for him). Palm's product didn't cut it as a replacement. US Robotics (the originator of the Palm Pilot), and later Palm had a rather successful run but it was clear that the tide was beginning to turn away from their line of electronic life organizers when Handspring Visor devices popped up.

2) An HP iPaq non-smartphone PDA, easily one of the last iPaq model's I'd ever seen that wasn't a smartphone (and I chuckle a little bit that Compaq/HP used to own the "i" moniker at one point). This, again, didn't cut it. I removed it from his office last year - he didn't know exactly what it was.

3) A Nextel Phone with Direct Connect. The sector that my father's business operates in depended greatly on Direct Connect. He complained as much as I did about call drops... I had owned one when Nextel was the only digital cellular carrier available in the area.

4) A DVD player with a VHS cassette player included. I included this one because it was at about the time Blockbuster started dropping it's stock of VHS tapes.

5) A functional, working digital mobile phone with a color screen, but effectively a "dumb phone". This was when RIM was starting to gain a lot of steam, but the iPhone hadn't been released.

6) Home phone service provided by someone other than the local phone company on something other than a POTS line (effectively, consumer land-line VoIP). This one comes with the caveat that they still own and make regular use of a fax machine (through no fault of their own ... an unfortunate amount of business is still done via Fax. Hopefully this gets fixed soon).

7) A Blackberry. Nobody knows what the future holds for RIM, but they're product is no iPhone or Android and my sense is that they're looking a lot like every other gadget company my father had purchased ... acting like nothing is wrong when all of the eyeballs are on something else.

8) And finally, the Android phone. He hasn't discovered, yet, the great things that it can do and was very impressed with it out of the box. It's what he was impressed with that the early adopter/geek in me was surprised about. "I have to slide my finger across the screen to wake it up. No more pocket dialing." This may seem naive, especially if you were an early iPhone/iPod touch owner, but the last version of Windows Mobile 6.5 didn't offer this feature and all but one device that I know of used a screen technology that made pocket dialing incredibly common. On the Blackberry platform, or any prior Dumb/Feature Phone, this is can still be a problem (it's sister is the "my face hung up the phone", and even the iPhone 4 has had issues with the proximity sensor).

Hopefully, dear reader (not plural for a reason), this was taken with the tongue-in-cheek tone that it was meant in. My father is not a reliably predictor of impending doom of gadgets, nor is he a Luddite when it comes to technology (we were the first of my friends that had a Car Phone [though, it always thought we were in Roam, which, being on a different continent, seemed like a bug that needed fixing]). Growing up, our house had two phone-lines for the BBS I hosted which ran a Telegard hack I wrote (and, with great coincidence completed just before 1995, when I had already been dorking around on Usenet for four years and had witnessed the early web as it made the transition from Gopher). He also helped me build my very first computer, a 486/25 with a SCSI hard drive.

* To clarify "reluctantly": I purchased the phone when my Samsung Omnia II (Windows Mobile 6.5) catastrophically failed (catastrophically is a required adjective, since the phone and the platform could easily have been defined as failed well before I purchased it). Being a former Windows Mobile platform developer/user, I see many of the pitfalls in Android that made WM 6+ and WP 6.5 devices positively suck. Specifically with the Thunderbolt: Awful battery life, a skinned interface, many pre-loaded carrier crapware apps that are difficult to remove (or impossible to remove without rooting the device), a semi-open application environment with poor adherence to UI guidelines at best, and malware being distributed directly at worst.

To be clear, I rather like my new phone. It's got some problems (reboots, strange handling of calendar invites, regular app crashes), but it's responsive and it's LTE.

How To: iPad 4.2.1 WiFi with a Bluetooth GPS (Warning, Jailbreak Required!) [Updated 2x]

2011-01-24T15:02:00.009-05:00

I landed a great deal on an iPad WiFi after Christmas due to return season, so I thought I'd pick one up. One thing that was particularly attractive was the idea of having a 9.2" GPS. Of course, I forgot the cold hard reality that the GPS is built into the 3G chip which is not included in the WiFi version. Oops!

I'll have none of that.

Jailbreaking Disclaimer

Before you read any further, repeat after me: "I will be voiding my warranty and may very well break my device by doing any of this." This information is provided AS IS. If you permanently break it, I'm not buying you a new one and nobody at Apple is going to be sympathetic.

And finally, "I will not be a despicable human being and use this jailbreak for the purposes of software piracy." It appears that jail breaking for the purpose of changing carriers (unlocking) and maybe even for the purpose of allowing unapproved software; i.e. breaking out of the walled garden that is The App Store, is probably legal. Though parts of that are being debated right now, so lets keep that in mind as we proceed. Check your local/national laws and make sure you're not breaking them

The Things you'll need

A Bluetooth GPS

Apple doesn't support GPS via Bluetooth. I'm not sure if this is because it adds a level of complexity that they expect the average user won't tolerate, or if it's because they'd prefer you not buy the WiFi version. In my case, I already own a MiFi so the idea of purchasing a data plan just for an iPad would have been wasteful.

Good Bluetooth GPS devices have a decent battery in them and can run unplugged for several hours. I purchased this one for a little over $35.00USD

Bluetooth GPS Software

We'll cover this after the jailbreak, because you can't install this until you've successfully booted jail-broken.

An iPad WiFi with 4.2.1 iOS

That's the version I'm covering because that's the version that was installed on my iPad (it was a returned unit after Christmas). If you have a later version, you're out of luck for now (I'll update when something is available).
If you're not sure what version you have, turn the device on, tap "Settings", tap "General", look for "Version". If it says 4.2.1, you're in good shape. If it's got something earlier, you may even be in better shape, but you'll need to find a different How To. I'm only covering 4.2.1.

The "ipsw" for 4.2.1

Fear not, you can get that directly from Apple, here.

greenpois0n

This is the only software as of this writing that fully jailbreaks the iPad. Download it and save it somewhere you'll remember. We'll be running it soon. Try here.
UPDATE: The iPhone Dev Team has their version now. Use it if you wish, but this how-to covers greenpois0n.

Jailbreaking iOS 4.2.1 for the iPad

So far, a fix to greenpois0n is pending (and if a fix isn't offered, a fix will be available via Cydia for this specific issue). You may want to stop here if you have purchased DRM encrusted iBooks.
UPDATE: If you use iBooks you'll want to take a look at this. Remember that disclaimer. You're now doing things that Apple would prefer you didn't.

A note about upgrading a Jailbroken Device

In short, don't ever apply "official" upgrades to your device from here on out. When iTunes tells you that there's a software update, ignore it (choose "Download Only"). The software update will most likely render your iPad either unjailbroken, or worse ... bricked and unusable. This is a pretty big problem. I'll be keeping mine up-to-date as I see new versions available and jailbroken, so check back here or at any of the hundreds of blogs that cover jailbreaking--especially The iPhone Dev Team, they're a much better resource than this. Always check the iPhone Dev Team or other sites to verify that the new firmware is able to be jailbroken, and that any software that requires jailbreaking to run is also compatible.

Don't Panic

Most of the time, most of the problems you'll encounter can be overcome. One of the big questions I had when I first embarked on Jailbreaking is "Will I have to reconfigure everything on this device again?". I have a bunch of Audiobooks, WiFi network keys and e-mail settings configured and the idea of redoing all of that was not a pleasant one. Other companies should take a page out of the Apple iTunes playbook. Your devices data is restored down to the last place you paused your Audiobook. Other than the addition of Cydia and the fact that you're jailbroken, you'd have no idea you just did what you did (though, do read the section about securing your device!)

So lets get started

Step 1 - Get a good backup

Plug your iPad into your windows or Mac box and make sure iTunes fires up, syncs and backs up your iPad. This is the key to getting everything back to the way you left it when we're done.

Step 2 - Fire up greenpois0n and follow the dead simple instructions

Yes, it is normal for your iPad to boot up with a bunch of text, just hang on. It takes a little bit of time to boot. Fear not, you're probably fine

Step 3 - Fix what's broken.

Maybe you won't have to do this. I did. Upon booting, if you do not have a Loader or Cydia icon, follow the nice video tutorial here

Securing your iPad (DO NOT SKIP THIS STEP)

So great, you're jailbroken. Unfortunately, you also have a device now that has an ID and password that a large chunk of the world already knows (and at least a few of those people are probably people you don't want accessing your device).
Tap Cydia and let it fully load. As of this writing, you'll get prompted that there are updates you need to install. Allow them to install and reboot your iPad.

Once rebooted, make sure your iPad is in portrait display mode (Cydia will look really banged up in landscape). Tap the section about changing the "Root" password. As of this writing "Mobile Terminal" does not work, but try following the instructions. If you can't launch Mobile Terminal, follow the "OpenSSH Access How-To" instructions to get OpenSSH running. Then connect according to those instructions. The Login ID is "root" password is "alpine", and this is the problem we're going to solve.

After connecting from PuTTY or terminal (putty for Windows, terminal for Mac) as instructed by Cydia, type "passwd". You'll be prompted for the old password ("alpine"), then the new password. Don't skimp here. SSH is something that is regularly targeted by hackers and script-kiddies. Go for 20 characters or more, with symbols and numbers weaved in. Don't bother memorizing it. Write it down on a piece of paper and store it somewhere useful to you. The guy robbing your house doesn't care about logging into your iPad remotely using SSH. And the guy who cares about logging into your iPad remotely isn't going to be rifling through your drawers, he's going to be using rainbow tables or brute forcing using the top passwords of the moment. Keep this password at home, not at work. Or write it on something that you can put in your wallet. If this makes you uncomfortable, try using a Password Safe (I'd recommend that anyway, consider protecting your online bank account as carefully as you protect the greenbacks in your wallet).

Installing Bluetooth GPS Support

So now you're jailbroken, secured and ready to go. First, you need software that will communicate with the GPS. As of this writing, there are a couple to choose from, but BTstack GPS 1.5 is the least expensive.
Hop into Cydia, tap "Search" and type in BTstack. If you're not sure your GPS will work with BTstack, install the free version, test it out, then buy the full version (the full version integrates the Bluetooth GPS location information into Apple's location APIs so that GPS based apps can see the data).

Hooking it all up

First, if you've never used a stand-alone GPS device, there's some things you need to understand.
1) Stand-alone GPS devices require a line of sight to the sky. They do not work indoors.
2) "Cold start" can take a full minute or more to get a GPS fix. Your cellphone doesn't take this long because it uses other tricks to figure out where you are, which gives your GPS device a boost in getting a fix.

That's just how it is. My Globalsat sits on my dash plugged into the cigarette lighter at all times, so it's always got a fix. This probably isn't a good idea to do if it's 1 degree outside and you have a weak car battery or don't drive your car every day (or if you live in an area where a bluetooth GPS device might be attractive to a thief).

First, if you haven't already, get your Bluetooth GPS on the charge (make sure to give it a good long charge the first time so as to improve the life of the internal battery).

Hold down the pairing button on the side for 5 seconds and tap the GPS icon on your iPad. If you're using the Globalsat from this post, you should see SB-369 show up in the list of devices (you may see some other devices, as well). Tap it. You'll be taken to a screen that shows the status of the GPS. When the screen changes and you see a "pin" over where you're standing, you're done.

Ok, so what about nav software?

I'm using Navigon's US+Canada edition. It's about $50, plus $20 for traffic. Personally, I think it's terrific. There may be better products out there, but when I was looking through many of them, I found that the Navigon product had the feature set I wanted.

Is there anything else I should know?

Glad you asked. I'm assuming you're not going to walk around with the Bluetooth GPS device in your pocket. Every time you get out of range of the bluetooth device, your iPad will disconnect from it. When you return to your car, or wherever your device is, you have to tap the GPS icon on your iPad and tap the SB-369 under recent devices. It should connect very quickly and if it was on your dash, it should already have a good fix.

See anything wrong with the post, or have experience with better/other bluetooth GPS devices/software? Post it in the comments.

This is why I AdBlock+ and You Should Too

2010-12-11T17:50:00.002-05:00

I occasionally get into arguments about the questionable ethics of blocking advertisements on web sites. Usually it's compared to piracy and the argument falls apart. The end-result is getting something for free and the publisher getting nothing, but that's where it ends.

One of the key difference is that (short of a few nasty DRM techniques some publishers insist on using), it's usually the pirates that have to worry about malware. Failing to block ads works the other way.

By failing to block advertisements, you're allowing a trusted third-party (who is usually using fourth-party) to serve you ... software. Software that you hope doesn't result in your computer becoming a zombie. That's trust that should only be given to the most savvy of third-party advertising networks, and the most savvy of publishers.

For a long time, if you didn't visit pr0n or warez sites, avoided P2P piracy or Usenet alt.binaries, and kept your AV up to date, you were unlikely to encounter trouble.

Such hasn't been the case for the last few years. Today's story of trusted third parties delivering malware comes from Google.

It's difficult to dwell on a bad day . . .

2010-09-25T22:24:00.005-04:00

A Joy Explosion. My daughter. Glory Anna Dippel.

Fix: MS10-049 and SSL problems connecting to https:// sites or Google Talk

2010-08-20T19:42:00.002-04:00

It's been a long time since I've run into a Microsoft patch that blew something up that I felt it warranted a quick poke and it also seems like the impact of the problem is incredibly limited (google searches on this as of today yielded only one useful link).

Problem

When connecting to Google Talk, or to some other SSL based sites using Internet Explorer or any browser that uses the operating system's SChannel libraries, the connection to the site fails.

Other things you might see

TLS v1.0 is turned off.
Wireshark shows a reset happening very shortly after the Client Hello for SSL.

The Fix

Use SCVS for TLS:
For non Windows 7 hosts, apply this fix (Reference)
Fire up RegEdit, navigate to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL
Create a new DWORD item called "UseScsvForTls" and set it equal to 1

I'm not sure if this was unique to our environment, but we discovered TLS 1.0 was disabled and the above fix didn't cover that. To enable TLS 1.0 in IE, select Tools|Internet Options|Advanced Tab. Scroll to the bottom and check the box that says TLS 1.0.

But why?

In at least some cases, a proxy server monitoring https traffic was interfering with the connection. If the proxy was bypassed, all was well with the world on Windows 7 and lower hosts. If the proxy was not bypassed, hosts failed without this registry key, and Windows 7 hosts failed at all times since the Windows 7 patch pays no attention to that registry key.
Obviously it's something related to the patch and the proxy server in my case, but I'm not sure what. I'll update this when I find out.

The importance of taking intent into account

2010-04-20T16:23:00.007-04:00

This story regarding the usage of GPS, speed cameras and license plate identification brought back a memory of an argument I had with a law professor several years ago.

The issue was (surprise) of intent. I was surprised to learn that in Michigan (at the time ... this may have changed), shop-lifting had to be intentional (or at least had an out for the absentminded). This protected the guy who forgot about the case of soda at the bottom of the cart while loading items on the belt while checking out.

I argued that intent was important based on a pre-WWW experience I had as a teenager. I had walked into a CVS, my girlfriend had purchased a few items and I had started reading the ingredient list on a pack of Certs (just what is Retsyn). Distracted, I walked out without paying for the breath-mints and we went to see a movie. I realized after the movie that I had not paid for the roll of Certs that I had half-eaten. Since I was now a common thief and wanted to rid myself of that personal blight, I went back to the drug-store, and paid up. All was well with the world. I got to keep up my streak of never shoplifting or stealing (to my knowledge) and the store got paid for the item I absentmindedly had forgotten to pay for.

This got into traffic law. Practically everyone thinks they're a good driver and yet everyone has had cause to be yelled at by another driver on the road entirely by accident. It's the single biggest reason that it's a bad idea to have something representing your church or political beliefs on your car, why inflict your mistakes on others?

I have no statistics to back it up, but I'm guessing that most of us have received a warning or citation for violating a speed limit, turning on red when there's a "no turn on red" sign, being the third car at the yellow light turning left or some other traffic law. Intent is not taken into account because you're *supposed to be paying attention* so as not to endanger the lives of other people.

Traffic/road laws where I'm from are strict and extensive. Enforcement, however, is limited by ratio of traffic patrol officers to ... well ... traffic. This is balanced by the idea that traffic enforcement officers take intent into account, if for no other reason than to be efficient with their own time.

On the right roads, there's no time to waste on the folks going 1-5 MPH over the limit, or the folks who cut a yellow light a little too close.

Take the human judgment aspect out of the picture, though, and those restrictive laws turn us all into "criminals by accident". Automation without human oversight and "Zero Tolerance" laws eliminate good judgment. (see fark.com or drudgereport.com for examples).

The child who brings a butter knife to school to better manage his turkey sandwich is being treated like the kid who brought a gun. The responsible driver who looks in his rear-view mirror, and assesses the road conditions before deciding whether or not to slam on the brakes at a yellow light is trained to choose between his life at the will of a cement truck driver or a ticket and higher insurance rates. A red light camera doesn't take that into account even if a judge might. Time and court costs are money.

As someone with a 60 mile round-trip trek for work, speed cameras are the worst. While attempting to safely drive you might focus less on the dashboard and more on the vehicles around you, especially if you're surrounded by someone who appears to be in more of a hurry than they should be. The idea of being hit with a ticket without the circumstances or "intent" being taken into account is scary to me.

But maybe I'm wrong?

Buy.com and Amazon.com, are they family now?

2010-03-12T17:32:00.020-05:00

Why do I save $53.10 buying from buy.com via amazon.com, rather than just buying directly from buy.com?

In my ever "deadline missed" project of getting my basement and home theater setup finished, as well as free up a rec room upstairs, I was looking for a wall mountable server/network equipment rack.
Through my favorite resource, I was able to find a 12U model that fit my needs precisely.

I have a pretty large gift card balance at buy.com (I am an affiliate as well, so take that how you want), so I thought I'd check to see if they offered the rack. They did.

Racks of the type I'm looking for are heavy, so the shipping was $53.10. I expected that.

Coincidentally, I also have a gift card balance at Amazon.com so I decided to check them out, knowing that they usually offer free shipping over a certain price.

Here's the result:

Buy.com sells via Amazon and I get free shipping! (The part number in the title omit's the "WALL", but it's there if you scroll down)

Buy.com's own web site costs me $53.10 more, and I can even use Amazon Checkout!

Here's the e-mail I sent to Buy.com via their customer service interface (I didn't bother calling, this basement project is not getting completed any time soon):

Please refer to these two links:
http://www.buy.com/prod/startech-com-12u-19-wall-mounted-server-rack-cabinet-19-12u/q/loc/101/203033503.html

and

http://www.amazon.com/Looking-Protect-Networking-Equipment-RK1219/dp/B000IE7ZE2

Identical product, and ironically, YOU are the ones selling it through Amazon. However, if I purchase it indirectly from you via Amazon, I don't have to pay $53 shipping. As I have a larger gift card balance with you, I'd prefer to buy it directly from you instead of indirectly from you via Amazon. Can you credit me the shipping or match your offer on their site?

I've gotten the auto-reply, and another one a day later indicating that they had to look into the issue and that it will take another 1-2 business days.

Based on my gift card balances, it would be less expensive to buy it from buy.com, but it would make far less sense financially. Buy.com sells everything and a lot of what they sell is reasonably priced -- I know I'll use that balance in the future.

I can only guess that this is an algorithmic failure. The listings on amazon are likely automatically posted by buy.com (it's possible that they're farmed out and done manually with so little oversight that something like this could slip through, or even maybe something in the middle, but my bet goes to automated listing). Decisions made by algorithms sometimes have funny outcomes.

/wonders how many people have to see this post before I no longer have an affiliate account with buy.com
//which I haven't made a penny on.

Update 3/16/2009 6:30 AM:
Response from Buy.com via Facebook (...and a fix)
Looks like they are both in sync now. I see free shipping on both Buy.com and Amazon.

Our site is real-time; our Amazon updates have a little delay. If we run out of a product from a distributor, we source it to another when available. Sometimes pricing and shipping changes. In this case, our primary distributor received more stock faster than the system could update.

MD: Sort of as I suspected. Supply chain automation algorithm failure, pretty common problem I suspect.

HOW-TO: Fix RDP from within RDP session or fixing the hang when trying to access a terminal server from an existing terminal services session

2009-12-07T18:28:00.005-05:00

So that title is a mouthful, my apologies, but this issue was so strange, I had a hard time wording it.

Yes, I know RDP means Remote Desktop Protocol, you're technically using Microsoft Terminal Services Client (mstsc.exe) a.k.a. the Remote Desktop Client (RDC) to connect, but it seems like folks throw around the acronym RDP as in "I'm going to RDP into that box", so frequently that I'm sticking with it for the moment.

Symptom

You are trying to connect to a desktop or server via a Windows XP desktop that you are already connected to via another Remote Desktop Session. The computer you are physically using is computer "A", running any operating system. Computer "B", the one in the middle, is a Windows XP SP2 or SP3 workstation running version 6.x or 7 of the Microsoft Terminal Services Client, which you are then using to connect to computer "C" via the Microsoft Terminal Services Client, which is any desktop or server operating system. Upon attempting to make this connection, you might see either a gray screen or a light blue screen that gets stuck somewhere in the process of trying to display the login prompt. You cannot close the Terminal Services client on computer "B", it is hung. You can kill it via Task Manager or Taskkill by stopping the mstsc.exe process.

Fix

Surprisingly simple and nonsensical. Click Start, choose Run on computer "B" (the "middle" computer) and type "mstsc", hit the down arrow next to "Options", choose "Local Resources", under the section "Local devices and resources", click the "More" button. Uncheck the "Smart cards" box. Using that same window, try to connect again and it should work.

Oddly with this one, on the computers we could get this to repeat, neither computer "A", "B" or "C" had a smart card reader or hardware on it. I'll post an update if I ever figure out what the real root cause was, but that was fascinating.

Also, in my attempts to find a solution to this problem, I found that Microsoft released Version 7 of the RDC for Windows XP and Vista (scroll to the bottom of the KB article for links to the download).

Solving the HD PVR 0x8007001f error in SageTV

2009-11-29T08:28:00.011-05:00

This saga has extended about a year now, but I have finally solved my HD-PVR problems and since it seems like a lot of folks have been hitting the wall on this one, I thought I'd put together how a year's worth of spare-time research resulted in a reliable HD PVR tuner.

There are only a few hard and fast "if it does this, do this" fixes, so lets start with those.

Also, understand that this information is provided AS IS, and though you're going to be doing things that may very well fix the problem, it could also make the problem significantly worse.

Sypmtom

0x8007001f error attempting to record anything. Device could not start in device manager and a yellow icon on top of the. Powering on/off doesn't fix it. Rebooting and powering on/off doesn't fix it. You have one of the first units from the days of the pre-order.

Resolution

You can take this a bit further and verify that it doesn't record properly in their scheduling app, but you'll probably find, like I did, that you need to RMA. Sorry. Don't worry about the revision that you get back if it's a D2, C3 or E1. They're all fine as long as they've come from RMA.

Observation: Power Adapters may have been faulty in early models

Hauppauge insists you return your power adapter with the unit. This isn't all that unusual, but I noticed a few things. On both the unit I purchased new at Microcenter and the replacement RMA unit, there was a sticker over the power adapter socket insisting that I use ONLY the one that came with the unit.
There were reports from folks of overheating and the like. I also noticed that the power adapter they sent me was rather different than the one I had with my previous version. Any number of perfectly reasonable explanations fit, including the possibility that they had a bad batch in one of the builds.

Observation: Revision numbers "in the wild" vary radically but don't matter entirely too much

A bit of background. I purchased a pre-order before this device was available and then didn't plug it in for a year after I had purchased it (my HTPC specs didn't fit with the device). When I got it working the first time, it was flaky before it outright failed regularly. I happened upon a sale on the HD PVR at Microcenter while perusing other items entirely by accident (I was surprised they even carried this device, being a rather overly geeky product, but ya gotta love Microcenter). So I purchased it after asking the sales associate if he could tell me when it arrived. Being that it arrived well after the release of the E1 revision and figuring mine was out of warranty anyway, I purchased it.
It worked, ultimately, as well as the one that I received after RMA, which is to say, very reliable after I applied the appropriate software fixes. Both were D2 units despite one being Refurbished and the other having been received by Microcenter less than a week prior to my purchase.
Their device FAQ does specifically note that the "D2, C3 or E1" are functionally equivalent. It doesn't say anything about C1 or C2 units (my original was a C2, it had no logo or printing on the front). There's a lot to be said about what isn't said sometimes...

Observation: Replacement units from RMA behave flaky, or your recording has been flaky with the 0x8007001f error

I was frustrated that both my new and RMA replacement unit were still giving me the 0x8007001f error after a few days of recording. While not failing outright, they were not stable.

My Solution: Here are the software steps I took to ultimately fix my rig

Preparation:
1) Backup your system partition (the one with the OS on it, hopefully you've isolated that out from your recording storage). We're about to start screwing things up so you may want to go back to where you were beforehand.
2) Download all of the latest Hauppauge drivers for each Hauppauge adapter you have.

Lets get down to business:
1) Remove all Hauppauge adapters except for one HD-PVR. Lets get one working and worry about the rest afterword.
2) Click Download HCW Clear on the link provided, run it, check all of the boxen.
3) Unplug your HD PVR from your computer and reboot.

If you're configured like me, SageTV will start, we have to kill it
1) Close the SageTV application (Alt+F4 once it's up).
2.a) If you're running SageTV as a service, stop the SageTV Service by hitting Win+R (or Start button, Run), and typing "SC stop sagetv" to stop the SageTV Service.
Alternate for Windows 7 / Vista with UAC enabled:
2.b) If you're running SageTV as a service, type Win+R (or Start Orb, Run), type Services.msc (You will be prompted for elevation), when the services snap-in opens up, find SageTV and click "Stop"

Some optional things, but might be necessary:
3) Update your BIOS to the latest version (you're PC or Motherboard manufacturer's web site will help here).
4) Download the latest chipset drivers.
If you know your exact chipset, get it from the manufacturer if it is offered (nVidia, Intel, VIA and others offer chipset drivers and some come with automatic update tools). This ensures that the "foundation" is in its best possible shape before we go up the chain to the USB controller and the HD PVR drivers.

SageTV appears to have made some changes in the settings for the HD PVR over time, but it doesn't appear that they apply these changes if you have already configured an HD PVR. So we're going to reset your SageTV installation to the time before you ever plugged this device in. You will lose all of your tuning and channel configurations as well, so keep that in mind as a later to do.

7) Find the SageTV folder off of the installation directory for SageTV (usually C:\Program Files\SageTV\SageTV) and open up the Sage.properties (you did make that backup I talked about earlier, right? No? Well, at least copy this file to a .bak or something useful.).
8) Page-down or search for the line beginning mmc/encoders/.
When you get there, look for a line that looks like this:

mmc/encoders/-431556906/video_capture_device_name=Hauppauge HD PVR Capture Device

The number "-431556906" might be any other number. This number is important.

9) Once you have found that line, page up to the first "mmc/encoders/-431556906" and remove every line that begins with that set of characters.

10) Plug in your HD PVR and install the latest drivers from the Hauppauge web site or if you're feeling daring, from here (the shspvr blog seems to be a day or two ahead of Hauppauge's own web site). Reboot, fire up SageTV, head to the Recording Sources config and add in your HD PVR using the settings you used before.

11) If you have other Hauppauge devices/tuners, Repeat steps 1 and 2.a or 2.b to stop SageTV.

This is no magic bullet, as I have done many other things to my system to make it ideal for handling the HD PVR. So what follows is a list of observations and ideas that might be worth a try if you are still experiencing problems.

Observation: HD PVR is touchy with some USB Controllers

Generally speaking, hardware manufacturers will cheat you on the things you would never think to ask. My motherboard, for instance, has a very flaky USB 2.0 controller. Sure, it had the USB logo and everything, but it used a chipset that has known issues and the issues existed prior to the HD PVR (I couldn't, for example, sync my Windows Mobile phone with that motherboard).

I don't think that the HD PVR is significantly more touchy with USB controllers, but if you think your existing USB controller is taxed, or trash, consider getting a dedicated one with an NEC chipset.
A PCI version is here, a PCI-Express 1x version is here. Hat tip to Fuzzy on the SageTV Forums for those links. I purchased the latter and it is excellent (it has an internal USB port which worked great for my external Wireless Keyboard and Mouse dongle).

Observation: Flakiness is less in 1080i than 720p or varieties of resolutions

If you can, configure your cable box or whatever device you're using with your HD PVR to 1080i. Eliminate all screen savers, if possible, and do whatever you can to ensure that the resolution is always 1080i. I have not received the 0x8007001f error as a result of resolution, but I have had recordings simply not start.

Observation: Tuning is always a pain if you have a screen saver on your cable box

I use the USB-UIRT for tuning and a piece of software called LM Remote Keymap. With AT&T U-VERSE service, and the Motorola VIP 1212 cable boxes, tuning can be very difficult to get reliable. Mis-tunes (tuning of wrong channels) often end up with you landing on channel 0, which is the ON DEMAND channel and seems to be entirely tricky to get away from. The Screen Saver/power save features cannot be disabled, so my tuning scheme is:
Press the TV button, wait 2 seconds (breaks out of ON DEMAND or menus), press the OK button, wait 4 seconds, begin tuning channel using four digits.
This means tuning takes quite a while, but it is robust. I have not had a mistune or a failure to break out of the screensaver yet. And it doesn't require the use of the Power button which can be a real problem, since you don't know the power state before hitting power.

Observation: SP/DIF or Analog Output, same result

I have read several posts about people finding that their tuners became suddenly much more reliable after switching to the stereo Analog outputs versus the optical DD 5.1 variety. I reluctantly tried this with my setup just to see if it improved things. It didn't. Your mileage may vary as I have seen my AV receiver fail to lock onto the digital signal due to a poorly made optical cable combined with a kink. I didn't see any improvement analog only on the latest drivers. Personally, I'd check the cable first.
Either way, I wouldn't consider the HD PVR to be working if it only worked reliably on analog audio. Might as toss it, buy a less complicated analog tuner and plug in via S-Video.

Observation: Tuning Delay (delay_to_wait_after_tuning)

I have seen many posts with many solutions surrounding tuning delay. I'm running reliably with no tuning delay configured.

The difficulty of "getting it right" with a device like this

The HD PVR is a wonderful device that has to cope with several assumptions. First is the flaky timing from various manufacturers STBs (with a driver that bricked folks with certain STBs). Then you have the usual problems with poor USB chipsets or over-taxed USB controllers/hubs. Top that with simply having to produce a device that can encode h.264 from a Y Pb Pr signal using a rather unproven chip (or is it officially proven to be not that great?) at a price point that hobbyists will accept for an audience that is getting smaller and smaller as HTPC users get frustrated and move to stand-alone solutions.

Ultimately, I expect most of these issues will get fixed in software and hardware revisions. At this time, I am unaware of any other device that is able to pull a 1080i stream with 5.1 audio from an STB. And this thing does a fantastic job once it's working.

To those who have given up hope, as I once had ... keep fussing. It took me a year (well, could have probably been solved with a few weeks of dedicated time, but hobby time is never dedicated). It can be made to work.

Got any other tips? Post them to the SageTV forums or in the comments.

Edit 3/13/2010: clarification on other devices capable of ripping a 1080i stream.
Updated instructions after performing this fix clean-room and added a few other helpful items

On the Subject of Internal E-Mail correspondence

2009-08-27T18:32:00.015-04:00

I'm not an expert here. In fact, I'm still learning quite a bit from an expert, my boss, who has a keen instinct on written communication. Here are some things I have picked up along the way.
These really only apply to e-mail destined within your company or folks that you work with. Customer or vendor correspondence should be handled differently.

Identify your intended tone

I (unconsciously) use an eleven point scale point scale from -5 to +5. Zero is neutral. If you intend your tone to be negative, consider whether or not it's a good idea to sleep before you write. If you wake up and still feel the need to pull the trigger, perhaps you should pick up the phone lest you end up here. Lose the passive-aggressive communication and have a real one-on-one chat. If it's done right: It won't be comfortable and it will affect both of your perspectives.

Always address the individuals you're writing to

If you're sending a message to one person, start it off with a simple first name and a comma. "Bob," not "Dear Bob" (is he really dear?).
If you're sending to a few people and CCing a few people, use the names of your "To"s (John/Tom,). If you're sending to a large group, don't skip the opening. "Greetings, Good Morning," even "Howdy," (with the right group of people), even "Hi!" is acceptable in the right context.
It comes down to tone, again.
Of course, use discretion. If you're dealing with a long thread that you have already contributed to before, it may actually be better to skip the greeting, lest you sound like you're targeting.

Use Good Subjects

At a minimum, include a subject. Secondly, put some thought into the subject. Thirdly, at least capitalize the first letter of the first word of your subject.
After you're done writing your e-mail re-read it. Then compare your subject to the content of your message. Rewrite it if you can't connect the two.

Check the subject on replies

Is the subject of the message you're replying to the 30th message? Is the original subject still remotely relevant to what you're replying to? Just because you're replying doesn't mean that you shouldn't have a useful, relevant subject. Modern e-mail clients have allowed us to neglect the subject on reply.
Stop the pattern of destruction. Change the subject when the Re:... doesn't make sense. As a bonus, use the well forgotten (was Re:...)
Idiotic scenario: your colleagues have been discussing how best to handle ordering buffalo style chicken wings for the annual "summer is officially over" lunch and 30 replies later everyone is settled on getting a variety of wings at spice levels from "vinegar" to "$#%@", but as the guy who had to replace the keyboards after the great buffalo wing debacle of 2003, you have something to add...
Original, and well worn subject:
Re: buffalo wings
Your reply 30 messages later:
Wet naps (was Re: buffalo wings)
Being an individual who handles a ridiculous amount of e-mail, sometimes one or two of those thirty messages get missed. A subject change with reference to the original topic helps to identify the branches of the tree and might result in your message being read.

Formality and signatures

I have no source to cite because this is my blog and it simply isn't important enough. Sorry!
The end of your message is very important. Much like the opening, it can change the tone of the entire note you've sent.
Again, focusing on internal communications only, remember that "you're all supposed to be on the same team". If you're asking for project statuses, or a request of any kind, it can come off as pushy. Assuming you're trying to get someone from outside of your particular sphere of influence to do something that will only benefit the project you're working on, consider toning down the formality.
My personal rule is that I don't have an automatically appended "sign-off" on my outgoing mail. After the "double dash", the remaining words are only glanced at by your recipient ... much in the way your recipient might glance at the floor or something less interesting. If the impression they receive is of a guy in a suit with his arms crossed in front of him, the tone of your message will be one "from authority" ... if so, I hope you have enough of that authority to prop up your written communication. If the picture is of a guy offering a hand to shake with a smile accompanying it, the tone of your message will be friendly.
People will exceed their normal boundaries to handle a request if it's delivered on friendly terms and common ground. "Take care! Thanks! Cheers!", rather than "Good day. Sincerely, Thank you," is the way to go.

That said...

The purpose of this isn't to encourage one to manipulate others. It's to help bridge the gap between verbal and written communication. If you're not being intentional about tone in your writing, you are probably being misunderstood.
I'm no verbal or psychological master (read my blog if you don't believe me). So take my advice with a grain of salt all ye three that have read this page in the last month :o).

Take care!
--
Matt

Rick's Tire and Wheel - Customer Service, Honesty and Mechanics can collide

2009-06-08T19:40:00.000-04:00

I'm going to unjustly attack an entire industry using a bunch of stereo-types. I'm warning you about this because I know I'm not right. My anger with this industry has much more to do with my ignorance. I am not a gear-head. I don't know when I'm being lied to by a mechanic. I don't know when I'm being told something needs replacing when it could just be repaired.

That said, I have never, ever, had a good experience with a mechanic. I have been wholesale taken advantage of on more than one occasion because my ignorance is pretty obvious (the last guy said I needed to have the Johnson Rod replaced)

I wrote a comment a while back about how you run into a free service or application every once in a while that I'd happily toss money (and have in both cases). The idea is that you've succeeded if people are begging for ways to pay you for what you're giving away.
On the customer service side, this equates to offering such good customer service that people are begging for ways to market your company.

The enemy of customer service is the traditional auto-mechanic (see my earlier disclaimer):
Leading up to this I had taken my car --- one which I had intended on replacing late summer --- to a smaller shop to repair my 4WD. They took it for a day, ruled out the most common cause of this particular car failing to return from 4WD, charged me fifty bucks for the diagnostic and told me to take it to the dealer.

The dealer fixed a problem with the computer (there are various advisories out for this model vehicle), and discovered I needed a transfer case motor (Johnson Rod what do I know?), charged me $65 for the diagnostic and said that it would cost me a thousand bucks to repair. They also told me that nobody could fix this for less than $700 because the part is $550 on its own. The truck is probably worth $4000 if I sold it today (who's buying anything?), so I ate the money, kept the receipt and figured I'd just live with the problem until I replaced it.

Two weeks ago, the other shoe fell. The truck wouldn't start without a jump and stalled at each stoplight. The problem went away the next day so I didn't think anything of it. "This is a car I'm replacing ... it works now ... so who cares."

Well, the verdict was in as of my last oil change, the battery is done. I stalled all the way there and back. So I took it to Rick's Tire and Wheel due to a very trusted recommendation. I thought it was worth a shot to see if I could avoid buying a new car for another Winter or two.

I came in with a laundry list:
Replace the battery and check it out to see if there are other problems.
Fix the 4WD.
The tires looked bad to me (what do I know), replace them.

My thinking was, if there were a bunch of problems, I'd pay for a lousy battery, buy a new car in August and put this one on Craigslist if the dealer didn't offer a good trade.

I received a phone call from Rick this afternoon. The 4WD is fixed, the battery is replaced. Price: about $350 (both the battery and the "nobody can do it for under $700 4WD repair")

Customer Service, above and beyond

"Wait on the tires until fall, they're fine". They seemed OK to me on wet and dry pavement but they didn't look anything like the spare. I couldn't tell if they were bad last winter because my truck is a rear-wheel drive 2-door SUV. Good tires or not, it drives very badly in the winter without the 4WD. The tires looked worn to me and I even told Rick my thoughts when I dropped the car off. He could have easily sold me four new tires (especially after the significant savings on the other repairs) but he didn't.

Despite selling me a total of zero tires when he could have sold four, I have an unused full sized spare on my truck (I've never had one of those with previous vehicles so I didn't think anything of it). He told me to buy three new tires in the fall, take the spare and use it as my fourth, then take the best of the four old tires and make it my spare.

So he not only didn't sell me four tires today, he sold me one less than he would have in the fall.

Oh, and I should mention that I gave Rick my estimate from the dealer. He knew how much they were going to charge me. He could have come in at $450, sold me four tires today and I would have probably taken the deal and left feeling OK about the transaction. I would have left with a running car with new tires, a new battery and a working 4WD for under a grand. It would have gotten me through the Winter.

Why it Matters

I worked retail as a teenager and we were always told that dissatisfied customers will tell about 15 people how lousy they were treated and 90% of them won't shop at the place again. Satisfied customers will tell far fewer people of the experience and will not have their brand loyalty affected very dramatically.

An experience like this breaks that rule. I posted this to my (barely traversed) blog, called a few people I know who need car repairs right now, and sent several e-mails. I'll be telling everyone I know about this experience.

Full Disclosure: I am not invested in this company nor are they paying me to give them an endorsement, nor do they know that I have given them one.

Rick's is located on 22-mile road between Ryan and Shelby (closer to Ryan) on the South Side if you're in the greater Detroit area, you read this blog and you need car repairs.

Google Matthew Dippel - An Exercise in Ego Surfing

2009-04-23T18:31:00.006-04:00

Or why, for some reason, my fascination with a couple of blog posts about nice staircase designs is my own doom.

I'm kidding, of course. Actually, no. I am looking into interesting staircase designs since I've had a dream of doing my basement up for the last few years and it's always included a replacement staircase.
But I digress . . . Today I had the pleasure of seeing my name put into a case study about a project I rather enjoyed last year.
Just for laughs I went to see if Google had indexed it yet (yes, I know that sounds totally psychotic, and perhaps it is).
I was surprised, for one, to find out that this curse of a last name is not only rather common but that there's another Matthew Dippel living in Grand Rapid's, Michigan.
In fact, it was interesting to find out that I share the namesake of an actor (ironic, as my sad little claim to fame was being paid as a seventh grade kid to do 42 performances of A Christmas Carol, and I'm guessing that this guy was much more successful than me), but also a choreographer (considering that my second biggest claim to fame as a child was being the lead in Godspell at my High School, where they had to write me out of all of the dancing because I was so lousy, this is particularly sad). There's also a guy in Australia that had a very instructional video on how to plug in your home computer (it was surreal finding another Matt Dippel that was a nerd)

Hey, I know it's considered bad form to ego-surf, but it's not a bad idea to do from time to time. Though I am not seeking employment, it's good to know that if I'm googled (tm), that ... at least thus far ... nobody named Matt Dippel has been arrested for mass murder, though apparently someone I share a name with is a bad trader on Game Trading Zone (a site I've never actually heard of until now).
Hopefully I don't snap in front of a piece of really lousy code or I fear for those who I share a name with.

About Successful Innovation

2009-04-19T21:04:00.005-04:00

I really don't want to be the guy that comments on other peoples' works. Frankly, I don't have the energy with all of the good content out there and I'm certainly not writing blog posts to make money (I'm laughing, really).

That said: Great article here on something I've been debating with a few individuals lately.

It points out one of the major difficulties of innovation. Most people believe "Good Enough" is. VHS created the home movie market despite competing Betamax technology that was superior. SVHS which was supposed to be the successor to VHS never took hold because the incremental innovation left people thinking ... VHS is "good enough".
The DVD standard took hold because of improved picture quality, 5.1 audio support and a radical change in format. Moving from magnetic tape to a digital disc format was what killed the audio cassette.

I'm actually surprised at how well Blu Ray has done thus far. As someone who is ... in every way ... a home theatre junkie, I still don't own a Blu-Ray player. The "incremental improvement" simply isn't enough for me. Most movies that I enjoy were recorded in formats that don't look great on DVD, why do I need to see those same movies in 1080P? And frankly, part of it is "principal", I hate AACS and BD+ and won't buy a player until a few years have gone by and they've given up trying to one-up the pirates. I'm not saying the studios will abandon anti-piracy efforts. I'm thinking they'll run into the wall. I expect that many early players will stop playing newer discs properly because of efforts they employ (unsuccessfully) to stop piracy and it'll be safe to buy a player that might play all of my legitimately purchased content.

Frankly, Blu-Ray doesn't offer much over DVD except on the latest titles. Being an audio guy (I love surround sound, I even own a ButtKicker for an immersive experience that only an infrasonic sub-woofer can deliver), I don't even really care about the uncompressed audio. DVD is "Good Enough" at the moment and I'm not shelling out the money for a new player for my HTPC, and a new Home Theatre receiver to decode audio formats I won't notice the difference with.

So it is about innovation. It's easy to take something that has been done and improve on it. Often with computer equipment (faster CPUs, faster GPUs, bigger hard drives), it's important. But to the average Joe, that bigger hard drive was only important when they discovered how to buy music on iTunes or rip their huge audio CD collection. The reason for the purchase of an upgraded computer came from one of two simple situations: "They're so cheep, might as well get rid of this bloated, bogged down PC that probably has a virus." or "This new PC can do things I (perceive) that I need that my current system cannot handle". Often new PCs were purchased immediately after they subscribed to broadband service. The old unit just couldn't handle the new experience.

So on innovation ... It seems the pattern is that incremental improvement will gain a small following ... revolution will gain a complete turnover. We've witnessed this with broadband plus improvements and reduction in prices of PCs, analog VHS magnetic tape to an all digital, reliable, slower degrading, convenient disc format plus commodity players, analog proprietary PBXes to VoIP on somewhat less proprietary all digital formats that include voice, and teleconferencing while keeping your phone calls on your data network eliminating long distance and international per minute charges.

Part of my job is writing software for unified communications, integrating communication into line of business applications and developing new applications that find ways to exploit the features that UC makes available. When I tell people the way my organization communicates and operates they look at me like I'm part of a Jetson's cartoon. We have an office that has headsets rather than phones. I don't know the phone number of anyone in my company because I just double-click their name when I want to talk to them. We communicate via IM more than e-mail or voice and when we make a call, we know if the other person is going to be interrupted and can decide to "flag" that person for notifications the next time they're free (think about making a call and rarely interrupting the person you're calling ...)
If we're meeting regarding a troubleshooting session, a document or a proposal, the click of a button enables immediate desktop sharing.
I can drag and drop an employee into a conference, they can choose to join it via their mobile phone or their headset or ignore me entirely. We communicate face to face despite being hundreds of miles apart (and it makes a huge difference).
I can click a button on my mobile phone and have my company connect me to a guy I work with in the UK without having to dial internationally.
A visitor can walk into our facility, type in their name and who they are coming to see using a touch screen interface and actually talk to the other employee who can "see" the visitor via a video channel, approve the visit, and have a temporary visitation badge printed that will also sign them out at the end of the day. If the employee is in a meeting, they can conduct the entire session via IM, or via their mobile phone.
I can do all of this with the same quality of experience if I'm in the office or at an access point at the coffee shop up the road.

I'm not hyping my company (this is my personal blog) nor am I going to talk up our vendor (this is my personal blog). But that's revolution. I don't know if our vendor is going to be the technology choice for the next several generations, but I know when you combine the cost of gasoline, the need for real efficiency in the workplace and the cost savings of eliminating legacy PBXes and POTS lines ... at least at the business level, this is where the world is headed. I don't see my dad buying into a solution like this quite yet, but who knows?

Anyone want to count how many different ways I wrote Bluray?

How to Fix Error: 26 - Error Locating Server/Instance Specified - Microsoft SQL Server

2009-03-07T13:19:00.005-05:00

One more for ya (btw, if anyone is wondering why I keep posting these notes, it's because I know I'll encounter it again in the future and will never remember what happened).

Symptom

Your web application gets an Error: 26 - Error Locating Server/Instance Specified. You know the database is up and working, and that the named instance is working. You've ruled out spelling errors (or the application has been up and running and is now suddenly returning this error).

Other factors

You've tried to connect via odbcad32.exe, but it worked fine, or it didn't work. Or on some computers it worked and on others it didn't.
You've connected to the database via SQL Management Studio from your development PC and it works.
You've also tested connecting with the limited rights ID that the web application uses. It worked or didn't work (or worked on some machines and not on others).
The instance you are connecting to is not the default instance, it's a named instance other than the default (In other words, your server is connected to using the "SqlServer\Instance" convention).
You've checked your database server and SQLBrowser is running (if not, that's your fix, start it up!)

The Fix

Take a look at the other factors since those are really the first steps to troubleshooting this sort of a problem. Take the web app out of the picture, check that services are running, etc.
Once you've gotten that far, cycle the SQLBrowser service and refresh your web app, it'll, most likely, start working again.

Why did that work?

SQLBrowser helps your client to find the named instance on the SQL Server. If you hunt around in your logs you may find an event that indicates that the SQLBrowser service has decided it's no longer going to respond to hosts because it encountered an error.
Folks who write services know that there's a "good way to handle errors" and a "bad way". We'll just say that leaving the service in a running state and having it give little to no indication that it's died is not the "good way". Cycling the SQL Browser service, if it is working, may result in other applications not being able to connect to the database for the seconds that it is unavailable though as you may have noticed in the Other Factors section, this isn't a guarantee. In my case, I was able to connect to all instances on a few PCs, including my development box despite the SQL Browser service being dead.

What's the actual cause

I'm not completely sure. In my case the issue was immediately preceded by a memory error on the server, so that was what went wrong. Your case may be different.
Happy Saturday!

A Tale of Three Cancellations

2009-03-05T21:12:00.000-05:00

Let me start off by saying that I'm not a fan of having to pick up the phone to cancel an account I can easily establish online. I understand why they do it ... it gives them an opportunity to try to talk you out of your decision.
I think it's a bad practice, personally, because I don't think I'm alone in saying that most of the time when I've decided to cancel an account, I had already subscribed to similar service from a competitor or my mind is fully made up that I'm not going back. I get even more flustered when a "loyalty specialist" offers me a special price to keep me from canceling. Where was that price while I was a loyal customer? Putting energy into making happy customers is better than putting energy into holding onto the ones who psychologically have already left.

Or maybe I don't know what I'm talking about . . .

The Bad: Dish Network

I can understand. I really can. They had a satellite fail on launch and have been shedding customers like crazy. They've lost any opportunity to get me back, though.
Step 1: Make the call, find the right menu option, get put on hold, talk to customer service.
Step 2: Get transferred to a "Loyalty Specialist" who asks you why you're leaving:
Me: "I have U-Verse installed at my house, now. They're cheaper than Dish + Cable and I can't get DSL due to my location"
Dish Guy: "Well, we have AT&T bundles also."
Me: "Yes, I researched them. They're DSL. I can't get DSL at my house due to my location and even if I could, I can't get 9/1.5 Mb service."
Dish Guy: "You know, we have the cheapest all digital pricing."
Note that I'm paying $104 on my bill and have a terrible looking monster attacking my roof
Me: "Not for the programming I have and not when you factor in bundling with high speed internet, so unless you can knock $50 off the bill..."
Yes, I'm an idiot
Things continued for a while like this because I chose to give them a way to get me back. U-Verse was already installed, and even if they had given me the $50 credit, I wouldn't have kept Dish. I don't know why I argued.
Lesson: Don't give excuses for leaving, and don't ask for bargains.
Now, mind you, this is Michigan. It's cold and had just snowed quite a bit. Dish network equipment is leased so it has to be returned. THANKFULLY, I didn't have to remove the whole satellite. Unfortunately, getting 3 LNBs removed from the satellite dish and removing the switch isn't all that much less work.
They give you 30 days from the date of shipping "Return Boxes" for you to return those items. Personally, this was the worst part. 30 days for the boxes/remotes is fine, but a little added flexibility for the LNB to keep people from sliding off the roof would have been nice.
I won't be doing satellite again without getting the return equipment requirements details, and ... in writing.

Even worse: XM Sirius Satellite Radio

Same game as Dish. In this case, I was canceling the service because I just wasn't using it. My wife and I switched cars and my new car didn't have satellite radio in it. She drives about 2-3 miles a week and only used it for one station to keep our child pacified in the car (a CD works just as well).
The problem wasn't with cancellation. They processed it instantly and that was that...

Then the phone calls started.

Some background: my home phone number is a Grand Central number that forwards calls to the cell phones my wife and I own.
I have telemarketer blocking setup (generally helps prevent autodialers from getting through to my phone). Twice per day, every day, the phone would ring from XM Radio, but when answered, their dialing system would hang up. After about three days of this, I called XM Radio and asked them why they were calling. The rep had no idea and put a note on my account to stop further calls.
Did they stop? ... nope ... So I setup Grand Central to dump them to voicemail. I received a call twice per day for 30 days. Then they stopped.
These guys are also guilty of offering the "come back to us" special price. I received an e-mail offering 4.99/month for three months if I paid for 6 months in advance. No thanks!

The Good: LifeLock

LifeLock tends to be a punching bag for a lot of people. I actually signed up for them because for a short time they had a no strings attached "Free Year of Service". I held onto it for a few months afterward, but recently found that my membership in certain other services and my homeowner's insurance covered everything they offered.
I called and was greeted by a very friendly woman on the phone. She asked why I was leaving, I explained I had comparable service already and that this was redundant... and that was it. No hold time, right to a person, right to cancellation and the only thing offered was "If I ever want to come back, just call any time day or night and they can reinstate the account". From zero to canceled in under 3 minutes.

FIX: Error 1324. The folder path 'Program Files' contains an invalid character.

2008-12-02T05:22:00.001-05:00

I just ran into this one yesterday evening while trying to install the service pack to Visual Studio 2008. After doing a lot of searching, I've discovered it's a pretty common problem encompassing not only VS2008, but .Net Framework upgrades and a few other patches.

Symptom

The Service Pack or update won't install. Upon examining the Log, you get a nonsensical message that a path with no invalid characters has invalid characters.

Other Factors

You're running the 64-bit version of Server 2008 or Windows Vista.

What's actually going on

Well, aside from the installer being completely b0rked, I'm not sure. It appears that at some point just prior to the error, the installer decides that your program files folder is located on a CD, DVD, Unmountable Partition or Virtual CD/DVD drive. To make matters better, it's looking in a helpful location called PFILES on this drive that it cannot write to.

How to fix it

It's almost difficult to write this without a quick facepalm. Microsoft actually documented part of this solution, but I'm going to expand on it a little more.
Step 1: Disable all virtual drives that you cannot write to. (DAEMON Tools, Virtual CD, all of them).
Step 2: This is documented in the KB article, but there's a few points to add. First, if you're installing the service pack or patch from your CD drive, now is a good time to copy it to your hard drive. Right Click "Computer" and choose "Manage", Under "Storage", select "Disk Management". Right click each CD/DVD drive and choose "Change Drive Letter and Paths". Write down the drive letter somewhere, then select the drive letter and click Remove (don't worry, you'll add them back in at the end).
Step 3: Unplug any external or internal drives that have raw or broken partitions, or format those partitions to make them valid. This one caught me as I had a data disaster earlier this year and have three drives that show up with no partition information and one that shows up with a partition with no data. I want to do some recovery on that when I have some time, so I elected not to format (or initialize) any of those drives.
Step 4: If you have any sort of card reader that shows drive letters for each of the card slots when there are no card installed, unplug it.
Step 5: Open up "Computer" and make sure that you have only drives that can be written to (the floppy, if you still have one, doesn't appear to pose a problem).
Step 6: Launch the installer again. Fixed.

Cleaning it all back up

Obviously, reboot if it's required and run the application you upgraded and make sure it works first.
Then plug in what you've unplugged.
Go back into Computer Management and right click each CD drive, select "Change Driver Letter and Paths", click "Add" and put the drive letter back that you removed earlier.

Debunking some Mac is Better Myths

2008-11-14T18:03:00.003-05:00

Fanboys Calm Down

Sorry, I always feel when I'm going to attack one of the sacred cows of the computing industry that I had better take -- at least -- that precaution.

So for the fanbois: The Playstation 3 will be the end of Sony electronics, the Wii is for Children and the fact that geriatrics like it isn't "a good thing". And the Xbox 360 is owned by the most evil corporation in the world. In addition, Google is Evil. Apple is too. And Microsoft writes fantastic software. There, now you're sufficiently distracted (or your head has exploded), you can happily ignore the rest of my post and be angry about one of the former statements (none of which are actually my opinion) :)

First, Why I care

I love tinkering with operating systems. I've messed with Mac OS X in the past (even on non-Apple hardware), and have been impressed.
At home, my wife runs Ubuntu, but due to her desire to use some media services that require either Windows or a Mac (read:DRM requirement), she was stuck. So I upgraded her (is it upgraded? Lateral move maybe?).

I am neither a Steve Jobs worshiper nor a Steve Ballmer hater. In fact, I don't generally look at technology as anything more than utilitarian. I like Open Source and Free Software, but ultimately, I'm going to pick the best solution. Frankly, I've seen very few articles or posts that do little more than drool all over Apple products, so I thought I'd provide some of the less than great parts.

Reboot, again, again, again...

A two-year old is less repetitive. Once considered the defining characteristic of Windows (and, though better, could still be improved a lot). Apple's Mac OS X 10.5.5 takes the cake here. Am I crazy or does almost everything you attempt to install require a reboot? Why does upgrading QuickTime, when it's not in use anywhere, require a reboot? Contrast this with Ubuntu, which despite having eighty or so components requiring updates every few weeks, rarely required a reboot to actually apply an update. Application or service restarts might have been required, but rarely did I have to reboot the whole box.

One thing that I have to mention, though, is rebooting a Mac is nothing like rebooting Windows or Ubuntu. It is by far the fastest OS from Power On to USABLE. By Usable, I mean, after logging in, the point at which the hard drive has stopped churning and you can actually click on something and have an application launch.

Hardware Support

Awful. By design. You run the version of Mac OS on the hardware provided by Apple, or you hack it up using the OSX86 Project, but run the risk of violating the Terms of Use.
Lets assume you've taken the high road and purchased a Mac. Peripheral support isn't great. For instance, I have a wonderful USB Wireless adapter that gets spectacular range (much better than anything built into any laptop I've ever owned). I was able to find a driver for it, but only from the chipset maker. It barely works, so I muddle by with the built in Wireless.

OS Bugs

You may be surprised to learn that despite the press reports to the contrary, Mac OS has bugs! Real bugs! And some of them are nasty.
I was spoiled by Ubuntu. On my hardware it worked out of the box. The applications rarely crashed and I had not once encountered a Kernel Panic.
Day one on the Mac involved copying data from a thumb drive. Insert the drive: Kernel Panic. Get the right file system driver for the drive, insert the drive, it doesn't mount. Insert any other USB device, it doesn't mount. Pull hair out, reboot, swear a little, try again, and it works.
Over several days of getting this thing up and ready for my wife, I've had file systems that have their permissions get corrupted for what seems like no reason at all, Bouncing icons that do nothing, random wireless and wired network disconnections and all sorts of silliness. It's pretty stable now, though the wireless performance could be much better.

The Dock

The dock is a great tool. But to me it feels like the Frequently Used Applications, or Quick Launch tool more than it feels like the Start Button. Perhaps it's my ignorance of the OS (which I'll certainly take blame for), but having to launch a Finder window aimed at Applications to see everything installed and run it isn't exactly ideal.

Apple Update

It works. It's slow. I'd equate it with Windows Update. The worst part is that it seems some applications include incremental updates (meaning, install the update, reboot, launch Apple Update, install the patch to the update, reboot, rinse, repeat). Ubuntu's update tool much nicer simply because managing and installing 80 updates at a time in a matter of seconds is pretty impressive.\

Software Installation

Perhaps its more intuitive and I just haven't caught on, but I don't "get" the process of mounting an image file to install software. Again, Ubuntu reigns supreme with apt-get and the GUI equivalent.

Eject, Eject

I don't think twice about removing a pen drive from Windows or Linux as long as the write light isn't on. In OS X, I'm given a nasty alert that I must "put away" the device. There's no Put Away option, but there is an eject option which brings me to point #2: Since when did having a hardware eject button on a dvd drive become 'evil'? I remember day's past of having to find the right sized paper clip in order to free a 3.5" floppy from an older mac. Stop it! I want my eject button back.

That said, it's a small list compared to annoyances I had when I first sat in front of a Linux box. And it's an even smaller list than the one that contains my many gripes about Vista.

There is plenty to love about OS X, but you can find plenty of good resources on that topic, I won't waste your time with another gushing piece about the OS. I also don't want to give the impression that I hate the OS. It's fantastic in many ways and a pleasure to use. It's also helped by the fact that the hardware is fantastic.

Inexpensive Laptop Nightmare

2008-11-09T16:56:00.004-05:00

I'm actually a big fan of buying the "mail-in rebate" black friday junk PCs, retail. Anymore, the "average" desktop is a commodity item made up of a bunch of other (name brand) commodity components. If you're going to buy retail, brand doesn't make a difference if you know how to replace parts in a computer. I've been doing it since I was 13, so it can't be that tough.

Friends gasp when I say I just purchased an E-Machines PC. Nevermind that I got an AMD Athlon X2, reasonable Seagate hard drive, reasonable LG dvd burner and a total lack of discreet graphics. Oh wait, mind that. Because that's what every one of them on the shelf had too. Even the big brands have their "retail only" models that are a combination of the most inexpensive components available. As far as I'm concerned, I wouldn't consider buying a desktop at retail without the obligatory $200 instant savings and a $100-$300 rebate bringing the total package down to $300 including a monitor and printer that I'll sell on eBay.

That same logic applied when I needed to replace my wife's notebook PC. I like to have reasonable specs, but brand is unimportant. I've learned a new lesson: on a notebook, brand appears to matter. I purchased an Acer laptop for her at a cost of around $600. It's a centrino duo (a good processor at the time), had bluetooth, 802.11g, 80G hard drive -- essentially good specs. It's worked very well for the last few years until a month ago.
You see, you can depend on the built in parts most of the time. The commodity PC supplier isn't making those parts. Unlike a desktop, however, there are some very important parts that are provided by the vendor and without them functioning properly ... well, you're stuck.
It started with the "Z" key. I've been around long enough to know how to fix a keyboard that's gone bad. On a desktop, it's easy, you buy a new one. On a laptop, you take the whole thing apart, and take some 91% alcohol solution to the contacts. Not terrible, but certainly not something an average shopper at CompUSA is going to figure out.
Unfortunately, the problem has started spreading. It's on to the "X" key and sometimes the "C" key. Perhaps my beautiful bride dripped some liquid onto the keyboard and the result has been corrosion, or maybe it was just something simple like oils from the tip of her fingers? It's tough to say. Nobody remembers using a keyboard with wet hands.
Having fixed a myriad of old Xbox gaming systems with nothing but a soldering iron, steady hands and a nice magnifying glass, I'm not uncomfortable with the idea of repairing the keyboard, but it's going to kill a Saturday and again, what about the average end-user ... it's going in the trash most likely. A perfectly good laptop will be thrown away because a manufacturer skimped on providing a good keyboard.

So, my personal plug. My other laptops are Lenovo and short of a couple of models (the T30 and T43) that didn't live up to the Thinkpad name, the T60, 61 and now 5xx series are well built devices. Even Dell has stepped up and started producing more durable laptops. You see, in my ignorance by applying the same selection methodologies to Desktops as I did my wife's laptop I neglected two huge differences. The laptop will encounter more hazardous conditions. The desktop's "throw away" parts are not "throw away" on a laptop and might mean throwing away the whole laptop if they fail.

Just as a note, I've already found a replacement keyboard for this acer laptop. It's going to set me back $100. The manufacturer won't support it and why should they ...? $100 for a laptop that only cost $600 isn't going to happen. I'll post an update when I've fixed this one and (hopefully) include some instructions on how to do the repair yourself.

Another note: I don't own Apple products. I've seen their laptops, but I also don't trust the objectivity of an average apple user. Their stuff looks nice, OS X also looks great, but having not used them, I left them out. Sorry!

Pretend Tweet! Stuff I worked on is in Information Week!

2008-11-07T19:35:00.003-05:00

You can imagine why I'm not on Twitter. If I kept up with that like I keep up with this blog, you'd have a message from 6 months ago saying "Going to work..."

Actually, I have nothing of substance to say as is the case with most Tweets and blog posts (especially on Blogger), but I do have one thing I wanted to keep someplace so I don't lose the link (Bookmarks are no good when you have a few thousand of them).
I've been working for a few months on a project centered around OCS 2007, and a little while ago we went production. Today I received an e-mail about an article centered around my company's implementation of Unified Communications. The Kiosk on Page #2 is the software I've been focused on.
Speaking personally and not on behalf of my company (hey, I'm a little biased, so figure that into what you're reading) ... I've seen the benefits of Unified Communication first hand ... I think Information Week did a great job of covering the technology and I believe it is the logical next step in the way the world interacts.
It's not just about slapping IM, Voice, Video and presence together in some silly client. It's about taking your line of business applications and adding conversation to them. I won't waste your time with my ideas, just read the article.

Maybe in a year I'll read this and wonder what I was thinking, but maybe I'll be chatting with myself via voice and video while writing or supporting software. Wait...no...that'd be strange.

This is not a political blog . . .

2008-09-11T05:39:00.005-04:00

Obama, McCain, Palin, Biden, Paul, Nader, the guy, the other guy?

I don't have a set topic to my blog because I write for me. But this is not a political blog. I read my share of tech blogs, or sites that aggregate tech blogs and I'm growing increasingly tired of the hysteria surrounding this election.

That you vote and who you vote for is important, and I will be standing in line at my precinct and voting along with you. But if all you have to offer your pet cause is filling in a circle on your ballot, you have failed.

The President of the United States has very little ability to bring about positive change, no matter which party is elected or what kind of change you want.
Short of "Ending The War", something you and I have little control over unless we're actually fighting in it, everything else is within your power to impact.

Are you concerned about...

...the homeless? Give time to a shelter, or a soup kitchen. Take a look in your closet, remove some nice clothes that you don't wear often, specifically those that would serve as "interview" clothes and check to see if a city near you has a program or charity that focuses on finding jobs for the homeless. Often they need nice clothes for interviews. Take the rest, bag it and give it to the Salvation Army or another suitable charity.

...the Economy or Forclosures? You probably have someone in your neighborhood who could use a helping hand. You have two hands, what are you doing with them? In your own life, you could start paying off your house, eliminating your debt, and shoring up your savings. Quit borrowing the American dream and start paying for it.

...Abortion (as in, the prevention of), Racial Equality, the proliferation of Drugs, Gun Violence? Get involved in a group that mentors young girls and boys, perhaps in an area that is less comfortable to drive through than the place you live. Children who are kept "off the streets" are less likely to get pregnant young, do drugs, and will succeed in education. Don't give me the exceptions, there's always exceptions, that's an excuse. If you attend church, get involved. If your church doesn't have a place for you to get involved, find another church.

...Uganda? Invisible Children.

...Africa and the Third World? Try Kiva. Do this with your children.

...Healthcare? Donate to cancer research. Sign up for the Bone Marrow Registry. Donate Blood. Look around your city and find a private, non-profit hospital or healthcare related charity. Give.
Volunteer at a local Free Clinic. Even if you're not a doctor, pharmacist, or Dentist, sometimes they need building improvements, receptionists or just people to sit and help manage the flow of traffic.

...Supporting the Troops? There are many charities that give care packages, plane tickets, phone cards and other things to support the troops.
Don't forget about their families. If you know someone who has a son or daughter serving, thank them. Talk to them. They are all proud of their sons and/or daughters, but don't think they're not scared out of their minds.
There are charities supporting the families of the fallen, supporting the families of the deployed, supporting the injured and disabled and supporting the currently deployed. Give.

...Public Schools? Get involved in your PTA, if your school doesn't have one, inquire about starting one. Contact your son or daughter's teachers. Attend school board meetings. Private or home school your kids.

...Violent Video Games? Take a look at your own family's collection, then start asking your kids parents. Inform them of what you consider acceptable, if they give you trouble, don't allow your child to spend time over there. You'll find that most parents are surprised at the question but will react reasonably a lot of the time.

...Violence or Objectionable material on Television? Monitor or Turn It Off. There are stations I don't allow into my house, and I've never found any reason to write letters to the FCC.

...High Taxes and Government Evils? Hire a tax professional to do your taxes. A tax pro can find more legal deductions than you. That's less money going to what you perceive as Government Evil. Non-political charitable donations are often tax deductible, so get extra bang for your buck by giving to a charity that will spend your money precisely the way you want them to.

...Freedom of Speech and DRM? (This has to be a political one), support the EFF. They're fighting the cause on several legal fronts. Stop buying music that is utilizes DRM. Stop running operating systems that are riddled with DRM. Help others do the same. Don't patronize sites that stream or allow the purchase of movies that employ DRM.

...Religious Freedom? Start serving at your church, mosque, synagogue, or wherever you are affiliated in a place that focuses on building people up, not tearing things down. Serve abroad in countries that lack religious freedoms. Private or Home school your kids if you're unhappy with religious teaching at public schools.

...The Environment, energy independence, making our enemies rich through Oil, or the high price of gas? When you buy your next car, replace your SUV with something fuel efficient, replace your appliances with more efficient models. Turn your computer off sometimes, or let it hibernate, and buy a more efficient power supply/CPU. Install CFL or LED lighting. Be less wasteful: fix things that are broken instead of replacing them (yes, that's a contradiction to my previous statement, but it all depends on what you're trying to save). Shop second hand, and donate that which you are replacing. Use Freecycle. Install a geo-thermal system, or wind/solar power if those are options for you.

OK, I'm finished . . .

So go out and vote for the guy or the other guy. And when the guy or the other guy wins, be happy or upset about it, but don't waste your time protesting, rioting or writing blog posts complaining or praising the winner. Quit talking about what they're doing or not doing and go do it yourself.

I know there are about 40 visits a day to this blog, and I have no idea how many of them actually read anything, but please note that I will remove any comment that mentions or alludes to any political candidate for any office (though, I won't be doing that all day today). I don't care to spread anyone's propaganda. And considering I have not one blog post with one comment, I don't expect it to be a lot of work :o). And this post was not meant to give you the impression that your humble author does any or all of these things.

If, on the other hand, you have other non-political ways to make the world a better place, such as a charity or activity that's worth time and money, by all means share it.

Before you return that item . . .

2008-09-08T16:29:00.002-04:00

I purchase a ridiculous amount of computer and Consumer Electronics products online. Because many of the products I purchase are niche items, I often have no choice but to go online for them, and where I can purchase retail, I can almost always find it cheaper online. Quite often I can find refurbs or Open Box versions of what I'm looking for at a pretty huge savings.

Of course, retail has one grand advantage. If the item is DOA, you can drive it back to the store and get a new one. And let me tell you, with Open Box items the DOA rate is very high.

Why not just return the broken product to the retailer?

Most CE or Computer vendors require you to foot the return shipping bill (those that don't factor it into the price of the product and therefore are places I don't shop). The argument is that a Brick and Mortar retailer won't refund the fuel cost that it took you to drive the product back, so they don't refund the shipping cost for you to get the product to them.
On that same logic, some online retailers won't even refund the shipping you paid to receive the dead item, leaving you only to tax and product price paid.

So this brings us to last Friday when my trusty 24" Acer monitor just died. After fussing with it for a bit, I was able to get it to *mostly* work in Analog mode. So I headed over to newegg and purchased a replacement. I wanted a specific NEC monitor, and I found that they had an Open Box version for $200 less than the Retail version. I figured, I have all of the cables, and I can download the manual, so if it's missing accessories (as is very common with OB items), it won't matter.

Unfortunately, it arrived with all of its parts and pieces, manuals, and everything and most of it was sealed except for the DVI-D and Power cable. Open Box items are almost always customer returns, and I've found that when you get one with "everything" in nearly perfect condition that generally means there was a defect with the product. When I looked in the box, I saw the story of a guy plugging in his fancy new NEC monitor, discovering that the thing didn't work at all, and returning it immediately.
The story was probably right. As I powered the monitor up on DVI, I discovered there was no picture. On Analog I got a picture with one bright stuck green pixel in the center of the screen and a corresponding bright yellow vertical line. Nuts.

Shipping this item back to NewEgg.com was going to cost about $30 and I'd be only given a cash refund. I needed a monitor, not a refund.

I don't want to be unfair to NewEgg. I knew the rules going in. NewEgg goes out of their way, even sending you an ominous warning prior to checkout that stops just short of saying "Open Box Items will Kill You!" So, sure, they could have tested the Open Box item a little bit, but it was clearly let the buyer beware.

If you aren't returning it because you "didn't like it", call the manufacturer first

I don't know why this wasn't obvious to me. I've found that even the worst manufacturers go to greater lengths for products that are within that "Return Window".
They do this for a few reasons. Preventing a return keeps your retailer happy. Items that have high return rates stop being stocked. They don't want their product to get that reputation. But the biggest reason is that when you return something, they aren't given the opportunity to keep you as a customer. Chances are good that you'll buy a competitors product because of your bad experience and you will be less inclined to purchase that brand in the future. So they've lost a sale, they've got an angry retailer and they may have lost a customer for life.

As such, NEC has a simple policy: if you purchased it within the last 30 days, they foot the return bill.
NEC also goes a step further that I wish all manufacturers did. They will ship you the replacement before receiving the damaged unit as long as you have a major credit card that can take a hold transaction (as in, not a Debit type Credit Card). This practice is referred to as Cross Shipping and for some reason it's incredibly rare.
I was pleased to find out that at least as of today, they allow Cross Shipping for the entire warranty period (the language is not written in the warranty itself).
Lastly, they ship your replacement FedEx 2-day by default. I'll admit that I've never seen that before. I have paid for expedited warranty service, some companies even over charge for the expedited shipping.

Having now worked with their warranty department, I can tell you that despite receiving a broken item, I will be more likely to purchase an NEC product in the future. Sure, the product was defective and that wasn't a good situation. But there's no way to produce 100% perfect products. How they handle things when everything goes wrong is very important.

Adding it all up: Return vs. Repair

So lets add up what this would have cost me if I had returned the product to NewEgg:
- $30 at least to ship it to them DHL Ground Insured. They'd get it in 5 business days. I'd receive my refund somewhere near the receipt time, so lets say 7 business days total.
- Assuming I don't have the money on hand to purchase the replacement immediately (I do, but it's not something I *want* to do), I'm looking at another 5-7 business days to receive the replacement and another $30 to get it shipped.
I saved $200 by purchasing an Open Box item, and because I got a dead one, I'm going to assume that all of the Open Box items of that model are probably similarly dead because I have no way of knowing and I'm not going to risk it. I'm probably also not going to buy an NEC because I have no way of knowing if this display has quality problems. Maybe a large batch was dead from the manufacturer? I'm not going to risk it. A competitive product of nearly identical specs doesn't exist, so I'm going to buy a better one for about a hundred more than the full Retail price of the NEC.
Total Cost: $360, and specifically $160 more than I would have paid for the display if I had simply bought the non-Retail version in the first place. And lets not forget the 2-3 weeks twiddling my thumbs waiting for the replacement.

The alternative "Repair route", cost me only in time. I dropped the broken item off, and will receive the replacement in two days. I had to spend about 20 minutes on the phone with tech support (probably less), while they had me run through the basic troubleshooting. I still save the $200 by buying Open Box.
Total cost: 0 (or -$200 if you consider that I got to keep the savings from the Open Box). And 2 days waiting for my replacement.

And then there's the added benefits

Most large vendors don't give you back what you've sent in. Sometimes the place your "Warranty Repaired" item is sent from and the place you sent your item in for warranty repair aren't even in the same state.
They usually do salvage the broken item for parts and repair the component that is damaged, but that item gets sent back to someone else with a new serial number or sold as Refurbished.
As a result, the thing that you receive from them has gone through a reasonable Q/A process probably very recently.
In 20+ years of taking advantage of warranties on products, I have never received a second DOA. I'm not saying it can't happen, but it hasn't happened to me.
And if the unit really does have a high failure rate, you may end up getting an upgrade. It may be the same model, but it might be a newer revision of that model that doesn't have the problems of the original.

I'm also not saying that all manufacturers are going to be as reasonable as NEC was. One of the reasons I picked them was because they still had a 3-year warranty on this display. I also chose a display that is targeted at professional, not home users. This often guarantees better customer service.

Nine things I want in a mobile phone.

2008-08-21T04:15:00.003-04:00

This is a response to a story I read today at A VC. It got me thinking about convergence, which ... I'll say is a great idea ... but sits as a "Nice To Have" for me, rather than a Need To Have.

When the phone receives a call, it should instantly begin ringing

My current phone, the Verizon XV6800 waits about 5 seconds. Unfortunately, I have a 1.5 ring forward from my desk and that extra five seconds means I lose the call.

If I miss a phone call, upon turning my phone's screen on I should be greeted with a large, ominous notification

Generally, that call will need to be returned and when you hide that information within a silly looking icon at the top (that is *always* there no matter what), I'm going to ignore it.

A battery life that allows for me to have an average day's worth of conversations and usage without having to plug it in, even once, until it's time for bed.

My old phone would go days. My new one is lucky to make it to 7:00 PM.

A form factor that is smaller than a bar of Dial Soap

Point #1: If a phone is so bulky that after two days the silly little belt clip actually breaks in half, chances are it's time to redesign the phone.
Point #2: Since the phone is so big, it looks a little strange sitting in my pocket. "Is that a bar of Dial Soap in your pocket or are you just happy to ..." Those are not funny jokes, guys.
The reason my phone is so large is because of the last point. The extended battery is mandatory if you are expecting to actually use the phone.

Reception that is spectacular

Part of this can be blamed on The Network, but a lot of blame lies with the phone. My old phone worked in several parts of my home that my new phone starts to drop calls in.

The ability to use it, comfortably, without a Blue Tooth Headset

Really, I'm carrying enough around already. Holding a bar of soap up to my ear both looks silly and is very uncomfortable.

The ability to predict when an incoming or outgoing call is going to be sent to my BT Headset or my Handset, and a dead simple way to switch between them if it goes to the wrong place

Why must the Pseudo-Random Number Generator built into my phone be the single biggest predictor of whether or not the call is going to go to my headset? Generally speaking, if it is, in fact, connected to a BT Headset ... shouldn't the phone default to sending everything to it? And if it doesn't, why do I have to go through a menu to find the Turn Handsfree On/Off? Try managing that while driving 70 MPH down a Michigan Freeway and then consider why there are so many accidents on I-696.

Names for Caller ID should appear on my cell phone regardless of whether or not I have them in my contact list

I have never understood why my silly home phone gets the last, first name or company name but my state of the art cell phone running over a The Network doesn't. I get many calls from people I don't necessarily have listed in my contact list. The information is clearly built into the Caller ID system. Is it so hard to come up with a standard way to deliver it to a "Smart Phone"?

The software and features of my phone should never trump the single biggest reason I use my phone: To talk to people ... on the phone

That's why I bought a cell phone, instead of a two-way. That's why I own an iPod, instead of using my phone to play mp3 files at the cost of precious battery life. That's why I have a removable GPS system for my car, to provide me navigation where I need it most ... in my car.
I'll admit, it's nice having e-mail, and Instant Messaging. When I absolutely have to, browsing the web at a resolution of 320x240 is possible, though never enjoyable.
But if my phone can't make phone calls and receive phone calls, I don't want it.

Conclusion

I'll admit that most of my gripes are centered around the current, miserable, state of Windows Mobile 6 and the XV6800, which is ... positively ... the worst designed handset ever made. I've played with an iPhone, and it is impressive, but I'm tied to Verizon and WinMo due to things outside of my control.
As I said with the last gripe, I think that most of what is wrong with today's "Smart Phones" is that they're a little too "Smart" and a little too little "Phone".
While it'd be nice to have location aware software, twitter clients, a Bike Odometer (WTHeck?), Shazam (again...), can we agree that the first priority should be making the phone work?

Review: Blue Jeans Cable BJC Series-1 HDMI Cables

2008-07-23T18:41:00.002-04:00

As I've stated a few times previously, I have a bit of a hobby in Home Theater PCs. That said, I'm not a trained engineer in the performance of cables, so this is a non-technical review and should be considered as such before deciding to make a purchasing decision based on its content.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with HDMI, or more importantly, why HDMI sucks, you might want to visit those two links before you go buy your spanking new HDTV and Blu-Ray player (or cable/satellite set-top).

It's worth setting up a bit of history before I get into my very simplistic review. For those of you who want to just take my word for it, go to Blue Jeans Cable and buy one right now. While your at it, swear off buying AV cables from any retail establishment ever again.

HDMI sucks (did I say that already? Yes, I think I did). It's basically DVI-D with a Digital Audio Signal jammed into the same casing and crippled by HDCP (a form of Copy Protection). It's a nasty method for delivering digital video/audio, but it's the only choice at this point. As a result, companies like Monster cable make a cottage industry out of selling ridiculously priced HDMI cables that don't seem to offer any real performance benefit.

To make matters worse, the Best Buys and Circuit Cities of the world don't offer much of an alternative to those purchasing a new television.

"Save $100 on your next HDTV, and use the $100 to buy one lousy cable."

I didn't fall for it. I knew HDMI carried a digital signal, and the general rule is "the signal gets there or it doesn't". So I went to Wal*Mart and plopped down $30 dollars for a suitable HDMI cable that claimed to meet the rigorous specifications set by the HDMI folks themselves. Unfortunately, as those above links will tell you more than my summary would, there are no rigorous specifications.

None-the-less, the cable worked fine for a long time. Then I got Satellite and tried to get my satellite receiver to work at 1080p via HDMI -- No Dice. So I went component 1080i.

Then I happened upon this story through a few blogs I follow. The CEO, a former lawyer, stood up to a large corporate Monster. A small bit of research later and it turned out this company has some pretty unique products in what is otherwise the boring world of cables.

So onto the review

Despite being from a part of the world where "Buy American" is the same as saying "Save Your Neighbor's Job", I will not sacrifice quality in order to buy a product that's made domestically (I do, incidentally, own two American cars, but I digress...).

This company assembles their cables in the United States. That's nice. It's great to know that you can buy a high quality product that is at least mostly US made.

The first thing you notice when shopping for the BJC Series-1 is that despite the fact that it is Blue Jeans Cable's best cable, at 6' it doesn't cost $100. It costs $30. Lets consider this for a moment: A cable that is quality enough to take a lousy HDMI signal 100 feet costs as much at the 6' size as the lousy Wal*Mart cable I purchased after buying my first HDMI capable HDTV.

The first thing you notice when opening the box containing your newly purchased BJC Series-1 is that they're thick and rigid. You can feel the shielding surrounding the cable and it takes a bit of working it through to get it to not lift your very light DVD player right off the place it is sitting.

So how did it perform? Well, as I said early, the signal either gets there or it doesn't, right (I know, not precisely, but lets pretend)? Well, it got there. It worked flawlessly with my Satellite receiver at 1080p. It worked flawlessly with my new DVD player at every up-converted resolution it supported. But there was even one bigger surprise: I had an old LG LDA-511 DVD player that I positioned in such a way as to guarantee an overheat. As a result, it stopped working via HDMI (hence, the *new* DVD player). It worked flawlessly using the BJC Series-1 at all resolutions. I scratched my head, plugged in the Wal*Mart cable, and it failed.

Pros

Inexpensive.
High Quality. These guys have more than a few good reviews about their products (here's one for their component cables, also rather inexpensive considering the quality).
Up to 100-feet runs (read the site before plunking down the cash, though).
Assembled in the US.
Even if you decided not to buy the cable from them, their web site has an incredible wealth of information on HDMI. If you read it over, you'll be a better informed consumer.
Shipping was Priority Mail, reasonable and processed very quickly.

Cons

Paypal is the only accepted form of payment.
The web site could use a designer (though, look who's talking from his template blog).

Conclusion

You'll note that the two cons I listed had nothing to do with the cable, and that's the important part. If you want a great quality HDMI cable, buy from them. Ignore the site design, clearly these guys are good at one thing: Making a great product. Who cares if the site is a little raw?

You'll end up with the quality of cable that Monster -- at $100 -- would have you believe you've just purchased at a price that the limp Wal*Mart HDMI cable can't beat. What more would you like?

Just a note of clarification. I own a couple of Monster cables from several years ago (before they were so expensive). They work fine. I can't imagine someone making a case that they're worth as much as they cost at the retail outlets that they are sold. In addition, this post was not paid for or solicited by bluejeanscable.com. This blog is a hobby, and I don't do paid posts for anyone. I also have no relation to anybody who works for BJC. This review is my own opinion and as I stated in the opening, I am not an engineer in this field, just a hobbiest. Yell at me in the comments.

Amazon S3 7/20/2008: EPIC FAIL

2008-07-20T19:18:00.006-04:00

I have a feeling this is one that will go down in history and will spark a few debates about the reliability of Services in the Cloud.

S3 - Great Idea, but was Amazon really the right provider?

This is the question that will probably be asked over and over again for the next several weeks.

When talking "shop talk" with co-workers, I have always come out on the side of Amazon. It's something I like to call Technology Recycling. They know how to keep their mammoth site up, and they have requirements that vastly eclipse most providers, so why not use their knowledge of hosting large amounts of data as a profit center?

The Fall Out of a Huge Outage

Working for a telecom, I'm very familiar with concepts surrounding disaster recovery and the incredible effort that goes into handling disasters. You can't avoid that hurricane that might blow through your office in Texas, or the earthquake in California, or (heaven forbid) an act of war that may interrupt services.

The cause is unimportant (until the problem is solved), the response is critical. Amazon's response has been pretty thorough communication, but through that communication, it's not exactly clear that they were ever prepared for this.

When this is over, Amazon will have learned something that enterprise telecommunications carriers know all too well: When you have an outage, you have no idea how much the impact of that outage will be. Enterprise carriers offer services to companies who turn around and use those services to sell services of their own. Sometimes the end-customer is several companies deep.

Case in point, this one hit me personally today. I sell products on eBay and use a provider called Auctiva. I'm not a power seller, I just don't like to throw things away that someone might be able to use, so I list old items on eBay or Craigslist, and if they don't sell, I put them on freecycle (or Craigslist "free" section). If nobody wants it, I put it to the curb.

I sell less than I give away (and throw away very little), but the amount that I sell is enough that I had to get a tax ID number here in Michigan.

One of the golden rules of small time sellers is closing your auctions on Sunday at 9:00 PM EST. It's probably half folk-lore about eager west coast buyers winding their Sundays down with a browsing of eBay, but I (and many others) stick to it.

Today is Sunday and I have an item that was getting great bidding right up until early this morning when all of my Auctiva hosted images vanished (lets face it, broken links to images don't exactly instill faith in the seller). Until now, I didn't know I was using Amazon's S3 service and at this point I'm strongly regretting using Auctiva's service. It's going to cost me about $30 (it's within $30 of my researched target price and nobody is bidding despite lots of activity last night).

It's not the end of the world for me, but I'm going to guess that it could spell some serious consequences for others. This is made especially more painful since the company who made the Fail Wail famous is among its victims.

Twitter and SmugMug have no excuses. They relied solely on the services of one individual company with no real back-up back plan.

Granted, Twitter and SmugMug aren't life and death services (well, most of the time).

The obvious loser here is S3. If they were hoping to attract the attention of companies who provide services that require five nine's reliability, they've already lost.

So, while I still think that S3 was a great idea from Amazon, it's beginning to feel like Sears Dental: While it's convenient to have oral surgery while the folks downstairs are replacing the tires on your truck, there are some things you want to leave to companies who "specialize", rather than diversify.

How To: Fail at Usability

2008-07-05T18:46:00.007-04:00

My job often surrounds writing usable and accessible systems. For the purpose of this post, I'm going to cover usability, and precisely how current web (and other) systems FAIL. My apologies for the rant-y writin-g.

FAIL #1: Make the User Conform - Credit Card Entry

The user won't conform and there's often no reason to make them. Case in point, if you're asking for a credit card number, what is so difficult about removing spaces, dashes or dots? Mastercard/Visa split their numbers into groupings of four out of convenience. Your web application makes them lump the entire number into a field without that grouping. This causes endlessly wasted bandwidth and frustration due to typo's. It's easier to re-read a number when it appears in the field the same way it appears in print.
Stop it: A simple regular expression can remove non-digit characters.
And while you're at it, if the user wants to type MM/YY instead of MMYY, or MMYYYY, or MM/YYYY, let them. This is also very easily fixed by careful parsing.

FAIL #2: Make the User Conform - Phone Number Entry

In the US, there are several phone standards. nnn-nnn-nnnn, 1-nnn-nnn-nnnn (nnn) nnn-nnnn. Again, this comes down to parsing. If you want the phone number in a certain format, format it on the backend. How much code is wasted trapping non-conforming phone numbers that would be better spent just reformatting what was given to you?

FAIL #3: Do Not Reply to This Message or You Will Be Ignored

Quite possibly the simplest thing to do is to hit the reply button to an e-mail. If you are sending an e-mail from an automated system, why do you insist on sending it from an address that is unmonitored?
Think about this in another communications medium. Imagine someone called your home and said "My name is Jenny and I'm calling to tell you that your order has arrived at our store. If you have any questions, please call me at 555-1234, because I'm calling you from a phone that does not have a speaker so I won't hear you screaming at me."

FAIL #4: Store Pickup, but Don't Forget To Bring These 9 Things

Firstly, I am not a fan of the "buy it online and pick it up in the store". If I want to pick it up, I'll go to the store and buy it, but there are a small number of situations where I have used this service:
1) It's cheaper online and I'd rather not hassle with the price adjustment in-store,
2) It's Wal*Mart, who does it "right". They allow you to buy many items online that the store normally doesn't carry, and do a "ship to store" (for free). This is great for large/heavy items in cases where an individual store may not carry that item and ordering it online will result in awful shipping costs.
3) You have a big store and I don't want to fish through seventeen aisles to find the item I'm looking to buy.
In all cases, though, why must I bring printed copies of the e-mail that was sent, my photo ID, the credit card I used to purchase the item and the clothing I was wearing at the time of purchase?
I work with databases, so I understand the power. If I bring in my photo ID ... and nothing else ... you should be able to look up my order and send me on my way with product in hand.
Sure, it's great to have that e-mail with a barcode on it that can be "scanned", but have a backup plan if I show up without the proper documentation.

FAIL #5: You're item will be ready to pick up sometime next year.

When your web site says something is in stock and available for order online and in-store pick-up, it should be ready right away.
Lets dig deeper. Obviously, the customer who is invoking this method of purchase is in a hurry and doesn't want to wait for shipping. A certain big-box home improvement store seems to think that if I place the order after 3:00 PM, I'll be happy with picking that order up the next day. Or if that item just happens to not actually *be* in stock, I'll be OK with waiting a couple of weeks while the store orders it and has it shipped in.

FAIL #6: Just use the coupon code HYTIDSOKFNSKDSA at check out to receive 10% off

Coupon codes are generally pointless. They don't stop smart people who don't subscribe to your mailing list from using them (see RetailMeNot, DealCatcher, Dealspl.us, and many other sites), and they're horribly inconvenient.
Use clickable links that embed the code. It's simple and doesn't involve having to retype some silly word combination that the marketing guys thought was cute.

FAIL #7: SKIP THIS INTRO

Think about why you needed that button on your homepage. If I went there, I probably "skipped your web site".

FAIL #8: Hi! I'm the Web Site! Are your ears bleeding yet?

Your product is very cool, but your web site should never, ever, just start singing. I like music. But if I didn't hit play and my browser unexpectedly starts making very loud noise emit from speakers I rarely use, I'm going to click the "x" before I've had a chance to see what you had to say about your very cool product.

FAIL #9: America Only: City, State and ZIP Code please

City and State can be derived from the ZIP code, and if you look the city and state up using various services, you'll get more accurate mailing labels. Don't make me type more than I have to. I recently sent a letter and completely omitted the city and state to see how the post office would handle such a mind boggling scenario. Surprise, the letter arrived at its destination. That five digit code is very versatile.
If you do resort to asking for all three, make sure you're using all three to your advantage. If your user puts in 90210 for the ZIP code, and Kansas City, Nebraska for the city and state, perhaps you should throw a friendly message up since that package is going to end up in a different universe if you ship it using that information.

My Review of the SageTV STX-HD100 Media Extender and SageTV

2008-06-11T17:03:00.014-04:00

Those of you who know me in Real Life(tm), know that I'm not one of those folks that pretends they don't own a television. I enjoy it, and I believe it can surpass movies in its ability to tell a detailed story.

Television dramas can be broken up into segments that span a long period of time. That's not to say that a lot of it is trash. That's also not to say that I'm above watching trash. But there are gems: Lost, Jericho, (beats, bears and) Battlestar Galactica, The Office (US and UK). These shows define why television is more than a boob tube, even though ... often ... it's a boob tube.

For a bit of background, I'm a US satellite subscriber and former Cable TV customer. I started using DVRs the day after the Tivo Series 2 became available. I purchased one because it was available at a steep discount as a refurb. Now I wouldn't watch television without a DVR. Owning a DVR means you get to watch precisely what you want to watch when you want to watch it. It's a time saver, or at least a way to waste less time watching bad television because that's all that happens to be on when you wish to watch television.
The Tivo was short lived. I didn't like paying a monthly service charge and I really didn't like the fact that I couldn't hack-upgrade my Series 2 easily.
Previous posts will indicate that SageTV isn't my first experience with DVR software.

SageTV

SageTV is a spectacular piece of software. But making it work spectacularly requires a bit of ... work. I wouldn't hand this over to my mother to get up and running. While it's not nearly as complicated to get working as MythTV (in its current state), it's a daunting task to get it to do "everything".

The Good Parts

SageTV will play back ... well ... whatever your processor is able to handle. This includes the obvious container formats like avi, and mpeg. But also some of the more obscure like mp4, avchd, Matroska (mkv), mpeg TS. You may have to install the appropriate codec or splitter in Windows, but provided you've done so, the files play back flawlessly.
SageTV can be controlled -- entirely -- by remote control. It works well on a range of televisions, from my very old 23" analog set, to my rather new 50" Full HD set. The interface is incredibly flexible, regardless of how inflexible your particular display technology happens to be.
SageTV includes Place Shifting capability (think Sling Box). And for a very small fee, you can purchase a placeshifter license. The SageTV PlaceShifter works beautifully.
It has the only High Definition Media Extender I've ever seen, and it's got the only Media Extender I've ever used that didn't come with a bunch of "It will work, as long as your media is encoded in precisely <insert format that your media is *not* encoded in> this format".
Though not Open Source or Free, there is no recurring cost other than major version software upgrades. The guide data subscription is included in the price of the application.

The Other Good Things (Provided you have customized SageTV)

I mentioned earlier that it's not easy to setup. This isn't entirely true. It is actually very easy to setup, provided you are happy with the default SageTV Interface. You won't be. The default SageTV interface is among the worst Media PC interfaces I've ever worked with.
All is not lost, however, as there is an add-on called Sage TV Media Center that fills in almost all of the gaps you can imagine. The interface is clean and refined. Screen real-estate is efficiently used and the ability to customize it is incredible.
Put bluntly, I wouldn't run SageTV were it not for SageMC.

The Not-so-good Things

With any system that is this customizable, you run into usability problems. Any system that is this customizable is always going to be geared toward the geekier amongst us. I had previously used, and enjoyed using, BeyondTV. It was a great system but lacked the ability to play many file formats, and as of writing does not support recording from the HD-PVR, which in my circumstances is a must.
Getting the device to work with one of the best remotes ever made, the Snapstream Firefly isn't trivial unless you have a license for Girder or have donated to and installed LM Remote Keymap (the latter being the most inexpensive choice).
Similarly, getting SageTV to work properly with the USB-UIRT, also requires LM Remote Keymap.

The downright bad

Television shows that are recorded are stored in "Recordings" and include all of the metadata that you'd expect from a Tivo, or other standalone DVR. All of the rest of your videos live in this black hole called Imported Videos. Assuming you have a large library of videos that were recorded with other software (BeyondTV), or downloaded (legally, of course), the Imported Videos might as well include a card catalog organized using the Dewey Decimal system.
The best analogy I can find is that it's basically Windows Explorer in a 10-foot interface.
As bad as this is, there are ways around it. The current best way is to use the SageTV Web Interface plug-in and provide the metadata yourself. Obviously, if you have several hundred videos from a different source (BeyondTV, or otherwise downloaded), you're going to be spending a lot of time manually typing metadata.
I whipped up a quick application (soon to be released here), that scours the web for the metadata and turns the "imported videos" into actual Recordings.
All of that said, based on how I have SageTV configured, including add-ons and my custom software, I give it an 8 out of 10.

The SageTV Media Extender

I was very skeptical the day that the SageTV STX-HD100 was released. I've worked with various media extenders and streamers (in fact, I own an Xbox 360, so I technically have another brand of Media Extender in my house). They're all lousy. Often they require you to run a client on a PC that re-encodes video (poorly) for playback on the streamer. Sometimes they have little to no user interface. And they almost always come with serious restrictions on what they will and will not play back.
Even the Xbox 360 -- with all of its processing power -- will refuse to decode and playback various file formats. Get into the obscure like Matroska (MKV) and you can simply forget it. It won't work.
I was intrigued when I discovered the list of formats that SageTV committed to supporting.
As of the latest beta firmware, you can play back video/audio files in these container formats:
Matroxka (MKV), AVI, ASF, MPEG1/2 (MPG), QuickTime (MOV, MP4), OGG, Windows Media Video (WMV), Good old DVD (VOB), and AVCHD.
You can play back audio files encoded in:
AAC, MPEG Audio, Vorbis (it appears only in the ogg container, which would be normal and it supports stereo only), AC3 (Dolby Digital is decoded if you're plugged in via the Stereo outputs, otherwise it does a pass-thru via the optical output), Windows Media Audio (WMA), Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC), DTS (It does not decode DTS but it will pass-through to optical).
You can play back video files encoded in:
MPEG-1 and 2 (at all DVD supported bitrates and several well above DVD), MPEG-4.2 ASP@L5, H.264 (AVC) up to 1080p, WMV9/VC-1 up to 1080p.
Video/Audio Output:
It's important to note that though this device is a High Definition media extender, it doesn't necessarily have to be. Despite the fact that the majority of my library is High Definition, I have one of my HD Extenders plugged into an analog television via the S-Video port. It does a brilliant job of displaying HD content on SD displays.
In fact, on the back of the HD Extender you'll find an optical port, two RCA stereo ports, an S-Video port, a composite video port, the typical "HD" component video ports, and an HDMI port, which means it'll plug in to just about any television made after 1990.
The versatility of this device is it's biggest feature. It'll play back almost everything, and it'll play it back to almost any kind of television.
The second biggest feature is one that you won't notice -- it's silent. Despite its ability to crunch through some of the more processor intensive video codecs, it's a small, silent and nice looking device.

The Two Drawbacks

It's somewhat expensive at $200 (more if you don't already own a SageTV license). Considering all of its capabilities, I'm happy to pay $200, rather than $100 or $150 for a device that has a slew of limitations.
No WiFi. Likely this is to prevent play-back limitations. 802.11G may not be able to handle the larger HD videos and "N" (in it's never-going-to-be-released state) is still "Draft".
You can always bridge if you need wireless. Though I'd hazard a guess that if you're really working with SageTV, you probably aren't uncomfortable with running Cat-5e cable into yet another room in your house.

The Verdict

SageTV is great, but tricky to get working "just right".
The SageTV STX-HD100 Extender is the gold standard. There is nothing on the market today that works this well and if you're serious about your home theater rig, you'll be happy to have a wallet that's $200 lighter.

Much thanks to Brent Evans of Geek Tonic fame for convincing me to buy one of these. He's got his own review of the STX-HD100 that puts mine to shame.

Konica Minolta Magicolor 2300 DL and Vista x64

2008-05-06T19:00:00.006-04:00

Site Note: It's been a while since I've updated anything here. My apologies. Our baby boy is 6 months old, so getting a few moments to write is becoming less common these days.

I had to share this one, since I spent several hours today fighting with my printer. I place the blame squarely with me. My expectation was that any driver for any prior version of Windows would never work with a later version of Windows. It's a fair assumption, but it was wrong.

The backstory: I migrated from XP to Vista, then after discovering how terribly slow the Vista world really was, I bumped up my RAM to 6 GB. Of course, this meant having to move to Vista x64, otherwise my system would only have 3GB of (yes, 3GB, not 4GB due to the intricacies of Memory Addressing).

Here's the scenario:
You have a Konica Minolta Magicolor 2300DL with Controller Firmware 2.85S (you can find the firmware revision by printing the Configuration page using the kludgey menu system on the front panel of your printer). In addition, you're using the Ethernet interface, rather than USB or Parallel.
In a desire to torture yourself, you have installed Vista x64 on a workstation that you wish to print using your 2300DL.

Here's the solution:
The Windows XP x64/Windows Server 2003 driver is compatible with Vista 64-bit.
Download the XP x64 driver and follow the directions for installing the 32-bit Vista driver up to the point where they tell you to go to the advanced settings and use LPR printing mode. Skip LPR, use Raw, and make sure the port is 9100.
When it's time to select a driver, use "Have Disk" and point the "wizard" in the direction of the folder that you extracted the XP x64 driver to and you're set.

A note about the 2300DL printer and the liklihood that this will work . . .
I've noticed that most people did what I did. When this model went EOL in 2004 (or was it 2005?), OfficeMax and others started selling it (with rebate) for around $400.00. A quick calculation indicated that the cost of the consumables was about $400.00. And a quick look at competing products (at the time) had the next color laser-like printer around nearly double the price.
The printer had its drawbacks: It shipped with 64MB of memory and used enough electricity to cause the lights in your house to blink when it ran. But it had its huge plusses: It used typical PC133 memory, of which any geek has a box full of. It had an Ethernet adapter. And it was a 400.00 Color Laser Printer!!
If you purchased this printer when I did, your firmware is probably alreadya at 2.85S

If you purchased it earlier, there's a chance that your firmware isn't even able to be updated.

Before you embark on updating the firmware, do yourself a favor, call Tech Support at 1-877-778-2687. Despite the fact that this printer is discontinued and mine is well out of warranty, it took 4 minutes to reach a representative who spoke perfect English and I was never once asked to pay a "one-time $45 dollar support fee". You don't see that too often.

Verizon: It's not all about the network anymore.

2007-10-06T08:43:00.000-04:00

There's been a lot of stories going around about Verizon Wireless's anti-consumer practices of locking out handset features and several rants about their yet-to-be-released Smartphones being a year behind the competition.

I am a Verizon Wireless customer. I've been using a horrible Motorola E815 phone for the last couple of years. My next phone will be a Windows Mobile or similar device.

I've been with Verizon since the Air Touch days. I had one of their top calling plans and as a result was given a "perk" of the 3-ring 611 call (this essentially means when dialing *611, the phone was answered in three rings by a human being who ... most of the time ... could solve whatever question I had). Air Touch had customer service, good network coverage in my area and after their purchase by Verizon, coverage only got better. And lets face it, if your coverage is good, you're not calling Customer Service often. Verizon put their effort into a digital network and gave several of its customers free digital phones (with a contractual commitment). They were on the bleeding edge both in terms of network quality and the devices they offered their customers.

I would laugh at my friends who chose Nextel, or Ameritech (Cingular now AT&T) and T-Mobile, but they'd rarely hear my laughs because the it was far less often that their phones actually had a signal. Verizon was more costly, but if you wanted to actually use your phone, you went with Verizon in my area.

Late last year, my mother decided to switch to T-Mobile. I did everything in my power to stop her, as I remembered how poor T-Mobile signals were around here. Several months after purchasing her new phone I was surprised to find out that she has had no coverage issues. Another friend of mine decided on the iPhone (booming voice is heard as he says the words, as the expectation is that everyone around him is secretly envious). AT&T Wireless prior to Cingular had nearly the worst signal quality in my area (and I'm told much of the rest of the country). They were terrible, but since purchasing ... well ... everyone, AT&T's network is great here as well.

In fact, other than "Hello? ... can you hear me? I can hear you. You're breaking up. %$^#!" Sprint/Nextel , I don't know of anyone experiencing problems more or less problems than anyone else with their wireless service. And I'll assume that Sprint/Nextel figures their problems out in the short-term as well.

So if you're not going to lose a customer because of call quality . . . why would you lose a customer?

Locked Down Devices and Lack of Selection

Back to my E815 for a moment. I picked this phone up because the Motorola web site indicated it supported Bluetooth OBEX (transfer of pictures/ringtons to/from your PC without using "The Network"), and Bluetooth Dial-up Networking (allowing you to connect a PDA, laptop or other device to the internet without a USB wire). Of course, I knew that Verizon would kill these features in the production model, but a couple of well documented hacks existed for the early firmware versions. Mind you, a firmware upgrade will break Dial-up, so I'm running the initial release revision.
The phone itself, sucks. I bought it for those two features because I have a PDA, and a nice wireless headset, so I don't have to touch it very often. This is good, since setting it down on a table sideways causes it to shut off.

While they attempt to lock out features on the PDA phones, it is far less common since the devices cost more and run an OS that they don't direct control over. Of course, Apple changes the rules, or maybe Apple customers are simple-folk. I never imagined I'd see a day when someone would be willing to pay $500 (or $300 for that matter) for a phone that they'd have to break into in order to install software ... and still have to sign a contract.

It's an unfortunate trend, and I really, sincerely hope Apple loses because if they win, we all lose. The expectation that you'd be able to install software to your PDA/Smartphone or that you'd have most of the features "left alone" will be something that we will not be taking for granted. The good news is that it appears everyone but Verizon has discovered the only way to differentiate themselves from the Executive Jewelry that is the iPhone is to offer devices that are bleeding edge and flexible.

Even the Exclusive iPhone Vendor of the United States of America AT&T (EiVUSAT&T for short) seems to have gotten it with the "Tilt". This product is about two generations ahead of the VX6800. And now T-Mobile is releasing some new WM Smartphones (though, admit it, their selection has been lacking). Sprint, with their "lack of a network" network has also been ahead of the curve on new devices compared with Verizon.

Verizon has the fastest data network (for now), but they have equivalent phone coverage in my area. They've put the cart before the horse, though, because the phones they're releasing can't crunch the web pages at the speed they're downloaded. And what's the point of all that speed if the phone is running a crippled OS, or one that is so outdated that it doesn't let me actually take advantage of "the network".

Bottom line: In my area, the network doesn't matter. And my contract's up. TTYL Verizon Wireless.

A word about Seagate RMAs

2007-10-06T06:28:00.000-04:00

After having been through quite an episode with some bad hardware causing other bad hardware, I had the pleasure of dealing with the Seagate RMA department for warranty repair.
My drives were about 2 years old and the process was incredibly simple. Put in a serial number, a model number, box it up and go.

The only cost was shipping it to them. They paid for the return shipping of my refurbished drive and shipped on the day my bad drive was received.

While filling out the online warranty repair forms, I received a notice asking if I'd prefer to upgrade my drive instead. The upgrade cost was $99.00 for a 500GB Refurbished SATA2 drive. The price was the same for both my 400GB and 300GB drive, both of which were also SATA2. Interestingly, at the time of the replacement, NewEgg was selling brand new OEM 500GB SATA2 drives for the same price, so this upgrade was less an upgrade and more of an upsell.
I had a dead 400GB from another PC, along with a 300 and 400GB drive from the HTPC and in both cases the 400GB drives were replaced with 500GB drives despite my not choosing to spend $99.00 on an upgrade. Your results may vary.

For those of you wondering if it's worth the $20 bucks for a cross ship, I can't tell you. I chose the standard replacement method. I shipped three drives USPS Priority, they arrived at the Texas facility within 3 business days and replacements were sent back UPS Ground, arriving back at my house (which is a max of 5 days depending on where you live).
Not a bad turn around. They're either really quick at identifying bad drives, or they don't bother checking. Considering they probably sell a lot of $99.00 upgrades, I'm guessing they don't put a lot of time into validating whether or not the drive they received is actually dead, though there's really no point in returning a good drive since the warranty on the refurbs is 90 days or the end of your warranty period on the drive you sent in, whichever is later.

Buy a Good Power Supply

2007-09-25T23:31:00.000-04:00

If you'd like to read the story, feel free. It's not a real page turner, so I'll provide my advice first.

Buy a good power supply. Cheep power supplies are not reliable and can be very tough to troubleshoot unless you are fortunate enough to own a PSU tester that actually works (mine didn't).
Don't blow dust and heat directly at the bottom of your computer (i.e. make sure you don't have a heating vent in a place that directly affects the running temperature of your PC)
When you have many components fail simultaneously, at least suspect the PSU. In my case, since I knew the Motherboard and Processor were dead I figured they could have been the reason that the drives failed.
If you have a suitable, working spare PSU, try that and see if your problems don't go away.
Buy Seagate or Maxtor hard drives. Their RMA process is incredible. They have my business for the rest of my computing days.

And here's the story . . .
I have an HTPC running Snapstream Media's Beyond TV. It's a fantastic application that is easy to get up and running on Windows. Though it's not free and there are certainly alternatives, it doesn't come with subscription fees and due to various historical reasons I won't get into in this post, I have been using it for a while and switching to MythTV would be painful as a result.

So, the rig is:
High-end Asus Motherboard running a Pentium D 850 over-clocked to 3.6GHz.
(2) 300GB Seagate Hard Drives
(1) 400GB Seagate Hard Drive
Creative Labs Soudblaster Audigy 2ZS
Hauppauge PVR-150MCE
Plextor Mpeg-4 USB TV Capture Device
AMD/ATI X1800XT PCIe Video (I'm outputting 1080i to a Sony HDTV)
Tons of custom software I've written to do various tasks that are shortcomings of BeyondTV.
Antec 500W power supply (not great, but need 500W to overclock this chip with what this box has installed)
1G of DDR2 memory to able to run at speed necessary for overclocking this chip.

About a month ago, the box started rebooting at random. As this machine is very overclocked, I assume that I'm having heat issues. The first step was to put everything back to spec. Yes, I know "overclocking bad". In this case, I disagree. The system was incredibly stable for over a year and the parts were hand picked for the task (including a very nice Zalman CPU cooler).

Things seem ok for a few days, until another sudden reboot. I had no time to troubleshoot it so I left it to its own for about a week. Unfortunately, when I did get to it ... after hours of troubleshooting ... I discovered the following had happened:
The processor is dead.
The motherboard has a black mark next to a place where a capacitor belonged and there are pieces of it throughout the case, so the board is toast too. The capacitor in question handled power to the processor, which explains my dead chip.
Two of my drives are clicking, data is unreadable. I don't back this machine up because in my short-sightedness I thought "gee, it's only TV shows, I can just record them again later". Unfortunately, one of the dead drives had all of that custom software on it and I hadn't backed up that folder in over a month. Oops!

So I put a few things on order, and send away for warranty repair on a few others. I decided to go AMD with an Athlon X2 4200+ and a suitable Asus Motherboard and for good measure, pick up a Maxtor 500GB hard drive. Still figuring this was a heat issue, I decide to go a little crazy on cable organization and end up with a very suitable, clean, airflow friendly rig.

...Except, my hard drives are clicking, I'm getting read/write failures and the one good drive that I had left is now reporting a S.M.A.R.T. failure (useless feature). I'm at a loss at this point. I've replaced almost everything in this box and it's still failing. I go down the path of troubleshooting drivers, even installing different operating systems (I always wanted a Myth box!). Nothing resolves the issue.

Suddenly it occurs to me that the drives only fail when all three are plugged in to power. They didn't even need to be plugged into the motherboard, just power. It dawns on me that I have a dead PSU. Well, not actually dead, but failing under heavy load conditions.
Something I had failed to notice is that while BeyondTV is recompressing video and I'm simultaneously watching video, my system becomes totally unstable. Similarly in Linux when I'm running the graphics test and load testing, the system becomes unstable.
Under idle or even minor load, the system is fine (mostly).

Back to Newegg, this time I purchased a very overpriced Pure80 600W power supply.

Now, there's a twist here that I completely missed when I installed the system the first time. The Antec power supply is located in the back/right side of the case (as is typical). When the case is positioned in my stand, the back right part of the case sits immediately above a heat register which during the summer blows cool air and a lot of dust, but in the winter blows a lot of piping hot air. It's a credit to this particular power supply that it didn't die any earlier. I have since blocked off this particular vent to prevent any airflow or dust.

Blank Screen after Setup is Inspecting your computer's hardware configuration in Windows XP

2007-09-03T16:08:00.000-04:00

It's been a little while since I've been able to write, but this one hit me again this weekend, and again I spent hours trying to figure out what was going on.

The symptom is this:
Blank Screen occurs when "Setup is Inspecting your Computer's Hardware Configuration"
or
Blank Screen before Setup even starts.
Further, waiting it out does nothing. The drive eventually spins down and the PC is unresponsive. Of course, the monitor never goes to DPMS mode, so it looks like the video card is still receiving a signal.

This saga was part of my other adventure.

The cause of the black screen is simple:
Windows XPs setup utility cannot properly read the hard disk partition tables. I'm not sure if it chokes on every linux installation, or the specific LVM setup I had done with Fedora 7, but the hang immediately after setup starts is usually always unreadable partition tables.

A couple of fixes to try:
Unplug every hard drive and USB, Compact Flash, SD, or other "hard drive like" device, except for the one you intend to boot from and install the operating system to. Try to rerun setup. If successful, plug in a drive at a time after Windows is installed and updated.
If that doesn't work, you still have options, but the only ones I can present to you will cause your data to be destroyed, so here's hoping you have a backup.

Download Knoppix (or a Linux based live CD that comes ... at least ... with fdisk).
Burn the CD/DVD on another computer.
Boot Knoppix ... wait.
When the GUI comes up (or perhaps "if" the GUI comes up), hit CTRL+ALT+F2, this will get you to a "root shell" in text mode. (The reason I prefer this route is that it doesn't require a working mouse, which I didn't have since Knoppix couldn't initialize it)
type "fdisk /dev/sda", if the hard disk you're dealing with is SCSI or SATA, otherwise type "fdisk /dev/hda" if the hard disk you're dealing with is IDE/EIDE/PATA.
type "d" (for delete), hit enter.
If you have one partition, type "w" (writes out the partition table), and shut down. If you have more than one, type a partition number and repeat until all partitions are gone. You can verify that all partitions are deleted by hitting "p", and seeing if any show up. Note that after you hit "w", you're going to lose all of the data on the partitions that you have deleted.
Rerun Setup.

If you're comfortable with partitioning, skip step 6 and start by hitting "p". This will list out all partitions on that drive. You may find a particular partition that looks suspect. Try deleting the suspect partition and leaving the ones that look good, then rerun setup.

Of course, you've booted to a Knoppix CD, so you might try using some of the tools that are included with Knoppix to diagnose your problems, recover some of your data and copy it to another computer or drive, or do any other number of recovery/hardware tests. In my case, the data was already gone, so wiping out the partitions was an easy choice.

.Net Framework 1.1 Installation Fails (rollback at end of installation) on Vista

2007-07-15T13:00:00.000-04:00

I'm partly embarrassed for having to post this, because it identifies that I am guilty of a few sins:

1. Don't run Microsoft Windows Vista. Believe me, I'm not a fan. I wouldn't be doing it except to understand the operating system since I will be supporting it at my job, so please forgive me. I've installed two Ubuntu Linux boxes on the side as penance.
2. Don't run any Microsoft software before Service Pack 1, especially one that changed so much of the underlying OS and rules as Vista did.

That said, while testing software and setting up a dedicated development station, I came across the need to install the .Net Framework 1.1. This is, to date, not an uncommon need as many applications require it. This posed several problems.

Here's a few things to try if you run into this same issue. Note that each one of these instructions requires a good understanding of how your computer works. If you're a novice, call your nephew or local computer geek. Any one of these could do irreparable harm to your system including rendering it useless and losing all of your data. Back things up before proceeding and use these instructions at your own risk!!

Troubleshooting Metodologies: Try each step, re-run the installation. If it works, run the SP1 Upgrade. If that works, do a Windows update and get the latest security patches. Be patient and do one at a time, if it fails, proceed to the next, each step is a little more risky than the previous.

Especially if you are running Kaspersky Anti-virus or Zone Labs Internet Security Suite, It's time to turn off your virus protection (don't uninstall unless you have to, typically you just have to right click the icon and choose "Disable" or "Shut down ZoneAlarm Security Suite"). Most people skip this idea because anti-virus in XP rarely interferes to the extent that it does in Vista (and every setup program warns you to turn off Anti-virus, even though it is rarely necessary).
For the .Net Framework 1.1 setup, Kaspersky and Zone Alarm will always interfere. The Framework installation tries to run regtlb.exe to register a number of libraries at the end of installation. Due to an untimely lock on the registry, regtlb will fail (though you won't see any indication that this happened unless you've enabled very aggressive logging and debugging in Windows Installer).
Temporarily disable User Account Control (UAC). The easiest way I've found to do this is:
(1) Click Start.
(2) Type "msconfig" in the blank spot above and hit Enter.
(3) Click "Tools", and scroll down the list.
(4) Click "Disable UAC" and click "Launch". A command prompt window will appear and indicate, hopefully, that The Command Completed Successfully.
(5) Reboot.
Note that this will leave your computer unprotected by UAC, which I am a big fan of (Most Linux distributions use similar technologies. I'm glad that Microsoft stole this idea).
After you've run the installation, repeat steps 1-5 except choose "Enable UAC".
Disable nx (No Execute) and DEP (Data Execution Prevention) if you're utilizing a modern processor (and if you're not, and you're trying to run Vista, downgrade the entire system to XP, you'll thank me later). Note that DEP is also here to protect you, but often gets in the way. .Net Framework 1.1 came out before DEP, so there are some isolated issues centered around the registration of System.EnterpriseServices.dll. If you're "rolling back" at that point, this is probably your solution.
(1) Perform the above steps for disabling UAC, it can only help you here.
(2) Click "Start", type "cmd" and hit Enter.
(3) Type: bcdedit.exe /set {current} nx AlwaysOff
(4) Reboot.
Rerun the installation. If it works, absolutely don't forget to install the service pack for .Net 1.1, it includes fixes for this problem.
If you want to turn NX back on, repeat step 1-4, but for step (3), type: bcdedit.exe /set {current} nx OptIn
Clean up a failed Framework Installation. Follow the steps linked here. (Please note that he refers to this as a Last Resort, which it is. It is highly invasive)
Are you using an account other than Administrator to do this installation? Try enabling the Administrator account (Be sure to assign it a password!), login as Administrator. If you have re-enabled DEP and UAC, disable them again. Try the installation.
The reason this may work is that the Administrator account will likely launch fewer user applications at start-up. When in doubt, make sure everything is as thin as possible and reinstall.

Things to avoid (I tried them, and they caused me grief)

Manual installation. There's a few tricks outlined whereby you disable rollback in the middle of the .Net Framework 1.1 installation and then attempt to install the remaining components by hand. Don't do this. It may appear as though it worked but your .Net Framework apps will be unstable and some apps will still think the Framework is not installed.
Renaming (or deleting) of the mscoree.dll in c:\Windows\System32. Doing so requires you to take ownership of the file, change the permissions on the file to values that are not safe, and ... of course ... rename the file. You'll find on Vista that the installation will run even shorter and that several components (including Event Viewer) will simply not work. This was a tip from Windows XP and should not be used in Vista.

I'd strongly advise anyone upgrading (if you can call it that) to Vista to install the .Net Framework 1.1 manually before doing any other application installs. There are thousands of forum posts and articles on how to fix problems with Framework 1.1, which indicates that it's a little touchy to get working. Make this step (2) after completing setup and installing the Application Compatibility updates. Perhaps in my many re-loads of this development system, I'll outline my recommended baseline software install for Vista, but for now, consider this step 2.

Many applications still require it and some will even try to install it manually. If this happens, you'll receive an install error for the application and it may not be terribly apparent that the installation error is related to .Net 1.1.

One last tip for those running Vista x64. You've got quite a road ahead of you. I'm running the 32-bit version at the moment, but upon my reading I ran into many articles identifying .Net 1.1 will not install without the Service Pack will not work in Vista x64. You'll be stuck in a catch-22. Vista 64 requires Service Pack 1, but the installer requires the non-Service Pack version be present.
Perhaps an application compatibility update will resolve this soon, but if not, there seems to be one sure-fire way to make it work:
If you're skilled with Windows Installer, give this solution a shot. It will allow you to install both the framework and SP1 in one shot. (The missing last step is to run "netfx.msi" from whatever folder you chose to build the administrative install point from).
Of course, it's not officially supported by Microsoft, so you're treading in tall weeds here.

Much thanks to Aaron Stebner's WebLog and the three thousand forum posts I read that led me to my final answer in this problem.
I'll get around to replying to each one when I have a few days :-)

10 Reasons to Abandon your ISP E-Mail Account

2007-06-07T18:42:00.000-04:00

I'm often asked why I exclusively use GMail and Yahoo! Mail for e-mail, rather than the account that my ISP gave me. My response is usually: "I don't know the ID and Password", but there are many other good reasons to permanently use these alternative services.

So lets start:

Most ISPs don't provide "forwarding" service when you decide to leave them for the competition.
If you're not planning on switching ISPs right now, you can give your friends and family a heads up. Start by sending a message to everyone you know has your existing e-mail address. Then setup a mail client rule to forward all messages to your new account on GMail (my preference) or another service.
For added convenience, setup another rule to reply to those messages with a notice that your e-mail address has changed. You have a much longer buffer period for your friends to update their address (or ignore). You can even take it one step further and change the message to say "I no longer check this account, if you want me to receive this message, send it to "mynewaddress@gmail.com".
You're no longer tethered to your ISPs service.
ISPs know that the fact that you being hooked into their e-mail service is something that may prevent you from shopping around for a better deal. If you're not tethered to their exclusive services, you can leave for that better deal (assuming you live in an area that actually has broadband competition!). I have close friends that kept their AOL dial-up subscription for years because the pain of giving up their @aol address was too much (they've all moved on now, thankfully ... that, or I've just stopped having friends who would use AOL).
Your passwords aren't sent in plain text.
Your e-mail account is the window into your world. Most people use their "ISP" e-mail account like they use their home phone. They provide it to those with whom they engage in transactions with (such as the Credit Card Company or The Bank).
If you make a habit of using open access points, or public access points, that silly mail client of yours is probably sending your password plain-text every 5 minutes. If someone gets that password, they simply have to collect some e-mail from you to determine who you do business with, visit the site, and use the "Forgot my Password" link, where most services will conveniently send your new password via e-mail.
Make sure you pick a service that encrypts your ID and Password by default. GMail requires an encrypted connection on their web site, and if you use their free POP access, it'll be encrypted there too.
I'm dumbfounded by the fact that so many ISPs do not even allow encrypted authentication on their e-mail servers.
You can take your e-mail with you.
Yes, it's web mail, so if you want to check it from a location other than home, you probably can (assuming the internet connection your using isn't blocking web mail). In addition, with GMail you can access your e-mail in the same manner you're already likely used to ... via Thunderbird, Outlook, Outlook Express or your favorite mail client at no additional charge.
Yahoo! also offers POP3 mail, however, at the time of this writing, you'll have to subscribe to their premium service.
You can send e-mail when you're not on the same network.
This is similar in nature to the above, and may already apply to your ISP e-mail. Some ISPs only allow you to send mail if you're connected via a set of IP Addresses that they own. This means when you're using an open WiFi Network, you can receive mail just fine, but cannot send it.
Most ISPs have addressed this limitation, but if yours hasn't, you'll now have the ability to send and receive via either your web based client, or your own local client.
You may find the Web mail features to be better than your mail client.
I have both a GMail and Yahoo! mail account that I regularly monitor. As far as GMail is concerned, I'd rather use GMail than Thunderbird. It filters spam well, it integrates with their instant messenger client (as does Yahoo!), it allows for lightning fast searching of my old mail, and it redefines the way I work with e-mail by grouping messages in conversations and allowing me to apply labels.
Plus it's just dead simple to use. Not that I'm confounded by the "intricacies" of Thunderbird, but I find I'm more efficient using Web Mail.
You will probably get more space for your mountains of mail.
This was the initial reason many people switched to GMail. They offered you 2GB of server side storage for mail (Indeed, some people even use it as a backup service).
You now have that backup you keep meaning to do.
This comes with a caveat. If you aren't using both a local client and the web client, you're actually in worse shape than if you had only the local client and failed to backup. At least you'd still have the drive or computer that failed if you wanted to pay for costly recovery services. If Yahoo! or GMail loses your mail, you're stuck.
That said, if you use a local client regularly (and you're leaving your mail on the remote server), you now have redundancy. A lost drive does not mean that all of your e-mail is gone.
Mobile E-Mail Access may be easier and less costly.
Of course, this always depends on who you choose as your e-mail service provider. For me, accessing my GMail account on my lousy Motorola E815's sorry excuse for a Web Browser is actually quite painless. They did mobile e-mail right, and it shows. It's easier for me to get into their service, check my mail, and get out than it is to use the kludgey POP3 client. And since my cell phone provider requires that I purchase the software to even check e-mail via my mobile phone, it costs less.
SPAM and Malware are handled better.
Maybe you'll be a little more careful with this new account and not put it on your MySpace profile, or give it to every company that asks for it. You're starting fresh, give it only to trusted sources. Set up more than one account or use services like Mailinator for disposable e-mail addresses.
In addition, because Google or Yahoo! know about *all* of the spam their receiving, you may find (as I have) that their spam filtering far exceeds what even the most sophisticated of mail clients can pull off. Sure, your ISP may have server-side spam filtering also, but they probably don't have the user base that Google or Yahoo! Mail does.
In addition, most Web mail services scan all attachments for viruses (typically only when you use the Web interface). If you've been lax on your Anti-virus updating, this may save you.

There are many more, but do you need more than 10 reasons?

SQL Injection Penetration Testing Tools

2007-05-24T21:13:00.000-04:00

I've already walked through the process of mitigating SQL Injection vulnerabilities in code, but even in the most skilled hands with the best code reviewers, you're going to miss something. We're aiming for a system that is as difficult to crack as possible. You can never achieve total security (short of disconnecting the network card and melting all of the parts into a big giant blob, but then I'm sure there's someone who will argue that they can hack the data from it!)

The final rule missing from that post was to perform penetration testing. Doing so can be difficult. If you have a security team that is skilled in the art, it's probably best to leave the real pen testing to them. If you don't, or if you just want to preliminarily test before passing it off to your security team, there are several tools that automate pen testing.

Disclaimer: Most security tools can be used for good and evil. Running these tools on software you've written, installed on your own servers, or on servers that you are responsible for securing is "good" -- assuming you're allowed to even use these tools in your organization (obvious, right?). Running this on your online banking site to see if they're "up to spec" will hopefully get you a visit by the feds, especially if you decide to take advantage of the vulnerabilities it finds. In other words, don't do it. And if you do, you deserve the consequences of your actions.

For those who don't work in security, the question is often asked: "Why should these tools even be available? They're gold in the hands of a malicious user. " Tow which the inevitable conclusion is "They should be banned!" This thinking is referred to as Security through Obscurity. It simply doesn't work. You can't ban a tool because secrets are not kept well on the internet. Beyond that, these tools are often more useful to a pen tester than a black hat.
Bear in mind that these tools all have limitations since they're based on pre-programmed attack methods. A truly creative security engineer or black hat might find another method that your tool does not check for.

That said, I ran across this link on security-hacks.com entitled the Top 15 free SQL Injection Scanners. Some are designed for specific databases, some are general purpose. You'll find that more than one tool will prove useful and since they're free, you're out nothing if you give them each a shot. Of course, use them at your own risk. Never test live production servers unless you're operating within whatever maintenance window you have setup and have full (and tested) backups. You have no idea what these tools might actually do.

In addition, as with all penetration testing software, make sure you do a lot of additional research on the tool itself. You wouldn't buy a gun from a "guy on the street" (maybe you would? I wouldn't). If it's open-source, that's a good start. Check the community behind it and if you're skilled enough, review the source code yourself. Always consult Google. If it's commercial, avoid it unless you know the brand very well. Look for any hints of added malware. Unfortunately, you may find some security sites rank the tools as malware because they work as advertised so make sure you research well. If it's only fault is that it's designed to hack a web application, that's fine. Remember, we're trying to break into our applications so we can plug the holes and prevent someone else from discovering them. Nobody wants to get that frantic cell phone call at 3:00AM on a Saturday.

GET vs. POST - Save your users!

2007-05-18T18:03:00.000-04:00

This is one thing I've seen gotten so wrong so often and resulted, I felt compelled to put some of my thoughts on the subject down here.

First, a little explanation. GET and POST are commands issued to a web server. Your browser uses the commands to request a web page, and provide information to a web application.

In the case of GET, this is often done via a specially formatted query string. The text and information of this query string is visible to the user assuming your application resides in a normal browser window and not one where the address has been hidden from view.
GET can be used as a method for sending form data, and it is used often in the case of Search Engines. Simply search for "dog" on Google and you'll find this URL:

http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&q=dog&btnG=Google+Search
GET is convenient. As you can see from the above URL, I could just as easily encode a link like this and you'd be sent away from my blog to a search about a dog. In fact every link that goes to a web page is a GET operation, not just forms like Google's Search form that use the method GET.

POST is a method that is primarily designed for sending form data (it can be used in many other ways, but we'll skip those for now). POST data does not appear in the address bar like GET data. It also cannot easily be encoded into a link.

So which should I use and when?

The answer is simple, but the solution is sometimes painful. GET should be used only when the operation it is performing is considered safe. Safe means an operation that is looking up data. I've even heard it said an operation that "asks a question", or "navigates somewhere". In the case of a search engine, you're asking a question. In the case of a link, you're navigating somewhere.

What's more important is knowing when GET should not be used.

Rule #1: Never use GET in a login form or to send sensitive data
I know that this should be obvious, but I've seen it before. For those who are still scratching their heads. When you use GET in a login form, the user ID and password of the logged in user will appear in the address bar. This is called exposure. :-)
I've seen plenty of older e-commerce sites that send credit card data this way. This is "bad" on more levels than I can get into here. Just don't do it.

Rule #2: Don't use GET for any operation that modifies something.
This is where most people fail. I've logged into my banking site, and I'm looking at my account. Next to my account is a link that says "Delete". It links to the following URL:

https://www.mynicebank.com/accountOperations.aspx?Action=Delete

My, how convenient is that to code? No form necessary, no javascript, no buttons, no hidden values, just an anchor reference. That's also leaner HTML.

Technically it works. Since I'm logged in and have an authenticated, encrypted session, it's thought to be secure (assuming your account number isn't in that querystring, it might actually be secure).

Unfortunately, some browser extensions and some alternative browsers do something called "Look Ahead". And it does exactly what it sounds like. It looks at the page you're on, and pre-loads all of the links on the page, figuring that you're probably going to click on one of them. The idea is that if the browser pre-loads all of the links, and you click one, it'll already be in your cache and navigation will run lightning fast. Unfortunately, the Look Ahead doesn't know anything about what the link actually does.

If mynicebank.com encoded the delete link that way, and I was running FasterFox, my bank account might be gone lightning fast even though I never clicked the link.

Rule #3: Never use GET to send large amounts of data
This is less of a rule and more of a suggestion. Some older web servers and browsers limited the length of a GET request. Most, nowadays, don't. I've even seen some clever hacks that use TinyURL to store entire files.

While writing this, I discovered a great resource over at the w3c. If you're still curious, check it out. Those guys are a lot smarter than me and probably came up with something I missed.

SQL Injection

2007-05-16T23:15:00.000-04:00

Editors Note: I wanted to start off with a bit about how I hate needles, but I don't actually have a fear of needles. It would have probably sounded as dumb as the sentence I've just written about why I left the pun out of this entry. I'll stop now . . .

The Injection you really should fear: The SQL Injection.
(sorry, couldn't resist)

To understand why, you must understand what SQL is. SQL stands for Structured Query Language. An SQL Server is a database server that implements some form of this language. When people think of databases, they tend to think of them as simple storage and retrieval mechanisms. Non-programmers do not realize that power of the database resides in the language used to query or manipulate that data.

The fact that interaction with the database is done via a separate language is where the problem resides. You have one set of code (your web language, php, C#, java) writing code in another language (SQL).
This is how a simple web app might look:

User fills out form element, clicks submit which sends the data to a page to display results.
That page connects to the database, and inserts the search string into a query command, gets the data from the database and displays the results.

The above italics is where injection can occur. In this case, developers often forget that the query command is interpreted code. A common (and wrong) way of doing this is to create a string with the code and add the data from the form field to it, in this manner:

Command = "SELECT Name, ID, Description FROM Products_Table WHERE Name LIKE '%" + users_search_request + "%'";

That's the language mix. Command and users_search_request come from C#, the language the web page was written in, whereas the portion between the quotes is intended for interpretation by the SQL server. This works but it is insecure.

If the user types Dog Collars, the resulting command is SELECT Name, ID, Description FROM Products_Table WHERE Name LIKE '%Dog Collars%', and everything is fine. If the user, instead, types '; DROP TABLE Products_Table, in that same search box, the resulting command is SELECT Name, ID, Description FROM Products_Table WHERE Name LIKE '%'; DROP TABLE Products_Table. The command "DROP TABLE Products_Table" has now been executed, and Products_Table gone.
Of course, SQL is very powerful, so far more than table deletion can occur. And today's malicious users are less concerned about defacing, or destroying data, and more concerned about stealing it for fraudulent uses.

Like all things in security, there isn't one magic solution to this problem. Any one of these will reduce your exposure. Using all of them will nearly eliminate it.

Rule #1: Use Database IDs with limited rights. Limited Rights = Limited Exposure
If every piece of newly written code I've ever looked at is any indication, this is almost always skipped. Often developers start the coding process using a generic ID, figuring it'll save time during the development process. They'll get fewer errors due to rights issues and can focus on debugging the newly written code. Just before release, they can switch the accounts to use the limited rights account. Of course, that last step is usually missed, and the service goes production using that same near-administrator account.
In the above example, it is appropriate to use an ID that only has the ability to read the values from that table, and only those fields if necessary. I'm a big fan of using more than one ID to do different operations. IDs that need update ability should only be able to update the table(s). Be as granular as your SQL server will allow and ensure that the account used can do only what it needs to do.
Read operations should occur with a read-only ID that is limited to the tables it needs access to.
The reason this is Rule #1 is that it's one of the only things you can do at the database to protect yourself from bad code.
If your organization has a database management team that is separate from your web developers, they should apply this rule.

Rule #2: Used Built In Libraries for Querying
The easiest way to prevent code injection is to eliminate the manual writing of SQL code. Most modern languages used in web development expose methods to let you query without writing a query string. Even if you have to write a query string, you can usually do so using parameters, rather than string concatenation (as we did in the above example). The values for the parameters can then be defined using the language, where they are properly sanitized (assuming the language itself isn't plagued with security holes).
This is often seen by developers as the silver bullet that is impervious to SQL Injection. Unfortunately, languages can have security holes too. So you can't simply rely on this being your savior every time.

Rule #3: Never trust that a user's input is "safe"
Rule #2 should sanitize any data sent to the database, so if you have the option of using built in libraries, do it. You've already completed Rule #3. Don't re-sanitize, or you'll probably break your application. On the other hand, if you have to do concatenation to query, you must sanitize the information submitted by the user.
Most languages used for web design include built-in methods to sanitize input. At a minimum, the above should have been sanitized to "escape" the apostrophe. That would effectively keep the apostrophe from being used to close the quotes and the command.

Rule #4: Stop displaying error messages to your users.
Some clarification is in order here. It's OK to deliver an error to the user when an error occurs. It's not ok to allow your web server to deliver it's debug information with that error. This is usually not the default setting, but we developers certainly like it for debugging.
A common method used by malicious users is to inspect your system by intentionally sending malformed input with the hopes of getting an error.
In the above example, I could have written invalid SQL, in which case I would have likely received the line of code that it failed on, and some or all of the text of the SQL command. I could use this to further attack the database. With that error message, I now know the table name and the column names that the receiving page expects. I could then try attacking other common table names by using something like '; SELECT Name, 1 as ID, Password As Description FROM users, and continued "guessing" the table names until I found one that fits.

Optional: Use Stored Procedures if the SQL server you're using supports it
There's differing opinions on this, but when coupled with Rule #1, it can be very powerful. A stored procedure will not prevent the above problem, but if the ID only has rights to execute that stored procedure and no rights to do anything else, your malicious user is effectively stopped. Stored procedures can be designed to enforce business rules, as well, but they can make managing an application more difficult since the code for that application is now effectively spread between the database and the application.
I'm, personally, a fan of stored procedures as long as they're managed properly.

Optional: Automatically IP Ban suspect users
This is a weak protection method, but if the risk is high enough, it may be worth doing. Look for patterns in user input like '; DROP TABLE, and update your web servers security rules to ban the IP address. It won't stop them, but it will slow them down.

Best Practices for Helping Code Review
Documentation is boring, I know. As a wise developer said to me (today actually), you can spend time writing code, or you can spend time writing about code. This how most developers feel. Documentation is very important, but it always feels like it's time that could be better spent solving problems.
When documenting code, blocks that touch databases (or other areas where your code is "writing code") should be clearly commented. This allows you to do a detailed review and focus on the areas that are the most likely to be attacked.

Matthew S. Dippel - The Official Blog

AppliancesConnection.com (and GE Capital) ... Adventures (and failures in) User Experience (Updated 1x)

Background

Solving Cart Abandonment at the Expense of an Angry Blogger

Moan and Complain, that's what the Internet is for. STFU, how would you solve this?

So you jumped through the hoop anyway, STFU

The difference: A delightful user experience

The mystery solved

My dad, predictor of the ubiquity and often decline of technology

How To: iPad 4.2.1 WiFi with a Bluetooth GPS (Warning, Jailbreak Required!) [Updated 2x]

Jailbreaking Disclaimer

The Things you'll need

A Bluetooth GPS

Bluetooth GPS Software

An iPad WiFi with 4.2.1 iOS

The "ipsw" for 4.2.1

greenpois0n

Jailbreaking iOS 4.2.1 for the iPad

A note about upgrading a Jailbroken Device

Don't Panic

So lets get started

Step 1 - Get a good backup

Step 2 - Fire up greenpois0n and follow the dead simple instructions

Step 3 - Fix what's broken.

Securing your iPad (DO NOT SKIP THIS STEP)

Installing Bluetooth GPS Support

Hooking it all up

Ok, so what about nav software?

Is there anything else I should know?

This is why I AdBlock+ and You Should Too

It's difficult to dwell on a bad day . . .

Fix: MS10-049 and SSL problems connecting to https:// sites or Google Talk

Problem

Other things you might see

The Fix

But why?

Other Posts on the Subject

The importance of taking intent into account

Buy.com and Amazon.com, are they family now?

Why do I save $53.10 buying from buy.com via amazon.com, rather than just buying directly from buy.com?

HOW-TO: Fix RDP from within RDP session or fixing the hang when trying to access a terminal server from an existing terminal services session

Symptom

Fix

Solving the HD PVR 0x8007001f error in SageTV

Sypmtom

Resolution

Observation: Power Adapters may have been faulty in early models

Observation: Revision numbers "in the wild" vary radically but don't matter entirely too much

Observation: Replacement units from RMA behave flaky, or your recording has been flaky with the 0x8007001f error

My Solution: Here are the software steps I took to ultimately fix my rig

Observation: HD PVR is touchy with some USB Controllers

Observation: Flakiness is less in 1080i than 720p or varieties of resolutions

Observation: Tuning is always a pain if you have a screen saver on your cable box

Observation: SP/DIF or Analog Output, same result

Observation: Tuning Delay (delay_to_wait_after_tuning)

The difficulty of "getting it right" with a device like this

On the Subject of Internal E-Mail correspondence

Identify your intended tone

Always address the individuals you're writing to

Use Good Subjects

Check the subject on replies

Formality and signatures

That said...

Rick's Tire and Wheel - Customer Service, Honesty and Mechanics can collide

Customer Service, above and beyond

Why it Matters

Google Matthew Dippel - An Exercise in Ego Surfing

Or why, for some reason, my fascination with a couple of blog posts about nice staircase designs is my own doom.

About Successful Innovation

How to Fix Error: 26 - Error Locating Server/Instance Specified - Microsoft SQL Server

Symptom

Other factors

The Fix

Why did that work?

What's the actual cause

A Tale of Three Cancellations

The Bad: Dish Network

Even worse: XM Sirius Satellite Radio

Then the phone calls started.

The Good: LifeLock