Sorry for the lack of updates everyone. I’ve just been so busy at work that I haven’t had much time to blog. There’s lots of interesting things to note — hopefully I can get caught up…
Archive for March, 2006
In relation to my previous post, I’d like to talk a little about online fraud. So, I listed my Gateway Convertible on eBay only to find out that the one who used “Buy It Now” was a scammer. He tried rushing me through the process and I just didn’t feel comfortable selling to this guy. First of all, his feedback rating was 0 - but I do understand that there are new people to eBay who can be trustworthy. Well, he ended up sending me a (an obvious) fake PayPal notification of payment. There were some English grammar mistakes that just seemed odd, and the note said that the funds were being held until I provided him with a tracking number. I confirmed with PayPal that it was fraudulent and he immediately deleted his eBay account and left. This transaction was for $1500, so it’s not like I was just going to ship it off to Nigeria and hope I get the money.
Shortly thereafter, in the random junk mail I get, I noticed a spam message from what appeared to be my bank. My girlfriend was amazed that I knew it was spam. So, this brings me to my point. NEVER click on a link in an email and fill in your personal information…no matter how legitimate it may seem. I highly recommend opening up a separate browser window and visiting the site directly. It’s easy to steal graphics and make a simple page that may appear to be your financial institution in an effort to get all of your personal information.
Last month, I made a post called Made the Switch (back) - in this post, I noted that I made the switch back to a PC, because I am a Windows developer. Well, I couldn’t stand it - and ended up switching back to a Mac…that’s right, a Mac. I had many problems with the Gateway Convertible - and most of them occurred when I tried upgrading to Windows Vista. All in all, I just didn’t like the design of the Gateway Convertible…it was too heavy, and I really didn’t use the tablet functions like I thought I would. I missed having my PowerBook - so I went and got a MacBook Pro. I’m loving it — very powerful machine!
Technorati Tags: macbook pro, macbook, tablet, gateway, convertible, switch
A while back, I decided to install Windows Vista (December CTP) on my Tablet PC. After the install completed, I discovered that my machine wouldn’t boot. Unfortunately the last backup I had made was from my PowerBook back in November. Well, I ended up losing all data from November-February. That’s not too painful since this is my personal laptop. So, I tried everything to get the machine working again - various Windows installations, recovery DVD, etc…and nothing worked. The Hard Disk Drive was a Serial ATA disk - so I had to use a driver floppy to even attempt an install. The closest I got was with the recovery DVD, but it gave me Delayed Write Errors. This led me to believe the Hard Drive was bad. I tried everything and couldn’t get this thing up and working. So, I took the machine back and exchanged it for a new one. This time I decided to buy an external HDD and thought I would use Windows Backup to at least keep my files safe. I backed everything up for about a week…and being the tech guy I am, I couldn’t leave well enough alone. I tried upgrading this time to the Februrary CTP of Windows Vista…and again, it crashed. When I tried using the Recovery DVD, I got a bugcheck KERNEL_DATA_INPAGE_ERROR. I was able to put in a Gentoo Linux CD (which recognizes Serial ATA devices on the LiveCD) and destroy the /dev/sda1 partition using fdisk. After this, I used the recovery DVD and was back in business. Now for the Windows Restore…I figured I lost most of my apps and would need to reinstall. To my surprise, it restored everything just like nothing had happened. I was truly amazed. What a life saver — I’ll be using this a lot more often. Wouldn’t it be nice to have NetApp filers in your house with the power of Snapshots?
Technorati Tags: storage, backup, restore, fdisk, windows, sata, vista, linux, crash
A new Beta of the Microsoft Command Shell (Codename Monad) was released a few days ago. Windows “Monad” Shell is a new interactive command-line and task-based scripting technology in Windows that enables administrators to more efficiently and securely automate and control system management tasks on both desktops and servers. MSH as it’s commonly called requires the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 RTM and is currently available on both x86 and AMD64.
Being a command-line guy, I am VERY excited about this product. I have been using it off and on since the first beta — it’s a completely different approach for Microsoft. I guess I’ve forgot how difficult learning a new shell can be – MSH is SO powerful, but definitely not intuitive.
Download: Windows “Monad” Shell Beta 3.1 x86
Download: Windows “Monad” Shell Beta 3.1 AMD64
Technorati Tags: microsoft, monad, msh, shell, command, .net, windows
