I’ve ventured out in the past on previous black friday’s fighting the traffic, parking, and crowds and certainly know what it’s like. Today I didn’t. Sure I get aggravated from the hassle and waiting in line but I didn’t see anything out there that made me think “wow, thats way too good to pass up”. From asking people I’ve talked with during the past view days and some input from various websites it doesn’t seem like many people were going out today. That’s not to say the stores were empty, I’m sure retailers such as BestBuy, CircuitCity, and many others were packed. I would be willing to guess that the number of people have declined this year.
Some of the retailers limited their deals to “in store only” which isn’t a half bad idea on their part. The deals themselves seemed a bit average with some short-windowed exceptions. For me it wasn’t enough to venture out. I also heard from someone first hand that needed to work today that a local mall (not a small strip mall but a two floor multi-anchor store type) received about an average weekend kind of traffic.
So what does this boil down to? People shopping more? Less? Getting their shopping done earlier in the year ad planned around the frenzy? Not as many as attractive deals? Increased online shopping? There could be many things that would influence the answer. For this blogger it comes down to two things - 1) Deals weren’t there 2) Online shopping is far more up my alley for the type of shopper I am. Thanks for the various sites that are available I was able to keep close tabs on the various sales without having to venture out. These are - techbargains, blackfridayhome, and slickdeals.
Something that was brought to my attention last week is a term called ‘Cyber Monday’ for which online shopping is suppose to be what Black Friday is for local retailers. I’ll be keeping an eye out for this to see what comes of it and more than likely any such deals will be mentioned in one, if not all, of the sites above.
As a parting question to those to visit - if you went shopping (local or online) what would you consider you best ‘Black Friday’ bargain?
During the past month or so, roughly a week before Halloween, I along with countless others began to see Christmas decorations, ornaments, lights, and the general decorations that go with Christmas. pop up a more and more each day in many retail stores and malls. The key problem to this being it was still October. I couldn’t help but notice since then from coworkers, friends, and hearing comments of those in the stores that “it’s too early for Christmas decorations, it’s not even November.”
I for one agree with them and though I haven’t been keeping track from previous years if I were to guess the holiday season is coming sooner each year. There is something odd when on two adjacent shelves/racks that one would be Halloween and the other Christmas. In fact about two weeks ago I saw candy canes in CVS and while I admit to getting a box (they are good) part of me also thinks its taking something away from that “special time of year” if it becomes too common. I am completely for the spirit people speak of during the holidays to be year round but don’t think this is the best way to accomplish that. I also wonder on maybe this is the result of companies wanting to get a leg up on their competitors by being in front of the customer first. I would bet that if this trend continues it will reach a tipping point and more of the public will be heard. I’ll take a bet that it would have to be late September for that to occur, not long after the fall school shopping bonanza is finished. I also recall seeing back to school advertisements in late May early June this past year, but I won’t get into that now.
Final words - leave the holiday and Christmas season where it belongs on the calendar year.
To continue on from an earlier installment, Installing a new keyboard - Part 1, I had time to look into this further and every turn I took it became more and more bleak until I succumbed to what I was ultimately hoping to avoid.
I made a complete backup and formated the laptop with a clean, crisp reinstallation of Windows XP Pro. From the initial screens of going through the setup I was using the keyboard but was waiting until it booted into windows and was still recognized. I was very pleased that it was and upon looking at the driver it decided on I found that it was the generic HID driver that I tried oh so many times before. I left the laptop in the docking station during the whole process and to my surprise detected that find too now, which is great since I have about eight or so usb devices and only had two ports available before on the side of the laptop. It can get tricky syncing an ipod without a mouse but I’m very familiar with keyboard shortcuts so it wasn’t too bad. To even more of my surprise the internal bluetooth card was also detected which is great so I can now setup my phone to be recognized by it.
As to almost anyone I talk with computers with can tell you, I dread formating because of the numerous programs I use and amount of little customizations I like. I think this time around was one of my smoothest formats yet. From time of format to almost a complete reinstallation of applications and setting was about four hours.
This story ends with a happy ending of getting the keyboard to work but not without its heartache. To anyone else out there that may have problems on a Dell Latitude D620 installing a Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 keyboard to it and it’s not being detected. If possible save yourself time and frustration and if you can’t get it to work right away keep in mind you very well may need to format. As to why I’m not sure and doubt I’ll look into the root of the problem of this, the docking station, or bluetooth since they’re all now working but if anyone can offer any insight please speak up.
About a year ago I wanted to setup a VMWare ESX 3.0 server to test out their new (at the time) release, unfortunately, I didn’t have the funds needed to setup a true production environment with it. I was able to find a fantastic alternative that is great to learn off of at a much more cost effective price point. It seems that the LSI Logic driver included is compatible with scsi and sata controllers, which is great news for us small folks wanting to check out this virtualization environment.
I won’t get into the details of a step by step setup installation but will jump ahead to the post installation changes needed. I’m probably going to miss or incorrectly state a technical term here or there but if there are any corrections needed or questions let me know.
The hardware (least the parts that matter for this writeup) I ended up using is as follows:
Motherboard: Tyan Transport GX28 (B2881)
Controller: LSI MegaRaid
Hard Drives: Seagate 320GB SATA 2
Keep in mind that the installation of ESX can be on any drive, including IDE, the datastores are what need to be on a supported device such as SAN, iSCSI, etc, or in this case a budget SATA setup. After the initial installation is complete you’ll need to check on and modify a file. It took some rummaging around at the time and after some good old trial and error along with a couple installations I was able to narrow it down to the following steps.
#cat /etc/modules.conf
alias eth0 e100
alias eth1 tg3
alias eth2 tg3
alias scsi_hostadapter megaraid2
alias usb-controller usb-ohci
From the above lines I think I did this to either check that “alias scsi_hostadapter megaraid2″ was there or I added it in.
#lspci | grep LSI
020:0e.0 RAID bus controller: LSI Logic / Symbios Logic: Unknown device 0409 (rev 0a)
This is to find out what the device number is for the controller, in this case it is “0409″.
#cat /etc/vmware/vmware-devices.map | grep LSI
vendor ,0x1000,Symbios,LSI Logic / Symbios Logic
device 0x1000,0x0050,scsi,LSI1064,mptscsi_2xx.o
device 0x1000,0x0054,scsi,LSI1068,mptscsi_2xx.o
device 0x1000,0x0056,scsi,LSI1064E,mptscsi_2xx.o
device 0x1000,0x0058,scsi,LSI1068E,mptscsi_2xx.o
device 0x1000,0x005a,scsi,LSI1066E,mptscsi_2xx.o
device 0x1000,0x005c,scsi,LSI1064A,mptscsi_2xx.o
device 0x1000,0x005e,scsi,LSI1066,mptscsi_2xx.o
device 0x1000,0x0060,scsi,LSI1078,mptscsi_2xx.o
device 0x1000,0x0407,scsi,LSI Logic MegaRAID,megaraid2.o
device 0x1000,0x0408,scsi,LSI Logic MegaRAID,megaraid2.o
device 0x1000,0x0411,scsi,LSI Logic MegaRAID SAS1064R,megaraid_sas.o
device 0x1000,0x1960,scsi,LSI Logic MegaRAID,megaraid2.o
device 0x1000,0x9010,scsi,LSI Logic MegaRAID ,megaraid2.o
device 0x1000,0x9060,scsi,LSI Logic MegaRAID ,megaraid2.o
The spacing in there is exactly how it was returned, without the word wrapping. I’m generally pretty organized with files and code so seeing this I needed to keep myself from fixing it :) Take note of the device line with 0×0408 in it, this will be changed to 0×0409 which we found out from the previous command.
From: device 0x1000,0x0408,scsi,LSI Logic MegaRAID,megaraid2.o
To: device 0x1000,0x0409,scsi,LSI Logic MegaRAID,megaraid2.o
Now that the updated the vmware-devices.map file to see the controller card we’ll need to update ESX and reboot. I’m not fully sure if each of these are needed, I would think that at least the first is, but I have done in before for safe practice to make sure the system is up to date.
#esxcfg-boot -p (reloads PCI data)
#esxcfg-boot -i (reloads initrd information)
#esxcfg-boot -b (sets up boot information)
#reboot
Upon rebooting and logging into the VMware Virtual Infrastructure Client you should be able to access that datastore and begin to create virtual machines. Watch out with keeping snapshots around too long, I talked about this some in a previous post. I now also recall watching the various services starting on boot and that it would begin to fail on a particular one until this was fixed. I didn’t write that down but I’ll try and find out what it is and add it here.
Some time ago it gradually came to my attention that I’ve fallen into a routine, like many others, and that I would get up, head to work, come home, do my things in the evening and eventually head to bed. After all, humans are creatures of habit and seeing that I’ve fallen into one isn’t a surprise. After making this realization it became more apparent to me and frustrated me more each time I thought about it and wanting to do something and for one reason or another didn’t initiate a change. A day came that a little change was made, then another, followed by another, and so on. The changes I’ve made and new experiences I’ve tried during that time were good but now I’m looking to do more.
So much so that some days I’m ready to accomplish or try out another idea quicker than the last time, and also think that it’s time to bring more of a variety to that routine. In a way it’s similar to getting “a fix” I suppose but much more healthy. One of these included having this blog and chronicling my thoughts, various reviews, and bits of knowledge. I am also making a push to contribute more to sites I visit frequently and to offer some insight and opinion back.
Currently I have a list with a wide assortment of items that I want to either do or accomplish. I’m not about to go down that list but odds are I will mention some somehow after my experience with them. This also includes traveling and will probably plan a trip somewhere for the spring. In my eyes, gone are the days wishing I’ve done something different, didn’t go anywhere, or spent every minute working. It is time to do something different and though it may not seem to be much after the particular moment, it will certainly come to mean a lot after a few years time. When I look back on what I’ve done over a period I can think of numerous times that I would have made a different decision now. There is a lot out there to do and, after all, the only difference between a rut and a grave are their dimentions.
I wanted to write up a short and sweet review of an experience we had with VitalStream (www.vitalstream.com), now part of InterNap (www.internap.com), in case someone is doing searching about their CDN (Content Delivery Network) and streaming services before they sign up.
During the spring of ‘07 a company I’m affiliated with began to offer flash streaming services for their clients. We looked at a few companies and in the end choose VitalStream because the quality, service, and products were right up our alley. They sounded great and and we were off and running with their service in just a couple days. Responses from the sales rep were always friendly and timely with a thorough answer. When we received our invoice there was a mistake and made a call to him to get it worked out. One call turned into two, then three, as well as emails. We were given the contact information of someone in accounting to help us out and after numerous calls and emails there was not response. We then in turn contacted our representative again and was given another person. We promptly received the same treatment when we contacted the first person in accounting. By this point the problem has turned to be quite annoying for us and unfortunately it was the tip of the iceberg.
Skipping forward to late summer/early fall and the transition to InterNap began and we started to experience random outages, and while the technical support dept was good to talk with on the phone I got the distinct impression they were over burdened and when an email was sent with a question or status update more often than not they never responded to it. This was even after they asked us to send an email for them to follow up with from a conversation. At one point the outages became really bad and did receive some great support at that time with phone calls back on status updates. After some digging with questions the problem had to do with the content not making to all of their delivery servers. The transition as a whole between the two companies for their flash streaming and CDN network was chaotic and were becoming very nervous with them. At one point while calling about one outage we were told the problem was related to various typo’s on the server which took down part of their service, and was given quick and vague excuses to what we felt was to get us off the phone. From that point we began to sought out alternate providers we know can maintain a quality service.
Jumping forward again to present day, we’re about to switch providers and still trying to resolve numerous billing issues which we’ve been blown off, passed around, and many ignored emails and voice mails in addition to what was previously mentioned. It is to the point that we will only get some form of direct answer or progress if they happen to pick up the phone when we call and spell out precisely what they should do while on the call. The whole relationship has been a nightmare and is the worst experience I have encountered with a company both professionally from another business and personally with a service provider (comcast, verizon, etc).
To be fair to InterNap these dealings have been with VitalStream and their CDN network in particular. InterNap is only mentioned because of the acquisition that occurred. As far as InterNap’s other services and network I have no comment or opinion on them since they were not used.
I was flipping through some RSS headlines and am disgusted with how celebrities and their antics make it to headline level news. There is a section for that under entertainment with music and movie releases and it belongs in the little square under those, not with key issues with the top headlines. When I check the news I’m looking for progress or changes on subject matters that pertain to subjects including my local area, economies, countries, and people and not mere water cooler headlines for people to gossip and talk about these music stars, actors, and actresses as if they talk with them regularly. Sadly it is to a point that some know what is happening more about them than within their own town.
I’m not going to name any specific examples because they, and there are many, don’t deserve any additional publicity or commentary on the internet than what currently exists. I’m sure you can think of several with ease, and I would contribute that to be from the amount of exposure in numerous forms from websites to magazines and even local news broadcasts. This isn’t a rant about how television is poisoning our minds and we should get our pitchforks and torches and march down to our local broadcast station. In my point of view television, magazines, and news broadcasts exist based on the feedback from its viewers and readers. It’s quite simple really and there are examples of it daily and is something most of us know about from school or work - supply and demand. I know of numerous people that agree and disagree with this and have thought about to understand the opposing view and I can see how they enjoy reading about it and that it is a source of entertainment. It is only entertainment, news is good and bad and we must take one with the other like it or not because it is reporting on facts that effect people and society as a whole. The entertainment aspect seems to have over saturated its column and time block into those around it.
Only until the majority or readers and viewers speak up, or Nielsen ratings go down, enough that the shift will begin. I was happy to read back in July that there is a local news station in Boston (need to find the reference and station) which agreed not to air such material and hope others agree to do the same. In the end I suppose if that is what people enjoy to read, so be it, I’m not here to dictate others just as they won’t to me, but let’s leave the news casts and columns free of entertainment and left to clever writing and research to make a story meaningful.
The Shoe Event Horizon is now a firmly established and rather sad economic phenomenon which, in future times will be taught as part of the basic Middle School Life, the Universe, and Everything syllabus. …
TEACHER: Stand up! Harsh Economic Truths, Class 17. You are standing up?
STUDENT: Yes.
T: Good. You are living in an exciting, go-ahead civilization. Where are you looking?
S: Up.
T: What do you see?
S: The open sky, the stars, an infinite horizon.
T: Correct… You are living in a stagnant, declining civilization. Where are you looking?
S: Down.
T: What do you see?
S: My shoes.
T: Correct. What do you do to cheer yourself up?
S: I buy a new pair.
T: Correct! Now, imagine everyone does the same thing… everyone buys new shoes, what happens?
S: More shoes.
T: And?
S: More shoe shops.
T: Correct… and in order to support all these extra shoe shops, what happens?
S: Everyone must keep buying shoes.
T: And how is that arranged?
S: Manufacturers dictate more and more different fashions of and make shoes so badly that they either hurt the feet or fall apart.
T: So that?
S: Everyone has to buy more shoes.
T: Until?
S: Until… everyone gets fed-up with lousy, rotten shoes.
T: And then what?
S: Massive capital investment by the manufacturers to try and make people buy the shoes.
T: Which means?
S: More shoe shops.
T: And then we reach what point?
S: The Shoe Event Horizon! The whole economy overbalances. Shoe shops outnumber every other kind of shop. It becomes economically impossible to build anything other than shoe shops.
T: Now, what’s the final stage?
S: Um… every shop in the world becomes a shoe shop.
T: Full of?
S: Shoes no one can wear.
T: Result?
S: Famine, collapse, and ruin. Any survivors eventually evolve into birds and never put their feet on the ground again.
T: Excellent! End of lesson.
One pet peeve of mine that has been increasing over time is when an email is sent with all the various information and someone in the list of people that received it decides to respond to the second or third latest to the chain, thus throwing the flow of the conversation out the window. I’m not sure if this is a common practice in a lot of companies, or maybe only specific types of people, but I would be curious for someone to comment on this and explain what they see. For example and generally what I’ve seen, let’s say an email went out involving four people for either a specification requirement, questions on a project, issue that came up, or anything. I’ll try and break this down so its easier to follow
- Initial email sent from chris to adam, stacey, jamal
- adam responds to chris, stacey, jamal
- chris responsds to adam, stacey, jamal
- stacey responds to only chris because she forgets to reply to all
- jamal responds to adam’s email from bullet 2, completely ignoring chris’ email from bullet 3
- chris responds to stacey’s email reincluding adam, and jamal. chris also answers the question from jamal since adam is a tool and will only forward it on to someone else anyhow
- chris finds out more info and responds to his own email still including adam, stacey, jamal — at this point we’re about back on track and the previous email is kept so nothing is missed
- jamal, as if he’s living in the past, sends another email replying to bullet 2, not the email he already sent to bullet 2, to adam, chris, stacey and now also includes jessica
More often than not, say 7/10 times, it goes further downhill from there. If an attachment becomes involved then it turns into a disaster, without fail. I can understand that people get a fair amount of email but this is senseless. I sometimes wonder if those people do it deliberately so if something gets screwed up they can blame it on some “miscommunication” in the email to cover their ass.
Much like source control I wish there was an option to require the server to not allow and email to send if there is a more recent version. This would probably be easier to accomplish if this was all on the same domain email server but I’m not here to work out the technical details at the time. If people followed a few basic rules to emailing conversations would take less time and be more meaningful. I think those include:
- Always respond to the latest email, even if you sent the previous one. Send a follow up response to that so the entire chain is kept in tact.
- Make sure to include everyone that should be on the email. But if you’re going to send a response that should be private then make sure you choose the right button. I’ve seen it happen.
- In the case of files, have a share on a type of file server with a version scheme in the name of the document. In this case if it does need to be emailed the version can be referenced instead of something abstract such as “from the email titled ‘newest doc’”. I’ve seen this happen too.
Am I asking too much? Is it out of line? Thought of a way to have people to follow rules? Let me know.
Couple months back I picked up a new Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 keyboard to replace my current one. I’ve used it at work for quite a while and thought it would be a good replacement. Being familiar with technology and having assembled a few computers over the years I didn’t give installing it a seconds thought. I figured “great, it gets in tomorrow so I’ll plug it in and start using it.” Unfortunately that wasn’t the case.
First off I’m quite fond of my current keyboard (pic to come). I received it as a Christmas present from my brother in 2004. It’s a completely modified Microsoft Natural Keyboard Elite with a Half-Life 2 theme, the game was released about a month and a half before hand. You maybe not be able to tell from the picture but each of the keys are the actual keys that came with the keyboard each being modified with the sides being cut off individually. The rust color is also a paint type mixture over the silver and yellow, and on top of them are numerous layers of a lacquer coating which I somehow managed to wear off in a few places. My reason for replacing it is because, quite simply, I wear the hell out of my computer gear. I couldn’t even guess how much I’ve typed on this during the past few years. In addition to the paint beginning to wear in a few places a few of the common letters such as the vowels, backspace, and space bar are jamming. This makes for a consensus stream of typing semi-frustrating at times. I suppose it could be related to cruising around a bumper-car track and suddenly getting it from the front. - a very abrupt stop. It’s not quite at the point of being retired but it is time for it to be moved to another spot where it won’t receive as much use. So, what’s all the fuss about installing the new one?
I’m running a Dell Latitude D620 with Windows XP SP2. The laptop actually came with Vista but since it’s used for a lot of development, and I’m not about to put up with the various Vista issues, and since I had an XP license I decided to format it and install XP. It has a couple usb ports on the back and the side, and since I prefer running dual screen I also have a docking station I connect it up with at home. I have a run of the mill Logitech usbmouse and the aforementioned keyboard is ps/2. For some reason I wasn’t able to get the mouse working in the docking station and since I needed to get some things done I just haven’t looked into it enough and plugged it into the side usb right into the laptop. Worked like a charm. I later purchase the new keyboard and go to install it…device not found. It sees I plugged in a usb type device, but it is unable to detect it as a keyboard. I manually add the device and repeat the process attempted at the assorted drivers. By this time I’ve also installed the Microsoft Keyboard software and driver. I’ve tried at countless combinations with reboots and different usb ports with all of the same result. The message that’s displayed after it attempts to detect the device is
The hardware was not installed because the wizard cannot find the necessary software.
Then checking the Device Manager there is a usb device that isn’t found. The device status reads:
This device is not configured correctly. (Code 1)
Which after searching for some time on google find it may have to do with an IRQ conflict. At this point I’m confused for a couple reasons:
- How is it a keyboard can cause such a conflict?
- Why do other usb devices (mouse, thumb drive, camera, ipod, phone) work just fine?
For those who may be wondering if the keyboard may be broken, it’s been tested on two desktops and another dell laptop. I also checked the driver it uses on the desktops and its the same general hid device driver which I tried on my laptop.
As a side issue with this, I think the problems I have with using the docking station’s usb ports are along the same lines. When it’s in the dock I see an additional unknown usb device with the device status showing:
This device is not configured correctly. (Code 28)
I haven’t looked into this as deeply but since I was focusing on the other. At this point after a friends suggestion I’ll probably end up backing up the laptop, with ghost or another utility, and install a clean build on it and see what happens. We suspect it may have to do with the various dell drivers that need to be installed since there is a EVDO modem and bluetooth in addition to the modem and network card. I’ll definitely post an update but if there are any thoughts or suggestions let me know.