Consolidation

I'm sitting here this evening with a MacBook that has slowed to a crawl. It further delays my inevitable completion of a school project (fine with me), but I really just want to finish what I'm doing (not the school project) and go to bed.

It's not the MacBook. It's the parasite I installed on it.

For the past month, I've been juggling the Vista desktop I use at home for development, the Vista notebook I use for school, the Windows XP tablet that I have for my day job, and this wonderful MacBook that doesn't have many applications I actually use to produce things. It's cool to blog with it, chat, and play with the camera, but it's really just eye-candy. I can't do schoolwork with it (they require Office 2K7 documents), I can't find an FTP program for it, and I really can't figure out how to edit raw text - a very important feature I need to edit HTML and do programming.

To combat my two-computer dining room table, I installed Windows (the aforementioned parasite) on the MacBook using VMWare's VMFusion. It's a wonderful piece of software and it is very similar to Parallels, only cheaper ($40 vs. $80). I installed the trial of VMFusion, and an old copy of Windows XP. It has effectively slowed my MacBook to where it takes a full eight seconds to open a new tab in Firefox. It's working really hard right now on installing SP3, and I'm sure a slew of updates are in store after that is finished. It has Office 2007 and I shouldn't need much more to do everything that I need to do on this beautiful 13-inch MacBook.

The cool thing is that if I ever get really sick of the reduced speed, I can close the Virtual Machine and Windows goes away like a little troll in the closet. I feel powerful.

Okay, I know it's slow because I am only running 1GB RAM on this computer with two operating systems running. A fix (4GB) is on the way. After the updates and the memory upgrade I should have no problem. I might even install Ubuntu on another VM.

Must go now; I have to write a post to tell everyone that the Web Spider project is not dead - I'm just busy.

As a Student of Software Engineering,

from the stories I hear about glitches and compatibility and poor project management, this is friggin' scary.

Friends with Vista

After nearly a year, I finally decided to figure out what I could do to make my Vista laptop a bit faster. The memory is maxed out at 2 Gigabytes and it has a dual-core AMD CPU. It had always been very very slow in completing trivial tasks, like opening a browser or the control panel. Copying and moving files took way too long, and I just never approached my problem with logic.

A few weeks ago I was talking with a friend about my experience with Vista so far, and mentioned to him that I didn't think it was a problem with Vista, but a hardware issue with my Gateway laptop. "It runs very hot," I told him. "The hard drive activity never stops. I just don't think the machine was designed well enough to support such a heavy OS." I'd never seen Vista so slow on any other computer, so why the hell is it pokey on mine? And what in the dickens is going on with my hard drive?

Then it hit me. Constant hard drive activity is an indicator of (1) a virus or crapware, or (2) an indexing service. Google Desktop search was deployed with the computer when I bought it; part of Gateway's image, along with all the other garbage like BigFix, AOL , and the Office 2007 90-day trial.

Having been a student of Vista before and during its release, I remembered something about Google and Microsoft having fits about desktop search. It seems that Vista includes its own indexing service to speed up searching, and Google was having a hissy over users not being able to choose a desktop search engine. The Windows Indexing Service is on by default, and I don't think any manufacturers have changed that in their production images. And it just so happens that Gateway included Google Desktop in every computer they released with Vista, and therein lies my problem: two indexing services, constantly running on my poor little 5400 RPM notebook hard drive.

After some thought, I decided I'm a fairly organized fellow and don't have the need very often to search for a document. Most of what I access anyway is on the network, and those locations aren't indexed by default anyway. So away went Google Desktop. Though I love Google, I have no need for that program on my mobile station.

And for that matter, I canceled the Windows Indexing service. No need to pick sides, you know?

Then for a final pick-me-up, I had Vista optimize the graphics for performance, which took away all the eye-candy and effectively made my desktop look like Windows 2000. I'm fine with that.

Oh, and one more thing: I shut off the UAC. Those pain-in-the-ass messages one gets when he tries to install a program, "Windows needs your permission to continue," are gone. I can now run a command window without specifying to run it as Administrator. I can change IP settings with fewer mouse clicks. A little bubble message when I log on warning me that User Account Control is turned off is the only annoyance I have now, and I'm sure that with a simple registry edit I can get rid of that too. Maybe I'll post it later.

I must say this little bottom-end laptop is pretty damn speedy these days. NetBeans opens in under 60 seconds. Outlook opens in under 5, and boot times are at their lowest since I got it. This doesn't change anything about the inevitable change to a Mac when I can afford one, but it certainly makes me more comfortable in delaying it.

Microsoft Takes a Swing

Microsoft Bids $44.6 Billion for Yahoo - Washington Post

This actually came as a surprise today. Microsoft buying Yahoo!? Preposterous!

That could change a lot about the web, but something smells. Microsoft is a huge company, and little-old Google seems to have them grabbing at straws to figure out how to catch up. I can look at any place on the web that Google produced and tell you exactly why their advertising makes so much sense. Why their e-mail works so well, and no user has to pay for it. Why they have so much available for free.

It's simply because they have but one reason: "Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." That's it. There are no software revenue projections, nothing to give the shareholders a hard-on, nothing about providing a service at a premium. Just to organize the world's information. This has been their goal since Sergey tried to download the Internet (or was it Larry? ...not important). Sure, they sell stuff. Useful stuff (except the lava lamp) even, like the Google search appliance and SketchUp Pro. But that is not their main business driver by any means. They're spending millions every year to scan books from libraries and make them searchable. They have a vast collection of scholarly journals and papers from around the world, and one may also search inside any of these.

This is just a taste of what Google is doing. They are successful because of something I don't have a name for, but it is something along the lines of know what you're doing and do no evil.

Most of you know that this blog is driven by the Blogger engine. I pay nothing for it, and it works much better than some of the other tools I've tried. Google probably bought it, but it has improved much over the years and it has never cost me anything. The funny thing is that there aren't ads all over it. Sure, there are ads on this site, but I put them there; they aren't some mandated advertisement justified for making my blogging free, it's just free.

No one has mentioned so far that Gmail doesn't inject ads into every message sent. It's just regular e-mail. The advertisements shown on the side of the Gmail window are only text-based, and they're usually relevant to what my e-mail is about. That way the advertising works. And if it works, people pay for it. So Google is king.

Microsoft and Yahoo! (and AOL, for that matter) are not because their interfaces are so heavy and the ads are very annoying. Their infrastructures are likely not as efficient as Google's (who else uses a hundred thousand servers?) and their business models are not in tune with what people want.

Okay, I changed my mind. Yahoo! and AOL are in the entertainment business. Microsoft is in the software business (I put that together all by myself!). Google, however, is in the search business. Does anyone remember when a Yahoo! search looked eerily familiar, as if the results of that search were the same as a Google search for the same string? It's because they were. Yahoo! used to use the Google engine for its search until just a few years ago.

The business of the web is changing, but there's no way I can predict anything. I only get feelings, and I'm usually wrong because business is definitely not one of my strong interests. If the major search engines are reduced to two, though, it could get pretty damn nasty by 2010. I'll likely not keep up with this subject, but it may be interesting nonetheless.

Horizontal Thoughts

I'm writing tonight to see how much I can think to tell my audience as I lay in bed with a wireless keyboard and gyroscopic mouse, staring at my beautiful TV/monitor. Looks like I got it all worked out, but I can barely read the screen from across the room and there's a significant delay between the keystroke and the appearance of the letter on-screen.
I'm really just up late because I can't figure out Java multithreading (or multithreading in general) enough to complete a project for school due Monday at midnight CST. So if anyone knows how to write a multithreaded chat server in Java, please contact me soon. I have several questions for you, including these:

1. How can more than one client connect on the same port number?
Never mind. I just figured that one out. The server can listen on a port and has exclusive rights to that port. The number of connections on that port matters only to the program listening.

2. How do I create a thread pool with an ArrayList and then pass a Runnable object to it? I don't see a method to pass the object after instantiation.
Update: I got that one figured out, too. You don't pass a Runnable object - just extend the Thread class and fill your ArrayList with those. Worked for me. To stop the thread, set it to null. To start it again, pass it what it needs and then call .start().

If you want to see that code, here is the Client, the Server, and the ServerThread. It's not pretty and there are some errors when you close a Client, but the multithreading works.

I realize these are not questions for my typical audience, but hey - what else should I do in bed at this hour?

Insert Title Here

These new LCD televisions are pretty neat. I finally broke down and bought one a couple of months ago and the idea just hit me this weekend to put a computer behind it. I have just the machine.
I've had a Dell PowerEdge SC440 on my desk with no monitor for several months. It's an overpowered, underused machine, so I gave it a DVD+R drive and set it behind the new television in the bedroom. The audio already goes out through a PC speaker set, so why shouldn't I complete the package?
So now I have a blazing-fast Fedora Core 7 box with a 32" widescreen monitor, right in my bedroom. I'm still working on the wireless keyboard and mouse part, but so far it's fun. I've been ripping DVDs with HandBrake and looking for ways to have this machine become a media center of sorts.
The one thing I enjoyed about this project was the wireless Ethernet bridge I installed in under 10 minutes. I used the Linksys WRT54GL employing dd-wrt to create a network link without running a single wire. As a bonus, I can now connect the Xbox to the Internet (but I still have no need to).
In the near future, we'll upgrade to Fedora Core 8 (released last month) and see what there is to see. Until then, try to find something you like to do in your own bedroom.

This is the Coolest Thing About the Internet

It's not that the latest technology can bring us all together, communicate with each other instantly around the world, or provide opportunity where there was once none. It's that in 2007 I can let my daughter learn a little bit in the same method I did.

It's like a friggin' time capsule.

The Time is Now...

Studying for an IT industry certification is not as fun as it may seem.  Many of my friends have certifications (and some don't but should) and they always talk about it like it was cake.

I picked up my first certification manual for CompTIA A+ in 2000.  I will take the tests for this certification next Monday, about 7 years after I began studying.  Since the beginning of this journey, CompTIA has changed the objectives twice.  Once in 2003, and last year.  It's time I bit the bullet and got certified, don't you think?

That's the reason I haven't been blogging lately.  I scheduled these exams last Friday and put my brain to work in a 600-page book that covers the following exam objectives:

A+ Essentials (Exam 640-201):

1. Personal Computer Components
   
2. Laptops and Portable Devices
3. Operating Systems
4. Printers and Scanners
5. Networks
6. Security
7. Safety and Environmental Issues
8. Professionalism and Communication

A+ IT Technician (Exam 640-202):

1. Personal Computer Components
   
2. Laptops and Portable Devices
3. Operating Systems
4. Printers and Scanners
5. Networks
6. Security
7. Safety and Environmental Issues
8. Professionalism and Communication

The overall objectives of both exams are the same, but I'm sure the IT Technician exam is a bit more technically in-depth and focused on actual field support than the Essentials exam.  For instance, the IT Technician exam objectives include performing preventive maintenance on printers and scanners while the Essentials exam stops short of that.

After one certification with CompTIA (they have many, including Network+, Security+, Linux+ and more) I can use the CompTIA logo on my business card and resume.  In college I learned that it sometimes helps to just put a logo on there.  Same for Microsoft, Cisco, and Novell certifications.  Catches their eye.  Although now most large corporations run your resume through a computer to find matches.  Logos don't help when you're being selected by an Intel Processor and a Perl script.

I'll be busy until Monday afternoon.


                

Nobody Cares, That's Why.

I've read Dvorak on and off for years now. I'm still not sure if I like him, but I read an article today about the media dumbing stuff down for its readers. I get his point, and I readily agree, but there is something missing: reader interest.

John fusses about a New York Times article dumbing down the term "hexadecimal" and continues to talk about how people might should be bombarded with computer related terms and acronyms. He says that if they want to know, they'll summon a dictionary or Google for a bit of learning. He asks

I just wonder when exactly The Times stopped calling automobiles horseless carriages. And when did it stop using velocipede for bicycle? The Times story reflects a much larger issue: Exactly how much jargon should be incorporated into the general lexicon? We're not in 1850 anymore.

I must submit my own two cents: Sure, we now call the horseless carriage an automobile, but the average driver does not know what the EGR valve is or does. I doubt they care. My father just had his EGR valve replaced for around $400, and still has no idea what it is. All he knows is that his truck runs smoother now. Stay with me - there is a point.

In the same light, everybody knows, generally, what a computer is. They just don't know everything about it. Or how it works. Nor do they care, just as long as it keeps working. My mother doesn't care one bit about the fact that I run Fedora Core 5 in runlevel 3 and with that machine I am able to keep up with my home IP address via a Google Gadget. It also runs home automation tasks with some open soure software called Heyu. As long as my mother can play solitare just as she has for the past ten years, she can't give a hoot about how much RAM she has, or that it's DDR. I might note that she is not mechanically enclined, either.

There is nothing wrong with that. I can understand operating systems and set up networks, but I can't read music or sell insurance. I don't know what an F-stop is or how to use it (adjust it?). I can change my own oil and manage my finances, but I don't know that I could provide in-home care for the elderly or disabled. We all have our specialties and don't have the time or interest to learn others, John C. Dvorak included.

Um, You Forgot Something

I am just about this (||) close to trashing Vista now. One more feature I need tonight was standard in XP but is now only included in Vista Business and Ultimate. I need to talk to the government, and damn me if I don't have to fax something. I don't (like many others) have a facsimile at home. Why would I ever need one if I have a computer, right? Ha! If I had one it would be out in the shed, and I'd have to go dig it out about once every two years. I found my workaround in XP when I started using the Windows Fax Wizard. Why wouldn't it be in Vista?

I guess it's in the Business and Ultimate editions because those folks, after buying their new software licenses, can't afford a damn fax machine anymore. The fortunate kids who saved a couple of hundred on a good cheap laptop with Home Premium will have to forgo the fax and buy another clunky piece of junk to use once per American marriage.

I'm now going to use CutePDF to get a portable document and e-mail those deprecated people at the State Department of Revenue.

Surface Computing

I'd heard of Microsoft Surface computing just a few weeks ago, but thought it was in more of a development phase. Turns out it's not. Watch this video and see if you can find some uses for this platform. Kinda reminds one of Minority Report, doesn't it?