OK. I'm on my fourth round of updates at windowsupdate.microsoft.com. I know that I need Service Pack 2. It's the first thing I tried to download. There are 50 reminders of it on their site, but do you think I can get it? No. At least not yet. I've probably loaded 100 or so updates, and I've clicked every "Get Service Pack 2" link under the sun, but they all send me back to the 'automatic' update page for another round of Service Pack 1 updates. Right. We've de-supported your release, and you really need to upgrade to the current release, but we won't let you.
These are some of my biggest pet peeves about Microsoft--1) They insist on doing all of your thinking for you, and 2) They won't just give you a full setup--you can't just go get the "latest build" and download everything you need in one shot. And why does it take so long to download these updates? Is it the mass of data that I'm uploading as well? I'm monitoring my upload/download stats. I'm uploading about 60% as much data as I'm downloading. Now that's spyware.
--Og
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
whew
We're on the road to recovery with the XP box. After much Googling, I concluded that there was really no way around running the Windows repair utility.
Not wanting to risk my data, I decided to back up the hard drive first. I've had this nagging feeling for over a year that I needed to start backing up my files to an external hard drive. Too late. I needed a drive and I needed it now. So, I grabbed a 250G My Book from Office Depot. With their $50 rebate, not a bad buy. I hate mail-in rebates, but $50 is enough motivation to get me off my can and get it sent in.
ok, so I had the drive now and needed to copy to it. I decided that I was going to boot in Linux and copy the hard drive to the new USB drive. I had read some articles on Lifehacker about this, and a quick search turned up an article on booting Knoppix from a flash drive. The geek factor was irresistible and I had to try it. I went through the tutorial and failed when I got to the Makeboot step. Crap. I downloaded .NET as instructed--no luck. I really wanted to make this one work, especially since the other versions of running from a flash drive basically involved having a linux installation running when you build your flash drive installation. Since the USB port on my linux box is trashed, I really wanted to load this thing from Windows.
I wandered around the pendrivelinux site some more and turned up their old instructions. Based on the old instructions, instead of running "makedrive.exe," I ran "syslinux.exe -f e:" I don't know what the -f option does, but I tried it without a switch, something went wrong, and then I tried it with -f and it worked. Accidental voodoo. Anyways, I now had a bootable USB drive.
So, I booted up in knoppix. In all honesty, since I knew that I was booting an OS designed to boot from CD, I was expecting something pretty small and unremarkable. I was BLOWN AWAY at how much stuff was on this thing!!! It is quite impressive. I guess, when I think about it, my first Linux install was done with a pile of 40 1.44MB floppies, so I really shouldn't be so amazed at how much stuff is on this 700MB build, and yet, I am. VERY IMPRESSIVE.
I think I'm going to leave it loaded on my flash drive. It's just too dang cool.
But I digress. In fact, when I booted up on the machine I was trying to recover, that's what I did--digressed. I was so impressed with Knoppix and how many features had booted up from my USB drive that I spent at least 30 minutes just wandering around and saying "cool, wow," etc. and playing around.
When I finally remembered that I was supposed to be about the serious business of recovering my XP installation, I plugged in the My Book and voila! Knoppix auto-detected the drive and mounted it. I created a folder for my backup. Then, I dragged the old hard drive to the new USB drive, and it started grinding away. Beautiful. There was absolutely no setup involved.
Of course, over the USB connection, it wasn't exactly instantaneous, but not too bad.
Once I had the data copied, I rebooted to the windows boot disk and began the arduous process of fixing the install. It took quite a while, but now we are back up and running XP again.
Now, I just have to wade through the Service Pack 2 install and all of the other patches to XP.
Although there is a serious temptation to just blow away the OS and install Linux permanently.....must resist. It is a relief to know that I can just throw in my USB drive and boot to Linux any time I want. :)
--Og
Not wanting to risk my data, I decided to back up the hard drive first. I've had this nagging feeling for over a year that I needed to start backing up my files to an external hard drive. Too late. I needed a drive and I needed it now. So, I grabbed a 250G My Book from Office Depot. With their $50 rebate, not a bad buy. I hate mail-in rebates, but $50 is enough motivation to get me off my can and get it sent in.
ok, so I had the drive now and needed to copy to it. I decided that I was going to boot in Linux and copy the hard drive to the new USB drive. I had read some articles on Lifehacker about this, and a quick search turned up an article on booting Knoppix from a flash drive. The geek factor was irresistible and I had to try it. I went through the tutorial and failed when I got to the Makeboot step. Crap. I downloaded .NET as instructed--no luck. I really wanted to make this one work, especially since the other versions of running from a flash drive basically involved having a linux installation running when you build your flash drive installation. Since the USB port on my linux box is trashed, I really wanted to load this thing from Windows.
I wandered around the pendrivelinux site some more and turned up their old instructions. Based on the old instructions, instead of running "makedrive.exe," I ran "syslinux.exe -f e:" I don't know what the -f option does, but I tried it without a switch, something went wrong, and then I tried it with -f and it worked. Accidental voodoo. Anyways, I now had a bootable USB drive.
So, I booted up in knoppix. In all honesty, since I knew that I was booting an OS designed to boot from CD, I was expecting something pretty small and unremarkable. I was BLOWN AWAY at how much stuff was on this thing!!! It is quite impressive. I guess, when I think about it, my first Linux install was done with a pile of 40 1.44MB floppies, so I really shouldn't be so amazed at how much stuff is on this 700MB build, and yet, I am. VERY IMPRESSIVE.
I think I'm going to leave it loaded on my flash drive. It's just too dang cool.
But I digress. In fact, when I booted up on the machine I was trying to recover, that's what I did--digressed. I was so impressed with Knoppix and how many features had booted up from my USB drive that I spent at least 30 minutes just wandering around and saying "cool, wow," etc. and playing around.
When I finally remembered that I was supposed to be about the serious business of recovering my XP installation, I plugged in the My Book and voila! Knoppix auto-detected the drive and mounted it. I created a folder for my backup. Then, I dragged the old hard drive to the new USB drive, and it started grinding away. Beautiful. There was absolutely no setup involved.
Of course, over the USB connection, it wasn't exactly instantaneous, but not too bad.
Once I had the data copied, I rebooted to the windows boot disk and began the arduous process of fixing the install. It took quite a while, but now we are back up and running XP again.
Now, I just have to wade through the Service Pack 2 install and all of the other patches to XP.
Although there is a serious temptation to just blow away the OS and install Linux permanently.....must resist. It is a relief to know that I can just throw in my USB drive and boot to Linux any time I want. :)
--Og
Monday, March 26, 2007
uh oh
Hmmmm.....my XP box won't boot anymore. No safe mode. Nothing. Just a blue screen with a fatal error. The first code is c000021a and the status code is c0000034.
I ran a bunch of diagnostics junk. Some of the tests so far have indicated some hard-drive problems. Some have indicated no such thing.
Of course, I initially assumed that my hard drive had a problem, mostly because I've been feeling guilty about not having a removable backup drive. Of course, now I'm feeling REALLY guilty about it.
Anyways, some of the digging I've done on this indicates a possibility of a problem with a Domain. Of course, I thought "I'm not on a domain. Except for the new domain for my Jukebox machine......hmmm...."
Guess I have to check that out tonight. Update tomorrow. Shall we start a pool on whether it's the domain settings or the hard drive? NOTE: Since I'm the only one reading my blog, I'm not only guaranteed to win the pool, but to lose it as well. Sweet.
On its own, the linux jukebox is working great. It was great to be able to crank up my "XP just took a dump" playlist and be soothed as I pulled my hair out. And, it was nice to have another machine running to search for info on the dead XP box. Hoping to recover that bad boy, since it really is my workhorse.
--Og
I ran a bunch of diagnostics junk. Some of the tests so far have indicated some hard-drive problems. Some have indicated no such thing.
Of course, I initially assumed that my hard drive had a problem, mostly because I've been feeling guilty about not having a removable backup drive. Of course, now I'm feeling REALLY guilty about it.
Anyways, some of the digging I've done on this indicates a possibility of a problem with a Domain. Of course, I thought "I'm not on a domain. Except for the new domain for my Jukebox machine......hmmm...."
Guess I have to check that out tonight. Update tomorrow. Shall we start a pool on whether it's the domain settings or the hard drive? NOTE: Since I'm the only one reading my blog, I'm not only guaranteed to win the pool, but to lose it as well. Sweet.
On its own, the linux jukebox is working great. It was great to be able to crank up my "XP just took a dump" playlist and be soothed as I pulled my hair out. And, it was nice to have another machine running to search for info on the dead XP box. Hoping to recover that bad boy, since it really is my workhorse.
--Og
Friday, March 23, 2007
linux audio jukebox
I've recently started a linux audio jukebox project. Here's the story....
It all started when someone I know and love handed me one of their old laptops and said "Will you destroy the data on this hard drive for me? You can use it if you want, or donate it to a thrift store, whatever." of course, I said "Yes!!" I added it to my pile of electronics and put in an action item to wipe the hard drive.
Then...the gears started turning. As long as I'm wiping the hard drive, why not install another OS? As I was wondering what to do with this machine, my wife mentioned that she might like a docking station for her mp3 player.....and the idea hatched.
The plan:
Ok. First, I have to see if this is even something that's worth doing. So, in the first phase, the goal is to spend as little money as possible--holding off on upgrades as long as possible until I know what will be the most beneficial upgrades, and really whether or not we will even use this thing. So, the plan is something like this:
Proof of Concept: Figure out how to get it running.
Small implementation: Throw it in the bedroom and see if we use it.
Medium implementation: Upgrade speakers. Add some sort of 'remote control' interface. Improve video interface. Probably will need to add another, larger hard drive (external?).
Large implementation (the dream phase): In-wall speakers in every room (because of interference in my area, wireless is NOT AN OPTION). Massive streaming audio server and several 'client' modules of some form. Integrated with a similarly massive video streaming service. Support for recording audio....oooooohhhhh, that opens a whole new can of worms. Hey, we can all dream, right?
The machine:
This is an HP laptop with a PIII and 128 MB of RAM :(. There is a 20GB (19) hard drive on it. Not exactly a monster. I have another HP configured similarly, but with a bad monitor. So, the first thing that happened (before idea hatching phase) was that this machine went under the knife and donated its monitor to the other box. Now I had a spare web-surfin' Win2000 box. So, this box is under-gunned and with a bad monitor. The USB port got destroyed at some point, so that's going to be an issue...
Wiping the hard drive:
I didn't want to just install Linux on top of the old messed up Win2000 install (the passwords had long since been forgotten, etc.). So, I had to wipe it. I remembered reading an article on lifehacker about just this sort of thing, so a quick search turned up DBAN and I was ready to kill some disk. DBAN did its thing with no trouble and soon (ok, it wasn't soon, it took quite a while, but I was doing something else, so who cares) I had a clean drive.
New OS:
My brother works at Novell and mentioned that they had just released a new version of SuSE. So, it got installed. On some sites, they'd give instructions on how to do this, but the install was entirely uneventful, other than assigning a password for root. So, I'd say skip the instructions and just install it. I chose Gnome as my desktop. I might have been better off choosing KDE....not really sure.
Monitor:
I mentioned that the old monitor was bad. You would boot up, start running, and the monitor would blank out and it would look like the computer was sleeping. You'd try to 'unsleep' the computer and end up in a real mess. Eventually, I figured out that the computer itself wasn't sleeping--just that the monitor was a bit narcoleptic. So, for now, I've hauled up an ancient 21" monitor from the basement. It weighs 3 tons and I had to have a crane move it for me (ha ha). It absolutely dwarfs the rest of the room, and will clearly NOT be a permanent solution, but that's what we have, and now I can see what's going on. For the next phase, I'm hoping to score a cheap cable or something to send the output to a TV (my laptop doesn't currently have s-video). I haven't really looked into this much yet. I'm sure there are some issues I haven't foreseen.
RAM:
This was the one event during the SuSE install. I know, I said it was uneventful, but I lied. The install CD told me that 128MB wasn't enough. So....remember how I mentioned that this machine has a Win2000 twin? Well, the twin donated a kidney (another 128MB of RAM). So, we are up to 256 for now (but the twin is hurting with only 128MB for itself). If we get past the Proof of Concept phase, this has to be one of the first upgrades.
Audio player:
Ok, so now that we are running an OS and have a monstrous 20 GB hard drive freed up, it's time to start ripping CD's and listening to the library. Initially, I was going to use JaJuk as my player/jukebox software, but it needs to allocate 64MB of RAM up front, and my system doesn't have it to spare. If we go to 512, I will take another look at Jajuk.
So, I fire up the audio player that came with SuSE/GNOME (I think it's called Helix Banshee or something like that), throw in a CD to rip and wait...............a really long time. Checking the system stats, the CPU and RAM were doing fine, so I concluded that it was just the ancient CD drive lagging. Hmmmm.....my main XP box is a lot faster at ripping.....
Samba Server:
The SuSE/GNOME install had a slick interface for configuring a Samba Server. A few clicks (I haven't configured one before) and I was pushing all of my audio files from my XP box down to the new SuSE box. It still takes longer to rip than I'd like, but since the XP box rips in half the time, now I can rip 3 discs in the time it took to rip one (2 on the XP box and 1 on the Linux box). If I ever buy more RAM, I can get the win2000 twin up on the Samba server connection and hopefully have three machines ripping at once--all storing their data on the Linux Jukebox machine. I'll probably have some I/O problems about then....
Speakers:
For now, just using some crappy PC speakers. Scouring thrift stores and pawn shops for the next upgrade....This upgrade may actually come as part of the Proof of Concept phase.
Amplifier:
I have an older donated (people with cool electronics give me their old stuff when they are de-cluttering) Kenwood 100W amp. My first monetary investment in this system was a $7 patch cord to go from the headphone jack on the laptop to RCA audio jacks.
USB:
Eventually, I have to replace the USB port or find a card with one or something. It would be a tragedy to have this great jukebox and not be able to update the mp3 player from it (especially since the mp3 player was part of the initial inspiration).
Summary:
So far, I've got about 700 tracks loaded, consuming about 30% of my hard drive. I'd like to keep the consumption under 85% to allow for some wiggle-room, so I think I can get up to around 1500 tracks. I've had a blast listening to music that I haven't pulled out in a long time, and I'm quite happy with the 'system' -- even with its puny speakers, etc. I've shown my wife what I've been wasting my time on, and she is somewhat impressed. Once I have speakers and am running through the Kenwood amp, I'm going to call the proof of concept phase complete. Then, we'll look at investing more $$ to get the other upgrades.
--Og
It all started when someone I know and love handed me one of their old laptops and said "Will you destroy the data on this hard drive for me? You can use it if you want, or donate it to a thrift store, whatever." of course, I said "Yes!!" I added it to my pile of electronics and put in an action item to wipe the hard drive.
Then...the gears started turning. As long as I'm wiping the hard drive, why not install another OS? As I was wondering what to do with this machine, my wife mentioned that she might like a docking station for her mp3 player.....and the idea hatched.
The plan:
Ok. First, I have to see if this is even something that's worth doing. So, in the first phase, the goal is to spend as little money as possible--holding off on upgrades as long as possible until I know what will be the most beneficial upgrades, and really whether or not we will even use this thing. So, the plan is something like this:
Proof of Concept: Figure out how to get it running.
Small implementation: Throw it in the bedroom and see if we use it.
Medium implementation: Upgrade speakers. Add some sort of 'remote control' interface. Improve video interface. Probably will need to add another, larger hard drive (external?).
Large implementation (the dream phase): In-wall speakers in every room (because of interference in my area, wireless is NOT AN OPTION). Massive streaming audio server and several 'client' modules of some form. Integrated with a similarly massive video streaming service. Support for recording audio....oooooohhhhh, that opens a whole new can of worms. Hey, we can all dream, right?
The machine:
This is an HP laptop with a PIII and 128 MB of RAM :(. There is a 20GB (19) hard drive on it. Not exactly a monster. I have another HP configured similarly, but with a bad monitor. So, the first thing that happened (before idea hatching phase) was that this machine went under the knife and donated its monitor to the other box. Now I had a spare web-surfin' Win2000 box. So, this box is under-gunned and with a bad monitor. The USB port got destroyed at some point, so that's going to be an issue...
Wiping the hard drive:
I didn't want to just install Linux on top of the old messed up Win2000 install (the passwords had long since been forgotten, etc.). So, I had to wipe it. I remembered reading an article on lifehacker about just this sort of thing, so a quick search turned up DBAN and I was ready to kill some disk. DBAN did its thing with no trouble and soon (ok, it wasn't soon, it took quite a while, but I was doing something else, so who cares) I had a clean drive.
New OS:
My brother works at Novell and mentioned that they had just released a new version of SuSE. So, it got installed. On some sites, they'd give instructions on how to do this, but the install was entirely uneventful, other than assigning a password for root. So, I'd say skip the instructions and just install it. I chose Gnome as my desktop. I might have been better off choosing KDE....not really sure.
Monitor:
I mentioned that the old monitor was bad. You would boot up, start running, and the monitor would blank out and it would look like the computer was sleeping. You'd try to 'unsleep' the computer and end up in a real mess. Eventually, I figured out that the computer itself wasn't sleeping--just that the monitor was a bit narcoleptic. So, for now, I've hauled up an ancient 21" monitor from the basement. It weighs 3 tons and I had to have a crane move it for me (ha ha). It absolutely dwarfs the rest of the room, and will clearly NOT be a permanent solution, but that's what we have, and now I can see what's going on. For the next phase, I'm hoping to score a cheap cable or something to send the output to a TV (my laptop doesn't currently have s-video). I haven't really looked into this much yet. I'm sure there are some issues I haven't foreseen.
RAM:
This was the one event during the SuSE install. I know, I said it was uneventful, but I lied. The install CD told me that 128MB wasn't enough. So....remember how I mentioned that this machine has a Win2000 twin? Well, the twin donated a kidney (another 128MB of RAM). So, we are up to 256 for now (but the twin is hurting with only 128MB for itself). If we get past the Proof of Concept phase, this has to be one of the first upgrades.
Audio player:
Ok, so now that we are running an OS and have a monstrous 20 GB hard drive freed up, it's time to start ripping CD's and listening to the library. Initially, I was going to use JaJuk as my player/jukebox software, but it needs to allocate 64MB of RAM up front, and my system doesn't have it to spare. If we go to 512, I will take another look at Jajuk.
So, I fire up the audio player that came with SuSE/GNOME (I think it's called Helix Banshee or something like that), throw in a CD to rip and wait...............a really long time. Checking the system stats, the CPU and RAM were doing fine, so I concluded that it was just the ancient CD drive lagging. Hmmmm.....my main XP box is a lot faster at ripping.....
Samba Server:
The SuSE/GNOME install had a slick interface for configuring a Samba Server. A few clicks (I haven't configured one before) and I was pushing all of my audio files from my XP box down to the new SuSE box. It still takes longer to rip than I'd like, but since the XP box rips in half the time, now I can rip 3 discs in the time it took to rip one (2 on the XP box and 1 on the Linux box). If I ever buy more RAM, I can get the win2000 twin up on the Samba server connection and hopefully have three machines ripping at once--all storing their data on the Linux Jukebox machine. I'll probably have some I/O problems about then....
Speakers:
For now, just using some crappy PC speakers. Scouring thrift stores and pawn shops for the next upgrade....This upgrade may actually come as part of the Proof of Concept phase.
Amplifier:
I have an older donated (people with cool electronics give me their old stuff when they are de-cluttering) Kenwood 100W amp. My first monetary investment in this system was a $7 patch cord to go from the headphone jack on the laptop to RCA audio jacks.
USB:
Eventually, I have to replace the USB port or find a card with one or something. It would be a tragedy to have this great jukebox and not be able to update the mp3 player from it (especially since the mp3 player was part of the initial inspiration).
Summary:
So far, I've got about 700 tracks loaded, consuming about 30% of my hard drive. I'd like to keep the consumption under 85% to allow for some wiggle-room, so I think I can get up to around 1500 tracks. I've had a blast listening to music that I haven't pulled out in a long time, and I'm quite happy with the 'system' -- even with its puny speakers, etc. I've shown my wife what I've been wasting my time on, and she is somewhat impressed. Once I have speakers and am running through the Kenwood amp, I'm going to call the proof of concept phase complete. Then, we'll look at investing more $$ to get the other upgrades.
--Og
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
unified iraq?
Should I stray from the theme of my blog? Ah, who cares, I'm the only one reading it, anyways.
Peace in a Unified Iraq is not going to happen. Why? We handed democracy to Iraq and said "unify." Throughout the course of human history, when has that led to unity? No, what leads to unity on a mass scale is to have a common enemy--whether it be a military enemy or whether it be a 'religious enemy,' a sports enemy, or a business enemy ("we all lose our jobs if this project fails"), people need a common threat to be able to pull together, overcome their differences and unite. The bigger the differences, the bigger the threat has to be.
Since Iraq's 'democracy' was not brought about by a common uprising from within, that common enemy did not exist, nor did they share the bonding experience of a victory over the common enemy.
How is the Iraq conflict going to play out? Civil war, ending in a separated Iraq. That's how they want it.
What could we do to Unify Iraq? Now that we've given them a slight taste of democracy, we take it away. We make them a 'colony,' then rule with fear and terror. We steal their oil and their resources until they get mad and rise up and kick us out.
What makes me think that would work? Well, when you look at former British colonies, that seems to be a large source for the worldwide spread of democracy. They transplanted people throughout the world who had a basic understanding of democracy, then they taxed them until they could no longer stand it. Ta-da!! Revolution.
--og
Peace in a Unified Iraq is not going to happen. Why? We handed democracy to Iraq and said "unify." Throughout the course of human history, when has that led to unity? No, what leads to unity on a mass scale is to have a common enemy--whether it be a military enemy or whether it be a 'religious enemy,' a sports enemy, or a business enemy ("we all lose our jobs if this project fails"), people need a common threat to be able to pull together, overcome their differences and unite. The bigger the differences, the bigger the threat has to be.
Since Iraq's 'democracy' was not brought about by a common uprising from within, that common enemy did not exist, nor did they share the bonding experience of a victory over the common enemy.
How is the Iraq conflict going to play out? Civil war, ending in a separated Iraq. That's how they want it.
What could we do to Unify Iraq? Now that we've given them a slight taste of democracy, we take it away. We make them a 'colony,' then rule with fear and terror. We steal their oil and their resources until they get mad and rise up and kick us out.
What makes me think that would work? Well, when you look at former British colonies, that seems to be a large source for the worldwide spread of democracy. They transplanted people throughout the world who had a basic understanding of democracy, then they taxed them until they could no longer stand it. Ta-da!! Revolution.
--og
Tuesday, March 6, 2007
good things -- gmail edition
If you don't have one, get a gmail account. If nothing else, it will give you a new perspective on e-mail. We are so accustomed to seeing every e-mail client look the same, that gmail's "conversation view" can be quite jarring at first. However, I think I speak for many when I say that you learn to love the conversation view. The search capabilities are, of course, unsurpassed.
By the way, you won't find 'folders' in gmail. Don't bother trying. What you will find is 'labels.' Labels are WAY more powerful than folders. Why? Because any one e-mail can only exist in one 'folder' in traditional e-mail clients. However, that e-mail can have multiple 'labels' and thus, can be viewed/searched/retrieved/clustered along with other e-mails sharing the same label. It's a thing of beauty, really.
E-mail is, after all, just a file (with possible attachments) that gets passed from one computer to another. Gmail took the big leap and made the UI different than the Outlook UI. Then, they made it easy to search your files.
Then, get the gtdgmail extension for firefox--you are using firefox, right?
I've seen people ask the question "If I'm using gtdgmail, then what do I use for my Calendar (hardscape)?"
uh........Google Calendar, of course. It integrates well with gmail (you can add event details from any e-mail). I even forward my appointments from other systems. Gmail automatically recognizes an appointment (at least from Groupwise--I suspect from others as well), and allows me to add it to my calendar with the click of the mouse. The really great thing here is that I now have one calendar tool that can merge all of my calendars in a truly GTD fashion. Even better, I can create multiple calendars--some for appointments, and some to be used as GTD tickler files. My whole family can (and does) share calendars. I can then view just my appointments, or mine along with the rest of the family's in order to be able to see a bigger picture.
Now, is Google reading my e-mail? Well, they say they're not, and I hope not. However, one would assume that if they are reading everyone's e-mail, they are suffering from severe information overload. I mean seriously, how many times can you read "I just found out about Microsoft's e-mail tracking beta program that will pay you.....?" bleeccchhhh.
--Og
By the way, you won't find 'folders' in gmail. Don't bother trying. What you will find is 'labels.' Labels are WAY more powerful than folders. Why? Because any one e-mail can only exist in one 'folder' in traditional e-mail clients. However, that e-mail can have multiple 'labels' and thus, can be viewed/searched/retrieved/clustered along with other e-mails sharing the same label. It's a thing of beauty, really.
E-mail is, after all, just a file (with possible attachments) that gets passed from one computer to another. Gmail took the big leap and made the UI different than the Outlook UI. Then, they made it easy to search your files.
Then, get the gtdgmail extension for firefox--you are using firefox, right?
I've seen people ask the question "If I'm using gtdgmail, then what do I use for my Calendar (hardscape)?"
uh........Google Calendar, of course. It integrates well with gmail (you can add event details from any e-mail). I even forward my appointments from other systems. Gmail automatically recognizes an appointment (at least from Groupwise--I suspect from others as well), and allows me to add it to my calendar with the click of the mouse. The really great thing here is that I now have one calendar tool that can merge all of my calendars in a truly GTD fashion. Even better, I can create multiple calendars--some for appointments, and some to be used as GTD tickler files. My whole family can (and does) share calendars. I can then view just my appointments, or mine along with the rest of the family's in order to be able to see a bigger picture.
Now, is Google reading my e-mail? Well, they say they're not, and I hope not. However, one would assume that if they are reading everyone's e-mail, they are suffering from severe information overload. I mean seriously, how many times can you read "I just found out about Microsoft's e-mail tracking beta program that will pay you.....?" bleeccchhhh.
--Og
realistic ID theft advice.
Deafening Silence. That would be the response I've received from the FCC as well as the local sheriff's department about my Caller ID Spoofing incident. I've expressed to both organizations the fact that some sort of crime seems to be going on, and that someone seems to be attempting to either use my identity or steal it (and most likely I'm not the only one). I have the exact time, the number called, and the fake originating number. Supposedly, identity theft is a huge problem that our officials are trying to stamp out.
Here is what I've found out with a couple of near-miss identity theft scenarios I've had in the past. If you suspect that you've had your ID stolen, but you haven't already personally tracked the scumbag down and have him in cuffs and tied up naked in the trunk of your car (there's plenty of air back there...), then basically, all the authorities will do is give you the generic list of id theft tips. Essentially, these are the solutions that have been recommended since the '80's, with a couple of 'online' tips thrown in.
1--"If you feel that you've had your Identity stolen, then you should report that the the three credit reporting agencies."
Equifax: 1-800-525-6285
Experian (formerly TRW): 1-888-397-3742
Trans Union: 1-800-680-7289
Oh, make sure that you ask them for your free credit check. That will be a big honking stack of papers what will come in the mail. It will have info about all of the old, strange accounts that you've had in your life. Hopefully, there are no new accounts.
2--Call all your cards. Check the account balances/charges. Close accounts that are being used illegally. If you found a new account in #1, call them first. Pray that they will be understanding of the fact that your id has been stolen. In fact, while you are at it, call a couple of the legitimate new accounts. Maybe you can get your car paid off out of this deal.
3--File a complaint with local authorities. They need to tell you that there is nothing they can do. It's therapeutic, as the first step is always acceptance. It's also important to start leaving a paper trail in the off-chance that they should bump into someone using your card at Dunkin Doughnuts. Also, if you have some disputing to do with a credit company, it's good to have something on file. That way, you can pretend that you have a hope. Make sure that they get all of your vitals--name, SSN, etc. so that they can leave it on their desk in an open file or something.
4--Keep a bunch of paperwork of your own. Write some stuff on some old dirty napkins, start a random file containing brief snippets from the conversations that are involved in this process. This file should have hastily scrawled notes about all the phone calls you place whilst trying to find out what's going on with your newly upside down life. The writing will most likely be illegible, as the adrenalin rushing through your body prevents clear thought. The stationery will likely be toilet paper, since you've crapped your pants and are still cleaning up the mess while making the calls.
Some more stuff that won't help, but might make you feel better:
5--Change your passwords. Pick a new one that's really tough to remember and then write it on a Post-It on your monitor. Make sure that you write "password" on the paper so you won't forget what it is and throw it away.
6--If you lost your wallet, call the DMV. Ask for a new license. Hope you don't have to fly for a while...pray that INS doesn't deport you while you're getting this stuff straightened out. Call the Social Security Administration. Ask them for a new fake number. Call the Department of Homeland Security and let them know that they will need to add you back onto the known terrorist list. Call the movie theater. Ask them if their refrigerator is running. That's always good fun.
7--Wash and Wax your car. The repo guy will be over shortly to pick it up. It just wouldn't look right to have your car towed away dirty. The whole neighborhood would be saying "can't they afford to wash their car?"
8--Mostly, just stay calm, cool and collected. It's no big deal. Just your life that's been taken. People change names and go underground all the time. It might just be a blessing in disguise. You can ditch that weird name your parents gave you (Og) and pick a newer, cooler name, like Sky, Voodoo, or Stinky. You can turn over a new leaf. The world is your oyster (whatever that means).
Look forward to retiring about 10 years later now...your 401k just got cashed in (and now you owe a tax penalty on it).
At least I can rest assured in the knowledge that this mysterious caller had almost all of my information wrong, and didn't get any more info.
Your ID is your responsibility. Might as well just fake it :)
--Og
--no wait, my name's Voodoo
Here is what I've found out with a couple of near-miss identity theft scenarios I've had in the past. If you suspect that you've had your ID stolen, but you haven't already personally tracked the scumbag down and have him in cuffs and tied up naked in the trunk of your car (there's plenty of air back there...), then basically, all the authorities will do is give you the generic list of id theft tips. Essentially, these are the solutions that have been recommended since the '80's, with a couple of 'online' tips thrown in.
1--"If you feel that you've had your Identity stolen, then you should report that the the three credit reporting agencies."
Equifax: 1-800-525-6285
Experian (formerly TRW): 1-888-397-3742
Trans Union: 1-800-680-7289
Oh, make sure that you ask them for your free credit check. That will be a big honking stack of papers what will come in the mail. It will have info about all of the old, strange accounts that you've had in your life. Hopefully, there are no new accounts.
2--Call all your cards. Check the account balances/charges. Close accounts that are being used illegally. If you found a new account in #1, call them first. Pray that they will be understanding of the fact that your id has been stolen. In fact, while you are at it, call a couple of the legitimate new accounts. Maybe you can get your car paid off out of this deal.
3--File a complaint with local authorities. They need to tell you that there is nothing they can do. It's therapeutic, as the first step is always acceptance. It's also important to start leaving a paper trail in the off-chance that they should bump into someone using your card at Dunkin Doughnuts. Also, if you have some disputing to do with a credit company, it's good to have something on file. That way, you can pretend that you have a hope. Make sure that they get all of your vitals--name, SSN, etc. so that they can leave it on their desk in an open file or something.
4--Keep a bunch of paperwork of your own. Write some stuff on some old dirty napkins, start a random file containing brief snippets from the conversations that are involved in this process. This file should have hastily scrawled notes about all the phone calls you place whilst trying to find out what's going on with your newly upside down life. The writing will most likely be illegible, as the adrenalin rushing through your body prevents clear thought. The stationery will likely be toilet paper, since you've crapped your pants and are still cleaning up the mess while making the calls.
Some more stuff that won't help, but might make you feel better:
5--Change your passwords. Pick a new one that's really tough to remember and then write it on a Post-It on your monitor. Make sure that you write "password" on the paper so you won't forget what it is and throw it away.
6--If you lost your wallet, call the DMV. Ask for a new license. Hope you don't have to fly for a while...pray that INS doesn't deport you while you're getting this stuff straightened out. Call the Social Security Administration. Ask them for a new fake number. Call the Department of Homeland Security and let them know that they will need to add you back onto the known terrorist list. Call the movie theater. Ask them if their refrigerator is running. That's always good fun.
7--Wash and Wax your car. The repo guy will be over shortly to pick it up. It just wouldn't look right to have your car towed away dirty. The whole neighborhood would be saying "can't they afford to wash their car?"
8--Mostly, just stay calm, cool and collected. It's no big deal. Just your life that's been taken. People change names and go underground all the time. It might just be a blessing in disguise. You can ditch that weird name your parents gave you (Og) and pick a newer, cooler name, like Sky, Voodoo, or Stinky. You can turn over a new leaf. The world is your oyster (whatever that means).
Look forward to retiring about 10 years later now...your 401k just got cashed in (and now you owe a tax penalty on it).
At least I can rest assured in the knowledge that this mysterious caller had almost all of my information wrong, and didn't get any more info.
Your ID is your responsibility. Might as well just fake it :)
--Og
--no wait, my name's Voodoo
Monday, March 5, 2007
Caller ID Spoofed
I got Caller ID spoofed today. Someone called my wife and claimed they were calling to collect on a t-mobile phone bill that was past due. Luckily, the caller got no personal information from my wife. When we called the number back that was on the Caller ID, it was a disconnected number. Spoofed.
I know that services exist to facilitate Caller ID Spoofing (TeleSpoof, SpoofCard), etc.) but a law was passed (HR 5304) making Caller ID Spoofing illegal. So how are these idiots able to stay in business if the service they provide is illegal? What kind of idiotic legal system do we have where companies providing illegal services can continue providing them?
And...who is the scamming jerk that called me?
By the way, Qwest says they can only help if I have a subpoena (thanks a ton for your help, Qwest). Their recommendation was to use *57 next time (for a $2.00 fee), but I've since learned that doesn't even work for caller id spoofing. The call has been spoofed (duh) and *57 doesn't help. They just want my $2. Again, thanks a ton, Qwest. People are using your system to conduct fraudulent activities and your main concern is getting your $2. The customer service rep actually tried to refer me to Repairs. I guess she thought I was broken...
T-mobile did verify that I don't have an account, but that's all the help they would give me. They had no advice on what to do.
I e-mailed the county Sheriff's department for information on what to do. No response as of yet.
So how am I supposed to find out who did this? Do I just start walking through neighborhoods, kicking in doors and saying "did you call my house?" Somehow, I think that will take a while.....
--Og
I know that services exist to facilitate Caller ID Spoofing (TeleSpoof, SpoofCard), etc.) but a law was passed (HR 5304) making Caller ID Spoofing illegal. So how are these idiots able to stay in business if the service they provide is illegal? What kind of idiotic legal system do we have where companies providing illegal services can continue providing them?
And...who is the scamming jerk that called me?
By the way, Qwest says they can only help if I have a subpoena (thanks a ton for your help, Qwest). Their recommendation was to use *57 next time (for a $2.00 fee), but I've since learned that doesn't even work for caller id spoofing. The call has been spoofed (duh) and *57 doesn't help. They just want my $2. Again, thanks a ton, Qwest. People are using your system to conduct fraudulent activities and your main concern is getting your $2. The customer service rep actually tried to refer me to Repairs. I guess she thought I was broken...
T-mobile did verify that I don't have an account, but that's all the help they would give me. They had no advice on what to do.
I e-mailed the county Sheriff's department for information on what to do. No response as of yet.
So how am I supposed to find out who did this? Do I just start walking through neighborhoods, kicking in doors and saying "did you call my house?" Somehow, I think that will take a while.....
--Og
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