tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-90328674063461723112024-03-13T16:14:01.088-07:00The Ramblings of KenKen Andersen's blog about technology related subjects.Kenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13007517245617023897noreply@blogger.comBlogger258125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9032867406346172311.post-24402081042806148612022-04-14T12:39:00.004-07:002022-04-14T12:42:37.747-07:00Is Ben Cool?If you haven't met my friend Ben, please head over to his awesome blog <em><a href="https://benscoderepo.blogspot.com">Code Like Vikings</a><em> and get to know him.
Kenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13007517245617023897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9032867406346172311.post-62621181666859610582022-04-14T12:37:00.002-07:002022-04-14T12:37:28.025-07:00The 2021-2022 Utah JazzThe Utah Jazz are in the playoffs again. Will they make it past the first round this year? Things are looking pretty scary for them going up against the Dallas Mavericks.Kenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13007517245617023897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9032867406346172311.post-39316952757465985302017-11-02T15:54:00.001-07:002018-06-14T13:45:15.058-07:00Yahoo Finance API Deprecation<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-H0P9ngXsKcM/Wfuhk1Ag1XI/AAAAAAAAGaI/CJLo64h7GeMBEk6B94smb6IeoPfNnIbEgCLcBGAs/s1600/yf.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-H0P9ngXsKcM/Wfuhk1Ag1XI/AAAAAAAAGaI/CJLo64h7GeMBEk6B94smb6IeoPfNnIbEgCLcBGAs/s320/yf.jpg" width="175" height="175" data-original-width="403" data-original-height="403" /></a></div>Yahoo! has <a href="https://yahoo.sdx.socialdynamx.com/portal/conversation/19248672">killed</a> their Finance API that many people used in free stock quote software.<br />
Years ago I wrote a series of scripts that would download a CSV file filled with stocks of local interest through the Yahoo! Finance API. The scripts would then parse the data and make it available on a private webpage for on-air announcers to be able to read off the local stock data. The simple query allowed you to tack on your desired symbols and looked like this:<br />
<blockquote>wget http://download.finance.yahoo.com/d/quotes.csv\?s\=\^GSPC\,\^IXIC\,CLAR\,PG\,CLRO\,CAG\,FC\,HUN\,MMSI\,NUE\,NUS\,OA\,OSTK\,D\,SKYW\,USNA\,ZION\&f\=nl1c1p2\&e\=\.csv</blockquote>
At about 4:00 p.m. MDT on November 1, 2017, any call to this quotes.csv service started responding with the following:<br />
<blockquote>Sorry, Unable to process request at this time -- error 999.</blockquote>
As of this writing, calls to quotes.csv respond with an HTTP 403 status code and this text:<br />
<blockquote>It has come to our attention that this service is being used in violation of the Yahoo Terms of Service. As such, the service is being discontinued. For all future markets and equities data research, please refer to finance.yahoo.com.</blockquote>
It was sure nice of them to give the users a warning. Luckily, I found a method to to scrape the data from their webpages when they stopped allowing the Dow Jones Index to be downloaded through the quotes.csv API.<br />
<br />
All I needed was the basic price data that came from the quotes api. I don't need historical data to go along with it. I noticed that the data I need is in the title of the page.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-gBVw8OAJGQU/WfuXcL_qYkI/AAAAAAAAGZ0/xMb8O02DBgMPBuncNSprs6Vt5l6PkTTjACLcBGAs/s1600/Yahoo.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-gBVw8OAJGQU/WfuXcL_qYkI/AAAAAAAAGZ0/xMb8O02DBgMPBuncNSprs6Vt5l6PkTTjACLcBGAs/s400/Yahoo.png" width="400" height="88" data-original-width="309" data-original-height="68" /></a></div>
There had to be a way to scrape this data and store it in my own CSV. I tried simple wget queries to the desired symbol URLs, but that doesn't work. There's a lot of JavaScript on the Yahoo! stock pages which manipulates elements on the page. The desired data wasn't showing in the title of the page with wget queries. It simply shows this for the title:<br />
<blockquote>OSTK : Summary for Overstock.com, Inc. - Yahoo Finance</blockquote>
I needed to find a way to parse JavaScript from a script. Research pointed me directly to <a href="http://phantomjs.org">PhantomJS</a>. The description on their site says that "PhantomJS is a headless WebKit scriptable with a JavaScript API." That's exactly what I needed. What PhantomJS does for me is that it goes to a page, parses the JavaScript, and saves the resulting HTML into a file. What you do is setup what you want it to do in a .js file and call it with the .js file as a parameter. To get the Overstock html from Yahoo! I simply setup a .js file like this:<br />
<blockquote>//render_ostk.js<br />var page = require('webpage').create(),<br />
address = 'http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=OSTK',<br />
output = '/var/www/localhost/htdocs/ostk.html',<br />
fs = require('fs');<br />
<br />
page.open(address, function (status) {<br />
if (status !== 'success') {<br />
console.log('Unable to load the address!');<br />
phantom.exit(1);<br />
} else {<br />
window.setTimeout(function () {<br />
page.render(output);<br />
fs.write(output,page.content,'w');<br />
phantom.exit();<br />
}, 20000);<br />
}<br />
});<br />
</blockquote>
You then simply call PhantomJS with render_ostk.js as the single parameter.<br />
<blockquote>phantomjs render_ostk.js</blockquote>
The html page is then saved where you requested it in the output variable. Now use Python to parse the html. I came across a "beautiful" Python library called <a href="https://www.crummy.com/software/BeautifulSoup/">BeautifulSoup</a>. It makes screen scraping very easy. It turns elements on the page into objects that can be called within Python. Here's my Python code for scraping the ostk.html page:<br />
<blockquote>#yahoo_stock_ostk.py<br />
import codecs<br />
import datetime<br />
<br />
page_name = '/var/www/localhost/htdocs/ostk.html'<br />
local_page = codecs.open(page_name, encoding='utf-8')<br />
<br />
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup<br />
soup = BeautifulSoup(local_page, "html.parser")<br />
<br />
title = soup.find('title')<br />
titlet = title.text<br />
values = titlet.split()<br />
pricet = values[1]<br />
pricet = pricet.strip()<br />
pricet = pricet.replace(',', "")<br />
<br />
change = values[2]<br />
change_flt = float(change)<br />
<br />
pchange = values[3]<br />
pchange = pchange.strip()<br />
<br />
if change_flt > 0:<br />
change = '+' + change<br />
pchange = '+' + pchange<br />
<br />
daystring = datetime.datetime.now().strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S')<br />
<br />
print('"Overstock.com, Inc.",',pricet,""",""",change,""",""",'"',pchange,'"',""",""",'"',daystring,'"')<br />
</blockquote>
This Python code simply finds the title of the webpage, splits the text of the title into separate variables, and then saves those. These values come back as strings from BeautifulSoup, so that is why you see the type casting. I needed to do comparisons on the values to get the plus or minus signs tacked on to the strings when exporting to a CSV file. There's probably a better way to do this, but it worked this way.<br />
<br />
I made a script which calls PhantomJS for each symbol I want and then runs a Python script to parse the data for each symbol and puts it in the CSV.<br />
<blockquote>
#!/bin/bash<br />
phantomjs render_oa.js &<br />
phantomjs render_ostk.js &<br />
phantomjs render_d.js &<br />
wait<br />
python yahoo_stock_oa.py >> quotes.csv<br />
python yahoo_stock_ostk.py >> quotes.csv<br />
python yahoo_stock_d.py >> quotes.csv<br />
</blockquote>
At this point I got a cron job setup to run every hour to keep the CSV file updated. From here, the CSV is imported into a private webpage and the values are all together on one convenient page for our announcers.<br />
<br />
Hopefully someone can benefit from this as they work through what to do about the Yahoo! Finance API deprecation.<br />Kenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13007517245617023897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9032867406346172311.post-66679517021821024152017-03-06T12:32:00.000-08:002017-03-06T12:32:28.778-08:00Dell OMSA Email Alerts via PowerShell<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-TKasuNLlgdk/WL29jfPdbII/AAAAAAAAGQo/3Kh7uIuMMbMr_WPbQiSbrKl6MUaCoSDWACLcB/s1600/OriginalJPG.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-TKasuNLlgdk/WL29jfPdbII/AAAAAAAAGQo/3Kh7uIuMMbMr_WPbQiSbrKl6MUaCoSDWACLcB/s320/OriginalJPG.jpeg" width="320" height="115" /></a></div>
<p>The SMTP server at my work has become quite unreliable. This is why I wasn't receiving email alerts from my Dell servers in my <a href="http://www.tigrao.org/2017/02/im-so-glad-that-raid-exists.html">previous post</a>. Also, in a web application that we host, students weren't getting email alerts that they should have been receiving. We changed that web application to use Office 365's SMTP server and email alerts have become reliable again. On the Dell servers, I was using an application I found called <a href="http://xyfon.com/tech-tips/setup-email-notifications-dell-openmanage/">DellSMTPNotify.exe</a> It worked great when our own SMTP server was reliable. It was time to take advantage of the more reliable SMTP server of our hosted Office 365 Exchange setup, but you have to use TLS encryption over SMTP to use Office 365. The DellSMTPNotify program does not support SSL or TLS encryption over SMTP as far as I can tell. It was time to investigate other solutions.</p>
<p>I found a PowerShell script called <a href="https://github.com/ncouraud/OMSA-Notify/blob/master/OMSANotify.ps1">OMSA-Notify</a> that someone had already written. You can, <a href="https://philerb.com/2011/11/sending-mail-with-powershell/">indeed</a>, use PowerShell to send email over an encrypted connection. I just needed to figure out how to modify the OMSA-Notify script to suit my needs.</p>
<p>I got everything configured, so I thought, but the script just wasn't working. PowerShell just seemed to be sitting idle and would eventually give a timeout error. That's when I realized I was trying to connect to an SMTP server on the public internet, but I was running all of this on a server that was behind a proxy server. I thought I would just try and configure PowerShell to use the proxy server to send my SMTP commands, but that didn't work either. My research led me to the conclusion that SMTP commands can't be send over an HTTP proxy without installing some sort of relay program. I was at a dead end.</p>
<p>Later on, however, it hit me that I could setup a remote PowerShell session to one of our servers that is using a public IP address in front of the proxy server. My co-worker had already setup something similar in a PowerShell script that connects to our Microsoft Data Protection Manager server to setup automatic backups from individual client machines. To setup a server to accept remote PowerShell sessions, you simply need to run "enable-psremoting" from a PowerShell session running as Administrator. That should do it.</p>
<p>After getting remote PowerShell setup, my script was still failing. The smtp.send command wouldn't work because the mail message wasn't being passed to the remote session properly. I then had to setup the passing of parameters into the remote PowerShell session and actually construct the mail message in the remote session. You simply use the "-ArgumentList" parameter to send local variables to the remote PowerShell, as seen in the Invoke-Command line in the script.</p>
<blockquote>Invoke-Command -Session $RoutableServer -ScriptBlock $ScriptBlockContent -ArgumentList $body, $AlertType, $env:COMPUTERNAME</blockquote>
This was a fun project to figure out. I'm really happy to have server alerts coming to my inbox again.
Here's a pastebin of the full modified OMSANotify.ps1: <a href="http://pastebin.com/wvvkNaVk">http://pastebin.com/wvvkNaVk</a>
Kenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13007517245617023897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9032867406346172311.post-42071199735935212222017-02-22T09:07:00.001-08:002017-02-22T09:07:45.704-08:00I'm So Glad That RAID Exists<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UvsGaASlTO0/WK3BcB-_Z-I/AAAAAAAAGQY/gNA1GkLzVgk2N5To59eizXvTknfodlmvACLcB/s1600/images.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; display: inline !important; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UvsGaASlTO0/WK3BcB-_Z-I/AAAAAAAAGQY/gNA1GkLzVgk2N5To59eizXvTknfodlmvACLcB/s1600/images.jpeg" /></a><br />
<p>I just discovered at work that a drive in one of our production servers failed about a month ago. The server kept humming along like nothing was wrong at all.</p>
<p>I had email reporting setup to alert our team when there is a failure. Apparently it isn't working anymore. I'll have to look into the alerting system.</p>
<p>With this post I just want to express my gratitude that RAID exists. The acronym RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks. It allows you to essentially combine many hard disk drives into one large drive. However, that isn't all. RAID has redundancy built in, if you pick the right configuration. In a RAID array your data is spread across all of the disks, which allows for all of the disks to work together for better performance. Parity data is also written to each disk. Parity data is the critical part. This type of data is really many calculations performed and stored on each drive. Parity data allows all of the data on one drive to be reconstructed should a drive fail.</p>
<p>I won't go into detail on how RAID exists in this post. There's plenty of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID">places</a> on the web that explain RAID. It will suffice to say that we configured our RAID array in RAID level 6. This essentially creates double parity across all of the drives. Double parity allows two drives to go dead and still have intact data.</p>
<p>We have a replacement drive coming tomorrow. I'll get that installed and then our array will be back in an optimal state. Right now it is basically doing calculations every time data is requested.</p>
<p>Our users don't even have any idea that a drive in our server has been offline for over a month. I'm really glad RAID exists.</p>Kenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13007517245617023897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9032867406346172311.post-78849792189191508142016-10-20T13:26:00.003-07:002017-02-15T14:54:34.053-08:00Reverse Proxies<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1TR9babSM7A/WAklFIbyWMI/AAAAAAAAGJg/phZ--yxyRkoN-dT8YsmivdJxHPfO_KxegCPcB/s1600/reverse_proxy.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1TR9babSM7A/WAklFIbyWMI/AAAAAAAAGJg/phZ--yxyRkoN-dT8YsmivdJxHPfO_KxegCPcB/s200/reverse_proxy.png" width="200" height="151" /></a></div><p>We all know what a proxy server does, right? A proxy server acts as a sort of path to the internet on a network that is not otherwise connected to the internet. Your computer talks to the proxy server, the proxy server requests the web page you are looking for, the web server sends the page back to the proxy server, and the proxy server sends the page to you.</p>
<p>What if you wanted to do the opposite? What if you have web servers that are not directly connected to the internet and you want to have them serve pages to the public? A reverse proxy can do this for you.</p>
<p>In my case, I have a live TV server on my home network that I want to make available on the public internet. I have made a <a href="http://www.tigrao.org/2015/02/hdhomerun-prime.html">post</a> about <a href="https://emby.media">Emby</a> (formerly Media Browser) before. It's a great way to stream your live TV and recordings to your various devices. However, I decided that I wanted this traffic to be encrypted and I wasn't very happy with the way Emby handles SSL on its own.</p>
<p>Here is where a reverse proxy comes in. A full featured web server handles SSL much better than a standalone application can. I wanted to be able to plug in the automation of <a href="https://letsencrypt.org">Letsencrypt</a> to be able to conveniently renew my SSL certificate. I couldn't get this working with Emby itself. So, I turned on the IIS feature on my Windows box and setup the proper domain binding on the default website. Then, I installed the <a href="https://www.iis.net/downloads/microsoft/application-request-routing">Application Request Routing extension</a> for IIS. Then I enabled the proxy feature of the extension.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9Hl1CxYjqbc/WAkmq2NyJcI/AAAAAAAAGJo/QMTSxQoA5P8ItlFZTWcqOwZuQqvzd67WgCLcB/s1600/arr.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9Hl1CxYjqbc/WAkmq2NyJcI/AAAAAAAAGJo/QMTSxQoA5P8ItlFZTWcqOwZuQqvzd67WgCLcB/s1600/arr.png" /></a></div>
<p>Then the <a href="https://www.iis.net/downloads/microsoft/url-rewrite">URL Rewrite module</a> needed to be installed. After installing, you need to create rules to work with Application Request Routing.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-oDo95P6BHgE/WAknfH3v9II/AAAAAAAAGJs/diA3B_N4TfET7Mlai5ZxLNL4DEgY-tuHgCLcB/s1600/url_rewrite.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-oDo95P6BHgE/WAknfH3v9II/AAAAAAAAGJs/diA3B_N4TfET7Mlai5ZxLNL4DEgY-tuHgCLcB/s1600/url_rewrite.png" /></a></div>
<p>It worked beautifully! I also got the added benefit of not having to specify a port number in my URL anymore. My requests to my domain are now standard port 443 https requests. The requests then get proxied to the Emby app on port 8096 running on the same machine.</p>
<p>I anticipate that my reverse proxy setup will also come in handy to be able to proxy SSL traffic to multiple services that I am thinking about setting up on this box. IIS will be able to handle multiple domains coming in and proxy them to other applications. It's an absolute win-win scenario.</p>Kenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13007517245617023897noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9032867406346172311.post-59672939828473909652015-06-02T10:51:00.000-07:002017-02-15T15:53:50.222-08:00Windows 10: Why I Am Not Upgrading<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vusjwORUlcY/VW3mdVFry6I/AAAAAAAAFvg/xkdwTW79hiw/s1600/Windows_10_Logo.svg.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vusjwORUlcY/VW3mdVFry6I/AAAAAAAAFvg/xkdwTW79hiw/s200/Windows_10_Logo.svg.png" /></a></div>
<p>The release date for Windows 10 has been announced. It is coming on July 29, 2015. The upgrade will be free for consumers that are running Windows 7 or Windows 8.1. I am not going to upgrade.</p>
<p>This little icon appeared in my system tray yesterday:</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-MezXlNIgZ3I/VW3lI3VJ6kI/AAAAAAAAFvQ/7ZFngydnyfs/s1600/upgrade10.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-MezXlNIgZ3I/VW3lI3VJ6kI/AAAAAAAAFvQ/7ZFngydnyfs/s320/upgrade10.png" /></a></div>
<p>If you look back through my previous posts you can easily see that I am a big Windows Media Center fan. Microsoft will not be including Windows Media Center in Windows 10.</p>
<p>From <a href="https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-10-specifications">https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-10-specifications</a>:</p>
<blockquote>If you have Windows 7 Home Premium, Windows 7 Professional, Windows 7 Ultimate, Windows 8 Pro with Media Center, or Windows 8.1 Pro with Media Center and you install Windows 10, Windows Media Center will be removed.</blockquote>
<p>I have grown quite fond of Windows Media Center ever since I abandoned the Comcast X1 platform. It has been absolutely flawless as a DVR platform for me. With the X1 DVR I was missing recordings of my favorite sports teams for no apparent reason. Windows Media Center has not missed a single recording for me.</p>
<p>I'm not saying that you shouldn't upgrade to Windows 10. However, if you are a Windows Media Center fan, stay far, far away.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-hRKvsE73eIY/VW3mykf0OeI/AAAAAAAAFvs/W9sVD7WWHL4/s1600/birthday.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-hRKvsE73eIY/VW3mykf0OeI/AAAAAAAAFvs/W9sVD7WWHL4/s200/birthday.png" /></a></div>Kenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13007517245617023897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9032867406346172311.post-58974272676088181442015-05-21T10:28:00.000-07:002017-02-15T15:56:51.788-08:00Python and Django<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-3OXukYsEB_8/VV4SDKtyTnI/AAAAAAAAFtc/bICNxgJm7_k/s1600/python-logo-master-v3-TM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-3OXukYsEB_8/VV4SDKtyTnI/AAAAAAAAFtc/bICNxgJm7_k/s200/python-logo-master-v3-TM.png" /></a></div>
<p>It's time that I post what I've been up to lately.</p>
<p>This past semester I took a Python and Powershell class. In all honesty, we didn't do too much with Powershell. We only spent about three weeks on it compared to nine weeks on Python. What I didn't expect from this class is that it would cause me to completely dive in to Python.</p>
<p>We spent two weeks on Python web frameworks and focused specifically on Django. Django has really hooked me. Once you learn how it works and learn a little Python, it is so simple to get a dynamic, powerful web page running in no time.</p>
<p>I think my boss might be annoyed with how much I have dived in to Django. I have now created three web pages on our intranet that have tools I have seen a need for. Two of them I created from scratch, another one is an adaptation of <a href="https://github.com/rossp/django-helpdesk">Django-helpdesk</a> for our environment.</p>
<p>For years I have been telling myself that I am not a developer. Well, I just might have some developer blood in me. I'm going to continue learning Python and Django and see what else I can do with it. If you have any coding background at all, I highly recommend that you go through the <a href="https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.8/intro/tutorial01/">Django tutorial</a>. It is one of the best tutorials that I have ever been through.</p>
<p>Now, I'm off to create another Django powered site...</p>
Kenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13007517245617023897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9032867406346172311.post-84523763368574390482015-02-13T10:06:00.000-08:002017-02-15T14:55:20.642-08:00HDHomeRun PRIME<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-6TUb8D_ukzw/VN41H5bSU8I/AAAAAAAAFlg/mBGpSRhTQrc/s1600/hd_prime_pic_rev3.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-6TUb8D_ukzw/VN41H5bSU8I/AAAAAAAAFlg/mBGpSRhTQrc/s320/hd_prime_pic_rev3.png" /></a></div>
<p>I need to post a follow up from my post almost a year ago about Windows Media Center.</p>
<p>In August my family resubscribed to cable. We have a college football addiction that cannot be cured with over the air TV. We got the Comcast X1 system on a promotion for two years. I was mostly satisfied with the service, but there were a few bugs with setting recordings and then having them not record. I also wasn't too happy with the picture quality on some channels. It sure seemed to become pixelated at times.</p>
<p>Even after getting cable, I was still using Windows Media Center to record some of the over the air programs that we enjoy. I then discovered software that plugs in to Windows Media Center to provide a web interface to stream your recorded shows and live TV over the internet. It was time to find a way to make this work with my cable!</p>
<p>I ordered the <a href="http://www.silicondust.com/products/hdhomerun/prime/">Silicondust HDHomeRun PRIME</a> in December. It was a little bit of a pain to setup because you have to go to your cable provider and get a CableCARD to insert into the device. You'd think that they could activate the card at the office and then you just take it home and put it in and be off and running. The process is not that simple. You have to call in after you have the card installed and have the provider "pair" the card to the device that it is installed in. I called in and found someone who could do the pairing process. After about 30 minutes I was getting my cable channels on my Windows Media Center.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-VGzhY16yc-4/VN44QYwroTI/AAAAAAAAFlw/Wr-2TOtkddA/s1600/wmc_guide.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-VGzhY16yc-4/VN44QYwroTI/AAAAAAAAFlw/Wr-2TOtkddA/s400/wmc_guide.png" /></a></div>
<p>What a sight it was to see ESPN and all of the other premium cable channels on my Windows Media Center guide.</p>
<p>I have been blown away by the possibilities that the HDHomeRun PRIME has unlocked for me. Earlier in this post, I referred to plug-ins that can provide a web interface for streaming your content. I just recently moved from <a href="http://myfrem.nl/download.html">Remote Potato</a> to <a href="http://mediabrowser.tv">Media Browser 3</a>. These are both free plug-ins that integrate with Windows Media Center. I discovered Remote Potato first and used it for awhile to be able to remotely schedule programs to record when I am away from home and also to stream recorded content. However, it never really worked for live TV. While I was searching for a way to fix live TV on Remote Potato I discovered Media Browser 3. After installing the server program and the <a href="https://0df317251eddfb99d4fce96eecb40d46cfc8ba25.googledrive.com/host/0ByNnAMYBoWvfTk8tRWJXYko1T2c/index.html">ServerWMC plug-in</a> for Media Browser, live TV was streaming flawlessly in my browser!</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KUBaNRixnOk/VN47fhDSJaI/AAAAAAAAFl4/BAz9UdVQrZo/s1600/cbssports-mb.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KUBaNRixnOk/VN47fhDSJaI/AAAAAAAAFl4/BAz9UdVQrZo/s400/cbssports-mb.jpg" /></a></div>
<p>For anyone who understands port forwarding and dynamic DNS, it is a really simple process to get all of this running over the internet. All of this can be done for the price of $10 for Windows Media Center on Windows 8 (it is free on Windows 7 Home Premium or above) and for about $100 for the HDHomeRun PRIME. Coincidentally, as I write this post, the HDHomeRun PRIME is <a href="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815345006">$78 on Newegg</a>.</p>
<p>If you desire to take your home entertainment and especially your recorded programs on the go with you, I highly recommend this setup with Windows Media Center and the HDHomeRun PRIME.</p>Kenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13007517245617023897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9032867406346172311.post-25079318441777406742014-07-09T08:49:00.000-07:002014-07-09T08:49:31.201-07:00Firmware Updates for Your Car?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8XE9GB05mL0/U71ba5-DcHI/AAAAAAAAEWo/cjOfgzLmrVg/s1600/IMG_0626.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8XE9GB05mL0/U71ba5-DcHI/AAAAAAAAEWo/cjOfgzLmrVg/s200/IMG_0626.JPG" /></a></div>
<p>Our family has grown to a considerable size of five. We decided that our little Saturn SL1 just wasn't cutting it anymore. Back in December we got a 2011 Dodge Grand Caravan.</p>
<p>I've been doing some reading on the technology in this vehicle and in other newer cars. I am very intrigued by the fact that newer cars actually have software updates. I found that there were several versions of the software that runs the head unit in my van that had been released in the past couple of years. I couldn't allow something I own to not be running the latest and greatest software available!</p>
<p>The process was pretty painless. I downloaded the firmware files and copied them to an empty FAT formatted USB stick. Then I stuck it in the radio's USB port, held down the phone button, and a prompt came up asking if I wanted to upgrade the software. In about five minutes it was done.</p>
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<p>Honestly, there are only difference I have noticed so far. First, the interface changed from a blue color to a black color. I like this change because it matches the color of the radio itself. Second, there is now an option for a camera delay. This causes the rear backup camera to stay on for a few seconds after you put the car into drive.</p>
<p>Anyway, the point of this post is to say that our cars are now in line with our computers. It's time that we keep them up to date just like we do with our computers.</p>Kenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13007517245617023897noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9032867406346172311.post-42654476899714051652014-03-18T14:19:00.001-07:002017-02-15T15:53:50.214-08:00Windows Media Center<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_r-gqMNIqlI/UyivAayCefI/AAAAAAAADxg/zuF8VAC_7d4/s1600/Windows_Media_Center_logo.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_r-gqMNIqlI/UyivAayCefI/AAAAAAAADxg/zuF8VAC_7d4/s1600/Windows_Media_Center_logo.png" /></a></div><p>With the shutdown of Aereo, which I <a href="http://www.tigrao.org/2014/03/aereo-shut-down.html">blogged about earlier</a>, I decided that I needed to come up with a quick solution to fill my TV needs. I've never had a DVR before, but I became hooked on Aereo's DVR feature. It was very nice to be able to record NFL and MLS games and other TV shows to watch them later.</p>
<p>My needs aren't very big. My family hardly watches any TV. There are a couple of shows that we watch regularly, though. One of them is on ABC. We used to watch on ABC's own website, but <a href="http://gigaom.com/2013/12/31/bad-news-for-cord-cutters-abc-starts-restricting-access-to-full-tv-show-episodes/">ABC started making us wait</a> at least a week to watch because we don't have cable TV anymore. This really is aggravating! I'm sure that this trend will only continue as people continue to "cut the cord." Thus, I decided that I needed a DVR.</p>
<p>First, however, I needed a working TV signal. There was a Real Salt Lake game on later in the day and I needed to watch it! I double checked Aereo and it really was dead. I needed an antenna to receive over the air TV signals. I know that installing an antenna outside will always give the best results, but I decided to see what I could do with an indoor antenna. I found that the <a href="http://www.homedepot.com/p/Winegard-Flatwave-Razor-Thin-Indoor-HDTV-Antenna-FL5000H/203972854">Winegard Flatwave Razor Thin</a> antenna was getting some good reviews. There were other antennas getting good reviews too, but I needed something I could get locally. Time was not on my side and game time was quickly approaching. I ran into town and purchased the antenna. Before going home I tried out the antenna at my grandmother's house and I was not pleased with the results. I was tempted to return it, but decided to try it at home first.</p>
<p>I fought with the antenna for several hours. I still don't know why I struggled so much with it. My Vizio TV kept giving me a generic "Scan Error" message as I tried to search for channels. I finally found a spot in my living room window where I could at least get it to scan enough to get signal from a few channels. After playing with it for quite some time, I found that if I unplugged the antenna from the TV before starting a scan I could get better results. I finally got a scan to complete and I had a working TV signal, but I still needed a DVR.</p>
<p>Thanks to my good brother-in-law, I had a digital ATSC TV tuner card lying around not being used. I decided to throw this into my Windows 8.1 machine and see what I could do. I paid the $10 for Windows Media Center and I was off and running. It was a pretty simple process except for the fact that it messed up a few channels with incorrect frequencies. I used the software that came with the TV card to scan for channels and compared with what Windows Media Center found. It was easy to correct the problems in Windows Media Center's lineup this way.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ZuflnHZwkyk/Uyiz4dadrII/AAAAAAAADxw/ADOWydSf0Yw/s1600/mce_guide.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ZuflnHZwkyk/Uyiz4dadrII/AAAAAAAADxw/ADOWydSf0Yw/s1600/mce_guide.png" /></a></div>
<p>I am quite pleased with the results. To watch TV, we hit the power button on the media center remote that came with the TV card, and the computer comes out of sleep and automatically turns on the TV within a couple of seconds. It really does feel like a real TV experience without the fuss of logging in to a website to watch TV which we were experiencing before. I think we are much better off now. We might not be using Aereo if they are able to restore service to us in Utah.</p>
<p>I know that I could have accomplished good results with free software, like Myth TV, but I needed things to work quickly without fussing with config files and package dependencies that come with Linux distributions. I would love to experiment with Myth TV, though, when I have some free time.</p>Kenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13007517245617023897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9032867406346172311.post-20147792170937445862014-03-10T09:47:00.000-07:002014-03-10T09:48:16.843-07:00Aereo Shut Down<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Y3RsqPgYgb0/Ux3qYhSehiI/AAAAAAAADvk/tZykWMWd4MU/s1600/aereo_logo-100045481-medium.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Y3RsqPgYgb0/Ux3qYhSehiI/AAAAAAAADvk/tZykWMWd4MU/s200/aereo_logo-100045481-medium.png" /></a></div><p>I'm not usually one to write about court decisions. They usually don't directly effect me, at least noticeably. However, I am quite upset about a ruling by US District Court Judge Dale A. Kimball. He ruled that Aereo should be shut down while we wait to hear what the Supreme Court will rule on the matter this summer.</p>
<p>Are you kidding me? The Supreme Court will hear the case, but he enforced a preliminary injunction in the tenth circuit states? Does this sound reasonable at all? Every other case against Aereo has been ruled in favor of Aereo. In the good old tenth circuit, however, we go our own way, I guess.</p>
<p>I am extremely disappointed in this ruling. I have grown quite fond of Aereo's service. Having over the air TV signals available via the internet is completely awesome. Their cloud DVR absolutely rules too. I loved being able to record NFL games this season and watch them later from any of my devices. I'm really going to miss this service. I don't anticipate it being turned back on any time soon. These battles tend to drag out for a long time.</p>
<p>More reading on this court case can be found here: <a href="http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/money/57570124-79/aereo-court-service-utah.html.csp">http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/money/57570124-79/aereo-court-service-utah.html.csp</a></p>Kenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13007517245617023897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9032867406346172311.post-8575437629669449702014-03-03T13:56:00.004-08:002017-02-15T15:54:48.167-08:00Why I Choose iPhone<p>Recently I have been trying to help someone at work with a broken Samsung Galaxy S3. The device will not power on whatsoever. After doing some research I discovered that the S3, like most Android phones, will not power on the screen if the boot loader has become corrupted.</p>
<p>I started looking into the possibility of recovering the boot loader. It turns out that there is a boot image you can load onto an SD card that will boot the phone and attempt to recovery the boot loader. I wrote the image to an SD card, popped it in, and the LCD turned on. Some text then showed up on the screen. Here's what it does:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cMbHkBcaIxM/UxT5d7GPuzI/AAAAAAAADuQ/EVAjksFB43M/s1600/SGH-T999_fail.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cMbHkBcaIxM/UxT5d7GPuzI/AAAAAAAADuQ/EVAjksFB43M/s400/SGH-T999_fail.jpg" /></a></div>
<p>After doing more research, my conclusion is that the flash memory on this phone became corrupted. There is no way to read or write an image to this phone anymore.</p>
<p>This is not the first time I have seen similar problems with Android hardware. I have never seen an iPhone do anything like this. I need a phone that I can depend on that won't randomly decide that its flash memory is suddenly corrupted.</p>
<p>That's my rant for the day.</p>Kenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13007517245617023897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9032867406346172311.post-41637522264067940142014-02-07T10:18:00.000-08:002017-02-15T15:57:42.291-08:00Conversion from VMware ESXi to Microsoft Hyper-V<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-MNdur-5bYWw/UvUiNyXcsxI/AAAAAAAACKE/3Y6xIMtlZtg/s1600/Hyper-V.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-MNdur-5bYWw/UvUiNyXcsxI/AAAAAAAACKE/3Y6xIMtlZtg/s1600/Hyper-V.png" /></a></div>
I think it is time for my yearly blog post. I've been meaning to post something about Microsoft Hyper-v for quite some time now.<br />
When I started at my current position we were running mostly physical servers, but we had a couple of virtual servers running on Microsoft Virtual Server 2005. One of the first things I helped with was to get those virtual servers migrated to VMware Server 2.0. After running on VMware Server for a year or so, we realized that it just wasn't going to fill our needs. It had not been updated for a very long time and it appeared that VMware was going to drop support for it. We then decided to migrate to VMware ESXi. It was a very good product for us. The performance of our virtual machines definitely improved significantly. However, just after getting everything migrated over and running smoothly, the state of Utah dropped their contract with VMware. We made the decision to migrate to Hyper-V.<br />
In all honesty, we struggled in our test conversions from ESXi to Hyper-V. System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 looked to have all of the functionality we needed to perform the conversions built in to it. In all of our test conversions the process would make it to 90% or so and then fail with a cryptic error message.<br />
Finally, we decided to give up on the built-in functionality and use VMware Converter. We shut down the virtual machine we were trying to convert and exported the ESXi VM to a VMware Workstation VM. After that it wasn't a problem at all to import the VMware Workstation VM into System Center Virtual Machine Manager and get it up and running. The process was very smooth once we followed the VMware Converter workflow. Every VM converted and imported just fine.<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cuv__IRVi18/UvUiN5PHzYI/AAAAAAAACKI/9twW-yn5QQg/s1600/DPM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cuv__IRVi18/UvUiN5PHzYI/AAAAAAAACKI/9twW-yn5QQg/s1600/DPM.png" /></a></div>
I was reluctant to move to Hyper-V, but we are very pleased with it. The one item that completely blew me away is how much better Microsoft's backup solution is. We were using the built-in VMware Data Protection product before. It was very unreliable for us. The worst part is that restore operations would take hours. Now we are using Microsoft's System Center Data Protection Manager. It is much more intuitive and restoring a complete VM takes only a matter of minutes.<br />
Microsoft, you've earned one more fan here with Hyper-V.Kenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13007517245617023897noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9032867406346172311.post-8257908640317723672013-01-29T21:22:00.003-08:002017-02-15T15:53:50.229-08:00Windows 8 Woes<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
I've had Windows 8 on my work machine for several months now. I am still not used to the start screen, or the Metro Style apps, or the Windows app store -- and I don't think I ever will get used to it. However, I quite enjoy the speed of Windows 8, the ability to mount virtual CD images in Windows Explorer, and the new server management tools for Windows 8.</div>
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There's one thing that really drives me crazy though. The video drivers seem to be very unstable on Windows 8 on the Dell OptiPlex 990 that I use at work. I am constantly getting this message:</div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8rL2TUbvrx4/UQitH2gFSPI/AAAAAAAABEU/iMvOXt5Wwco/s1600/Crash.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="52" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8rL2TUbvrx4/UQitH2gFSPI/AAAAAAAABEU/iMvOXt5Wwco/s320/Crash.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Then, just the other day, I saw my first blue screen of death on Windows 8:</div>
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I am using the latest AMD Catalyst software for windows 8. None of this happened on Windows 7. This system was very stable before. Granted, it might be AMD or Dell's fault, but I still want to blame Windows 8 for it.</div>
<br />Kenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13007517245617023897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9032867406346172311.post-40832135731164888482012-10-01T15:40:00.003-07:002017-02-15T15:53:50.210-08:00Server 2003 vs 2008 Free Space<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Update - 1/29/2013:</b><br />
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This turned out to be a partitioning error. I created a new virtual disk with a new partitioning scheme and cloned my data over to the new partitions. That fixed the problem.<br />
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<b>Original Post:</b><br />
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Something is very wrong here. I've been trying for about six months to upgrade an old Windows Server 2003 file server to Windows Server 2008. I have been getting a weird error message when it tries to reboot after the initial copying of files from the DVD. The error is:<br />
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: none; background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Segoe UI', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Windows could not prepare the computer to boot into the next phase of installation. To install Windows, restart the installation.</span></blockquote>
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This generic error obviously doesn't help. When you restart the installation it fails over and over with the same message.<br />
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For kicks and giggles I decided to boot from the DVD directly instead of running setup from within Windows. It said that I couldn't install Windows on my system partition because there wasn't enough free space. What in the world? I have over 90 GB free on the C drive.<br />
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Screenshot from within Windows Server 2003:<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-eGA70AQjXjg/UGoaf5Eh8OI/AAAAAAAAAg0/Nwl1Nm_mMLA/s1600/2003_freespace.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="163" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-eGA70AQjXjg/UGoaf5Eh8OI/AAAAAAAAAg0/Nwl1Nm_mMLA/s320/2003_freespace.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Screenshot from within Windows Server 2008 setup:</div>
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How can this be? What is going on here?</div>
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Kenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13007517245617023897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9032867406346172311.post-79803356162667460802012-09-26T20:56:00.001-07:002017-02-15T16:01:29.367-08:00Nano Sim in iPad 3<b>Update 1/29/2013:</b><br />
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I am now using a micro sim adapter for my nano sim. Obviously, this works much better.<br />
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<b>Original Post:</b><br />
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I got my iPhone 5 on Friday. I'm loving the device. However, this post isn't a review of the device. I won't go into any details about it. I just want to talk about the nano sim in this post.<br />
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As you may know from a <a href="http://www.tigrao.org/2012/05/i-trying-experiment.html">previous post</a>, I like to tether using my iPad. The Verizon iPad 3 comes with free tethering. I've gotten used to moving my Verizon LTE sim card between my phone and iPad. However, the iPhone 5 presents a new challenge. <br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-h5YAc5ylnGY/UGPMbm1wXDI/AAAAAAAAAY4/TLoJGD1wHBI/s1600/nano_sim1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="246" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-h5YAc5ylnGY/UGPMbm1wXDI/AAAAAAAAAY4/TLoJGD1wHBI/s320/nano_sim1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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As you can see, the nano sim card in the new iPhone is much smaller than the micro sim that the iPad 3 takes. I decided to try taping it into the micro sim tray.</div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vjz3dhb4AcY/UGPMcdu5X6I/AAAAAAAAAZA/V5D4AF7fABY/s1600/nano_sim2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="251" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vjz3dhb4AcY/UGPMcdu5X6I/AAAAAAAAAZA/V5D4AF7fABY/s320/nano_sim2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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The contacts are fully exposed as they should be. Let's try popping it in now.</div>
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The iPad seemed to recognize that I have a sim in the tray! I opened my Verizon and, yep, it shows that my device has changed from the iPhone to an iPad.</div>
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I ran a speed test and got a somewhat decent speed on the semi-congested network on the school campus where I work.</div>
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I popped the sim back into the iPhone and it came back online just fine. I love the FCC rules that force Verizon to leave their LTE network wide open for geeks like me to do stuff like this.</div>
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<br />Kenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13007517245617023897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9032867406346172311.post-5439317370606130212012-09-13T19:56:00.001-07:002012-09-13T19:59:52.902-07:00The Old Tigrao.org is Back!I just got done migrating all of my old posts from backups of my website dating back to 2005! I just got years of history back and I am excited about it! I forgot how much I used to actually post on my site. It used to be an engaging place for conversation amongst my friends. It's all back now.<br />
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Take a look for yourself by using the archive links on the right. For example, <a href="http://www.tigrao.org/2005_10_01_archive.html">here's</a> all the posts from 2005. You just might find comments from yourself that you forgot about.Kenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13007517245617023897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9032867406346172311.post-35594378578761586792012-09-06T10:50:00.001-07:002012-09-06T10:50:18.324-07:00Migrated to BloggerMy ugly redirect from www.tigrao.org to my USU hosted blog has now been eliminated. I have fully migrated tigrao.org to be a Google Apps domain. I just finished exporting all my WordPress content to Blogger. It looks good so far. This doesn't necessarily mean that I will post more often. I really should, but we'll see. I always hated the ugly redirect, though. This is much better.Kenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13007517245617023897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9032867406346172311.post-32758603703100329582012-08-14T10:04:00.000-07:002017-02-15T15:54:48.158-08:00Finder and a Corrupt .DS_Store<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I've been beating my head against the wall with this one for three days now, but I finally figured it out!<br />
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This problem was due to a corrupt .DS_Store file in the user's Desktop folder. Removing this file fixed problem.Kenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13007517245617023897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9032867406346172311.post-52529407621581909042012-06-01T03:09:00.000-07:002017-02-15T15:54:48.161-08:00Triple Boot on MacBook Air<strong>Update - 8/14/2012</strong>: I've since wiped my MacBook Air Linux and Windows partitions. I just wasn't using them enough. Windows 8 completely strikes me as a mess of an operating system. I may come back to post step by step instructions as I do this again with the final version of Windows 8.<br/><br/>This post is a work in progress, bear with me...<br/><br/>I successfully have a triple boot with Mac OS X, Windows 8 Release Preview, and Gentoo Linux again on my MacBook Air. I used to have a triple boot on my old MacBook 13 inch with Snow Leopard. However, Lion changed everything. With the introduction of the Lion recovery partition, triple booting legacy operating systems that depend on BIOS emulation was no longer possible. This is because you cannot have a hybrid GPT/MBR partition with more than four partitions. GPT partition schemes don't understand extended partitions and MBR partition schemes cannot have more than four primary partitions. Mac OS X Lion now takes up three of those partitions with a default install. You've got the EFI partition, the Mac OS HFS+ partition, and the recovery partition. You've only got one left if you want to boot a legacy OS alongside Mac OS X.<br/><br/>I dreamed for the day when Windows could successfully EFI boot on a Mac. I tried it with Windows 7 and it failed miserably. I can't remember if I tried it with Windows 8 Consumer Preview at all. I guess I figured that Apple had to change their EFI implementation from version 1.1 up to UEFI 2.0. Apple still uses a wacky non-standard EFI. They haven't changed anything there. However, I decided to attempt an EFI boot from a USB Windows 8 installer to see what would happen. It worked fine! With Windows now able to boot and install on my MacBook Air in EFI mode, I resurrected my old EFI enabled Gentoo Linux image and restored it to an additional partition. All operating systems are booting and running just fine now.<br/><br/>In the coming days I will post the exact steps I used to achieve this. The only drawback is that Windows cannot use an accelerated video driver when booted in EFI mode on the Mac. If I don't plan on playing games on my Mac under Windows then it shouldn't be a problem, though.<br/><br/>Stay tuned...Kenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13007517245617023897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9032867406346172311.post-17481620350763261332012-05-29T03:25:00.000-07:002017-02-15T16:01:29.354-08:00I'm Trying an Experiment<a href="http://www.theverge.com/2012/5/16/3024472/verizon-kills-unlimited-data-lte-upgrades" target="_blank">Verizon Wireless is killing unlimited data</a>. It's true. I was so upset about this when I read the article that I picked up the phone to call and cancel my account with them. However, I remembered that $350 early termination fee that I would have to pay and I hung up the phone before even making the call.<br/><br/>There have been official updates since then from Verizon saying that you will only be forced off of an unlimited plan if you purchase a new subsidized device and renew your contract for another two years. Those that continue to pay full price for their new phones will be able to keep their unlimited plan.<br/><br/>Later, I came across <a href="http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1336647" target="_blank">a forum posting at MacRumors.com</a> saying that it worked to take a Verizon 4G LTE sim card and put it in your Verizon 4G LTE iPad. Your unlimited data plan will work on the iPad, including personal hotspot functionality. There's nothing Verizon can currently do about this. They are obligated to allow you to put your sim card in any device that will function on their 700 Mhz block C LTE network. When the FCC auctioned off the 700 Mhz block C spectrum, they put a provision into the terms of the purchase that open access must be allowed. <a href="http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2007/09/verizon-unhappy-with-700mhz-open-access-requirements-sues-fcc/" target="_blank">Verizon sued</a> to try and get this open access requirement removed, but then later <a href="http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/153848/ctia_drops_lawsuit_against_fccs_open_access_rules.html" target="_blank">dropped the lawsuit</a>. They seem to have surrendered to the FCC's requirements.<br/><br/>Reading about all of this sparked an idea. If I somehow had my 3G unlimited account upgraded to a 4G account and got my hands on a 4G LTE sim then I could have unlimited 4G LTE data on my iPad. Then, if I fully switch over to Google Voice, I could also tether my iPhone to it and still use it while my account was provisioned on the iPad. Then, what convinced me to actually give this experiment a try was that I logged in to my account on the Verizon Wireless website and saw that they actually had a free 4G LTE phone. It wasn't actually free, of course. It comes at the price of a new 2 year contract commitment.<br/><br/>Well, I took the plunge. I decided that it was worth the risk of a new two year contract on one of my lines to try this experiment. I transfered one of the upgrades that was available on my family plan over to my line. I ordered the Droid Charge to replace my beloved iPhone 4S. Let me say that I don't have too much experience with Android devices. The little experience that I do have has left a bad taste in my mouth. It didn't feel very good to order the Charge, for all intents and purposes, to replace my iPhone. It especially didn't feel good after reading all the reviews about the Droid Charge. It doesn't look like a very good phone at all. I still went ahead and did it, intending to never use it at all. I knew that I could still contact Verizon and have my iPhone activated again if the experiment failed horribly. <br/><br/>The device finally arrived. I followed the instructions that came in the box to activate my sim card. As soon as I heard confirmation that my new sim card was activated I picked up my iPhone and tried to make a call. I got the message saying that my device was not activated. Ahhh! It was really done! I stuck the sim card into the Droid Charge and turned it on. I confirmed that I could make calls and that the data connection was working.<br/><br/>I actually made myself use the device that night and the next day to see if I could ever like it. It seemed like an okay phone while I used it until I went to sleep. The next day, however, it was a horrible experience. The battery was dead by noon, the data connection kept dropping, and the device started to feel very slow. I've never had experiences like this on my iPhone.<br/><br/>Later that night, after I got home from work, I pulled the sim card out of the Droid Charge and <a href="http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/06/how-to-create-your-own-micro-sim-card-using-a-chef-knife-and-som/" target="_blank">cut it down to micro sim size</a>. I pulled the sim tray out of my iPad, removed the sim card, and replaced it with my cut down card. Everything that I had read said that you should only have to go into the settings app on the iPad and reprovision the cellular account under general -> reset -> subscriber services. However, after fussing with the sim card and rebooting the iPad several times, I decided to try the reset account option under subscriber services. It worked! I had a cellular data connection on my existing unlimited plan!<br/><br/>It turns out the next day we were traveling up to the Boise area. I turned on the iPad's hotspot option and tethered my iPhone to it. I logged in to my Google Voice account using the Talkatone app. I had my wife give me a test call and Talkatone would not ring. We then made an outbound test call while on the freeway using a 3G data connection. They heard us loud and clear. I realized that my iPad would drop the data connection if I was receiving an incoming call on my Verizon number and the busy/no answer forwarding wasn't working because of that. I stuck the sim card back in my Charge and dialed *72 plus my Google Voice number to enable permanent call forwarding. We tried another incoming call and it worked great. My experiment was working. At this point I was delighted that everything was working out. My enjoyment was increased even more when we finally got to Boise and I tried this all out in a 4G LTE service area. I was getting speeds up around 20 megabits a second!<br/><br/>So far this experiment seems to be a success. My iPad already went with me on my commute to work and back, so it's not a problem to have my iPad in my backpack and my phone tethered to it in my pocket. No behavior is changing there. 99 percent of the time I am always in an area with WiFi, so I will still be able to receive calls without the iPad. When I am going somewhere where I won't have WiFi and it is inconvenient to carry my iPad with me, then I will just pop the sim back into my Droid Charge and just use it as a basic phone.<br/><br/>I just thought I'd share my experience for those that might be thinking about doing something similar...Kenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13007517245617023897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9032867406346172311.post-27332765346257543542011-10-27T08:31:00.000-07:002017-02-15T15:54:48.156-08:00Apple Fanboy Part 2 / The Death of webOSLet's follow up on a previous post...<br/><br/>If there was any doubt as to my status of Apple fanboy or not Apple fanboy, there should be no doubt today.<br/><br/>Tomorrow makes the two week mark with my new iPhone 4S. Guess what I am thinking now... why didn't I do this years ago? I bought in to a great promotion Verizon was running back in April of last year. They were offering the Palm Pre Plus for $50 to existing customers that never had a smartphone before. The one thing that lured me to this offer, though, was the fact that they were also offering the mobile hotspot service for no additional cost. I also thought that I would be paying an additional $29.99 a month to have a data plan on my phone line. However, it came out to be around $23 more a month because of a company discount that I was not aware of. That was all I needed to hear. I was convinced. It was time to go into the world of the smartphone.<br/><br/>The Palm Pre was nice... for awhile. I loved having the ability to have the web, email, Facebook, and everything else in the Palm of my hand (pun not intended). However, there were issues with the keyboard. You were very lucky if you typed out a short text message and it actually said what you wanted it to say. The phone became very slow too. I quickly discovered homebrew hacking possibilities for the phone at precentral.net. Hacking non-approved software onto the phone brought new life to it, but it got to where I couldn't handle it anymore. The keyboard and GPS problems it had (another saga you can read about at precentral.net) just brought the phone to the point where it was not usable for me anymore.<br/><br/>Palm then released the Palm Pre 2 with webOS 2.0. Mr. Jon Rubinstein himself also announced that the Palm Pre and Palm Pre Plus would get webOS 2.0 by the end of 2010. I wanted it! The new update to webOS 2.0 would be what would really make my phone rock! I looked forward to the day when I could run it on my phone. Well, they ended up backtracking and announced in February that webOS 2.0 would not be released for the older devices. That was it... I was done. HP ended up buying Palm and promised a lot things. I don't know if this was HP's decision to not release the update or what it was.<br/><br/>Actually, I wasn't done with Palm yet it turns out. I expressed my frustration that my less than a year old Palm Pre Plus would not get anymore updates to the local HP representative. He managed to work out a deal to send me a Palm Pre 2 at no charge. I was sold again on Palm (or should I say HP) devices. They bought my loyalty at the cost of a new Palm Pre 2.<br/><br/>Needless to say, it didn't last more than about six months. Don't get me wrong, the phone was great. The hardware was a breath of fresh air compared to the Palm Pre Plus. It still had GPS problems, but I had learned to live without it. Additionally, the keyboard problems were gone and the software was buttery smooth. I was in love with my phone again. However, in August HP announced the death of webOS devices. That was the end of webOS as we knew it, as far as I was concerned. If HP didn't care anymore, why should I invest my time, energy, and money into this platform? I made my decision that I was going with a Google or Apple platform from now on.<br/><br/>Having used an iPod Touch 3rd generation and also an iPad I decided that it made sense to go with an iPhone. It obviously didn't make sense to get an iPhone 4 when a new iPhone announcement was right around the corner, though. Fast forward to October 7, the day iPhone 4S pre-orders became avaiable, where I stayed up until midnight to pre-order my black iPhone 4S.<br/><br/>The iPhone 4S has been outstanding! It more than exceeds my expectations. The camera is great, the virtual keyboard just works, and amazingly I have functional GPS now! Siri is surprisingly useful too. I won't give a full review here. The reviews are out there on the web if you want to read them.<br/><br/>My home now has my old 13 inch aluminum MacBook and 3rd generation iPod Touch, which my wife primarily uses; an iPad 2; a MacBook Air; and now an iPhone 4S. Yes, I admit it now. I am an Apple fanboy through and through. I have totally bought in to this ecosystem that Apple has created. Now I'm just wondering when I can afford to get an iMac, an Apple TV, and a Time Capsule. It won't be any time soon, but I look forward to buying more Apple devices.<br/><br/>Again I say... why didn't I do this a long time ago!Kenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13007517245617023897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9032867406346172311.post-44974654849555322722011-03-22T17:25:00.000-07:002017-02-15T16:01:29.360-08:00Cell Phone ChoicesThe news that AT&T is buying T-Mobile has got me thinking about how evil cell phone companies appear to be. There seems to be an evil side to a lot of corporations in America, but not all of them get to the level of trying to squeeze every cent out of Americans that they possibly can. This seems to be even more true when it comes to cellular phone carriers in the United States. <br/><br/>Of the remaining big 3 carriers in the US, only Sprint has not announced plans to get rid of unlimited data plans. Data and tethering pricing on cellular devices is the one of the largest forms of screwing over American consumers. My "unlimited" data plan with Verizon is $30 per month. Unlimited really means don't go over 5 GB a month. By comparison, my Comcast dedicated connection does not have these limits and I only pay $10 more a month. I get a connection that is at least 15 times faster than my cell phone that is always on for not much more money. Something is wrong with this picture.<br/><br/>When the iPhone 4 was released on AT&T, they announced tiered data pricing. You no longer get your "unlimited" connection, but you can get 2 GB of data for $20 a month. My mom uses 2 GB a month on her connection at home just checking her email. AT&T is screwing people over. They are going to make a lot of money on data overage charges<br/><br/>Verizon is going to do the same thing, as they have at least hinted that they will have the same kind of plans when they finish rolling out their LTE network. Why do they have to squeeze every last penny that they can out of their customers?<br/><br/>When the T-Mobile acquisition is complete, surely AT&T will find a way to get T-Mobile customers to pay the same rates that current AT&T customers pay.<br/><br/>So why do we even have cell phones? Why do we let the carriers push us around like we do? I am just as much at fault here as everyone else is. Can we not live without our mobile devices?<br/><br/>I want to hear from people as to why they pay what they do. Why do you have a cell phone? What phone and on what carrier do you have service? Do you have a smartphone with data capabilities? If you don't, is it because of the high premiums you pay for data? Have you considered getting one?Kenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13007517245617023897noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9032867406346172311.post-25486708935444980272010-11-05T07:47:00.000-07:002017-02-15T15:54:48.153-08:00Apple Fanboy?About a year and a half ago I bought my first Apple product, a 13 inch MacBook Unibody. I've used many laptops in my IT career. The PC laptops seemed like they were constructed very cheaply and had a lot of hardware issues. The first thing I did when I got the laptop, however, was install Windows. I didn't think that I liked Mac OS X in my limited experience with it. I just knew that I had a good solid laptop that wouldn't have hardware issues. I also considered myself an avid PC gamer at the time and still used my Windows desktop all the time.<br/><br/>Let's fast forward now. Now my work computer is a Mac as well. I quite like OS X, except when it comes to games. However, now that I am married I find myself gaming less than I used to. I also have an iPod Touch 3rd generation that I love. I still quite like Windows, especially Windows 7. However, am I an Apple fanboy? I find myself watching Apple news sites to see the latest on their new products and I always look forward to new OS X and iOS updates. I read about Microsoft and PC news less and less everyday. What is happening to me?Kenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13007517245617023897noreply@blogger.com1