Category: software

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.

some random apps

I’ve been trying to be careful about how many iOS apps I buy and/or download, since I’ve gotten to the point where I have a fairly ridiculous number of them in my library — a little over 250, based on the size of my “Mobile Applications” folder on my Mac. But there were a lot of holiday app sales over the past couple of weeks, so I gave in and bought a few things that I thought might be interesting.

First, I bought Launch Center Pro, which I’ve heard much about and seems like it could be really useful. I’ve played around with it a bit, and I can see where there’s some potential, but I haven’t really figured out how to do anything that interesting with it yet. I need to read up on it a bit; there’s some good stuff on MacStories that I should read.

Second, I picked up Day One, a popular journaling app. I’m not sure I really need an app like this, since I already write quite a bit on my blog, and keep track of a bunch of stuff in Evernote. But, hey, it was only a dollar. I think I might be able to do some interesting stuff with it, if I also pop for the Mac version, then set up Slogger and/or Sifttter. Both of these solutions seem to be a bit Rube Goldberg-ian, but they’re interesting.

And, finally, I bought Gneo, a task management app that can sync with Evernote. I’ve also been experimenting with Things again. I think there’s a fair chance that I’m going to give up on both of these, and just keep track of my tasks in Evernote directly, which is basically what I’m doing now, but I still feel like my system isn’t working as smoothly as I’d like. And I do realize that it’s easy to waste a lot of time messing with GTD software, rather than actually getting things done, but I don’t think I’m going to fall too far down that rabbit hole.

Between Launch Center Pro, IFTTT, Evernote, Drafts, and a few other apps and services, I think I really ought to be able to do some interesting things, linking apps together and automating stuff. But every time I think of something that would be useful, I can’t find an easy way to do it. Oh well, it’s all fun to play with anyway, even if I don’t actually accomplish anything useful!

Office 365 Home Premium

I’ve been going back and forth for a while now as to whether or not I wanted to sign up for an Office 365 Home subscription. I’ve been using a retail box version of Office 2010 on my desktop PC, and a HUP version of Office 2013 on my ThinkPad, so I’ve got both of those machines adequately covered. And I’ve never bothered with Office on my Mac. But the only office suite I had on the Mac was iWork ’08, which is obviously out of date. I’ve occasionally thought about updating to the new Mac App Store versions of Pages and Numbers, but I couldn’t talk myself into spending $20 each for them.

So instead I bought a key card for Office 365 Home for $60 from a sketchy third-party seller on Amazon. It worked, so now I have Office for Mac for a year, plus I can upgrade my desktop PC from Office 2010 to Office 2013 if I want. (And a bunch of extra space in OneDrive, and some Skype minutes.) I don’t know if I’ll want to renew it next year or not, but it should keep me out of trouble through 2015.

I’ve never actually used Office on the Mac. I’ve always relied on iWork, and before that, AppleWorks. I don’t do much word processing or spreadsheet work on the Mac, so that was always good enough. But it’ll be nice to have a “real” install of MS Office on my Mac, for those occasions when I really do need to work with an Excel file or (less likely) a Word or PowerPoint file.

I’m not really tempted to move away from Apple Mail to Outlook for my personal e-mail on the Mac. But I do have my company e-mail set up in Apple Mail too, and that’s an Exchange account, so maybe I should delete that from Apple Mail and use Outlook for that. It would make some sense, and certain things would probably be easier, but then I’d have to check two different mail programs. So I’m probably going to ignore Outlook for now.

I need to think about whether or not I have any use for the copious OneDrive space or the Skype minutes. Right now, I have DropBox and Google Drive installed on all my computers. I’m not sure I want to add the OneDrive client in there too; I don’t think it gives me much that I’m not already getting from Google Drive, except just more space. And I never come anywhere close to using up all the minutes on my Verizon plan, and I don’t need to make any international calls, so I’m not sure what I can do with those Skype minutes.

two-factor authentication and other worries

After reading this article earlier today, I panicked a little, since I couldn’t remember ever having seen a “recovery key” associated with my Apple account, nor could I find one in KeePass, 1Password, or Evernote. But, when I got home from work, I checked, and it turns out I’ve never enabled two-factor auth on my Apple account. And I do still know the answer to my security questions, though I’d never copied them over from KeePass to 1Password for some reason. (I’ve done that now.)

I was going to go ahead and enable two-factor authentication on my Apple account tonight, but I couldn’t quite make up my mind as to whether it would be a help or a hindrance. I need to think about it some more.

This also made me think about my Google account, and one particular thing I’d been meaning to do for a long time: make a local backup of my GMail data. About a year ago, I read about a tool called Gmvault, and made a note to install it on my desktop PC and start using it. But I never got around to it. Well, now that I’m on a bit of a GTD kick, I went ahead and made a new note about that and put it in my Evernote ‘inbox’. So now I’ve got gmvault installed on my PC, and I’m letting it run. It was easy enough to set up; it’s a pretty simple command-line tool. It looks like it’ll take a couple of hours to run. After the initial sync, it can apparently do incremental syncs, so if I can manage to remember to run it occasionally, I should be in good shape.

Occasionally, you read horror stories about someone losing access to their Apple account or their Google account for one reason or another, and getting caught up in the bureaucracy at those companies and not being able to get their account back. It’s kind of scary, how much of our data we trust to these guys. I try to keep track of everything I’d ever need to restore my access, if I ever get locked out, and I try to keep important stuff backed up locally, whenever I can. But there’s only so much you can do.

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.

a bit more on Evernote

I’m making good progress with my efforts to consolidate all my notes into Evernote. All of the notes from OneNote on my desktop PC have been copied over or deleted. And I’m working through my Backpack notes.

I’m still thinking about whether or not Evernote is a good choice for the long term. There’s some interesting stuff in this recent article from The Guardian.

Stuff I like:

  • “We don’t data-mine your information, we’re not selling you to anyone. Our fundamental belief is that we make money when our users say ‘we love this product and we want to pay for it’.”
  • “It takes longer to get started, but ultimately it gives us a shot at building a 100-year startup.”
  • “If a third-party developer makes something great that gives people a great experience, we make more money. Other companies have this love-hate relationship with developers. For us it’s just easy: it’s love.”

Stuff that I’m maybe a little worried about:

  • “We’re about work. Last year we made the decision to really focus on work. We don’t really talk about Evernote [as something] for your hobbies any more.”
  • “We’ve never changed our price: we launched seven years ago at $5 a month, but we realised a couple of years ago that it was the wrong price.”

So, basically, I’m glad to see that they’re thinking long-term, and trying to monetize via paid subscriptions rather than selling info to advertisers, and I’m glad to see that they’re still supportive of third-party developers. But I’m a little concerned that they’re focusing on business rather than personal use, and that they may be mucking with the subscription price next year.

Trimming the Costanza wallet

I must admit that I’ve been carrying a Costanza wallet for the last few years. Well, maybe not as bad as that, but really it’s a bit thick. I’ve been experiencing some pain in my left hip lately, and I think the overstuffed wallet may be a contributing factor. In addition to switching from my left pocket to my right, I also decided that it was time to trim down the wallet a bit.

I’ve been meaning to get rid of all my loyalty cards and replace them with an app on my phone, but never quite got around to it. So I went ahead and did that today. I looked at a few apps, including Key Ring and Card Star, which seem to be the two most popular. I also realized that Red Laser, which I already had on my phone, can be used to store loyalty cards. So I started with Red Laser, and that seemed to work fine, but I decided to mess around a bit more, and tried Stocard. It has a nice and simple interface, and had no trouble scanning any of my cards. So I think I’m going to stick with it for now. I used it for the first time today at the supermarket, and the cashier had no trouble scanning the code off the phone screen, so that’s good. I’ve got about a dozen cards in the app, so that’s a dozen cards that aren’t in my wallet anymore.

I wish I could get rid of some more cards though. My CostCo card, for instance, has a mag stripe on it, and I have to show it at the door when I go in, so I guess I can’t get rid of it. I looked at the CostCo iPhone app, thinking maybe it could be used in place of the card, but apparently not. Oh well. And I can’t really do anything about the “buy 12 coffees, get one free” card from the bakery down the street. Or my credit cards, though I’m hoping Apple Pay will take care of that problem in a few years.