Digital Impulses

Setting up an iPod for Isa

So the evening after work today was consumed entirely by going to Best Buy with my sister, buying her a set of speakers, going to her house, installing the speakers and then getting to work on setting up her brand new green iPod Nano.

Installing iTunes 7.7: NOT
The first snag I encountered was that my sister's PC is horribly put-of-date in terms of MS security patches and service packs and was still running XP SP1.  So, the iTunes install failed immediately because it needs for XP to be running a minimum of SP 2.

Getting Windows XP Service Pack 2
Upon hitting the MS Windows Update web site, I was informed that my sister's copy of Windows XP was "not genuine* and thus Service Pack 2 could NOT be installed. I was then offered a link to a web site where I could purchase a *valid* Product key for $149.00 instead of the regular $299.00 that MS charges for a retail, boxed copy of Windows XP Pro.

I clicked on the link, filled out the form, provided a CC and purchased the valid Product key.  Once the transaction was authorized, I was re-directed to a web site where a tiny applet was downloaded and installed on the computer that upgraded or "legalized" the copy of XP Pro currently installed on my sister's PC.

Once all of that was done (MS will be shipping me a CD of Windows XP Pro SP2 for the cost of the product key I just bought, btw), a reboot of the computer followed by once again visiting the MS Windows Update web site allowed me to being the process of downloading and installing Service Pack 2.  about 15 minutes and 75 MB later, the download finished and the process of updating XP to SP 2 began.

That took another long while but eventually finished without incident.  Of course, REBOOT YET AGAIN, and this time i was able to launch the install of iTunes (+ QuickTime, of course) 7.7

Installing iTunes 7.7: Yes!
This time, the install of iTunes proceeded without a hitch and all was well with the world.  Once the install completed, it trundled for a little while and then was ready to be used.  I created an account for my sister at the iTunes music store and then gave her a quick demo / tutorial of using the iTunes music store.

Connecting her iPod Nano
Once iTunes was ready, I connected up her Nano and it was recognized without a hitch. iTunes synced it up nicely and my sister was able to listen to the demo songs that were put on her Nano by iTunes.  From there it was just a matter of ripping a couple of my sister's music CD's to her PC so that iTunes could put some more content on her Nano for her.

All in all, it was a long and boring and (expensive) process, but my sister now has a modern MP3 player that I think she is going to get a lot of pleasure out of.

Good for her.

Computer Support for Bert: Up late with the Purple Dell

FUCK.

So, after the absolutely *exhausting* grind of dealing with meeting Aldo's attorney for the 1st time, I came home and attempted to crash, only to receive a phone call from Bert, at like 9:30 PM, to pressure me about the progress on his POS purple Dell "pizza box" computer that he wanted me to retrofit for the Factory.

After expressing frustration with Bert at the fact that he was calling me about the computer and not about Aldo, we had a tense back and forth about the ETA on the repair of the computer, with Bert stating that although "i kinda need it by Friday", I will be very upset if you stay up late working on it.

I, of course, got out of bed, got dressed, stomped outside, got his computer, took it to the garage and hooked it up.  I then spent almost 2 hrs in my office and the garage, updating the computer, patching it up, installing the new nic card in it and making sure it was good to go so I could take it to him in the morning.

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!

Clueless, Idiot, Ungreatful People

Following is a perfect example as to WHY I have decided to RETIRE from one-on-one tech support effective 1/1/08.

Recently, a computer was dropped off at my house, unsolicited by me, to be fixed.  Said computer is the property of the daughter of an acquaintance of the family for whom I have done computer work in the past.

Initially, I looked at the PC to find that it had massive amounts of crap/mal/ware on it and was obviously infected to the gills with Trojan horses/ unidentified Virii and was barely booting to the Windows desktop.  I eventually informed the owner of the multiple problems the machine has and told her that I would see about getting her data peeled off of the machine.

Unfortunately, *life* and the remodel of my house started at right about the same time and chaos invaded every nook and cranny of my life, including the work area I use in the garage.  As a result of the chaos, I stopped working on all projects and the PC in question took a place on the back burner of my support projects.

When I recently got some time to look at the infernal machine, I found that the piece of shit would no longer POST.  Nothing I tried got it to boot successfully.  So, I drove over to PC Club in Hawthorne and bought a 3.5" External hard drive enclosure in order to connect her hard drive to it and slave her data over to my own PC.

Having done that, I ensured that her data was intact (it was) and waited for her phone call.

Fast forward to this past week and a tense conversation between said daughter and myself over the phone.  It ended with her agreeing to call me this Monday to arrange for pick-up of her PC.  So she calls me this afternoon on my way home from work and I break the news to her that her PC is *still* not booting, but that her data is safe on one of my hard drives.

She becomes increasingly hostile and irate at the fact that her PC and her Data are not immediately available to her (because I have not copied her data over to a spare HD yet).  At one point in the conversation, this broad blurts out "I have no reason to trust you" and I blew up.

I disconnected the phone call immediately and texted her to the effect that I thought she was rude and that I would no longer be taking her phone calls.  In a nutshell, because she decided to mount a personal attack, I have lost what little interest I had in helping her and now she will have to wait until her father returns on Sunday 12/2 to get her computer back.

Oh, by the way.  Did I mention that I am not MAKING A SINGLE RED FUCKING CENT on this entire nightmare?  Because of the length of time the computer has been at my house, I long ago told her that I would not be charging her or her father anything for my time.  All I asked for was a little patience.

She had to act like an idiot.  People like her are the very reason WHY I have defacto *retired* from doing this anymore for anyone outside my immediate family.

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.

Minor computer repair work in Marina Del Rey

This evening I took some time to visit a client in Marina Del Rey who runs a Beauty Salon/Spa. He needed a mass of cables under his front desk untangled and tidied up and also wanted me to ensure that his PC's are networked together properly.

Arriving there right at 8:00 P.M., I surprised the pregnant young lady behind the desk who seemed surprised to see me.  She got the owner on the phone who asked me to stay there while he drove over a little while later.

After the girl left, I got to work unplugging everything and generally cleaning up.  After that was done, I located a broom somewhere in the back and swept out the underside of the desk.  I then plugged everything back in and brought both machines back up to ensure that everything was working. 

Everything came back up and so it was time to do a little Windows XP maintenance. By that time the owner had arrived and we spoke at length about backup solutions, remote control, Internet access restrictions and remote surveillance options.

Before leaving, I made arrangements with him to stop by his jewelry store to check on the health of his PC network at that store.

A short visit with Julia, Reyna's friend
On the way home from Marina Del Rey, I stopped by Julia's house where my wife was visiting to pay a visit to Julia who had surgery a day earlier to take care of a minor health issue.  By now it was near 10:00 P.M., so I scooted on home to call it a night after a rather tiresome and hectic Monday.

A nice Sunday after the Wedding

So, I spent a good part of the morning and early afternoon today working on the pictures of my brother Pete's wedding.

I gotta say, I love how absolutely trouble-free it has been to transfer pictures from my Nikon D40 to my computer, be it on XP or in Vista.

Editing Pete's wedding pictures
My current rookie workflow is to create a folder on my Server's external drive that I am dedicating just to media and then manipulate the pictures once I have them safely transferred there.  Once I had all of the images off the Nikon D40, it was time to get them tagged.

I am excited at the possibilities offered by developing a real discipline in getting images tagged the instant they come off the camera.  I think the real trick is to split the task into manageable, bite-sized tasks, using multiple folders created by picture theme to tags bunches of images at a time.

Once the images are tagged, doing a search for a place or someone's name, having just those pictures show up in the search results really rocks.  I am really having fun with this digital photography hobby I am filling my time with.

Printing a CD Cover.  NOT.
After getting the pictures from the wedding sorted out, it was time to try and print to a CD.  Hah. In short, all I managed after nearly two hours was to get extremely frustrated and pent up with the desire to just throw my printer into the middle of the street.

It simply *REFUSED* to print on a CD, and all I can think is that the mechanism to pull the CD Tray in is broken.  time for a new printer.  I am not going to invest any more time in this.  I hand-wrote a title on the CD's and left it as a bad job.  *sigh*.

Windows Movie Maker in Windows Vista
I should note that I created a "movie" slide show of the images using the new version of Windows Movie Maker included in Windows Vista.  It was utterly simple to do and added value to the CD's that I turned over to my brother and his new bride.

1408
After that, my boy, his girlfriend and I took off for the movies in El Segundo and stopped by Pacific Theaters to see 1408, a horror flick starring John Cusack, Samuel L. Jackson and Mary McCormack.

The movie was typical nowadays horror fare with a couple of genuinely scary moments and a so-so ending.  All in all, it was OK and served as a nice ending to a hectic weekend.  In any case, the kids enjoyed themselves and that's what matters ultimately, right?  Right.

Royal Prestige: reviving a crippled Compaq Desktop

A good chunk of this Saturday was consumed by a trip to Huntington Park to look at an HP desktop PC that was so infected with Ad/Spy/Mal-ware that it had been effectively paralyzed.

I took a cursory look around and saw that the computer was basically impossible to operate.  After determining that there was no data on it that needed to be saved, I rebooted it and hit "Ctrl-F10" to access the hidden partition. This is a partition upon which there was a "restore to factory specs" image that returned the computer back to the way it was the day it was taken out of the box.

Once the machine was re-imaged, it was a simple matter to re-install the printer and re-configure access to the Internet.  A few short clicks later and the PC was usable once again.  I explained to the owner that great care should be taken in surfing the Internet, because access to suspect sites is what casued the computer to get sick in the first place.

We will see if i get called back to do this again in a few months because they do not listen to my warnings and get the PC infected again.

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.