Absoblogginlutely

Fit Badge.

I've included the FIT badge to the web pages now to provide a link back to FriendsInTech.

Funny xbox360 video

One of the benefits of the technet roadshow was hearing about the banned xbox 360 video. If you saw it on tv you'd wonder what on earth they are advertising until the very end. The taxi scene is pretty funny.

blingo at google/ig

I changed my google/ig page so that the search bar uses Blingo instead. I modified someone elses greasemonkey script - mine changes form[0] to use blingo

I'm looking at a way of hacking the google/ig page so that all the google links are secure. This is because if you log into google.com/ig or gmail.com as a secure site, the links to the calendars do not go across via ssl which is a pain if you are using an insecure hotspot.

Zooomr portals and stuff

I uploaded a whole load of photos to zooomr the other day after going around Sidney, Ohio and taking lots of pictures of the architecture. I uploaded a lot of those photos as private ones so I could prepare them with portal features before releasing to the public but it seems that photos that are uploaded as private cannot be made public again (for the time being). There is also an issue with weird punctuation in user names as there are some sets that work with my username (absoblogginlutely!) and some that dont as they drop off the exclamation mark. I got feedback from the support guys - their email address is zfeedback@bbridgetech.com but they may take some time to reply. When I got a reply from the posting I made on their website asking for this information, the comment posting had 1058 comments awaiting approval - looks like they are going to be busy.

"Attempt to Lock Slot Failed" with Backupexec

I had a weird error on a rev drive backup which wouldn't let me do anything to the rev drive - I was unable to backup, catalog or do anything else useful with the drive. I was getting the error message "An error occured while processing a B2D command. Change: MoveMedium() Attempt to Lock Slot Failed (Path to file.lck); Error=112

If you enter "Attempt to Lock Slot Failed" you get no results back from Google or Veritas (thats not suprising on the latter) - the only thing similar states that the disk is full. In my case explorer shows 2.8mb free and it is set to overwrite in Backupexec anyway.

I'm not sure what I did to get it working in the end but the following 3 things seemed to do the trick when done at the same time.
1. Remove the drive and put it back in again.
2. Dragged the oldest file to the scratch media (this seems to solve a lot of BE problems)
3. Kicked off a backup job to restore a small file.

Hope this helps someone else.

Ricky at the office

Nick Whittome - "The Naked MVP" : Ricky Gervais visits Microsoft.
Thanks Nick - thats great.

Technet event

 I'm going to be at the Microsoft Technet - Gear up with Microsoft Windows Vista and Exchange Server at Easton tomorrow morning so if you are reading this and going too then come say "Hello!" I'll be the one with the FriendsInTech button on my shirt and talking with a british accent ;-)

Zooomr gets notes and more.

Zooomr are apparently releasing an update on Monday which will activate notes on photos and something they are calling portals. Like Notes, an area of the photo is hotlinked to give you a scrolling view of another photo (such as a closeup shot of an area in the first photo). You can scroll around the closeup within the original photo and then click on it to zoom into the next photo - A unique implementation. The blog post by Kristopher has a link to the YouTube video of it in action.

Wireless at the library

The Gahanna branch will have free wifi from Monday which will be followed by the other locations throughout the rest of the year - that will be a nice feature to have when studying at the library (which I do about once a year!) It will be interesting to see how fast it is as the lan connection really crawls sometimes but I think that is due to all the kids playing some rpg game on the computers.

Our Anniversary!

7 years ago today (if you count aphian years where 1 aphian year= 1year and 5/7ths of a day) Kristen and I got married. Loads of things have happened since then and I'm looking forward to many more years in the future. (I got in trouble for not blogging about our anniversary but I thought that if I blogged on the anniversary I'd get moaned at ;-)

New blog name?

As part of the reinstall on the new pc I installed picassa2 on the pc and discovered that I've lost all the tagging information - grrrrrrr. However, I did find this picture that I had played around with a while ago and was wondering if I should change the blog name -

I actually created this post using WindowsLiveWriter - it works pretty well - I didn't have to enter any image uploading details (although it would be nice to control where the image is uploaded too and I did have to enter the path to the MovableType cgi file but I think that is because I have removed the RSD data for this blog. Update I'm also not sure why it decided to change the font on me too - the font for this post has been edited back to the default.

OneNote Journalling

DailyJournal for OneNote automatically creates new tabs for each day that the journal feature is used in OneNote - great for tracking what has been done on a certain day - yet another weapon in trying to keep my timesheets uptodate.

ntbackup recovery

nucleus data recovery's Kernel for BKF looks like a good way of recovering from a backup image that is unreadable with ntbackup. Fortunately I've not had to do this yet....
However I have had to use PC Inspector's File Recovery for digital camera cards and the other day I recommended it to a user whose disk full of ghost images were coming back as unreadable - until this utility was used. Well worth downloading if you have not used it already.

System Center Essentials

Microsoft have created a new blog for System Center essentials which if I remember correctly is a new management tool that enables you to manage a bunch of servers and stuff, including ones not on your network - ideal for a consulting company to keep track of everybody's servers. Note that I got this impression from a podcast I listened to so I could be wrong but if I'm right, this will be an awesome utility - hopefully it's not too expensive.

Outlook forms.

I had a user today who logged a ticket saying that everytime she requested a meeting with someone, the recipient was unable to open the meeting request and add it to their calendar. After trying it on their pc I noticed that it asked if I wanted to add the meeting to the timecard application - this was obviously a custom form and sure enough, it was available in the organizational forms - but how to change it back? I was unable to delete the form from the organization and it took me a while to find the real form location. To solve this, go to the folder view in outlook 2003 and right click on the calendar and choose properties. Change the "When posting to this folder" to read IPM.Appointment and it will all work again.

Now if someone could explain why I had two users complain their pc wouldn't boot today but started ok when I switched them on I'd like to know how to market my magic aura.

Tubular 404

It's been a long time since I posted a funny 404 page, but if you remember the stupid senator and his tubes, then you'll appreciate the 404 found at Ed Bott's site
Note that if you link through to the original page you get an annoying mp3 playing so turn the speakers off if you are at work.

greasemonkey error fixed.

If you get the error message Component returned failure code: 0x80520012 when trying to install a greasemonkey script then you need to create a gm_scripts directory in your profile directory and then create an empty file called config.xml in this directory. I got the information from iPodWizard.net where someone had the same problem. I must admit that the solution is not very obvious from the error code.
As to the reason it happened? I think it's because the restore of my firefox profile didn't include that directory for some reason. It turns out that this is because I restored my profile using mozbackup which doesn't backup this directory. I've requested this feature/bug in the next version.

Geek Dinner

Kevin was hosting a geek dinner in Cleveland last night as part of the Friends In Tech / In The Trenches network. I asked one of the guys at work, who also listened to the show if he wanted to go to, he said yes, so last night we headed off on a 272 mile round trip for some ribs and some great company. 8 of us turned up, which is pretty small for a geek dinner, but considering we had people from Cleveland, Columbus (and wherever Kevin and Dave come from) it was a pretty good turn out really.
We had a really good time chatting about all sorts of stuff, no user bashing and Kevin sneakily managed to interview all of us for the Trench segment (which means I'll probably have to think of some new answers). George couldn't make it so Kevin rang him up and we all wished him a speedy recovery.
I've uploaded my photos to zooomr and flickr and tagged them with ClevelandGeekDinner

New del.icio.us usage.

I discovered this evening that you can now have private bookmarks on del.icio.us. When I was looking at having my bookmarks accessible from any computer that I work on I wasn't happy with the idea of just anyone accessing those bookmarks. Some of them are personal to me or other people in the family so I didn't want just anyone accessing them. Some would also be work related and therefore not suitable for publication. However with the new privacy options I can load them all up and mark them up appropriately. Also clipmarks now has an option to automatically post clips to del.icio.us too. I can now be found at del.icio.us and clipmarks (although you won't see much on the former yet until I go through the bookmarks.)

Slimtimer

Slimtimer may be a great tool for those of you who need (or like) to keep a track of things that you are doing during the day. A web page app that keeps track of what you are doing automatically (as long as you click to stop or start a task) and gives you nice reports at the end of various time periods. I'm going to try using this for work for the next couple of days to see how it goes and see if it will help keep my time sheet uptodate. Currently I use a paper based system, but it only gives me details when I fill it in (not always by the computer) and this means I can run it from any computer that I have access to. Of course it doesn't solve the problem of tracking things that happen offline like lunch/travel/ etc but it should hopefully be a start. Thanks to Joe for the information on this one

Dublin Irish Festival

We got tickets to go to the Dublin Irish Festival so went over this afternoon. Personally I didn't think there was much there apart from a lot of Irish shops but I wasn't interested in buying some Irish tat ;-), a lot of overpriced food and drink stands but the Funnel cake was delicious and the first time I'd had one. It was very hot so the soft iced lemon stand was doing very well and was nice and refreshing.
After wandering around the festival we headed back to the traditional stage and watched Gaelic Storm perform a set. They were very good with a lot of audience participation. I've uploaded my photos of Dublin Irish Festival to my zooomr profile (as it has more space than Flickr) and also set up a smartset in case other people also upload photo's.
I also managed to take some video of one of their drum solo's which I uploaded to YouTube.
Edit Updated the YouTube link as I uploaded the wrong video to start with!

Phone ringtones

Kristen and I were having tea at the Old Bag of Nails pub in Upper Arlington (the fish was obviously cooked by someone who had never had real english fish and chips - you are not supposed to be able to pick the whole fish up between two fingers and it stay in one piece) and I was telling Kristen about the Trigger Happy TV that I had been watching on You Tube this morning. There were two skits in particular - one was about a man walking up a street and the other was about a man playing squash whilst on the phone (fast forward to 1:53) and as I was talking about it - someone's phone rang in the pub - playing the very same ringtone -which is infamous if you've ever lived in the UK. I was so tempted to shout "HELLO? YEAH - I'M IN THE PUB - EATING FISH AND CHIPS"
The other trigger happy clip I liked was the Stop and Stop board - the funniest thing is how the car moves forward twice!

Friends in Tech and Firefox

I've been invited to join the Friends In Tech team as a blogger which was a nice offer and an honour to take up. I'll still be posting over here but will have some content on their site too now.
My first post was about the firefox upgrade to 1.5.06 and an easy way to get extensions to work afterwards.
Mike McBride was also invited to post and his first post is about having an appreciation folder in your email client.

If you read either of our blogs you will probably be interested in some of the other Friends in Tech blogs and their podcasts.

Fixing tabs in ie6

After installing the live toolbar from Microsoft I was really hoping to have the tabbed browser functionality (the only thing I really needed) but unfortunately it didn't work. I logged a trouble ticket and received instructions to remove the old version and reinstall it. The instructions are in the extended entry, but I only had to remove a couple of toolbars with the windows installer cleanup utility and the msn entries in the registry. After a reinstall, the tabbed browsing option arrived. It's not as nice as tabbed browsing in ie7 or firefox but neither of those two browsers work well with the Lotus Notes webpages we have to use for work.

A.) Please clear the Windows and Internet Explorer Temp files by using the Disk Cleanup Utility:

1. Click Start, and then click My Computer.
2. Right-click the disk in which you want to free up space, and then click Properties.
3. Click the General tab, and then click Disk Cleanup.
4. Click the Disk Cleanup tab (if it is not already selected), click to select the check boxes next to the files that you want to remove making sure to include Temporary files, and then click OK.
5. Click Yes to proceed with this action, and then click OK.

B.) Then we need to install the Windows Installer Cleanup Utility to get ready to remove any leftover parts or pieces of the Toolbar or it's add-ins. (For more information you can go to http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;290301)

1. To download and install the Windows Installer Cleanup Utility, go to the following url:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/e/9/d/e9d80355-7ab4-45b8-80e8-983a48d5e1bd/msicuu2.exe.
2. Choose Save and when asked where you would like to download the file please select Desktop

C.) Once you have downloaded the Windows Installer Cleanup Utility you will need to run it in order to install it.

1. Find the msicuu.exe (you may not see the exe part) file on your desktop and double-click it.
2. Click Next and allow the program to install.
3. After the installation is complete you can remove the file from your desktop to the Recycle Bin.

D.) Now we will need to run the Windows Installer Cleanup Utility
1. Click Start, point to Programs, and then click Windows Install Clean Up.
2. Select the program that you want to remove, and then click Remove. You should select Live Toolbar, MSN Toolbar and any Toolbar add-ins that you can identify.
3. Click OK, and then click Exit.

E.) Once we have made sure that Windows Installer should no longer see the Toolbar or it's add-ins we now need to remove any traces of them from the registry.

1. On your desktop click Start, and Run, type "regedit" (without quotation") in the Run box and hit the Enter key on your keyboard to launch Registry Editor.
2. Use the + signs next to folders to expand them.
3. Using the + sign navigate to the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft folder
4. Under that Microsoft folder make sure the "MSN Toolbar" and "MSN Apps" folders are not present. If they are then right-click them (using the button on the right-hand side of the top of your mouse) and then choose delete from the resulting drop-down menu.
5. Using the + sign navigate to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \Software\Microsoft folder
6. Under that Microsoft folder make sure the "MSN Toolbar" and "MSN Apps" folders are not present. If they are then right-click them (using the button on the right-hand side of the top of your mouse) and then choose delete from the resulting drop-down menu.

Steps for the clean boot of Windows XP:

Note You must be logged on as an administrator or a member of the Administrators group to follow these steps. If your computer is connected to a network, network policy settings may also prevent you from follow these steps.
1. Click Start, click Run, type msconfig in the Open box, and then click OK.
2. On the General tab, click Selective Startup, and then clear the Process System.ini File, Process WIn.ini File, and Load Startup Items check boxes. You cannot clear the Use Original Boot.ini check box.
3. On the Services tab, select the Hide All Microsoft Services check box, and then click Disable All.
4. Click OK, and then click Restart to restart your computer.
5. After Windows starts, determine whether the symptoms still occur.

Note Look closely at the General tab to make sure that the check boxes that you cleared are still cleared. Continue to step 6 if none of the check boxes are selected. If the Load System Services check box is the only disabled check box, your computer is not clean-booted. If additional check boxes are disabled and the issue is not resolved, you may require help from the manufacturer of the program that places a check mark back in Msconfig.

If none of the check boxes are selected, and the issue is not resolved, you may have to repeat steps 1 through 5, but you may also have to clear the Load System Services check box on the General tab. This temporarily disables Microsoft services (such as, Networking, Plug and Play, Event Logging, and Error Reporting) and permanently deletes all restore points for the System Restore utility. Do not do this if you want to retain your restore points for System Restore or if you must use a Microsoft service to test the issue.
6. Click Start, click Run, type msconfig in the Open box, and then click OK.
7. On the General tab, select the Process System.ini File check box, click OK, and then click Restart to restart the computer. If the issue continues, the issue is with an entry in your System.ini file. If the issue does not continue, repeat this step for the Process Win.ini File, Load Startup Items, and Load System Services check boxes until the issue occurs. After the issue occurs, the last item that you selected is the item where the issue is occurring.

Note Microsoft strongly recommends that you do not use System Configuration Utility to modify the Boot.ini file on your computer without the direction of a Microsoft support engineer. Doing so may make your computer unusable.

Steps to install Live Toolbar:

1. Please visit: http://ideas.live.com and click on Try It in the Live Toolbar area.
2. Complete any further steps to install the Live Toolbar program.