Author: Andrew Huey

patches aplenty

Even after installing Windows XP SP 2 from CD on my old laptop, there are still 73 patches out there on Windows Update. I tried looking at AutoPatcher, by the way, but I had some trouble getting a download started from their BitTorrent tracker, so I gave up and went back to Windows Update.

lots of computers

Right now, I’m running a full backup of my desktop PC to my new 500 GB external drive. I’m also working on wiping my old Gateway and reinstalling Windows XP on it, so I can hand it off to a friend who has some use for it. And I’m also installing various things on my new Vista laptop. So I’m jumping around from machine to machine, checking on stuff, pressing “OK” a lot, and stuff like that.

On the Vista laptop, I’ve spent several hours trying to get Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server Express set up. Everything seems to be working now, but it sure takes a long time to get that all set up. First, you have to install the original VS 2005 package from DVD. That takes a while. Then, you have to install SP 1. That can take quite a while: several hours. There’s a good explanation for this lengthy install here, and apparently Vista adds even more of a complication to this, so it takes even longer under Vista vs. XP.

After SP1, you need to install the Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 Update for Windows Vista Beta. I’m a little alarmed that this is still a beta; you’d think that one of Microsoft’s first priorities would be getting a good solid development environment running on Vista.

And, if you want to bring SQL Express up to date, you need to install SQL 2005 Service Pack 2. I’m not 100% if I had to do both of these, but I installed “SQL Server 2005 Express Edition with Advanced Services” and “SQL Server 2005 Express Edition Toolkit”. Then, I went back and installed the latest Books Online files.

So, all that took about four hours. Call me crazy, but that really seems like too long just to set up your development environment. Back in the old days, it’d take maybe 5 minutes to install, say, Clipper 5.2 or Turbo Pascal. I guess this is progress, but it doesn’t feel like it!

progress

I hooked up my new 500 GB external drive to my desktop computer today, so I’ll be ready to try a full backup tomorrow. I’m probably going to take my old 100 GB drive and use it to do full backups on the new Vista laptop and my old iBook. I’m not sure if I really want to keep that drive though; I don’t really have any place to keep it. (I’m just running out of room in my apartment!)

I also figured out that the DVDs I used to backup my Vista laptop at work yesterday were probably DVD+R (rather than DVD-R), which may explain why they worked while my DVD-R media wouldn’t. Maybe the drive just doesn’t work well with DVD-R? I’ve seen reference to the idea that DVD+R is more reliable, but that was on Wikipedia, so who knows it that’s accurate.

If I can manage to get my full backup(s) done tomorrow, then I can finally get around to installing Office 2007 on both my desktop and laptop. Maybe I can get some of the other installs I need to do on the laptop done too. Of course, I’d really like to get out of the apartment for a little while this weekend!

Vista backup

I tried the Windows Complete PC Backup again from work today, and it worked fine! The only difference is that I used DVDs from work instead of the ones I have at home. So, it’s looking like this was just a media issue. Weird. The DVDs I’m using at home are name-brand DVD-Rs that are supposed to be fine up to 16x. (The burner in my laptop is 8x.) The DVDs in work are no-name DVDs, and I’m not even sure if they’re DVD-R or DVD+R. Well, either way, I now have a complete hard drive backup (hopefully).

Meanwhile, I just installed LoJack for Laptops, which was included as part of the service bundle I got from Dell. I have no idea if I’ll ever need it, nor do I know if it’ll do any good if the laptop *is* stolen. Seems like an interesting idea, though.

And I signed up for some stuff at LearnDell.com that was also included with my service bundle. I don’t know yet if Dell’s online training is any good, but maybe I’ll try to work my way through some of it and find out if it’s worth it.

Windows Vista backup

My new Dell Inspiron laptop with Vista showed up at work yesterday. I haven’t gotten a chance to do much with it, since I was really tired yesterday and went to bed at 9:30. I did, however, complete some of the usual “new computer” chores: uninstalling some of the pointless crapware that’s loaded on the machine, applying various updates, and so on. I’ve now got the machine in a state where I’d like to make myself an image of the drive, so I’ll have a relatively clean image to fall back on if need be.

I’m trying out Windows Complete PC Backup. This should work pretty much the same way Ghost or Acronis work, and create a complete image backup of the machine. Alas, every time I try this (backing up to DVD), I get an I/O error on the first disc. I’ve run across some advice on the internet to kill any system restore points, then try it again. I guess I’ll give that a try. I called Dell support on this, just to see if they knew anything. After an hour-long call, all they could really do is advise that I keep an eye on Windows Updates and hope that this is a problem that Microsoft will fix. Not really useful advice, huh?

I’m a little bit paranoid that some of the Sonic/Roxio stuff that Dell preinstalls is messing up the DVD drive, but I don’t know enough to really have a clue if that’s the case. I guess I’ll play around with it some more, and see if I can figure it out. The only problem here is that I burn a coaster every time a backup fails. While DVD-R prices have fallen a lot, I still don’t like tossing them in the trash.

memories

I’ve been shredding old credit card receipts and stuff like that tonight. While I wait for my overheated shredder to cool down a bit, I thought I’d write up a blog post with some of the stuff I found.

Interesting things found in 10+ years worth of credit card receipts:
– I shop at Best Buy and Borders a lot!
– I paid $259 for a Microsoft Office upgrade back in 1993. (That’s a little more than what I just paid for the Office 2007 upgrade.)
– Gas used to cost $1.39 a gallon!
– My Kenwood receiver is ten years old.
– I paid $94 for a 14.4 bps modem at the Egghead in Green Brook in March 1995.
– I paid $50 for a copy of OS/2 in 1994. Purchased at the Short Hills Mall, no less.

Memories brought back by looking through old receipts:
– Dinner at Next Door Nobu with Paul and Rob a few years back.
– Disneyland after Ankur’s wedding.
– Hitting Epcot and Pleasure Island with Rob during a Great Plains conference in Orlando.
– Many large hotel bills from San Diego!
– A hotel bill from a Best Western in Troy NY from 1995. I’m pretty sure this is from when I took my brother Patrick up to RPI for student orientation.
– I found a bunch of bills from San Francisco, May 1995, iincluding one from Lefty O’Doul’s. These are probably from the trip I went on with my Mom and Dad to go see my brother Mike graduate from law school. I think that was the last time we ever took a vacation together.
– I moved into my current apartment on 3/19/94. I had to put down a $200 deposit on the truck we rented to get me from Rahway to Somerville.

complications

Everything’s complicated. I wanted to do a complete hard drive backup on my desktop PC before upgrading to Office 2007. I’ve got a 250 GB hard drive in that machine, and I’m using about 200 GB on it. I’ve got an extra internal 100 GB HD, and an external 120 GB HD, so I should be able to get the backup done across those two devices without too much grief. But no. I burned up a bunch of time yesterday getting about halfway through the backup, then watching it blow up when it ran out of room on the internal drive. I’ve done this backup before with Retrospect, but it just isn’t working now. After tweaking a few things, I think I’ve got it right, and I start another backup. I’m puttering around doing other stuff in the apartment while this is going on; at some point, I decide to turn on the TV and check the weather. Boom. Turning on the TV causes a momentary surge (or sag, or something) that causes the computer to reboot. End of backup.

I’ve got a new UPS on order that should prevent this sort of power thing from happening again. And I picked up a 500 GB external drive at Best Buy today that should allow me to get the whole backup on one drive. (Then, I can maybe use the secondary internal drive for automated backups of key files. Wouldn’t that be nice?)

Amazon history

I read a post on someone’s blog today that made me a bit curious. He mentioned that some other bloggers had been posting their first Amazon.com purchase. I decided to go back and check mine. It was on June 26, 1997, and I ordered two books: Mort, by Terry Pratchett, and the Sybase DBA Companion. Mort was a great, and very funny, novel. It was out of print at the time, and didn’t actually ship until May 17, 1998. At that time, Amazon had a service where you could order a book, and whenever a used copy became available, it would be shipped to you. I’m not sure if they do that anymore. So many people are selling used books through Amazon now, that it’d be pretty odd to find something that you couldn’t get from a secondary seller right away.

The other book I ordered, the Sybase DBA Companion, was pretty useful at the time, since I was just getting started on Sybase. I’ve since moved to Microsoft SQL Server, but a lot of the skills I developed working on Sybase are still useful, since Microsoft’s product was kind of a spin-off from Sybase, though it’s diverged a lot over the last ten years.

My second order with Amazon was on August 15, 1997, and was for a book called Programming for the Newton Using Windows . That sure brings back some memories! I don’t think I ever got around to writing anything more that a couple of trivial programs for the Newton, but it was fun to play around with Newton programming for a while. I’ve since given away my first Newton, and sold my second. I’m using a Palm PDA now, the i705. I still haven’t gotten around to giving it up in favor of a smartphone or anything like that. Maybe I’ll get an iPhone, and then I’ll have come full circle, in a way, back to an Apple PDA of sorts.