graham.reeds/

No Means No!

Where I work likes to keep the machines up to date with the latest patches on all their systems. There is nothing wrong with that, but the way automatic updates goes about it is.

About an hour ago I go the message that as part of the automatic update my machine needs to be rebooted, and gave me a choice of now or later. Due to me debugging some treacherous code I selected later but Automatic Updates doesn’t believe that I will update my system, and keeps reminding me that I need to reboot like I have the attention span of a goldfish. I DON’T WANT TO REBOOT – I’D RATHER KEEP WORKING ON WHAT I AM DOING!

In fact I have had to dismiss it while writing the post.

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Google Notes

One of Google‘s plethora of useful tools that are making it as extensions to Firefox is Google Notebook. It’s exceptionally useful though it does come with a pointless “Open Notebook” text next to the icon in the status bar. It’s not needed so it has to go. Also if your status bar was a mess like mine you will need the Organise Status Bar extension.

This is written from a Windows perspective so you might need to change some points in your religion of choice:

1. Close Firefox.
2. In your Profile, go into extensions\notebook@google.com\chrome\chromeFiles\locale\<your locale> back up the two files that are there (google-gnotes.dtd and the google-gnotes.properties).
3. Open them in the editor of your choice (notepad works fine).
4. On the lines that say openNotebook make sure that there are nothing in the quotes or after the equals sign.
5. Then remove the key in the gnotes.accessKey. If you leave it in you get a solitary letter next to the icon.

It’s not quite perfect as you have a small space to the right of the icon, but at least there is no ugly text. Hopefully for future versions this hack will not be needed. I might look into this at a later date, but for now it suits me fine.

Also, as an aside, it is interesting to note that the extension works on any page. It would be nice if the GoogleTalk functionality of the GoogleMail page was extended to do the same.

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Return to sender

I have my other computer up and running and a lot more reliably than before. It wasn’t a hard drive related issue (though it still might be – booting to Windows still takes the best part of 3 minutes). The problem was that my machine would sometimes fail to POST, as in it doesn’t show anything on screen. So what could be the problem? It must be something I have added to the machine, and the only thing I added was the new network card. I could understand if it never booted up once – while it would be a major pain I could understand: The machine is old (KX-333R) and it always was a bit twitchy (the RAID is just being used as JBOD and has seemed to be what slowed the machine down so badly. Detach the disks and you will get a snappy system again).

So I can’t use the network card in the machine, but fortunately Belkin make a USB version. That would have to work or else I go back to trailing cables across the room (something I really wanted rid of). So we bought one and it works! The software is a bit old – even though the USB is very similar to the PCI version the software for the USB version looks about 10 years old – but it works.

I will hold onto the PCI card so when I finally get around to upgrading I can put the more discrete card in.

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Perils of xcopy and haste

We’re are in and the computers are now up and running.

However everything was not as rosy as I’d hoped and I still have a slightly sour taste in my mouth.

First my main machine had developed a problem regarding booting – it would take about 3 attempts to boot. It would load fine until it was supposed to do the final mode switch to the desktop and it would just black screen and go no further. Since the moment of death was just as it was switching resolutions I thought it was a driver problem. I thought my suspicion were confirmed when after a reinstall the problem came back immeadiately after a reformat.

But I am getting ahead of myself – the reformat was the problem.

I needed to first back up C: drive and in particular the Documents and Settings folder. So after booting into safe mode, I selected everything on C (Windows, Program Files, Documents and Settings) and dragging it to the E drive I went away and made myself a cuppa.

I came back to find the machine still sat on “Preparing to copy files”. It was still there 15 minutes later. Not wanting to waste anymore time on it I opened the command prompt and navigated to the respective directories and entered the command “xcopy c: /E” and away it went. Then about an hour later the drive had finished copying and I rebooted to let the Windows CD do it’s stuff.

As well as the problem with the graphics card I also had the problem of not having the CD for the Creative Labs Live! 5.1 Digital card. Creative have the annoying business logic of not allowing you to install a sound card from the drivers on their website. They only allow you to upgrade the drivers from a previously installed set. Also the age of the card meant concrete information was hard to come by on the internet. Or maybe I was just using the wrong search parameters.

When I had the machine open to install the wireless network card I checked the graphics card. The bvlo was (and still is) held in by two screws. Even it looked like it hadn’t moved I decided to reseat it while the case was open in the off chance that it was that was causing my range of problems. Turned out it was. Should of checked earlier really, but with two screws holding it in you would guess it would be pretty secure.

So my machine was booted, the picture was sharp and crisp, the sound card was making all the right bleeps and internet was streaming bits into my home. Time to copy everything I had moved back. But it wasn’t there. Application Data wasn’t there, Local Settings wasn’t there, nor was the other half dozen directories that normally live in the user directory there. Had I done my research properly and not been in so much of a hurry I would of used the modifiers /H /E.

So what did I lose? The previous 4 years of email and instant messages, which is why Google’s online storage of email and chat is so good (pity not many people actually use the chat): Lose your system settings due to stupidity or just bad luck you won’t lose your continuing record. However it is useful to have a separate system that is suitable for newsgroup and mailing lists.

Then there was my file server which is still experiencing teething troubles which I will leave until they are sorted…

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