Notes From My Basement

Upgraded to Windows 7 Ultimate x64

guillermo — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 08:43:41 -0600

I just got done with running the upgrade to Windows 7 Ultimate x64 on my previous Vista Ultimate x64 system.

Kudos, two thumbs up, hooray and well done!

Painless, quick, efficient, transparent. System is performing like a charm. The only one visible change was that it swapped my wallpaper.

ASUS Technical Service FAIL.

Guillermo — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 01:00:00 -0600

After having pre ordered it from Amazon (sorry, no links… not making it easier for anyone to give ASUS business they don’t deserve) and paying a hefty $375 for it (in comparison to the competition), the unit shipped on February 7th of this year 2009 and I received it a few days later.

I was motivated to pre order, because as I had read somewhere in the “interwebs”, that the ASUS 1000HE was the first one to offer the (back then) new Atom N280 processor. Sparing anyone the details of what the benefits of the N280 processor are over its brother the N270 processor (yes, to me processors are MALE because they do all the hard work and the heavy lifting, plus they can multitask!), but suffice it to say it was not because of the clock speed difference: 1.60ghz for the N270 in contrast to the whopping 1.66ghz of its big brother the N280.

3 months after, the unit’s integrated wireless card sadly died. I called, got on their phone with their tech support, explained my case and after running a series of unnecessary tests to satisfy their need to prove the customer is not an idiot, it was determined (you don’t say?) that the wireless card was indeed kaput! As if I didn’t know already, but oh well… the RMA was issued and the unit went out the door and unto little machine hospital care.

Little did I know, “little machine hospital” care turned out to be the worst HMO anyone would ever want to put their selves into their hands.

About a month later I received the unit back, and promptly turned it back on making my first order of business to test that the wireless card was indeed in working order. Oh jolly, yeay! it was.

Don’t ask me why, I can’t tell you, and maybe its part of my stupid OCD habits, but I decided to check on the hardware specs by “right clicking” on my computer and selecting properties (you know these . Oh, I remember, I wanted to confirm it had 1GB of memory and not 2GB, because my ultimate plan was (and quite honestly probably still is) to install Windows 7 on it. I wanted to set out to buy extra RAM for it.

This is what I saw:

Surprise and darn! WTF??? 1.6Ghz Atom N270… not Atom N280… hmm… am I going crazy? So I go and check Amazon’s receipts and sure enough, It says right there I bought a unit with an N280 processor.

I then went and check the box in which the unit originally shipped, the same one I used to ship it back to repair the wireless card (yes, I keep that sort of stuff laying around. I told you I have annoying OCD habits).

Sure enough, you can see the serial number AND that it is an EEEPC 1000HE, even the color is listed so thank God they didn’t send me back a pink one! can you imagine the post I’d write?

There it is: INTEL ATOM280.

I quickly call them up, state the case and … surprise #2: with what sounded to me at the time, a very condescending forcibly polite little tone of voice, the tech proceeds to tell me that “it is all ok, because right here in my system it says that the serial number for your machine indicates the unit shipped from factory with a N270 processor” I literally felt my head flush with the fluids of irrational anger and almost had to run and put it under the bathroom sink faucet to cool it off. 10 minutes later, after futile attempts to use logic to explain that “it must be an error”, I concluded with the statement “I don’t give a fuck what your system says, my unit was purchased as, was shipped from Amazon as, and I used it for 2 months as configured with an N280 processor” and followed it up with “what do I need to do to prove to you guys you are verging on committing retail fraud or at the very least deception by assumption of stupidity?”.

Long story short (yeah right, but believe me when I say this is the abridged version) I had to write an essay about 5 times lengthier and angrier than this post is turning to be, and included every picture possible to prove to those idiots that I am not an idiot and that indeed my EeePC was originally equipped with an N280 and they shipped it back after repair with a lesser processor, the N270.

Blah, blah, blah, yada-yada-yada… about 2 weeks later I finally got a new RMA, and after my strong position that I wasn’t going to pay for shipping so that they can correct their blatant mistake, they included a pre-paid shipping label. So I shipped it out and readied myself to let the waiting begin.

Yesterday after approximately 3 or 4 weeks, I received my EeePc 1000HE back from ASUS technical service (well technically speaking, I picked it up).

Got it home, power it up and of course the first thing I do is go into the BIOS to check the processor… surprise, surprise, or should I be surprised? You guessed it… same shit. N270 Processor… this is even AFTER their order slip reads and says they actually replaced it AGAIN with the N280 (see the picture of the body of the repair slip included in the box back from the repair center):

Breath in Guillermo, Breath in… on the phone again, calmly explain the situation to the rep on the other side and guess what line they tried to feed me yet once again? “sir, the serial number for your machine shows that…” I said “STOP… STOP it right there and get me the highest ranking someone that I can talk to right now that is not going to insult my intelligence”. She did, and I got Irish on the line, and she listened and did not try the “the serial number says” line again on me, although in all fairness i did warn her about it.

I am still waiting for yet another RMA, yet another pre paid shipping label and will send it out again. This unit has spend more time in transit and in repair than it has on my lap and in my house. I am not hopeful, but I have no recourse so I’ll try to make myself a believer.

Maybe I am not helping my case, but I felt compelled to and so I did… and wrote a note to the poor soul who is fortunate enough to be dealt the card of opening this box when it comes into ASUS’s technical black hole.

Here it is in all its glory. Tell me what you think.

IT Manager’s Top 10 Reading List

Guillermo — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 07:00:00 -0600

According to Baseline Magazine, you should make room on your bookshelf for the following books:

Managing the Human Factor in Information Security: How to win over staff and influence business managers by David Lacey
Information Nation: Seven Keys to Information Management Compliance by Randolph Kahn, Barclay Blair
The Truth About Middle Managers: Who They Are, How They Work, Why They Matter by Paul Osterman
Strategic Project Management Made Simple: Practical Tools for Leaders and Teams by Terry Schmidt
Growing Software: Proven Strategies for Managing Software Engineers by Louis Testa
Identifying and Managing Project Risk: Essential Tools for Failure-Proofing Your Project by Tom Kendrick PMP
The Greening of IT: How Companies Can Make a Difference for the Environment by John Lamb
Winning the Hardware-Software Game: Using Game Theory to Optimize the Pace of New Technology Adoption by Ruth D. Fisher
The Deciding Factor: The Power of Analytics to Make Every Decision a Winner by Larry E. Rosenberger
Manage Your Project Portfolio: Increase Your Capacity and Finish More Projects (Pragmatic Programmers) by Johanna Rothman

Once I stumble across a list like this, I’ll likely read a couple… already ordered one of them.

Physical to Virtual (P2V) Tool from Sysinternals

Guillermo — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 19:00:00 -0600

Fresh off the production line, a P2V tool by Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell, formerly of Sysinternals.

The tool is called Disk2Vhd and this is the 1.0 offering, and is now part of the Sysinternals Suite.

Disk2vhd is a utility that creates VHD (Virtual Hard Disk - Microsoft’s Virtual Machine disk format) versions of physical disks for use in Microsoft Virtual PC or Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machines (VMs). The difference between Disk2vhd and other physical-to-virtual tools is that you can run Disk2vhd on a system that’s online.

This assumes “other” tools require you to power down the system you wish to create an image of. I guess this sounds reasonable to expect, and since I haven’t used either tool yet, I am not one to make a judgment call.

I am turning my old Dell 600SC server into a virtual host exclusively and in doing so I need to P2V it and store that image on my new NAS and then host it virtually amongst other environments I plan to add. These tools are now a critical component of that plan and my plan is to write a post about the process and results once I get to doing it.

Who’s the man?

Guillermo — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 18:00:00 -0600

This has simplified my Christmas shopping for all my married friends.

Me? Naahhh, I don’t need that! Right honey?

I realized this has been around for a while, it is so dead on though, I couldn’t help but share it.

Who monitors the monitor?

guillermo — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 13:39:24 -0600

I just signed up for a 24/7 Web Monitoring service, and granted it is probably a startup and probably going through growing pains, I still couldn’t help but chuckle at the irony.

(Image hosted FREE by pict.com)

Download XP and Vista VHD Ready to Use

guillermo — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 10:01:46 -0600

I needed a virtual machine to test an application in isolation and realized I didn’t have any of my .vhd images on hand.

I looked around and came across this collection of downloadable VHDs directly from Microsoft, pre-activated, for both Vista and XP with different versions of IE including IE6 (XP only), IE7 & IE8.

The OSes are trial versions (of course) and expire January 1st for the XP installs and 120 days after first use for the Vista images.

Images require at least 1.5GB of HD space once expanded, so make sure you have some room available for it.

Refactor that spellchecker

guillermo — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 08:15:00 -0600

It appears the word/verb “Refactor” is absent “out of the box” from all if not most of the environments that provide a spell checker service or feature. At least the ones I’ve used lately and since I started to notice. From (this) Live Writer to Word to within the browser on the update textbox of twitter, you name it, I keep having to “right click, Add to Dictionary”.

Wikipedia does have an article for the term “Refactoring”, and so does Dictionary.com but the “verb” Refactor is not on either (Wikipedia redirects to Refactoring) and Merriam-Webster comes up empty when searching for either.

Is there a way to carry around one’s dictionary from environment to environment and use it on all if not most of the aforementioned tools?

I guess I have to do a little bit of research, and no I won’t hold the post until I do. I’d rather note my observation and I *should* then later do the legwork and update with my findings. I reserve the right to slack on such task, do nothing and instead keep “right clicking, Adding to Dictionary” as I go.

Image by hisks

Clean as you go

Guillermo — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 08:15:00 -0600

If you take the approach to clean up after yourself as you progress through whatever maybe your daily routine, and create this good habit for everything you do, you’ll end up avoiding what is almost unavoidably natural for most of us: procrastination.

Whether it is while you cook, write code/implement software solutions, do the laundry or go though things on your desk at the office, if you let things pile up… well, you’ll end up with a pile of <insert appropriate noun here>.

Why not keep your projects, solutions, classes, layers, frameworks, third party components et.al. in an organized manner right off the bat? Regardless of the size and scope of the project, platform or technology… Why wait until it becomes a tangled mess of bad historic legacy waiting… clamoring for someone to come in, criticize, refactor and “waste time” cleaning up your mess?

Why wait until your roommate, spouse, parent or sibling comes around and has to deal with piles of dirty dishes, filthy counters or messy bathroom?

I believe it is one of the easiest forms of procrastination to avoid with the highest payback in quantity, quality and immediacy of satisfaction.

Be it with the proverbial or actual dirty dishes, don’t be a slob, love yourself and those around you and Clean as you go… whatever that may end up being.

An addiction I never thought I would see

guillermo — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 08:00:27 -0600

My wife seems to be addicted to strollers… or maybe it is just to the action of buying them and finding every little possible flaw in them.

Disclaimer intended for my beautiful and beyond perfect wife: Honey, I love you, but this has got to stop. A stroller is a stroller is a stroller.

Going on for about 2 years now, but most definitely a lot worse during the last year. Those that I can count and recollect, she’s gone through SIX (6) different stroller, not counting the ones she accumulated in the garage that she picked up in what seems to be random places as she drove past.

She has bought them direct from different places the majority of them coming from craigslist.

The following are pictures of the ones currently in our possession including:

a) A double Burley bike trailer

b) A “jogging” (wink-wink) double stroller

c) A double “regular” stroller.

d) Our first and reliable Graco single stroller.

She “just” bought “b” as a “bargain” from Craigslist and took it out this afternoon. Upon returning she reported “I don’t like it… its weird”… which only means one thing: a new stroller will be added to the line up.

God help us.

New NAS

Guillermo — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 08:00:00 -0600

Got myself a new toy, a Linksys NAS 200, picked it up at on sale at buy.com for $75 and stuffed it with dual 1TB Hitachi 7200RPM hard drives from Newegg.com for $65 a piece after $10 immediate coupon and, where I to get my ass in gear I have a $10 rebate on each that would bring the price down to $55 a pop.

Here is my cliff notes review.

Installation

Physical

A snap, quite literally (do notice I did have a helper throughout so take that into account!).

Take the front covers out by releasing the plastic latch, then squeeze in the 3.5” SATA drives which fit snuggly and perfectly, until you feel the connectors in the back perfectly couple with the drive’s own.

Power up…

Setup

Pop in the Installation CD, which runs the app that scans for the device in your local network. Either follow the wizard (which I did the first time) or change settings manually (without the wizard). Settings to set include device network name, IP (static or DHPC) and drive configuration.

The NAS supports as much as you would expect from a $75, 2 drive device. RAID 0 (stripping) for speed, RAID 1 (mirroring) for peace of mind. You can also configure it to use the Two separate disks (Recommended)or Two disks configured as one large disk (JBOD/LVM).

I configured it using RAID 1, since I don’t think I have close to that amount of data requiring “secure” storage. This is the purpose that best fits my immediate needs and that in my mind justified the roughly $150 expense.

One small shortcoming that I think is, again typical to expect of your $75 device, is that you are tied to manage permissions and setup shares and such from the proprietary software interface, something that may fall short of a great experience but also something that I am probably going to do seldom if ever now that it is up and running.

It is manageable via its self contained and hosted web interface or via a desktop app included with the supporting media.

If you happen to need additional storage to be served via the same mechanism and want to add to the NAS, one option is to do it via it’s USB interface. The device will manage up to 2 external USB drives and serve them up via the same interface with some limitations, served straight up no RAID.

Some cool, non advertised features include power management (very welcome indeed) and a “Media Server” option which I haven’t tried out yet.

Thus far, not quite 1 month into the purchase, installation, setup and configuration, I would recommend this product to anyone looking for a truly inexpensive way to store and manage (secure if so desired) data. How expensive or cheap you end up going depends on your options for the actual drives you put in it, but you could start with one and add to it. Of course that would limit or somewhat restrict your ability to use mirror after the fact.

Expressive Souls

Guillermo — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 17:28:00 -0600

This literally just came into my inbox… (cut edited for obvious reasons)

And what exactly am I supposed to do with this?

Its all about the specs

guillermo — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 17:50:13 -0600

I know its not the biggest, or most powerful or most impressive out there, but MY jaw certainly dropped when I first got my hands on this bad boy.

This is our new Database Server. Check out the # of processors, and if you are still standing, check out the amount of RAM installed! I am running at least 2 machines that have a smaller hard drive than the total amount of RAM on this monster.

Yeah, it rocks!

Continuing Education. A month of learning.

guillermo — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 17:11:53 -0600

A couple of weeks ago, more precisely on March 31st, I attended the ArcReady event on Architecting for the Cloud. Sparing you of all the details, suffice it to say that it was much needed motivation to take action on a few personal goals around something that has always been a passion of mine… Continuous Education.

I am currently working on some personal tasks pertaining to that goal, as I said before inspired and motivated by the contents of that ArcReady event. Expect a stream of content coming from me on the topics around cloud computing, specifically developing for Azure.

Be it learning through trial by fire, attending a more structured lecture, seminar, conference or class or a combination of them, doing *that* allows me to frame my actions within the right mindset. It is a way to cope with the routine of our daily grind, where implementation of current technology is not always a welcome approach and other priorities take precedence.

This coming Friday April 17th, I will be attending an all day seminar on ASP.NET MVC, presented Jeffrey Palermo. Its a paid event at $125 for the day, including food. Not bad. Work is not picking up the tab (at least proactively), and I have no problem paying for it out of my own pocket.

I wouldn’t usually be willing to pay the $125 for a conference of this nature, but I’ve seen Jeffrey speak at a user group meeting and I genuinely enjoyed his style. At times, speakers either by choice or inadvertently focus their tone and message towards a certain audience, leaving some others with much to be desired and some others lost in the land of glazed eyes. In this case, Palermo certainly spoke to my “level”. Lets leave it at that.

I know Brennan and Scott Isaacs will be there. I don’t know who else, but I am sure 70% will be familiar faces as it always ends up being.

Next on the agenda for this month is an MSDN Events Unleashed afternoon session coming up Tuesday April 28th on Internet Explorer 8 for Developers and Developing on Microsoft Windows 7. Interesting topics, enough to coerce my attendance. On that, I wanted to comment on the fact that some people expect too much of these sessions, and honestly, they are what they are (isn’t that enlightening!)… You should attend with more than one point on your agenda. It is a chance to network and a chance to be there when perhaps this one bit of information which you weren’t aware of gets revealed to you. You may think on topics like these, having done your homework is good enough and “what else could I learn from going there?”, but you’d be surprised.

constipation

guillermo — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 19:37:28 -0600

apparently, that is what I am going through. In the classiest way anyone could have described it, Ted tells us that what we are experiencing is constipation.

quite a way to anchor a post, and I am allowing myself the same eloquence but I’ll do so in the form of a quote

Don't write just because you want to spend some time on the pot. Do it because you really have to go.