Digital Impulses

Bert's iBoss / iPhantom issues with Comcast

I just got off the phone with Bert, who stated to me that he is having issues with his Phantom technologies devices, the iBoss and the iPhantom. He tells me that last night, he started having trouble with his Internet connection and none of the remedies he tried helped.

We discussed a couple of possible solutions, but seeing as to how he was on the way to the factory with Adrian (Adrian works part-time at the factory now), there was not a whole lot of solution implementing to be done.

I then thought about the problem for a little bit and realized that the issue might have resolved itself overnight if it was related to a database corruption problem.  So I told Bert to call his wife and have her attempt to connect to the Internet to see if the problem is still happening.

Meanwhile, I went to the http://www.iphantom.com/ support site and created a support ticket (trouble ticket # DIV-443087) for someone on their end to start working the issue and get back to Bert with a possible solution.

This is being documented here for the purposes of review a year from now or whenever.

UPDATE: 1435 hrs.  I just spoke with Bert who states that his Internet connection is back up and running flawlessly.  He received an Email from Phantom Technology telling him:

"...There has been a temporary routing issue that has been identified and resolved which affected a few users. This has been resolved and everything should now be up and running..."

So, I was right!  They had routing corruption and it affected users whose iBosses/iPhantoms were phoning home to get updates to their local databases.

Awesome.  One more technical issue identified and put to bed.  Nice!

Instaling Mac OS X Leopard (10.5)

This afternoon, after "The Interview", I decided to dedicate a few hours to installing Mac OS X Leopard.  Unfortunately, seeing as to the problems I had with iPhoto '08 earlier this year, I was very hesitant to start the upgrade without making absolutely sure I had backed up completely.

After much indecision and research of Mac backup programs, I just made sure that my iPhoto and iTunes library were indeed safe on my external hard drive and just plunged ahead with the default 'Upgrade Install'.

All in all, although it took a long time (over 90 minutes), the install itself was utterly painless.  I booted with the Leopard DVD, clicked a couple of buttons, answered a few questions and let the install do it's thing.

I returned to my Mac Mini about an hour and a half after it started the install and I was presented with a beautiful Leopard desktop, ready for me to explore and test.

I spent the next few hours going through the new features and making sure my hard disk(s) and the data thereon had survived intact and it had.  Everything was working as it should and nothing was out of the ordinary.  The install completed seamlessly and with nary a hiccup.

Score one for Apple in my book.

Altaf @ Blue Diamond: Finally invoiced

Altaf Amlani
Blue Diamond Spa
Blue Diamond Jewelry

Just billed him 7 hours work and 1 wireless router installed at his jewelry store. 

I faxed the invoice to him after speaking to him on his cell phone.  He stated to me that he was out of the office and that he would look at the invoice when he got back to the jewelry store so that we could "square away".

I hope getting paid is stress free.

Errand Saturday

Lucky Lotto day at the Bakery
For the 1st time in a long while, my son and his girlfriend showed up early on a Saturday morning and came over just to hang out.  We went to see his mom at work, where we bought a bunch of Lotto tickets and I won like 3 or 4 times, winning 12 dollars at one time and then winning free tickets on two others.

Another visit to Rojas Inc.
After the bakery, AJ, his girlfriend and I drove over to Rojas Inc. so that I could pick up a PC that Bert agreed to *lend* me as payment for the computer work that I did for him last week.  After having my son say "Hi!" to Victor, one of Bert's long-time employees, we drove home.

OLD PC from Martele converted into a Server for me
As soon as I got home, I hooked up this anceint PC to find that it had the following specs:

• 1.8Ghz Intel Celeron CPU
• 256 MB RAM (248MB for Windows, 8MB shared out to the on-board video)
• 2 Hard Disks:
  • 30GB Western Digital Primary Master
  • 4 GB (!) Samsung Secondary Slave
• 1 CD Burner
• 1 Floppy Drive
• On-board Sound, Ethernet and Video

For what I need it to do, it should be fine.  I am going to convert it to Windows 2000 and off-load my two USB 2.0 External Hard Drives that I have attached to my computer right now to it.

In preparation for the conversion, I made a copy over the network of any data on the C: drive and, being a "belt and suspenders" kind og guy, I created an image of the C: Drive also, with Norton Ghost 2003.

Later this evening, I will be attending a celebration at Buono's Pizza II in Long Beach for my brother's 38th birthday.

Ho-Hum Saturday: Configuring Bert's iBoss

Routine Saturday, lazing around the house and then later in the early evening eating dinner at Asela's and then playing Scrabble in Palos Verdes.

Configuring the iBoss for Bert
A good part of the Scrabble time was consumed by configuring Bert's new Internet Security device called the iBoss.  Bert was trying to get it to allow connections to specific pages INSIDE a DOMAIN (such as YouTube) even though the DOMAIN itself is BLOCKED.

I attempted to explain to Bert that this would not work, but he continued on stubbornly, in typical fashion for like an additional 20 minutes, until he too became convinced there was nothing for it and left the configuration as is.

As a result of this, we ended up playing a single game of Scrabble.

Another Dell resuscitated for Bert

SO a good part of this day was taken up setting up yet another computer for Bert Rojas. This time it involved an old Dell "Pizza box-style" Desktop PC that Bert bought for his family in January 2002.

That PC has a 1.74Ghz CPU, 512 MB of RAM and a 30 GB hard disk.  Sound and video are integrated, but the LAN card is stand-alone as a PCI card and is replaceable.  Which is exactly what I did, going over to Best Buy and picking up a $75.00 Linksys wireless card and popping it into the Dell.

Installing Windows XP was a breeze, as it detected all of the hardware the 1st time and never even asked me for the Drivers CD that Dell had provided with purchase.  Once it was done installing and I had tweaked the interface to my liking, it was time to hit Microsoft for nearly 400MB in patches and updates, including XP SP 2.

By the time all of that had downloaded and started installing, it was time to head over to Asela's for dinner.  I had already installed Windows Office XP and MS Publisher, so I left the updates installing and left for Asela's.

When I returned later in the evening to get the PC and my car to head over to PV, the updates had not finished installing because there was a license agreement on the screen waiting for a yes/no click of approval.

At that point I canceled the install, shut down the PC and put it in the car.  I drove to Palos Verdes (where, incidentally, I was made to wait 40 minutes for Bert to show up) and gave the PC to Bert, informing him that the updates would have to continue once the PC has been installed in its new location.

Bert pressured me for the PC to be ready today. Supposedly because he will be purchasing a desk and other stuff to get installed ASAP for it to be ready for the arrival of Adrian's new Art teacher.

I predict here and now that there was NO REASON to hurry and that the PC and desk will not be ready for use even a month from now, if not 6.  I know Bert well, and he demanded the 18-hour turnaround as part of thinking he deserves to be 'pampered' by me.  He doesn't have a place for the PC, but he wanted it back immediately.

What a joke.

Mom's PC dies.

This evening was consumed by a visit to my mom's house trying vainly to bring back her PC from the dead.  Dealing with a PC that would not boot form the primary hard drive, I had eons of trouble trying to get into the BIOS, because the PC would not recognize the USB-attached Wireless Microsoft keyboard.

That entailed a quick trip over to the nearby Radio Shack to purchase a regular, el cheapo wired/PS2 keyboard that allowed me to enter the BIOS setup where I could try (again, vainly) to have the PC re-detect the Hard Drive correctly. 

Right.  2 hours later, the PC still refused to boot into Windows.

I broke out SpinRite 6.0 to see if there was actual damage to the Hard Drive. Thankfully, after 90 minutes or so,  SR 6.0 finished running and reported no problems to the hard drive, which makes me hopeful that the issue is maybe motherboard related and my mom's data is *safe* for the time being.

So just before 10:00 P.M., I decided to call it a night and will be taking the PC back to my office for further in-depth troubleshooting and re-configuring.  I will be trying the following steps:

1. Replace the Battery on the motherboard to make sure that's not part of the problem.
2. Replace the IDE cable on the hard drives connected to the Primary IDE Controller on the Motherboard
3. Move the hard Drive to the Secondary IDE Controller to see if the PC boots from there.

More fun details to follow as I try and revive this PC.  Lucky Me.

Alberto's Fine Furniture: 2 hrs work

This afternoon after work, I went directly to Alberto's Fine Furniture to help him get up and running on a NEW PC (HP Compaq tower, 3.0 Ghz, 512 MB RAM, 100 GB HD, integrated sound, graphics & ethernet, CD Burner/DVD Player) that he bought last weekend from Best Buy in Hawthorne, CA.

Speakers and a Printer
When I arrived, The PC had already been setup and he needed to connect his old speakers and install an  HP All-IN-One Fax, Scanner, Copier Printer that he had there already.  I connected the speakers and installed the printer without problems on Windows Vista Home Basic, the OS that came pre-installed on the PC that he bought.

Internet Connection
Afterwords, he wanted assistance getting connected to the Internet via D-I-A-L U-P (!!) via a company called "PeoplePC Online", which were offering basic 56K dial-up service for $5.43 a month.  90 minutes and 3 aborted billing sign-ups later, I determined that this software simply doesn't play nice with Windows Vista and there is nothing for it.

I decided to call it a night and told the owner that I would research alternatives for him and get back to him with a better connectivity option.

NOTE: I need to put this project to bed already, as I have been working on it since 3/3/07 and I still have not seen a dime from it.

Microsoft: Launch Across America

Took a day off from work today to attend an 'IT Pro Track' Microsoft Windows Vista and Office 2007 System launch in Anaheim, CA.

The main lure to trudge the 35 miles out to Orange County in the rain and fog was the FREE copy of Office 2007 Professional and Microsoft Office Groove that we got just for attending the 4 hour session. As it was, they started handing out the copies of Office 2007 at the 11:00 AM break, so I was able to scoot out of there early and het a jump on the traffic.

They presenter was nice and funny enough to avoid total stupor, but he did seem a little ill prepared.  Regardless, the info presented was good to file away for later.

At 13:31, I am sitting at the Barnes & Noble bookstore in Manhattan Beach using the AT&T WiFi connection ($3.95 for 2 hours) to blog about the event I attended.

It was a good day today.  :>)

Installing Windows Vista on a 3-year Laptop: A Wasted effort

So this evening, while watching TV at my mom's house, I decided to see what Windows Vista would be like running on a 3-year old Fujitsu E2010 laptop purchased in June of 2004 from notebookshop.com in Cerritos, CA.

First, the hardware specs of this Laptop:

• Mobile Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor 2.0GHz (with SpeedStep® Technology)
• Microsoft Windows XP Professional
• 1 GB DDR266 RAM
• 30 GB Hard Disk (Ultra DMA/100 and S.M.A.R.T. Support)
• 14" XGA TFT Color screen (Max resolution: 1024x768)
• Internal ATI Graphics, 32/64/128 MB selectable with 3D graphics Accelerator and MPEG-2 Support (for DVD)
• Internal Speakers (Stereo)
• Integrated V.90 modem & 10/100 Base-T LAN
• 802.11b Wi-Fi compliant module (Optional)
• CD-R/RW Drive (Swappable device bay)
• External USB FDD (bundled)
• IrDA 1.1 (Max 4Mbps)
• Up to 2.7* hours (Standard Battery Pack Li-Ion 14.4V 3800 mAH)
• Approximately 2.65kg (with Weight Saver)

According to the Windows System Assessment Tool, the laptop was rated a "1.0" on a scale of 1 - 5, because of the low-end, integrated graphics.  Microsoft was not kidding when they stated that Windows Vista requires a high-end graphics card in order to run Aero, the new GUI included in all versions of Windows Vista except for the Home basic edition.

Regardless, I really wanted to demonstrate Windows Vista to a friend (although now, because of the sub-par graphic capabilities, one of the neater parts of the upgrade, the Aero interface, would not be present), so I trudged forward with the install and hoped for the best.

After inputting some basic information, I wiped my C: partition and proceeded to do a "clean install" of Windows Home Premium (Note: the install was performed via my Windows Vista Ultimate DVD; all versions are included on the DVD -- the version you are installing is determined by the product key that you provide).

Since I had not yet purchased a valid product key from Microsoft via their "Windows Vista Family Discount", I skipped the entering of a product key and did not activate Windows, as I figured that 30 days would be enough time to decide if I can live with Windows Vista on this under-powered notebook.

As was to be expected, Vista installed without issue and works fine for the most part, except for the fact that Aero is not present and thus most of the "eye candy" is therefore absent also. 

Games
Attempting to play any of the new games included with Windows Vista gets you a large pop-up box in the middle of the screen with a rather dire warning that graphics performance does not meet the minimum requirements and thus performance will suffer.

Conclusion
Graphics card strength is the single biggest factor affecting the performance of Windows Vista on any platform.  All in all, the machine runs well enough to be serviceable, but I am leaning towards popping Win XP Pro back on here as soon as my buddy is able to put what passes for Windows Vista on this notebook through its paces.