Category Archives: General Tech Stuff

I’ve been using Groove for several projects recently. I bought their client software. Now I find out that the only way to get support for it is to buy a $2500 “support pack” that allows me to ask 10 support questions via e-mail. Shyeah, right.
People complain about Microsoft for a variety of reasons, but even their low-end products have competent free tech support. I once spent two hours on the phone with a PictureIt! support rep identifying a bug with the HP PhotoSmart printer driver. For the $40 they got from me for the program, Microsoft probably spent four times that for one support call. Their pay-for-support program is excellent as well.
When I have time, I’m building up a longer rant about Groove’s frustrating potential: it does some things really well, but it’s missing some basics.

I just signed a contract to write the weekly Exchange UPDATE column for my pals at Exchange & Outlook Administrator. I’m really excited by the opportunity, although Jerry Cochran (the previous editor) is leaving me some mighty big shoes to fill. If you have suggestions for topics, I’d love to hear them.

I needed the ISBN number for a book that I knew I had on my printer desk, about 18″ behind my chair. Almost without thinking about it, I opened a new IE window and headed to Amazon before I realized that I had the actual dead-trees book right here. Would this be evidence that the ‘net has thoroughly pervaded my work life?

I’ve been meaning to supplement the book review engine on this site with better links to Amazon, using Adam Kalsey’s MTAmazon plugin. Brad Choate has an interesting application of the plugin on his site. I haven’t figured out yet exactly how I’m going to make this work, but it should be an interesting project for any free time I accidentally happen to get between now and the time the book’s finished.

Wireless networks are great. It follows, then, that a wireless networks between two cars on the Interstate must be greater still.

In a shocking revelation, Simson Garfinkel points out that Starbucks is charging for wireless Internet access in its stores! Oh, the horror! He says:

Starbucks, the king of the $4 coffee, wanted me to pay for a service that should be too cheap to meter.

Well, duh. Consider the fact that Starbucks is a demonic corporate monster bent on world domination, and this probably won’t be too surprising. Simson does make a few good points about the fact that for most of us, it’s cheaper just to set up a WiFi access point and let people share it than it would be to set up an elaborate billing infrastructure.

Julie asks how I like MovableType as a blogging tool. I started blogging the old-school way: HTML by hand, posted manually. Eventually I graduated to Dreamweaver, which gave me some site management and link-checking tools (see my old travel diaries for a sample.) This approach has its champions, notably Bob Thompson and Jerry Pournelle. However, the bad news is that this approach ties you to a particular tool (see Bob’s many rants about FrontPage).
In the new world, we can use tools like MovableType that provide content management. These tools keep track of the posts, sorting and ordering them. The better ones apply styles to keep everything looking consistent; the best, like MT and Radio Userland, support protocols (like XMLRPC) that allow blogging tools to work together. I can drive MT from any web browser, or I can use purpose-built tools like BlogApp or BlogBuddy to quickly post items with better editing tools than Internet Explorer provides.
Overall, I like MT quite a lot. It’s very stable, it has an attractive interface, and I can use it from any browser-equipped machine. (Note, alas, that you don’t get all of the editing bells & whistles on Mac browsers; I’m not sure why this is yet.) Even better, it is inexpensive and very well-supported (not that I’ve needed any support yet). Once I get it set up properly, so that I can use BlogApp, it’ll be even better. Honorable mention goes to Radio Userland, which does all kinds of cool stuff that I don’t fully understand yet. Radio has a slick desktop client, which you are free not to use, and a powerful macro language. However, for my relatively modest needs MT is just the ticket. I give it two thumbs up.

I’m going to be updating this blog to the new version of MoveableType in the next day or so. That may cause a bit of downtime, so don’t be alarmed. Along the way, I have some cool new features I’m planning on implementing, too; you’ll notice when the upgrade is finished.

A clever fellow got some useful help building his new computer. I guess it’s time to go raid David’s Lego stash…

One of the key pieces missing from Mac OS X, at least for me, has been a client that I can use with Microsoft’s Terminal Services (TS). With TS, you can remotely log on to a Windows machine and operate it just as though you were sitting in front of it. Since I travel frequently, TS has been an invaluable tool, but it’s required me to use a Windows machine. Now Microsoft’s Mac business unit has released a Terminal Services client for Mac OS X! It’s missing some features that the Windows XP client has, but so what? It’s a lot better than nothing.

On Saturday, sometime after 3pm CDT, my DSL connection went down. My ISP has been super-reliable, which is why I use them. The problem appeared to be with the DSLAM , the gadget that takes a consumer DSL line and terminates it in the telephone company’s central office. The link is back up now; evidently BellSouth or API Digital fixed it overnight. Good for them. If you sent mail over the weekend and it didn’t go through, now you know why. Of course, since this blog is hosted by my web service provider, it wasn’t affected by the outage.

My pal Tyler Regas has been working on PDAHandyman, but I’ve only recently gotten around to visiting it. Nice site! I am certain that he’d like to hear from all you Linux folks who are using Sharp’s cool-but-IMHO-impractical Linux handheld. Personally, I have a Treo pricing rant that I’m saving up to send his way.

For some reason, this month has been an unusually tough one for various components of my geek lifestyle. By extension, this has made it a tough month for me, as I’ve had to spend an inordinate amount of time in voice-mail hell. Here’s the rundown on what broke and how hard it was to get fixed:

• The plastic case on my ThinkPad has cracked in such a way that the back part of the case, just above the row of Insert/Home keys, is pulling away, threatening to spill the keyboard out onto the floor. I called IBM, spent about 2 minutes on hold, and got a case number. The shipping box will get here tomorrow, so I expect to have the machine back next week sometime. I give their support phone system a 4; it was easy and quick to get to someone who could help me.
• My PowerMac G4 Cube suffered a failed DC-to-DC converter, so it’s at the Apple body & fender shop. Apple’s phone support is legendarily bad, so I just took it to MacResource so they could fix it.
• The paddle to our bread machine mysteriously disappeared. I suspect my four-year-old’s involvement, but there’s no evidence to prove it, and he’s at Grandma’s this week. Sunbeam gets a -1 for their phone support process; first you call a number that says “Press 2 for breadmakers”, followed by a choice that says “Press 1 to order parts”. When you pick that option, the service center you get connected to doesn’t sell breadmaker parts. Ooops.
• cyclone, my primary Exchange & file server, has two disks in it. One of them started making an awful clunk, click while I was backing it up this morning. I’m heading to Gigaparts to get a replacement drive. No phone calls required!
• My Siemens 2420 phone system is “fencing” (clipping audio in a predictable pattern), but only sometimes. I suspected 802.11a interference, but it still occasionally does it even when all my wireless gear is off.

Granted, these aren’t major catastrophes. Thank goodness the air conditioning and refrigerator still work, both cars are running, and the septic tank isn’t plugged. Everything else is small potatoes.

Bob Thompson said:

The Inquirer reports that Microsoft may release WinXP SP1 sooner than expected, possibly as soon as the end of this month. As was the case with Win2000 SP1, the first SP is going to be huge, perhaps 120 MB. It sounds like there are a lot of bugs to be fixed.

This isn’t entirely fair. SP1 does include a ton of bug fixes; if it didn’t, the screaming penguins would be complaining that MS doesn’t fix their bugs. However, as part of the Strategic Technology Protection Program (that’s “get secure, stay secure” to you & I), MS is including new security functionality as part of service packs. There are a wealth of new SP1 features, including some significant enhancements to the way IPsec works and rollups that result from the Windows division’s security push. Of course, SP1 also includes changes to the OS that are required by the consent degree in the Microsoft antitrust case. Bob was too polite to point this out.

So, the blogosphere has exploded in volume, right? There are thousands of people, ranging from professional journalists to various unsavory types, creating blogs with a wide variety of tools– so how come I still have to copy-and-paste HTML to bring in archived content? I’m slowly porting over some content, including (eventually) my Travel Diaries.