Category: hardware

slow progress on my desktop rebuild

I didn’t get too far with my desktop PC rebuild last night. I got as far as getting Windows 8 installed, and I got started on installing the many pending Windows updates. I left the PC on when I went to bed, hoping that maybe the updates would be all installed when I woke up, but that didn’t work out. I had to go through a couple more install/reboot cycles to get everything cleared out, to get to the point where I could do the Windows 8.1 upgrade. At this point, I’ve done that successfully, and did a little work on copying stuff from my backup drive back to my main drive.

But I hit a snag when trying to copy my iTunes library back over. That’s a really big folder, and the copy runs OK for about 45 minutes, but then the USB drive just… disappears… and the copy fails. I can get the USB drive going again by simply unplugging it and plugging it back in, but that’s not a good solution for a copy that would take four hours, if it was running smoothly.

So I did some research, and found this blog post from the Windows USB core team. If the issue described there is indeed my problem, then it’s fixed in a Windows update. So I’m giving up on the file copy stuff for now, and installing all the Windows 8.1 pending updates. Then, we’ll try it again.

If it’s not the issue, then I think I’m going to have to crack open that USB case, remove the drive, and mount it in the PC internally. I’m hoping it won’t come to that. But it would likely allow the copy to run much more quickly.

When I think about all the work that’s required to get a functioning Windows 8.1 machine set up, given a Windows 8 DVD and key, it’s really quite frustrating. It really seems like, with a little effort, Microsoft could shorten the process considerably. There are so many things wrong with the process as it is. Why can’t we go straight from Windows 8 to 8.1 without installing every single Windows 8 update? For that matter, why can’t someone with a Windows 8 key download an 8.1 ISO, and skip Windows 8 entirely? And if you’re going to require that people install 8.1 from the Windows store, why not set things up so that at least that’s done from an updated install image that includes all the 8.1 updates? The current process is basically the worst of all possibilities: Install Windows 8 RTM. Apply all updates. Download & install Windows 8.1 RTM. Apply all updates.

Well, I needed to vent about that. I feel a little better. I’m going to go back to watching Netflix now.

2014 Year in Review and 2015 Goals

By many measures, 2014 was a horrible year for the world. Dave Barry wrote a fairly amusing (and somewhat depressing) year in review article for the Washington Post. And Charlie Booker wrote a similar article, from a UK perspective, for the Guardian. Bill Gates has a fairly upbeat take on 2014 though. All three of those articles are worth reading, if you want to get some perspective on the past year.

Personally, I think I had a pretty good year, though things were pretty static, and I didn’t make as much progress as I would have liked on some fronts. But I did a really good job with my weight loss goals, and with some other stuff.

I wrote a relatively short year in review post last year. This year’s post is going to be pretty long. I’ve had a lot of this stuff banging around in my head for the last few weeks, and I really want to get it down in writing, partly so I have it to refer back to in a year, and partly just so I can organize my thoughts and move forward.

Weight & Health
I started a diet in September 2013, at 230 pounds. I got down to 200 lbs as of January 1, 2014. I hit 165 about a month ago, and have been hovering around there, +/- 3 lbs, since then. So I think I’ve done a generally good job on this front.

For 2015, I’m not sure if I want to just maintain at 165 or set a new goal for 160. I don’t see much point in trying to go any lower than 160. I should probably switch gears in 2015 and try to work a bit harder on fitness. Through most of 2014, until it got cold, I was going out for walks almost every day. I think that really helped get the pounds off. I definitely want to pick up on that, when the weather gets warmer. Until then, I’m not sure what I want to do. But I know I should be doing something. My neck and shoulders have been bothering me a bit recently, so maybe I need to do something about that before I try to do anything new on the exercise front. I tried using my exercise bike a bit in 2014, but I’ve found that my back starts bothering me after about five minutes on the bike. So I probably need to figure that out before I can get any further with the exercise.

Education / Programming
I made an attempt to get through Algorithms I and II on Coursera in 2013. I got most of the way through part one, and never started part two. In 2014, I took another shot at part one, but gave up when I got sick not long after the course started. I never got back to it. I’m still interested in doing something with Coursera and/or EdX in 2015, but I don’t have any particular plans.

On a couple of other fronts, I did manage to learn a bit about WordPress and F# in 2014. I read two books on WordPress, one general and one on plugin development, and I successfully moved my blog from Blogger to a self-hosted WordPress install. So that was an accomplishment. I didn’t actually do any meaningful WordPress development, though, aside from tweaking a few things in my template, and working through some of the examples in the plugin dev book.

On F#, I started reading a few books on the subject, but didn’t finish any of them. I learned enough to solve a few Project Euler problems with F#, but not enough to do anything really useful with the language.

Speaking of Project Euler, I had solved through to problem 25 at the end of 2013, and I’ve now solved through to # 65, so that’s 40 problems solved in 2014. I used C# for all of the problems I solved, and reworked a handful of them with F#. For 2015, I’d like to continue working on Euler problems, using a combination of C# and F#.

I’m not sure if I want to try to learn any new languages in 2015. I think I want to concentrate on C# and F# for now. It might be nice to learn Swift, and get back to doing some Mac and/or iOS development, but I don’t have any particular plans to do so. If possible, I’d like to get back to doing some web development using some of the new stuff around ASP.NET that I really didn’t get a chance to play with in 2014.

Work
I started my job at SHI in January 2013, so I’m now just about to hit the two-year mark. Things were pretty static with SHI in 2014. I worked almost exclusively on Dynamics AX projects, using X++. I did a smattering of C# work, but only to support stuff I was doing in X++. The one big thing that changed, early in 2014, was a reorganization, so I’m now under a different boss than I was in 2013. But the new boss was already my project manager, so there wasn’t really much of a change there.

During my year-end review for 2013, there was some talk about the possibility that I might be getting involved in a SharePoint project, but nothing ever came of that. I did read an introductory SharePoint development book, but I never got as far as even setting up a local environment to play around with. If I learned anything about SharePoint, it was mostly that it’s a mess, and trying to learn it, in a general way, on your own, probably isn’t a great idea. If the SharePoint project resurfaces in 2015, I’ll definitely jump back in, but I’m not going to mess around with SharePoint any more without some specific direction.

I haven’t had my 2014 review yet, so I’m not sure what will come out of that. The boss has talked, in general, about some upcoming changes, but hasn’t gotten into specifics. I’m cautiously optimistic about things at SHI, but we’ll see what comes out of my review, and what kind of changes occur this year.
One specific thing she did mention was that we’ll have a training budget this year, so that might be good. She didn’t mention how much the budget was, or what it might be spent on, so I’m not getting my hopes up about going to any tech conferences on the company dime, but hopefully it’s not just a $500 budget that gets spent some CBT software or something like that.

Consulting and/or Volunteering
I haven’t done any consulting work at all in 2014. I’m OK with that, though it would have been nice to have done at least one independent project.

I signed up for Catchafire in 2014, in the hope of finding a good volunteer programming project to work on. But I never did find anything there that I thought would be a good match for my skills and my interests. I’ll keep an eye on it in 2015, but maybe I should look around for other opportunities.

I also applied for volunteer positions at a few museums in NYC, including the Met, The Morgan, and the Museum of Natural History. The only one I heard back from was the Morgan, but they needed someone who was available on weekdays, so that was out. I’ll keep an eye out for volunteer opportunities in 2015, but I’m not hopeful that I’ll find anything interesting that would actually fit into my schedule.

Reading
According to Goodreads, I finished 30 books in 2014, but most of them were comics. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that!) I read The Strain trilogy at the beginning of the year, then spent the rest of the year slowly working my way through Kate Elliot’s Spirit Gate. So I can’t really say I read any fiction over the past year that wasn’t just escapist fantasy. (Again, not that there’s anything wrong with that!) For non-fiction, I read through two books on WordPress, started (but didn’t finish) a couple of F# books, and recently started David Allen’s Making It All Work. I’ll likely finish the David Allen book this month.

I don’t have any specific reading goals for 2015, though I’d like to read more non-fiction, and I definitely have a lot of comics I’d like to read, when I can find the time. But I’m not setting any real goals.

Blogging
I moved this blog to WordPress in May, and I’ve been pretty happy about that. I think it worked out well, and I learned a lot about WordPress in the process.

I wrote a little over 100 posts in 2014, including a few that were actually useful enough to attract a few page views, so that’s good. I only had 33 posts in 2013. (I’m still not making any money on AdSense though. I might just remove ads entirely this year, since they don’t seem to be doing me any good.)

I think I want to keep going with WordPress, and I’m happy enough with 1&1 that I think I’ll stick with them as a host. I might mess with the template a bit in 2015, but I don’t think I need to.

Travel
I didn’t really do any travel in 2014, aside from several trips into NYC, and one trip to Georgia for a funeral. Most of the trips into NYC were day trips, but I did go to WordCamp NYC over the summer, and stayed in the city for that. I made several visits to the Met and MoMA over the past year, so I’m pretty happy about that. The trip to Georgia was not a happy one; my brother’s best friend passed away.

I didn’t make it to even a single comics convention in 2014, so I’d like to try and get to either San Diego or NYCC this year. Or maybe I should consider WonderCon in Anaheim. I know the chance of getting SDCC tickets is low, but I’ll give it a shot, when they go on sale. And I’m sure I can get NYCC tickets, if I don’t wait until the last minute like I did last year.

Hardware
I recently swapped out the hard drives in my ThinkPad and MacBook with SSDs. I re-installed Windows 8.1 on the ThinkPad several months ago, and wiped & reinstalled OS X on the MacBook as part of the SSD switch. So both of those machines are clean, speedy, and up to date. I think I’ll keep both of them through 2015.

I am currently in the middle of doing a clean install of Windows 8 on my desktop machine. I’m hoping that works out, but I have some doubts. I don’t really want to have to replace that machine this year, but I might have to. I’ll think about that some more once I’ve got it all set up.

I got a new iPhone 5s in October 2013, so I’m going to stick with that through most of 2015. I might replace it at the end of the year, or I might wait until 2016. And I only just recently picked up an iPad Air, so I shouldn’t need to replace that until 2016, I hope.

Apartment and Car
I think I’m going to renew the lease on my current apartment again this year. I keep thinking about moving, but I can never quite talk myself into it. I’ll need to review my thinking on that this month, since I’ll need to make a decision on the lease in February. I do have a lot of stuff that I want to get cleaned up and/or fixed in the apartment this year, assuming I stay in it. Some of that will require some action from the landlord, which I’m not optimistic about, but I’ll make an effort, and see how far I can get.

And I’m hoping to keep my car through 2015. It’s got about 65,0000 miles on it and it’s running well. I just need to keep up with maintenance on it, and I think I’ll be fine.

Personal Organization
I made a number of changes in my systems for personal organization in 2014, and I’m pretty happy with the direction I’m going in on that. I got all of my passwords moved from KeePass to 1Password. And I consolidated all of my personal notes into Evernote, and canceled my old Backpack account. I’ve been making a concerted effort to reapply myself to following the general principles of GTD, and have managed to get a lot of random stuff done in the last few months.

Summary
Well, that was a pretty long post. Probably longer than it needed to be, but I feel like I’ve worked some stuff out and cleared some stuff out of my head. Happy New Year!

Finally: Windows 8

For my New Year’s Eve festivities this year, I decided to stay home and try to finally get my Windows 8 install done on my desktop PC. After some more trials and tribulations, I’ve finally got that done, and the PC is booting into Windows 8 now. Remembering what I went through with my ThinkPad clean install, I know that I now need to go through all the excitement of applying many Windows updates, rebooting, then getting Windows 8.1 through the Windows Store, then installing that, then more Windows updates. So I’ll probably be done with that around midnight. Then, I can start setting up software and copying files back over from my backup drive tomorrow.

I think this thread at the Microsoft support forums contained the solution to my upgrade difficulties: I had to switch my SATA mode from AHCI to IDE in my BIOS. (I’m hoping I can change that back at some point, but I’m not going to try it until I’ve got myself fully upgraded to 8.1.)

I’m hoping that this was worth all the trouble. I think it will be. The end result should be a nice clean Windows 8 install, free of the HP cruft that originally shipped on this machine, and all the various layers of accumulated cruft that has built up since I bought the machine in 2010.

trying again, with my desktop PC

I purchased my current desktop PC back in 2010. And my last serious effort to upgrade it to Windows 8 was in 2012. I’ve never done any upgrading on this PC, as far as I can remember, and I’ve never done a wipe & reinstall of Windows on it either. It’s still working reasonably well, but it’s pretty slow to start up now.

It can get to the login screen in a reasonable amount of time, and from there to the desktop reasonably quickly. But, then it takes a long time before it’s really “ready” to launch any non-trivial applications. I’m not sure I have a terribly good explanation for that, but I guess there’s too much random background stuff starting up after login.

My current plan is to clone my boot drive over to an external USB drive, then do a format & clean install of Window 8 on the boot drive, then reinstall apps and copy data back from the USB drive to the boot drive. Well, I tried the initial clone today, and that failed, probably due to a hardware error on the external drive. So, now I’m trying a full format of the external drive, just to see if that works, or if there’s a real problem with the drive. Well, it turns out that it takes a very long time to format a 1 TB external USB drive. I’m not sure why. But, either way, I’m stuck until that’s done. So tomorrow, if the format works, I’ll try the clone again.

I’m not sure at what point I should just cut my losses and buy a new PC, with Windows 8 pre-installed. But I’m definitely not ready to give up yet! If it turns out that the external drive I’m using is no good, I’ve got others I can try.

adding a printer under Mac OS X

I just spent some time trying to get my Canon printer set up to work on my MacBook. This was one of the last things on my to-do list for the new clean Yosemite install. Here’s a quick note for anyone else setting up a network printer under Mac OS X: the following bit from this page is key:

A dialog appears listing printers on your local network. It may take a minute or two for your printer to appear.

Yes, if you do like I did and stare at the dialog that’s supposed to list network printers for only 15 or 30 seconds, then give up and close it, you’re going to be going in circles. It would really help if that dialog actually did something to make it obvious that it was still searching the network. Well, hey, I’ve got it working now. I think I wound up installing some unnecessary software along the way, but no big deal.

And it’s nice to see that Canon still supports a five year old printer with drivers that work on the newest version of Mac OS. The printer is a PIXMA MX870, a fairly low-end network multi-function inkjet, but it’s held up really well and works fine under Windows 7, Windows 8, and Mac OS X.

MacBook SSD replacement, part three

The MacBook is up and running, with (pretty much) all my software installed and (probably) all the files I need copied over to the new drive. It’s definitely much faster than before. And it’s a much cleaner install, with a lot less crap in my ~/Library folder and elsewhere.

I left behind a few fairly big items, like VMWare Fusion, and my Windows XP VM, since I wasn’t really using it for anything, and I hadn’t paid to upgrade Fusion to a version that works on Yosemite. I don’t think I’ll bother buying the upgrade, since I really don’t have any need for Windows on the MacBook anymore.

And my MAMP stack is gone. I’ll probably want to get that set up again, but I don’t mind starting from scratch, since parts of my old MAMP stack were fairly out of date. I’ll need to do some research on the easiest way to set that up nowadays. I can probably use a guide like this one to get things going again.

As for the old drive, I just bought a $20 enclosure for it from Newegg. None of the enclosures I have now is USB 3.0, so I figured I should get a new one. I’ll hold on to the drive, as-is, for a while, then, after I’m sure I don’t need anything else off it, I’ll wipe it and start using it as a backup drive. Oh, and if the enclosure I just bought from Newegg is any good, I should probably buy a second one for the old drive from the ThinkPad.

I’m getting to the point now where I should really think about retiring some of the old drives that I have lying around the apartment. I’ve got maybe a half-dozen old drives, all under 200 GB, gathering dust. I guess they’re not doing any harm, but I should really get them together, wipe the oldest/smallest ones, and send them off to a recycler. Well, that’s a project for another day.

MacBook SSD replacement, part two

Yosemite is now installed, and I’m in the process of copying over data from the old drive to the new. That’s going to take some time, probably another couple of hours. Meanwhile, I went out to Home Depot and bought a precision screwdriver set that has the Torx bit that I need.

So now it’s back to the waiting game. Once the copying is done, I have a whole list of applications to install and configure. Then, I also need to decide if I want to use Trim Enabler. I’m pretty sure I do, even with the necessity of jumping through some hoops to use it on Yosemite. I also want to see if there’s an easy way to see if I need to run the performance restoration fix on my SSD. Since I’m pretty sure I have the most recent firmware, I don’t think I need it.

 

MacBook SSD replacement, part one

I decided to take the plunge today and replace my MacBook hard drive with one of the SSDs I bought last week. I had been going back and forth on whether to just copy the old drive to the new one and swap them, or to do a fresh install on the new drive, and then copy data and reinstall apps. After a lot of deliberation, I decided to do the fresh install. I’m not sure if I’ve ever even done a fresh install of OS X. I got my first OS X iBook in 2002, and I may actually still be using the same install from that, just upgraded and/or migrated over and over. So it’s time.

But so far it’s been a comedy of errors. First, I wanted to hook up the SSD to my ThinkPad so I could run the Samsung utility program on it, and make sure the firmware was up to date. I went ahead and hooked it up, using my BlacX dock, but the Samsung utility didn’t see it. I guess it only works on drives that are mounted internally. So I decided to just trust that it was in good shape and running the current firmware. (The other one was, and it’s reasonable to assume they came from the same batch.)

Next, I needed to make a bootable USB key with the OS X Yosemite installer. I didn’t save the installer after my upgrade, so I had to download it again. Then, I used DiskMaker X to create the USB installer. I got an error on that the first time I tried it, but I tried a second time, and it worked fine.

Once that was done, and I’d cleaned things up on the old drive and shut it down, I went through the work of unscrewing everything and replacing the drive. That was easy enough to do, with a little help from iFixit.

Then, I screwed everything together, booted from the USB key, and started the install. That went great, no issues. Until it was all done, and I saw that it was a 10.9 Mavericks install instead of a 10.10 Yosemite install. D’oh. Apparently, I spaced out and downloaded the Mavericks installer from the app store instead of the Yosemite installer, and didn’t notice it until after the install was done. So now I need to upgrade the Mavericks install to Yosemite. So I’m doing that now. It’s going to take a while to download, so this is really going to slow down the process. But it’s not the end of the world.

One other issue I’m having is that I don’t have the right kind of Torx screwdriver to remove the retaining posts from the old hard drive. That’s not a big deal, since the Samsung SSD seems to fit in there snugly without them. But I can’t fit the old drive in my BlacX dock with the screws still in it. So I’m putting it in a different enclosure instead, with the cover off, since I can’t slide it in with those screws sticking out. So that should be good enough to get the data over from the old drive to the new one, but I’m going to want to get those Torx screws out at some point, so I can fit the drive into an enclosure and use it as a backup drive.

Oh, and I guess the other error I made is that I’m not sure I got the right screws in the right holes when screwing the case back together, as apparently there are two slightly different kinds of 3.5mm screws, and I didn’t notice that, so not all the screws are quite flush, the way they should be. So I think I need to unscrew them, look at them more closely, then screw them back in correctly, so everything is nice and neat again.

Meanwhile, I’ve got some time to kill while Yosemite downloads. Sigh. Well, it’s time for lunch anyway.

SSD #1 installed

My two new Samsung SSDs arrived in the mail yesterday, and I set up the first one today. I used it to replace the drive in my old ThinkPad. It was pretty easy to clone the old drive to the new one, using Samsung’s software, and a BlacX dock that I had sitting around gathering dust. It took about 20 minutes to copy everything over. Replacing the drive itself wasn’t too hard; the ThinkPad is pretty easy to open up. (I expect a little more trouble with the Mac.)

The machine is definitely faster and quieter with the SSD than it was before. But it’s not an amazing difference, really. At least not that I’ve noticed so far. I’ll need to mess around with it some more and see how much snappier it feels with normal use.

I’m not sure if I’ll get around to replacing the MacBook drive before the weekend. I really want to, but I know it’s going to take some time to get it done. Definitely looking forward to it though, as I think the SSD will make a big difference with the MacBook.

Thanksgiving weekend

I spent Thanksgiving day with a friend’s family. It was a good day, but pretty loud and chaotic, which is to be expected when you put sixteen people (including three small children) together in a house on Thanksgiving.

I spent Black Friday home alone, working on some personal organization. I almost managed to update the map on my TomTom GPS, but hit a snag when the new map was too large to copy to the device. That led me on a wild goose chase that ended when I found a notice on the TomTom site that said they were aware of the problem and working on a solution. But it was a fair amount of wasted time. (I’d thought, at one point, that maybe they’d purposely made the new map file just a little too large, to force people with older devices to upgrade to newer ones, but apparently it was an honest mistake.)

I also continued my work on getting stuff out of Backpack and into Evernote. I’m almost done there, and I should be able to close down the Backpack account soon. I’m getting enough stuff into Evernote now that I’m starting to think about how I’m organizing things, and what kind of adjustments I should make. I read the book Evernote Essentials yesterday, and also listened to a podcast with a lot of Evernote tips, so I could hopefully stimulate my brain a bit and come up with some good ideas on how to best use Evernote. I found both the book and the podcast helpful, though there weren’t any earth-shattering revelations in either of them.

I had a page in Backpack titled “GTD”, and I was using it to keep, basically, GTD-related lists, like a “someday/maybe” list, a “waiting for” list, project lists, and stuff like that. But I stopped doing anything resembling a weekly review quite some time ago, and I haven’t really been keeping up the lists. So, for instance, one list item was to use a $10 Best Buy Reward Zone certificate before it expired… in 2011. So I’m not entirely sure how best to clean up and re-structure those lists in such a way that I’ll be more likely to use them.

I really like the general idea of consolidating as much stuff as I can in Evernote, and cutting down on complexity a lot, eliminating OneNote, Backpack,  DevonThink, and whatever else I can. But I also noticed that Things for iPhone and iPad is free this weekend, and the Mac version is 30% off. So maybe keeping my GTD stuff in Things would be a good idea, while using Evernote for reference material and archives. But Things doesn’t have a PC version, or a web version, so I’d only be able to access it on the Mac and iOS. Which probably isn’t really a problem, given the way I’m using my computers these days. (Also, “Things” is a horrible product name, and tends to produce a lot of irrelevant (but amusing) results when Googled.) I’ve already downloaded the iPhone and iPad versions, and have played around a bit, and like what I see. I’m planning on downloading the trial version of the Mac software today, so I can see if it’s going to work for me or not.

Meanwhile, I just ordered two 500GB Samsung SSDs, for $189 each, with the general idea of replacing the old-fashioned drives in my MacBook and ThinkPad. I’ve been meaning to do this for some time now, and I kept putting it off. But I keep hearing, over and over, from friends and random internet sources, about how much difference an SSD will make, so I finally had to go ahead and do it. So next weekend’s project will likely be replacing either the MacBook or ThinkPad drive. Or possibly both, if I have enough time.

I’m also thinking about going to NYC to see The Imitation Game, the new movie about Alan Turing. I don’t think I’ll talk myself into doing that today, given how cold it is outside right now. But maybe tomorrow, if it’s a little warmer.