Computing

Hybrid Training and Technology Partners (HTTP)

Keith — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 14:25:26 GMT

My friend and former co-worker has started blogging. He started a technology company named Hybrid Technology and Training Partners (HTTP for short) after leaving The Solutions Group where we both worked. So far, most, if not all of his posts are about the daily activities and growth of his business. I read nearly all of the posts today and I have to say it was pretty interesting. It doesn't hurt that Jeff has an incredible vocabulary and is quite the wordsmith.

Anyway, Jeff does some great work and will treat you right. You should give him a call if you have computer problems. And don't forget to check out his blog and company web site!

http://hybridtraining.net and http://salinehttpblog.blogspot.com

Speaking of Twittervision...

Keith — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 21:03:53 GMT

Hmmm. I just heard about Flickrvision. Too cool.

TwitterVision

Keith — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 20:25:56 GMT

I've blogged about it before, but I still think TwitterVision is very cool. The bad thing is, it depresses me. It reinforces my belief that I'm on the outside looking in.

What did you do on Labor Day Keith?

Keith — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 19:00:30 GMT

I'm spent most of my Labor Day, and much of the entire weekend, trying to install Windows 2003 Server on an old Dell Optiplex GX1 computer. I've not had much luck.

First I tried to install a version of Windows XP Pro on a 4 gig harddrive. Installing Windows and the BAZILLION updates to it pretty much ate up the entire 4 gigs. I couldn't do a damn thing with it. So I decided to buy a new harddrive. I went out and bought a 320 gig Western Digital Caviar HDD. After installing it, I decided I had enough room to throw Windows 2003 Server on it.

Windows setup found the drive just fine and was able to format the whole 320 gigs. Then after copying the installation files and a reboot I found that the BIOS didn't recognize a drive that big. Next, I downloaded an upgrade to the BIOS thinking that would fix the problem. The BIOS was still erroring out on reboot. The error was a "read error".

The Fix

I decided that since this a computer that my mother-in-law is just going to be using for email and very little Internet surfing, I could go without using all the space on the disk. So the first thing I did was use my Windows 98 boot disk to clear the existing partition on the disk and create a new FAT partition. I ended up with 175 gig partition which is TONS more space than my mom needs. This allowed the BIOS to recognize the disk. Then I installed Windows 98 Pro. I was A LOT faster installing with the extra space. When I only had 4 gigs to work with, it was a nightmare! So now I'm on to the 93 upgrades to install and then taking it back to my mom.

The machine is surprisingly fast for 400 MHZ PII. I do have 384 megs of RAM in there tho' so that's got to help.

Blue Screen of Death

Keith — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 17:40:28 GMT

Last week I started getting blue screens on my main computer. It would barely run for fifteen minutes before shutting down. I hadn't installed any new hardware or software so I was completely baffled. After several hours of troubleshooting I figured I was over my head. I took it to a local computer store and had to leave it. After two days they hadn't even looked at it and to make things worse, there were no techs coming in for the next two days. Not good. Being the totally impatient person that I am, I went and picked it up.

I decided that it had to be a hardware problem since I hadn't installed any new software recently. The computer is a few years old so a hardware failure was definitely not out of the question. I thought at first it might be the memory going bad but I ran MemTest86 and everything checked out there. Then I turned to the hard drives and ran a couple of diagnostic tools on them. Again, nothing unusual. Must be one of the perephrials right?

So, I unhooked all the perephrials and pulled the side of the cover off. The only things I left connected were the monitor, the mouse and keyboard, and the Internet. My plan was to connect perephrials one at a time and see if I got the blue screen. Before I started connecting things, I decided to grab a flashlight so I could look around inside. That's when I saw it. Underneath the cpu fan, on top of the heat sink, was a layer of dust so thick that I couldn't even see the fins of the heat sink. Ah ha! The cpu was overheating!

I pulled the fan off the heat sink and vacuumed the dust off the top and then put the fan back on. I ran it for a couple of hours with the side off and the perephrials still disconnected and not a single failure. Sweet! I'm back in business!

Today, I woke up to another blue screen. Damn. Well, at least I have some experience with this. I went directly to the cpu fan and it definitely didn't look like it was optimally spinning. So when the local computer store opened I went out and bought a new cpu fan. So far so good. Keep your fingers crossed.

The Mona Lisa using MS Paint

Keith — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 02:44:41 GMT

I can't even draw a straight line with MS Paint.

Twitter and TwitterVision

Keith — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 13:52:36 GMT

I just heard of Twitter the other day over at Girl and Geek and think it is a very cool idea. I really like the idea of TwitterVision and think that it's probably the coolest thing that I've seen on the web lately. It's pretty addicting to watch although I wish there was some way to control how long the "tweets" are displayed since some are kinda long and its hard to read the whole message before they disappear.

This morning I went to TwitterVision for my daily fix and was presented with this monstrosity...

At first I was a little worried because even though I clicked on the Starbucks image it wasn't going away. Now though, I'm finding that all you have to do is click on it and it will fade into cyberspace oblivion. Musta been a bug.

Anyway, Twitter and TwitterVision are pretty cool. You should check it out.

Community Server Rocks!

Keith — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 01:55:50 GMT

Last night I downloaded and installed Community Server. The installation was so easy and effortless! A simple double click on the msi file and that was that. It just works. Nice. I'm using it for my forums site. I was using ASP.Net forums, which severd me just fine, but it's time to move on. There is just so much more in the Community Server product. I would like to thank telligent for making the personal version available. Feel free to check the forums out and create an account! You can find them at http://bigkspub.com/ThePub/forums/default.aspx. I'm still in the process of setting it up and getting all the forums in so be kind. There's not a lot there. :)

IE 7 and SQL Server 2005 Service Packs

Keith — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 03:47:28 GMT

Tonight I updated my computer. Specifically, I installed Internet Explorer 7 Service Pack 1, then a couple security updates for that, then SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2. While we're waiting for them to finish, let's recap some world events that have taken place during the installs.

My daughter graduated college, got married, had kids, and sent them to college.
A baby that was born yesterday has grown up and become President.
I have gotten old and died.
We've found an alternative fuel to oil.
We've achieved world peace.
We've sent humans to Mars, Jupiter, Neptune, and the closest galaxy. (I think it's Andromdeda) And, they've all returned!

OH MY GOD! Will it ever end?!

Now if I could only get Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 to install.

Careful what you search for

Keith — Wed, 27 Dec 2006 12:59:36 GMT

Shelley Powers comments on a post written by Greg Beck at CL&P. Pretty scary really. Can we ever be anonymous again?