There will probably be a short site outage at 3:30PM UTC time on March 1st. While the outage is due to problems with the server I’m hosted on it’s a good example of why I love Slicehost as a hosting provider. Earlier today I my site went dead as I was doing an update. It wasn’t the type of update that would have caused an outage. I checked the Sitehost diagnostics page which told me my slice was not running although the host hardware was up. It suggested I do [...] Read the rest »
Windows Home Server Update
Windows Home Server got a small update with the February 2009 update. After installing the update on my Windows Home Server and rebooting the WHS I had to update the connector software on my desktop (I don’t have it set to automatic). The update was also announced on the Windows Home Server Team Blog. The technote mentions that a problem with restores is fixed although I recall seeing backup fixes in the January update. I had the restore problem previously and saw it mentioned in an update, although it wasn’t [...] Read the rest »
Why Buy an HP EX487 Windows Home Server?
I noticed that Newegg was offering the HP EX487 Windows Home Server as one of their deals. It’s $50 off list (a common promotion these days) with free shipping. This is the 1.5 TB version with two hard drives. With drives being so cheap these days I decided to check out the HP EX485 Windows Home Server which is the 750GB one drive version. Other than the additional drive the servers are the same. The HP EX485 also has the same $50 discount from Newegg (among other places) and free [...] Read the rest »
Great PC Case on Sale
I used the Antec New Solution NSK2480case in my PC build and have been very happy with it so far. It’s quiet and keeps everything nice and cool. It was a bit pricey but NewEgg has it for $40 off which brings it down to $80. Read the rest »
McAfee VirusScan Plus free with VMware Fusion – Overpriced
I’ve recently been casually looking at virus software to see what’s out there. My impression of McAfee overall is negative but I can no longer remember the specific reason why that is. It’s bundled with VMware Fusion so I figured since it was free I’ve give it a try. Now, I expect a few strings but McAfee was so egregious all its products are now dead to me. And since VMware’s branding was incorporated into the McAfee interface itself which implies they approved I’ll view them skeptically in the future. [...] Read the rest »
Amazon Kindle Take 2
Amazon announced the Kindle 2 and plans to begin shipping it on Feb. 24th. While there’s no doubt Amazon has run out of Kindles at various times and there’s been estimates of a half million sold, I’m not convinced the Kindle qualifies as “hugely popular”. When using it in public I’ve only been asked about it by one person. And she asked me if it was the one Oprah talked about. I’ve never seen another Kindle in the wild. Of course, I own the first Kindle and have already pre-ordered [...] Read the rest »
The OS Quest Trail Log #38: The OS Edition
So far this year I’ve built a couple computers, one with Windows 7 and one with Windows Home Server. I’ve also fought some OS X patching battles and hardware problems. The new Windows Home Server is running well and has been nice and stable. With all the disk that’s now in it I was able to turn on file duplication for the video share which has 4.3 TB of data. Eventually I’ll turn off the file duplication but I want to get a feel for performance with it turned on. [...] Read the rest »
Internet Explorer 8 Gets It Right
I’ve forever ignored a problem Internet Explorer had when displaying this site. It displayed correctly (meaning the way the CSS said to) in every browser I used except IE. Now IE 8 gets it right (at least the IE8 I’m running on Windows 7). The problem was the way IE displayed the picture I put in the top left of many posts. This is how IE 7 and earlier used to display them. Notice the text starting at the bottom of the picture. This is the way every other browser [...] Read the rest »
Google Stealth Updater
I’ve been setting up a new Windows 7 PC and I just installed Google Gears for Firefox. I noticed a new task under Windows Scheduler called GoogleUpdateTaskMachine. It’s set to run at every login and when the computer is idle. I have mixed emotions about this. I think it’s good to keep software up top date and for many people or PCs it may be the way to go. Yet, this is the company that recently deemed the entire web to be malware due to human error so it’s clearly [...] Read the rest »
RSS Feed Readers Only
I just moved my Feedburner feeds to a google account. There shouldn’t be any noticeable change, or action required, if you subscribe to one of the rss feeds. If you notice any problems let me know. Google purchased Feedburner awhile ago and is now making us users move from Feedburner to Google accounts. It needs to be done by the end of this month so hopefully by doing it early I’ve avoided the rush and can avoid any problems that may be caused by that last minute rush. Read the rest »
