mike says things sometimes

I completely regret ever purchasing video from the itunes store now.

So i like a good consumer I updated my itunes to 9.2 today, and after it completed, 88 files are missing, 564 tv shows are showing as unplayed, and some of my music is now gone.  Thankfully the music had already been copied over to my Zune library, but the problem is that I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT HAPPENED. Its just gone.

Frankly though, my greater concern is the fact that even if I want to move to a computer’s product, like oh say….Zune, I can’t take my media with me.  Due to drm and failure to adhere to standards, Apple has assured that I will forever have to use this apple TV they don’t really want to support to view the files.  The container Apple uses for MP4 is an M4V with AC3 passthru, which is an unsupported hack to the MP4 codec container, therefore most other software won’t read it.  Combined with the DRM, you are locked forever into using this thing, no matter how laggy and crappy it is, since Apple doesn’t wanna actually upgrade the device. 

The lesson I’ve learned here is this, if you want interoperability and you want to insure your investment in media isn’t destroyed by a shitty software update….PIRATE. 

And they wonder why they can’t beat piracy?

So for the last week or so, my Embarq DSL has been acting wonky. Multiple outtages, now stretching into multiple DAYS worth of outtages, and they seem completely unable to resolve this.

I’ve finally given up, and am trying out Clear WiMax.  Since my DSL was stagnant at 3MB/768kb anyhow, Clear is saying they can offer 6MB/1MB Home AND Mobile internet for LESS than I’m paying for Embarq’s DSL service, and I’m getting it for half off for 6 months.  My equipment should be arriving this afternoon, so hopefully I’ll actually have internet again at home tonight, and then I can just cancel embarq’s craptastic service.  I’ll post some updates as to how Clear’s service is.

I just really wanted to mention how much I <3 the win7 installer.  I’ve got a GX620 optiplex in the house that I realized had no cd-rom, and wouldn’t boot from a flash drive, so i copied the win7 install files from my flash drive to an NTFS formatted usb hard drive, and it installed wicked fast.

Win7 is full of win and love and butter.

Ok, so after many days of frustration and troubleshooting, I think I have this problem licked.

First off, setup your network to enable RPC over HTTP, and confirm it works with Outlook 2k3.

Keep in mind you WILL need a valid SSL cert from a trusted authority.  I recommend a cheap cert from godaddy, as they can be had for between 13-30 bucks if you catch a sale.

Once you have your cert, follow the instructions here:

http://www.petri.co.il/how-can-i-configure-rpc-over-https-on-exchange-2003-single-server-scenario.htm

And make sure you test your exchange connectivity, and make sure RPC over HTTP is working for a standard Outlook 2k3 install.

Once you’ve followed those steps, test your configuration here:

https://www.testexchangeconnectivity.com/

All green? Gooooood.

Now, this is where it gets weird. In your Outlook 2k7/Vista machine, go to control panel-mail, and setup your new profile. 

For your Exchange server, enter the INTERNAL FQDN of your mail server, ie servername.domain.local, selected cached mode so you can get decent performance out of your setup, and enter your username.

Select more settings, go to Security, and set it to Kerberos for now. (We’ll come back to this.)

Go to the Connection tab, and under Outlook Anywhere put a check in “connect to Microsoft Exchange using HTTP”, and then click the Exchange Proxy Settings button

Under connection seetings, enter the URL for your OWA server, and put a check Connect using SSL only.  Also check both “On fast networks”… and “On slow networks…”  Set your Proxy Authentication settings to Basic authentication.

Click OK, and then OK again, at which point you should get a pop up warning about using Kerberos from outside a firewall.  Hit ok and continue.  Go ahead an open outlook, enter your username as Domain.local\username  and password, and outlook should probably fail.  At this point go back to your exchange settings, and change you Logon security back to NTLM instead of Kerberos.  Reopen Outlook, and you should now connect.

Stupid and crazy compared to every other version of Outlook\Entourage, but there you go, it worked for me

You’re awesome.

 

Love,

Able-X

Learn something new everyday.  I have a 5g Ipod Video 30GB, and disk use is NOT enabled, and it auto syncs playlists.  In this configuration it generally syncs when i plug it in, then un mounts itself and I get the happy “Ok To Disconnect” message.  Well today, it wouldn’t get out of “Do Not Disconnect”.

Turns out the issue was the ipod itself.  Hold down ‘Menu’ and the center button to reset the ipod, then after it restarts put it in the dock and it should start behaving normally!

Happy ipodding

Another odd one.  A user was having problems syncing his my docs, and kept receiving a strange error that “The Parameter Is Incorrect”. Well, here’s what I did to fix it:

Go to the offline files tab in windows explorer, hold down  ctrl+shift at the same time that you click the “Delete Files…” button. I know it’s kind of an unusual method for Windows but it does seem to solve the problem most times. It should pop up with a warning message and Yes or No buttons. Click Yes, reboot, and resync and all should be well.

If not, try the following (although I can’t say that I’ve tried it myself):

1. Disable Offline Files with  csccmd.exe /disable

3. Reboot into Safe Mode and delete all content under %SystemRoot%\CSC

4. Reboot again and re-enable Offline Files.

After this is done, try the Ctrl+Shift+click method again.

Also, be aware that the offline file database has a path name limitation. I don’t know what it is – but if your path\file name is too long it will corrupt the database and cause the “The Parameter is Incorrect” error.
Make sure that your file and folder names are kept reasonable. I also recommend not using special characters for any folder or file names.

Hope it helps!

So a user got a new laptop, and everything seemed ok.  Until he went to send an email and get an address from his contacts list.  IT WAS MISSING.  So, after a bit of google-fu, i was led to the following solution which worked like champ:

Step 1: Install the Outlook Address Book service

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/287563/

To do this, follow these steps, as appropriate for the version of Outlook that you are running.
Microsoft Outlook 2002 and Microsoft Office Outlook 2003

1.    On the Tools menu, click E-mail Accounts.
2.    Click to select View or change existing directories or address books, and then click Next.
3.    If your Outlook Address Book is listed, click Cancel, and then go to the steps in the “How to Mark Your Contact Folder for Use with Your Address Book” section.
4.    If your Outlook Address Book is not listed, click Add.
5.    Click to select Additional Address Books, and then click Next.
6.    Click to select Outlook Address Book, and then click Next.
7.    Click OK when you receive the prompt that the address book you added will not start until you click Exit from the File menu.
8.    Click Finish.
9.    Click Exit from the File menu, and then restart Outlook.

My google-fu is strong.

Today was full of suck, with many users being very needy, and day 2 of no long distance in the office, so I spent all day on the phone with vendors.  Oh, and one of our sites backups hadn’t worked properly since last july.  And some shadow copies were disappearing faster than I could recover data from them.
And I found Limewire on a users machine who is always bitching about how her compy doesn’t work.
And a hard drive died.  So yeah, suck ass.

So I’m sitting here thinking “hmm, I think I’ll go play portal on my PC”.  So I meander my way over to it, and notice the lights are on, but no one is home.  Specificially, the PC lights are on, and the blue LED in my usb wireless card are on, but none of the fans are spinning and there’s no noise at all.  Normally this thing is noisy as hell since it’s PC that used to be a server, with multiple SCSI disks and the whole bit.

So I’m all “oh shit” and try to turn the power off.  I hold the button in, no dice, won’t turn off.  So I unplug it.  Lights are still on.  WTF.  I turn off the power supply switch.  Lights are STILL on.  WTF?  I even unplug the monitor, and the led’s are still on.  So I’m like “ok, uber capacitors or something”.  It’s been 5 minutes now, and the lights are STILL on, and it’s kinda creepin’ me out, cause there’s no electricity hooked up.

Seriously.  WTF?.