By ray | September 25, 2008
I finally got around to applying to recent Apple updates to my iMac. I’ve been queueing them up starting with the iTunes 8 update. Part of the reason is I wanted to limit changes while I was recovering my Windows Home Server. But the main reason was I’ve come to expect problems when applying updates from Apple. So far the problems have been minor.
While waiting to apply the updates I’d read about people losing iTunes songs and album art after installing iTunes 8 A common thread for the missing files was that the files weren’t consolidated by iTunes which matches my configuration. I have files in three different locations, none of them the default. I keep most songs on an external hard drive and it happens to be the location specified in iTunes prefs. Videos, audio-books and some music in different shares on my Windows Home Server.
After the upgrade I did have some videos missing, but in going to the pre-upgrade backup they were missing there too so it probably wasn’t upgrade related, they just didn’t get flagged until the upgrade.
I also had some album art missing. I’m not big on album art, when I add music I have iTunes check for album art, if it’s there great, if not I move on. But some of the missing album art was from the free singles I’d downloaded from iTunes so it was there at one time but I can’t say they were there right before the upgrade.
The annoying problem I do have is that the option to “Keep Movie Window On Top Of All Other Windows” no longer works. It keeps the window on top of the main iTunes window but that;s all. Other windows appear on top of it. A visit to the user forums shows it’s a common problem.
I’ve had one other annoying problem. While I can’t say which update caused it I figure its OS X 10.5.5. Parallels has lost its menu bar (the one that appears on the OS X desktop, not in the VM) and it no longer hides when I tell it to hide. Selecting “Hide Others” from another app causes the apps in the Vista VM to minimize but the full Parallels vm stays front and center. This is annoying but not a real problem so I’m hoping it goes away on its own before I get annoyed enough to look into it.
So far there’s hasn’t been any problems, but it’s only been a couple of hours.
By ray | September 20, 2008
I’ve always been paranoid about backups, a file doesn’t exist unless it was in two places. And then there’s off-site backups which add a third place for important or expensive (time & money) files. Things like RAID and file duplication (in WHS) don’t count as two places. If a RAID or disk controller failed the files could be lost. RAID and file duplication are good against drive failures and allow you to keep working, but they aren’t a replacement for backups.
This week I got a object lesson that proved the paranoia was justified. I have over 3 TB of files on my Windows Home Server. Due to their size I don’t use file duplication for most things, but I do back everything up. I was adding the external drives to get more space.
Long story short - that new external rack was bad, but not so bad it wouldn’t run, and I’m now restoring the entire server from backup. Even files that were duplicated were corrupted since both copies (probably) ended up on drives in that external rack. It appeared that files on the original 4 internal drives were OK but I decided to do a complete server rebuild anyway. I’d had so much corruption and other problems that I decided to flatten the server and restore the files. So, after about a day, I’m about 1/3 of the way through the restore. Luckily I had recently bought some cheap hardware to make the restore process a little faster than it would have been.
The irony of this was one reason I was adding the drives was to enable file duplication for more files and reduce the risk of having to do a full restore since it would be so time consuming. I was also replacing a dual USB drive since I was worried USB would be a little unreliable. So after trying to improve things I’m back to the USB which had been reliable for the month or so I was using it.
Now it’s time to get back to checking those file restores.
By ray | September 18, 2008
These are the patches I got after I followed Microsoft’s own instructions on How to obtain the latest Microsoft Word Viewer and installed two files - the Word 2003 viewer and the Office 2007 compatibility pack. On the plus side, it’s only 5 months worth of updates.
By ray | September 17, 2008
Microsoft announced that they’re cutting Seinfeld out of their ads. Planned it all along. I didn’t say anything about the ads at the time but I thought they were unfairly disparaged at first. I kind of liked them, I chuckled a bit, and figured they were recreating Seinfeld’s sitcom about nothing in an attempt to try to make people feel good about Microsoft. I didn’t expect Seinfeld to pitch Vista directly, but rather promote the Microsoft brand to consumers.
Now they say they always planned to dump Seinfeld after two ads. Not that I buy it, but assuming it’s true then those ads did suck and had no point. I had hoped to see the ads through to the end, figuring they were going somewhere. Now it’s aapparent Microsoft doesn’t have a clue about marketing anymore (too many committees?).
Word is they’re going for a John Hodgman look-alike. My prediction is those ads will get slammed even more than the Seinfeld ads as being woofully inferier to the Apple ads which they’ll be compared to directly.
Posted in Random Access | Tagged microsoft |
By ray | September 15, 2008
Apple has released OS X 10.5.5 today. Apple’s release notes were quite detailed this time. They also released a separate bulletin with the security related updates that are included.
I installed the update on my MacBook a little while ago without incident. It was a 136MB download through software update on my Intel MacBook. It’s also available a a standalone download from the Apple download page. The MacBook had already installed the iTunes 8, QuickTime and FronRow updates.
At this point I haven’t installed OS X 10.5.5 on any other Macs yet. I’ll wait and see what problems are reported and probably catch up with the updates this coming weekend.
By ray | September 14, 2008
The Team Fusion blog has an article about optimizing Vista on VMware Fusion 2. Since it’s from the VMware folks it’s titled as VMware specific, but it’s appropriate for any Vista virtual machine.
Suggestions include:
- Disable System Restore
- Disable Screen Saver
- Optimize Power Management for Virtual Machine
- Disable Windows Sidebar
- Disable Remote Management
- Run Windows Disk Defragmentation Utilities
- OPTIONAL: Change to Classic UI
Disabling system restore is something I hadn’t considered although I do severely limit the disk space it’s given. I like the option of bein able to roll back patches and update, although vm snaptshots and backups would work too.
My Windows Vista vm on my MacBook is running under VMware Fusion and has 728MB of memory allocated to it, with 2GB of RAM on the MacBook. Performance is acceptable but I’m a light Vista users on the MacBook.
On my iMac I’ve got 1GB out of 3GB allocated to Vista. While I tend to run a little more software I wouldn’t say I stress the system.
I finally got around to applying to recent Apple updates to my iMac. I’ve been queueing them up starting with the iTunes 8 update. Part of the reason is I wanted to limit changes while I was recovering my Windows Home Server. But the main reason was I’ve come to expect problems when applying updates from Apple. So far the problems have been minor.
