Ever since I launched this site, I’ve tried to update it at least once a week. In fact, during the last two weeks of December 2009, I updated it daily. But it has been almost four weeks since my last update. And I have an excuse – it’s my web host fault – well, kind of.
I originally launch this site in 2007 after having been on Livejournal for two years because I wanted total control of my content, not just the words, but any advertising revenue it generated as well as site ownership. My goal had always been to have a massive content management system that would house all of my fan fiction, any fandom websites I owned and a personal blog.
It now appears that my web host is going to upgrade his hosting products and with this, finally, comes an opportunity for me to realize the goal I set for myself back in January 2009. In the coming months, this website will take on a more professional and complete appearance. The BillA1 JL fanfiction website will also undergo an appearance change with comments/reviews being hosted on site rather than being directed to LJ or fanfiction.net.
If my host is on-time with his upgrades, I will be complete with mine by Thanksgivings. Meanwhile I’ve been building a cache of tidbits to put the new site. I’m really looking forward to this and no matter how it turns out, a systematic change to this site will be the best Christmas present I could give myself this year. ~ Bill
Back in June I commented on the fact that customers of the new Apple iPhone 4 complained about poor reception within hours of purchase and that Apple’s initial response was, “You’re holding it wrong.” Finally, after Consumer Reports gave the phone a “Not Recommended” rating, Steve Jobs came forth with his July press conference and stated that the performance issues were not to unique to Apple and that there was no “antennagate.” He went on to say that because Apple loved their customers they were going to give all who purchased an iPhone 4 between the phone’s release date and 30 September, a new $30 case which would be a better fix than the duct tape solution Consumer Reports had recommended.
So, $30 times the 8.4 million units sold since the release date equals $252 million dollar in lost additional sales. And if you’ve ever worked in retail, you know that add-on sales, which these cases were intended to be, add directly to the company’s bottom line. So it was a safe bet that if your name wasn’t Steve Jobs and you just cost your company $252 million dollars in sales, you might have a problem with job security. Well, today, the other shoe dropped for the Apple iPhone 4 or at least for the man who was in charge of the iPhone and iPod division at Apple. Mark Papermaster was fired from what had previously been one of Apple’s most successful money making divisions. The story of Mr. Papermaster’s hiring and firing is here. I don’t think Mr. Jobs attended Mr. Papermaster’s farewell party.
Earlier this week, hundreds of thousands of people rushed out to get the new Apple iPhone 4. Hours afterwards, Apple got complaints that the phone didn’t work or reception dropped into nothingness. Apple’s answer? “You’re holding it wrong.”
Apparently, you have to hold the iPhone 4 a special way or it loses reception. Now if you want to hold the phone the same way that you’ve held every other phone in your life, well Apple has a solution for that. Put the phone in one of their $30 cases and then you can hold the phone anyway you want and it will work.
CNN story here.
There is wisdom in the adage about not fixing that which is not broken. Unfortunately, following this adage doesn’t seem to be anything which is inherently wired in my genes. Case in point: WordPress (the software my blog runs on) did a version upgrade yesterday. After the version upgrade was completed, the new WordPress offered to upgrade the theme that my blog uses. Now the reality is that I was very satisfied with my blog’s theme and should have resisted this call to upgrade, but as I said earlier, resistance is not in my genes. I allowed it to upgrade the theme which it promptly broke. *deep sigh*
The bottom line is that I spent a lot of time yesterday trying to restore my beloved theme with no success. So I’ve changed the layout of my blog temporarily and at some point during the summer, I will find the time to restore the previous theme. Now I have to admit, that there is a chance that the current layout might grow on me, but between you and me, I wouldn’t put any money on that; after all if it ain’t broke – I have to fix it.
Last weekend, I installed Windows 7 Ultimate on my Dell 630i desktop machine. I choose to upgrade the machine rather than do a “clean install” because, frankly, my Dell has an nvidia motherboard and I wasn’t confident that I could find a Windows 7 compatible motherboard driver. It turns out that I didn’t need to worry about that because Windows 7 did have the drivers, but more importantly doesn’t need them or use them.
A clean install of Windows 7 takes about 15-20 minutes, an upgrade can take several hours (mine took 57 minutes). There were a couple of programs that I needed to uninstall and 
reinstall after the upgrade was completed (yes I’m talking to you Flight Simulator X), but on the whole everything worked with minimal problems. But more importantly, everything seemed to work faster and that, to me, validated the decision to move from Vista (which I really liked) to Windows 7 (which I am falling in love with).
Have enjoyed success on my machine, I proceeded to upgrade my wife’s Dell 530i machine to Windows 7 Professional. This attempt at goodwill turned out to be a mistake. In fairness, the compatibility program the installer runs first told me I was in for a world of hurt with one devices, but apparently it didn’t know about the other one until it got crushed. The upgrade took 75 minutes, the repair of the two problem took almost 7 hours.
The first problem I blame on Linksys-Cisco. About two months ago, I installed the Linksys EG1032 gigabit adapter on the Dell 530i. Well, there are no Windows 7 drivers for this device, but I discovered, thanks to the internet, that the card is a rebranded Realtek card and will use the Realtek RTL8169/8110 drivers built into Windows 7. This is why Linksys has said it won’t develop Windows 7 drivers for this card which frankly makes me angry because Linksys is still selling the card as being compatible with Windows 7 when it is not when it uses Linksys drivers. Once the card is up and running, Windows update installs the Linksys XP driver for the card and you are off and running – just not happily.
The second problem I blame on Apple. After installation, the network icon reported that I had local LAN access, but no internet access. Well, I’m hear to tell you that no internet access is reason enough to head to divorce court for my most significant other, so that became my primary mission. Windows 7 reported the card was working, but it wasn’t able to get DNS service. It could see the router and get a DHCP address from the router, but it couldn’t get out. I looked at the network connections and saw that it was showing two networks: my private home network and a unnamed public one. After much gritting of teeth, I discovered that the public network was Apple’s Bonjour, which was apparently installed as part of my iTunes installation. Needless to say, I uninstalled that piece of (expletive deleted) software and a miracle occurred: I had my network (and internet access) back.
The verdict? This was a good and impressive upgrade. Those moving from Windows XP will go “Wow”. Those moving from Windows Vista will be slightly less impressed, but will still like what they see. I know I do.
For the last two weeks, my most significant other has been bugging me (yes, I’m using that term) with the “I don’t know how this stuff is all put together. What am I suppose to do when you die and something breaks.” Ignoring the fact that I really don’t think I’ll care whether the laser printer is working when I die, I decided to show her how the stuff is put together. The stuff refers to my home computer network. So last night I diagramed it out, showed it to her and filed it in a book that I had her label so she knows what it is.
In a way I’m glad I diagramed my network because it made me appreciate my setup. I know that there are others who have much better setups than I do, but mine does everything I want and more. The hub of my system remains my Windows Home Server (WHS) which I wrote about in October 2008. (As I looked at the photo in October article, I realized that the only thing I still have from that picture is the server and the gigabit switch.)
As I’ve said countless times before, the Home Server houses all my stored media (pictures, videos , music and movies) and automatically backs up all connected computers. The Cisco E3000 router (which is new) is a dual band device so the Xbox which is connected to the TV is on a separate frequency (5 GHz vs 2.4 GHz) than the IPod, my laptop or my son’s laptop when he comes to visit. The router also lets my son and daughter have remote access to the Home Server so they can see our pictures or drop pictures of the grandkids directly on the device.
In short, I’ve come a long way since my first home network of crossover cables. But I didn’t realize how far until I drew it out.
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