OST Nightmare

Count me in with the multitudes of horror stories involving Exchange server crashes and lost correspondence.

Long story short, I found myself in Outlook’s recovery mode once the server was up back and running. Not being used to Outlook’s bottomless innards, I mistakenly assumed that my existing local copies of messages would simply sync back up with the server.

Not so. When the server went down, so did the correspondence.

By default, Outlook caches your messages for offline use in case you lose communication with your company’s Exchange server. Those messages are saved in a special database called outlook.ost deep in your Documents and Settings folder. So, if you somehow corrupt your ost file, you can simply keep a backup copy of it, right? Only if you use the same mailbox. You see, in Redmond’s infinite wisdom, the ost databases are protected with security keys corresponding to the user and their mailbox where the ost was based on. If the keys between the ost and the mailbox match, you can access everything in that ost such as messages, calendar items, and contacts. No match? No dice. Your data is gone forever. You have a large database file that you can’t do anything with. When you take yourself out of recovery mode by reconnecting to your server, you create a new mailbox and, in turn, a new ost file. The old ost file? Sorry, pal.

Enter the snake-oil salesmen. Believe it or not, there is a flourishing third party market for recovering from Outlook disasters. Their solutions will run you in the hundreds of dollars (don’t believe me? Google is your friend). One solution will get your ost back for a mere $600. SIX HUNDRED DOLLARS!!??? For something MS should have had in Outlook to begin with?

Oh, but it’s because of potential legal issues, they say. You know? Disgruntled employees copying databases with sensitive correspondence onto their USB sticks and taking them home?

What a crock of shit. And the moon is made of swiss cheese.

Isn’t proprietary lock-in great?

Go Fork Yourself

Open sorcery at its finest.

Pidgin: automatic chat input field resizing should be optional, regression from 2.3

The fact of Pidgin development is that we wrote it for ourselves. We released it to the world in the hopes that it would be useful to others. There is a huge difference between this and bending over backwards to satisfy every request or complaint. If our desired development path no longer makes the software usable, we’re sorry, but you’ll need to find another piece of software to meet your needs. - rekkanoryo

I am a developer too and I cannot stand that attitude, I just don’t have a words. How can you say something like that? You don’t care about your users? Major linux distributions are including your software as a default IM - that’s a responsibility you should care of. You’re not writing this just for you, you’re writing it for millions of users. - megaloman

For those of you revering to 2.3, this solution will work for awhile but eventually you are probably going to want new features that Pidgin developers introduce. I have created a fork for this purpose called “funpidgin” which is on sourceforge.net (http://sourceforge.net/projects/funpidgin/). It is my first software project and I’m hoping it will be a lot of fun. If it gains a serious following, it can have a more serious name. - ConnorBehan

Yeah, forked! That’s what I’m talking about! Fight tyranny! Yes we can! - quoderat

Why are the developers being so obstinate? It’s beyond me. This is a change that has only pissed people off and harmed your project. I now no longer recommend Pidgin to neophytes, and I will be contributing time and money to the FunPidgin fork. - lunaticinterior

But, my dear developers, it should be a clue to you how much people really do hate this feature, that not only did someone make the effort to write a plug-in to restore the old behavior, but someone is actually willing to maintain an entire fork of your project, over this distasteful choice that you’ve forced on us. What more do you need to convince you that your unwavering devotion to this new functionality is a disservice to your user community? - ddm

It AMAZES me the developers have decided this ticket should be “wontfix”. Over 270 responses for this ticket, 8 other tickets related to what many users consider a defect, and the developers can’t see THIS WAS A BAD IDEA! Sorry, Mr. Ethan, but you’re wrong. You’ve got lots of constructive criticism, many suggestions, complains, patches, a fork and you still act as the guy who just had the best (but misunderstood) idea on Earth! - rfgiusti

While most of the above is nonsensical crap not worth replying to, I will note that our development model has worked for 10 years, and will continue to work regardless of a few disgruntled users. - rekkanoryo

Eddie Murphy’s Musical Talents Live On…

…thanks to Sharam of Deep Dish.

If you have seen the original video, it’s quite a spoof, no?

Repairing Broken Windows

Seriously, I don’t have time for this shit. I know, I know. I really should be taking Rick’s advice. And it doesn’t help that I’m on Windows as I type this.

To no one’s surprise, ZoneAlarm…errr…EZ Armor went belly up on my own box. I ended up trading the suite (and downloading/running CCleaner) for AVG Free and Comodo. So far, so good. WinXP is noticeably snappy again. I still don’t know if I completely eradicated XP of the remnants, for AVG continued to nag me about existing AV long after removing EZ Armor.

At least I can use Privoxy again…

On a work PC, Windows decided to bork itself after a routine shutdown. Start up the box and you’re greeted with the usual vendor splash screen followed by the WinXP logo in all of its 8-bit glory. And then…NO SIGNAL INPUT. Huh? Really? Check the connections. Nope, all there and secured. Safe mode perhaps, just to be sure? Wait a minute. I can get in. Reboot again to normal screen, BIOS, WinXP, and…NO SIGNAL INPUT?

I tried searching teh Internets.  Looking up help for Windows is an absolute trainwreck especially when you have to mingle with the unwashed masses.

As of right now, with nothing to go on but being able to boot safe mode, I’m not sure whether I should blame WinXP, the sloppy second-hand video card, or the monitor.  And the finger is firmly being pointed in my direction.

I’m getting too old for this.

Out of Touch

$40

Forty fucking dollars to fill a tank.

Never before in the history of owning my current ride have I ever had to pay such a ridiculous sum for not even 10 gallons of petrol only to be idled away at 0 mpg in 405 traffic and every stoplight from the freeway to Timbuktu my apartment for the next 2-3 days.

$4/gallon of gas is here, despite what the current chimp in chief thinks.

So what will Billary Shillary Hillary, Osama Obama, or McLame McCain do about it?  The missing fourth estate is too busy fueling the gossip about pastors, bitterness, and sniper firings.

And before the Euro readers come chiming in here:

a) Public transit is NOT an option, let alone a viable one.

b) Your expensive gas prices have remained stagnant over the years while ours has just about doubled in the past few years.

c) Your taxes actually pay for things, while the government here raids our gas taxes to pay off other debts instead of fixing our roads as the gas taxes were originally meant for.

ABC’s ‘Crossfire’ Moment

Like Jon Stewart appearing on CNN’s Crossfire, ABC made the mistake of asking for feedback from the people who are fed up with politics as usual.

Clinton, Obama Find ‘Brotherly Love’ at Philly Debate

Lots of gems to quote, but this pretty much sums it up. Pay no attention to which candidate this person supports, but the gist of the problem with our MSM:

This was not a debate by any register of the defintion of professional journalistic integrity. Imagine what perception ABC has given by allowing George S. to take his marching orders from Sean Hannity. Talk about ruining a reputation for any type of unbiased reporting or commentary. MSNBC and CNN need to teach you people how to run a journalistic operation otherwise you are aka FOX news in disguise and disgust. The American people want answers on the current recession and increasing rate of inflation. They want debate on whether $4.00 a gallon gasoline is the future and whether our occupation of Iraq is status quo. Americans also want guidance and are looking at these debates as a measure of who best will be able to formulate a path to our continued prosperity or a path to our dooming disparity. It is in your best interest to further the discussion by honest and intelligent questions…if you needed help in formulating your questions we are certainly here to ask…health care not mentioned, social security…where are we going…education…etc..p.s. let’s put Americans back to work starting with infrastructure….and producing …we can do it…but not with people who have a vested interest in columbia trade deals or the occupation of Iraq…guess that’s why President Barak Obama sounds fine to me. George go get a job at Fox. -6minnies

C&L Coverage

The Great Hard Drive Debacle

I was cruising through the same wiki page I had linked earlier to re: Compiz-Fusion in a previous post when I stumbled upon the section regarding Gutsy and laptop hard drives.  Somehow I must have missed the Slashdot coverage but found myself in frustration over the low signal-to-noise ratio in that discussion.  Worse, the Launchpad bug report itself required wading through knee-deep shit.  Everyone seemed to have one kind of ‘fix’ or another…it’s enough to make you want to pull your hair out in frustration.  Nevertheless, I came away from the discussion with the following conclusions:

~ Monitor the Load Cycle Count per smartctl reports frequently.

~ Set the -B 254 flag to hdparm to be on the safe side, put it into the config, and make sure it’s loaded upon startup.

~ Verify the setting via hdparm -I /dev/sda.

~ Shake head at the usual open sorcery and finger-pointing.

Now, for a laptop that isn’t barely three-weeks-old in usage, here are the results:

ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE

193 Load_Cycle_Count        0×0032   198   198   000    Old_age   Always       -       6400

Not very re-assuring, considering that most laptop drives usually last somewhere in the neighborhood of 600K cycles.  Since this also seems to affect my PowerBook, I brought it out from its final resting place, fired up Ubuntu, and ran smartmontools there.  Let’s just say that the worst value has hit the threshold with over 1 million something load cycles.  In a word, doomed.  DOOMED.

I don’t know what’s going on here other than applying the hdparm fix and hoping for the best.  Now I have to mind bumping my laptop…

Oh yeah, and here’s the thread on Ubuntu Forums.  Enjoy pulling what’s left of your hair out.

Compiz-Fusion

I now have Compiz-Fusion successfully running on my Thinkpad.

Thank you, ThinkWiki.

100% Ubuntu

At last, I am now 100% full time with Ubuntu.  All of my past gripes have been put to rest.  Well, except for this moment.

(I’m adding a sandboxed account to Windows…like I’m ever going to boot to it for a friend who needs to check something.)

At Last

Windows is finally set up on my lappy. A whole fvcking week!

No wonder most people just throw the whole kitchen sink out when there’s a small leak.

I’m ready to install Linux. I might get rid of my hidden recovery partition anyway as it’s eating up 8 GB of space that could be useful elsewhere and especially since I fouled up in creating my shared FAT32 as a primary instead of a logical partition. Damn those 4 primary partition limits…

Anyway, here is some required reading that helped me along the way:

Tweakhound: Securing Windows XP

Ignore the bits about disabling Secondary Logon and Terminal Services. If you want Fast User Switching to work, keep those two services enabled. Also for the record I use Windows Defender instead of the Ad-Aware + Spybot combo. Yes, I used to advocate using these in the past but found them to be repetitive. I personally use a firewall/AV suite so that negates the need for Privoxy (conflicts with the firewall) and ClamWin.

Labmice.net: Windows XP Security Checklist

This takes things further to just about workstation-grade security.

And this is as damn close as you can get to sudo on Windows:

SuRun

A few other gotchas:

I downloaded the Current Track plugin for Pidgin. Unfortunately, enabling it promptly crashes Pidgin. The fix is to edit your Pidgin preferences XML. Specifically, find the entry for Current Track and change the boolean in the following string:

<pref name=’update’ type=’bool’ value=’1′/>

Change the value to 0. If you need your hand held, the XML file is here:

C:\Documents and Settings\$USER\Application Data\.purple\prefs.xml

And then you’ll have your currently playing track as your status a la iChat and Adium.

Watch out for permissions once you downgrade to LUAser status! Also be sure to lock out access to the admin group. You don’t want your files getting snooped on.

Don’t blindly run SuRun to give admin access to every program you think is acting up! I’ve only had to use it on VirtuaWin and AirPort Utility as I know both have trouble with LUAs.

And now, off to my Linux install…

iTunes on Windows SUCKS. Or is it Windows Itself?

Mordecai told his story about iTunes 7.x back in September 2006.  I’ll let you have a look as much of his complaints are still quite valid.  On my TP - with the Intel Santa Rosa, a more than decent video card, and 2 GB of RAM on a XP system - iTunes runs like a dog, a far cry from the version I have been so accustomed to in OS X.  It can’t remember my AirTunes speaker volume setting.  It sometimes burps for no apparent reason.  It makes its own special rule in Windows firewall.  And now it’s the trojan horse for the Safari payload.

You’d think that after 6 minor point releases…oh what the hell.

Forget about the bloatware factor.  I’m more pissed at the fact that I could not seamlessly transfer well over 6000 files that make up my music collection.  I know you can’t see me, but I’ll have you know, I’m shaking my fist in anger. (Insert sarcasm close tag here)  Just how hard is it to connect up another device and make a copy of your music folder?

Definitely not from a Linux live CD; that’s for sure.  I kept getting “parameter errors” (huh?) while attempting to transfer my music from my external (formatted in HFS+) to my TP’s FAT32 partition.

Fine.  Break out the DVD backups.  Nope; still no dice.  Back to Windows it is (and no native HFS+ support).

I empirically believed that I achieved success by popping in DVD after DVD and dragging the contents into iTunes (and allowing iTunes to automagically sort my music in my designated directory).  After an all-nighter and with my music in place, I inventoried and compared my copied collection to the original location only to find that I was actually missing songs.  Not one or two or a few, but significantly enough to warrant a WTF?

Really?  I popped in the relevant DVDs to investigate whether or not I really did burn the music I could have sworn I have burned via Windows Explorer.  Nope.  As a last ditch effort, I brought the PowerBook back out and popped in the same DVDs to that machine.  And wouldn’t you know, there they were…my supposedly ‘missing’ tracks that wouldn’t show up neither in iTunes or Windows Explorer.

The underlying issue?  Multiple subfolders with pretty much the same name and 001, 002, etc. appended to them.  And the missing songs?  They were accounted for in those subfolders.  Too bad I can’t easily add them without editing ID3 tags to make the iTunes automagic directory sorting ‘feature’ happy.

Care to take a guess where I’m placing the blame?  Sorry, it isn’t Apple this time.

My ThinkPad Out-of-the-Box eXPerience

The ThinkPad finally arrived in my hands this past weekend in a cardboard box.

Never mind the shitty packaging; I didn’t get the TP for that.

I opened the notebook to find a stunning, marvelous engineering feat reeking of quality. The way things should have been all along. Everything is just right. You can tell that IBM continues to rub off.

Not bad for a little more than $750.

Unfortunately, if there is one thing to single-handedly ruin the experience, it is the foul odor emanating from Redmond and is stenching up my hard drive.

Yes, I’m in Windoze land right now, and it fvcking sucks. (Temporarily)

I knew I was in for several long nights, but I didn’t realize how painful the out-of-the-box experience is until I kept a log of everything I did to the machine.

~ Endless hours of Windows updates.

~ The obligatory firewall suite.

~ Removing the crapware.

Let me stop for a minute here and let this be said: Norton is a fvcking virus itself. Even when you use their official uninstaller to rid yourself of their shit, unbeknownst to you they still leave their services behind. You have to use msconfig to hunt them down.

And let this also be said: Anti-virus is a waste of time and CPU cycles. It’s a reactive solution, not a proactive one. They are useless against 0-days. All you’re doing is allowing these window lickers to laugh all the way to the bank. Proactively protect yourself from (a) being stupid and (b) inadvertently exposing yourself to security exploits and you should be fine…until you can get the hell off of Windows. Besides, the jig for XP is up in June and with Windows Se7en around the corner for your rental, you’ll be seeking a Brave GNU World anyway. (Huh, Vista? Oh yeah. That.)

Let’s see, where was I…oh yes:

~ Cleaning out the system tray of shit that wants to keep coming back.

~ Rebooting to safe mode and running cleanmgr /sageset:50, cleanmgr /sagerun:50, and defragging the volume.

~ Rebooting back to install IE7Pro (to sanitize IE Se7en) and all of my favorite apps.

~ Rearranging the Start Menu (I use the GNOME-style categories).

~ Getting rid of the useless eye candy (as per Tweakhound’s recommendations).

~ Disabling potentially troublesome and insecure services.

~ The obligatory disk cleaning and defragging again.

~ Booting to GNOME partition editor and shrinking XP.

~ Booting back to Windows because it’ll panic and run chkdisk.

~ Booting back to gparted and reclaiming most of the freed space as a shared FAT32 partition, leaving the remainder for a future Linux install.

~ Booting back to Windows to get settled in and to bring my personal files over.

And that’s where I am right now. I haven’t even given thought to creating a second admin account and downgrading myself to a LUAser yet. And this is where my troubles are beginning.

It’s amazing that:

~ The recovery CD creation process is absolutely dreadful. I wasted a large amount of coasters in burning 9 CDs that MIGHT work should I ever hose XP. And thanks to licensing issues, once you successfully burn a set, you’re locked out from doing it again. EVER.  Oh, and Lenovo sells the official set for $45, provided that you’re still in warranty and that your shipping address is on file with the bank as usual.  Oh, and those CDs MIGHT work as well…

~ I can read FAT32 on Mac OS X and Linux and even read HFS+ on Linux, but can’t read HFS+ in Windows without coughing up $$$ for a solution in typical Maccie fashion.

~ My LaCie DVD burner won’t work in Windows because it was the Apple Store special that came with Toast 7 and OS X drivers, yet works without a hitch in Linux. Dammit I wish I spent the extra $$$ for the ’super’ drive.

~ It took less than 24 hours for Windows to cease from being a lean, mean OS and turn into a decrepit pile of shit. (Going from a 142 GB to a 31 GB partition wasn’t exactly the reason, especially since after installing everything I still have 37% free space and I have 2 GB of RAM anyway. And yes, I did defrag again.) I have a feeling that I had a bad installation or a rogue service installed somewhere.

~ I have 3 different media player programs competing to be my default player for particular files.

~ Apple isn’t exactly the beacon of computing bliss on Windows. iTunes blows chunks compared to the native OS X version and QuickTime still thinks that I should cough up another $30 for ‘pro’ functionality, especially when enough FOSS solutions exist elsewhere. VLC rocks my socks off.

For kicks, I already tried running the Ubuntu Feisty Live CD. Save for a restricted driver, everything just works…even my wireless. And hey, I don’t even need to use a hex password for my WPA, either. I’m looking forward to the Hardy LTS final so that I can get that running and thus complete my switch. (I don’t feel like fscking with betas in the meantime.)

Yes, I know that I should try another distro - especially a RPM-based one - but I’m at the point of my life where I don’t have extra time on my hands to go around trashing installs in the name of learning and 1337 h4X0ring.

I can’t believe that I’m still trying to set this notebook up over 4 days later…just to get it to work where I almost want it to work. Once I’m done, XP will be relegated to secondary status for whatever doesn’t work in Linux. And judging from my past experience, the initial Linux install will only eat up only half of the time at the most, with (almost) everything in place.

Comcast: A Perfect Example of Why We Need Net Neutrality

Comcast: FCC lacks any authority to act on P2P blocking

This is an excellent Op-Ed piece by Ars that is well worth the read. I won’t cover excerpts of it, but I’ll just get straight to the point.

This is not about P2P or pirating or whatever the powers that be want to make excuses for. P2P does have its legit uses (e.g. distributing FOSS), but it’s a distraction designed to hide the real issue. If Comcast can get away with regulating P2P, what’s to stop them from regulating other forms of content? How would you feel if you no longer had access to some of your favorite sites or if, say, the iTunes Music Store was throttled down in favor of their own service?

Yes, it’s net neutrality once again. You know, those two evil words repeated ad nauseam on cable ads?

Now think about this: For a good number of individuals, households, and even entire communities, Comcast is the only game in town. How the fvck, then, can Comcast repeat the ‘marketplace’ mantra when they full well know that they hold entire local monopolies? This inquiring mind wants to know.

I really do hope that the FCC gets involved and the rest of our government to an extent (whatever faith I have left in it). I don’t want to imagine the precedent set by Comcast and other cable corporations once they’re off the hook.

I’ll be damned if I let these greedy, evil, monopolistic sons-of-a-&^!##(*!& NO CARRIER

Good Riddance, Finder

Nice to see the beige shirts take up arms at my little corner of the web. Yes, how dare I post an Apple-bashing piece framed as a ‘Dear Steve’ letter. Never mind that these one-time visitors haven’t bothered to look at the culmination of events that led me to escape out of the Bloopertino Circus tent in the first place.

No really, please, give me some pats on the back for deciding to go with a Thinkpad instead. I’m desperate. Anyone?

Didn’t think so. In the meantime, please continue to enjoy your overheating, underpowered, and overpriced Ford-grade hardware with your ‘business OS’ that no one takes seriously after 10 years. I know I won’t miss this POS PowerBook.

There. I said it. Not that the fanboys will be back to this backwater blog anytime soon unless it gets picked up at another site…

To even think that I was considering a MacBook after my fiancee got one? After enough time spent fiddling with my account on hers? I’m glad I didn’t waste my time.

But enough talking about those L. Ron Steve luddites…I’m here to rant about something else.

You would think that after 11 ’service packs,’ Apple would get things right in Tiger. Unfortunately, I won’t hold my breath now that the abomination called Leopard is out. Case in point, the Finder. Can anyone explain how this is excusable?

Oh, I know. Works as designed.™

Note that this only happens with the stupid Finder upon logging into your account, especially if you’re trying to empty the trash full of leftover droppings by naughty fanboy apps. Other apps - especially if you have them start up immediately - have a fully intact Apple menu as intended.

But that’s okay. Your bug fix will cost you $129, perhaps with some new hardware, and upgrade specials of your favorite wizards of OS X.

I’ll pass.

$ killall Finder