Tomatoes, Conquering and Computers

Haven't posted for 3 weeks.

Would have a good excuse if I said I hadn't been on a computer at home during those 3 weeks. Yep, I'd have a good excuse if that was the case.

Was sick for a week - spent a lot of time on the computer, but playing Civ IV. Nice thing about Civ IV is it's like TV - you dont' need a brain to do it, and you can set it on an easy setting and conquer the world with a little bit of competition, but nothing to serious.

And then there was getting everything transferred over to the new computer, backed up off the old computer, backed up again, and then "wiping" the old computer. Last thing you want to do is give away all your financial info and passwords.

You could just delete everything, and use a program like Eraser to overwrite it, or your could reformat your hard disk and start from scratch. Or you could be extra cautious - and run a program to like DBAN (Darik's Boot and Nuke). You boot to a floppy / CD, and then shred the data on your hard drive, by writing over it in multiple different ways to not only destroy the data, but all evidence of the data. There's the simple write 0's, write 1's. There's the Canadian Royal Mounted Police of writing "I like horsies" followed by "I'm a Lumberjack, but I'm OK". Guess they tried just having the horses gallop all over the hard drives, but that did a better job of rendering them useless than erasing the data.

Of course, the US Millitary / FBI / CIA and NSA (No Such Agency) have their own standards. All of those are variations of recording "24" onto the hard disk, followed by CSPAN. Why does it need to record CSPAN as well as 24? Turns out that dialogue of Jack Bauer is not truly random, with certain phrases, such as "WHO ARE YOU WORKING FOR" and "Make no mistake, if you do not tell me , I will kill you." Good thing is that while the political BS on CSPAN is even more repetitive, politicians try hard to put their 100 phrase vocabulary together in different ways, so the combination of 24 and CSPAN are particularly effective in erasing all useful electronic data.

But back to my story. What I did - delete all the files, and ran Eraser to remove all evidence of them. Run DBAN to shread everything on the hard disk. Re-format the hard disk. And only then re-install Windows XP and the software the came with the computer / is free.

Just re-install Windows XP. My computer came with the original Windows XP - not even SP1, let alone SP2. So, re-installing goes something like this:

1. Install Windows XP from original CD
2. Reboot, activiate, run Updater.
3. Reboot, click "No" for logging onto .NET, run Updater.
4. Reboot, click "No" for logging onto .NET, run Updater.
5. Reboot, click "No" for logging onto .NET, run Updater.
6. Reboot, click "No" for logging onto .NET, run Updater.
7. Reboot, click "No" for logging onto .NET, run Updater.
8. Reboot, click "No" for logging onto .NET, run Updater.
9. Reboot, click "No" for logging onto .NET, run Updater.

Yep - 9 rounds to get all patches / updates / stuff re-installed. 9 clicks to tell .NET to go f-off. Actually only took a couple of hours. Then it was tracking down good free anti-virus (PCMag recommended AVG, so I went with that), Spyware (Ad-Aware and Spybot Search & Destroy also recommended by PCMag, and I've used them off / on for years), and other freeware (OpenOffice looks pretty cool - free software to replace Word / Excel / PowerPoint).

Get the old computer setup and ready to give away, at which point I realize that it's now about 2-3 times faster than it was "pre-cleanup", since it is no longer gunked up by lots of little software programs running in the background, doesn't have 5 years of accumulated electronic dust causing it be slow. If the house was bigger, I might have kept it as a file / print server someplace. Good thing about having a smaller house is the forced minimization.

Which brings us to spring cleaning - started that yesterday. Me in the garage, Nava in her studio. I filled up half a large garbage bags with junk / old stuff don't really need anymore, and Nava discovered the carpetting she's always detested in her studio. Need to go out and do the other half of the garage in a few minutes.

Got the garden in last weekend, after prepping it the weekend before. Good thing about Sunnybail (it's supposed to be Sunnyvale, but with a bit more global warming, we'll be underwater, so I'm betting on Sunnybail) is the free compost at the recycling center. As much as you want, if you're a resident. Now, the Crudolla, which is over 10 years old now, and not as good looking as it is in the "Cast of Characters" over at CherkyB, can hold 8 five-gallon buckets of compost in the trunk. A couple of hours and 3 trips later, I had 120 gallons of compost on the garden, plus some basic fertilizer and green sand mixed in. There's something about me and 3 - maybe it's a mild case of OCD or something:

• Number of trips to Sunnybail recycling for compost?
• Number of times I turn the soil over each spring to mix in the compost / amendments
• Number of unique ways I erased the data off the old computer
• Number of tires with hubcaps on the Crudolla
• Number of jokes CherkyB will add relating 3...

Bad thing about going to the nursery on a Saturday afternoon, on the way back from the recyling center with a load of compost, is Saturday afternoon is when the amateur gardeners go there. You get looked at funny for showing up with gardening cloths, let alone dirty gardening clothes caused you've been gardening. And their mozing around like cows grazing in the pasture - no real purpose or process, and they just stand where they want. And leave their carts blocking the isles. And their idiot kids just stand around and you have to ask them to let you by. Saturday mornings 9am is much better. 7am would be better, but then I'd have to leave a note for Nava to find when she wakes up...

Got some tomatos, and peppers and spices. Planted a couple of handfulls of old sugar pea seeds - figured they were old, so I'd overplant by a bunch and see if anything sprouted. With all the freezes we had over the winter, had to replace the pressure reducer that hooked the dripper system up to the sprinkler controller - it froze and cracked a couple of months back, which explained the mad dash outside @ 5:30am to turn off that sprinkler branch when it came on and was shooting water all over the side of the house and the master bedroom window.

And the soil still has a good whiff of funkiness to it, so my jokes about dead bodies with the neighbors are keeping up my "nice but a little off" rep in the neighborhood.

2.5 Days on Vista

The new desktop arrived on Thursday - Velocity Micro Vector GX. VM builds some very nice equipment, using quality components (aka you gonna pay a few dollars more than a Dell, but you'll get more reliable components as well). The new desktop has:

• Intel Core 2 Duo 6400 (2.13GHz / 2M cache) CPU / 965 Chipset & Motherboard
• 2G RAM
• 320GB 300MB/sec 16MB cache SATA hard-disk
• Lite-Scribe CD/DVD burner (you can laser "etch" a label onto the CD/DVD)
• nVidia GeForce 7600 GS

Oh - and Windows Vista now has some built in benchmarks to score your system overall, so you can know how well it is for gaming or business info, etc.

Component	What is rated	Subscore
Processor	"calcuations per second"	5.1
RAM	Memory operations per second	5.5
Graphics	Desktop performance for Windows Aero	4.7
Gaming Graphics	3D business and gaming graphic performance	4.0
Primary Hard Disk	Disk data transfer rate	5.4
Overall	Windows Experience Index	4.0

Basically, I now own a computer that's worth more than my 1996 Corolla.

And it comes with Vista.

So far, so good. Vista looks and feels nice, so no complaints there.

The new "Windows Easy Transfer" software seems more user friendly and controllable than the old "Files and Settings Transfer", but is equally annoying. Well, it's annoying if you don't want to transfer absolutely everything, or have some of your stuff in non-standard places. Problem isn't that it misses stuff, it's that if you want to just transfer your settings and email folders, you can't say that. Besides saying what you want, you also have to go back and say what you don't want. And after 2 tries, where besides saying don't copy "My Pictures" and "My Music", I also had to de-select the folders by explicit paths. Seems that unless everything is in standard places, it doesn't consider "My Pictures" to be "My Pictures". Or, the left hand of windows doesn't know what the right hand of windows is doing, since when I open "My Documents", it shows me "My Pictures", even though they're both not on my C: disk, as that was filling up...

Trying to find a better program on the web, seems like none of them are very popular. In between the 1st and 2nd try of WET, I stopped by Fry's a got a USB Transfer Cable, so the 2 computers can talk @ 480MB/sec, instead of just the 100MB/sec over the network. Belkin one said it came with free Laplink PCSync software - sounded like it might help. Not - it's for *keeping* 2 computers in sync on a set of files / folders, not moving stuff to a new computer. Of course, the details on the Mil Spec plastic package (I sweat plastic packages now-a-days are designed to withstand nuclear detonations within 100ft, but would take even a 10 year old 10 minutes to open) didn't say what PCSync was for. Yes, CherkyB, it didn't say PC Migration. It also didn't say it could withstand a nuclear detonation within 100ft...

But, I'm smarter than your average cockroach (note - "average", not above average, and singular - I bet a small cabal of cockroaches could keep me guessing), so I managed to move Nava's Outlook Express folders, IE favorites and cookies, and get most of the programs we care about install.

Tried to get my Outlook folders over - copying wasn't the problem, new desktop didn't come with Microsoft Office, so no outlook, just Windows Mail (replaces Outlook Express - consider it Outlook Express 7 or so - a bit nicer, but nothing to blog about). Try to read the old Outlook folders into Windows Mail - can't do it. Search the web and find out that it's can do it, but only if you have Outlook installed.

Now, if I had Outlook installed, would I really want to use Windows Mail (aka Outlook Express 7)?

Not to be put-off, I go to http://www.microsoft.com/, and find a trial download of MS Office that's good for 60 days. Have a brain fart, and click on the "Home and Student" version, so the one I get doesn't have Outlook, just Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. Not sure who decides that PowerPoint or OneNote are more important than Outlook, but there it is. I'm sure it was listed someplace, but not on the page I was on / downloading from.

Fine - I'll try a different way (this is why I get paid the big bucks. Well, I like to think it's big bucks). So - if Windows Mail will not import from Outlook "natively", but will from Outlook Express, let's try going from Outlook to Outlook Express on the old computer and from there into Windows Mail (since OE to WM worked for Nava's mail). And since Windows Mail appears to be just a big update to Outlook Express, I bet Outlook Express on the old computer can import from Outlook.

Yep - 10 minutes later, I had the files into Outlook Express, copied the Outlook Express hidden storage folder. (hint - C:\Documents and Settings\\Local Settings\Application Data\Identities\{}\Microsoft\Outlook Express) to the new computer (doesn't matter where on the new one, as you "import" from it)

Show Nava how all of her email is now on Vista under Windows Mail - takes her about 10 seconds to spot that while I did specially migrate her contacts, it dropped the mail lists. Contacts can be exported in a CSV file, but it won't include any lists. OK - back to the old computer, find the Outlook Express "Windows Address Book", copy that over as well, and import it into Windows Mail.

All of this should have been handled by Windows Easy Transfer, except the 1st try, after twelve hours, it was still only 2% done (it'll find every file / folder on every attached disk and both evaluate it, which slows it down, and most likely copy it, which slows it down). 2nd try, when I went back and de-selected all the pictures and all the music, and had specifically told it to just do a few folders that should contain the Outlook / Outlook Express / Internet Explorer stuff, after 4 hours, it was still on 1% done, so was also brain dead.

Still have ~30GB of pictures and music to copy, but at 100MB/s, that should only take 300 seconds. De-rate by another factor of 20x for slower disk / computer, 6000 seconds. That's 100 minutes. Less than 2hours.

That means the Windows Easy Transfer could have copied all of the music, pictures and video 6 times overnight the first night, but only got 2% done. Let's see - 2% in 12 hours is 4% per day, or 25 days to migrate from an old computer to a new computer. Ridiculous. Even if it's not "linear", and the 25 days would have sped up at some point, and been only 5 days, still ridiculous. Or with the

But, I like the new machine. I don't mind doing stuff by hand - it's kind of fun, and you can learn some stuff while doing it. And this way, I don't have to worry about Windows, or some other program, copying programs or Windows Registry settings, or other stuff that might pollute or otherwise slow down the new machine.

Cause it is much, much faster!

I think technology is making me bipolar...

Received the replacement for the previous laptop that died - it was a 500m, which was a ~4yr old design. They said they didn't have that model around anymore, so would give me something somewhat newer. The replacement is a Dell e1405 - a very good, middle-of-the-road laptop:

• Intel® Core™ Duo T2050 (1.60GHz, 2MB L2 Cache, 533 MHz FSB), 100G,
• 1G of RAM
• 14" WXGA+
• 7200RPM hard disk
• 8X CD/DVD dual-layer burner
• 802.11 b/g
• Bluetooth

A very nice system overall. Processor is 1 generation behind what I was going to buy, and I'd like a discrete graphics card, and WSXGA, instead of WXGA+. But hey - it's a ~$1200 system I got for free.

When I signed into my Dell account, to register it and link it to my account, I found out that it comes with a 3yr "Complete Care" warranty. Yep - old laptop died ~1.5yrs out of warranty, and the replacement, thank you very much Dell for just giving us a replacement, the replacement has a 3 year "Complete Care" warranty, which covers:

• Liquid spilled
• Dropped
• Electric surge
• Broken LCD
• Accidental breakage

Doesn't cover damage in fire, theft, intentional damage (they even mention hammer marks), or normal wear.

PFA. The ~$1200 replacement has a $300 warranty.

So - that was the highlight of the week.

On the same day the laptop arrived, also got the replacement monitor. 2nd replacement, as the first one was "torqued". New one looks great, sits almost perfect level. Very happy. Not. After resolving the initial display issues of hooking up the monitor while the computer is running, the display mostly behaves nicely. Except it's a 20" monitor that should have 1600x1200 resolution, and we can't get it w/ the DVI input.

Call Samsung tech support - they walk me through a couple of things, and then pass me on to Level2 support. They walk me through a few more, and then decide it's the ATI Radeon 9550 video card I have, as the monitor will display 1600x1200 with the analog video cable, just not with the DVI capable.

I'll buy that. Update the ATI driver / software, re-boot. No luck. Re-install the Samsung monitor driver. No luck. Maybe it's a software problem, and I need to do the Microsoft Windows trick of rebooting, and while the machine is booting, crawling into the room, naked, begging for pity from the software gods. No luck.

Open up the desktop, remove the ATI card, and put back in the old Nvidia one (no DVI). Analog 1600x1200 resolution w/ out any problems (no duh). Remove all ATI software. Remove all evidence there was any ATI software (regedit, remove Programs/ATI*). Download the latest ATI software. Find out it wants Microsoft .Net Framework 2.0. Download and install that. Download security updates for .Net. OK - all set to re-install, so turn desktop off, swap cards, make sure monitor is off, turn desktop on.

Go outside for a smoke, with the computer booting, but the monitor connected by DVI, but not turned on. Come back in, power the monitor on, trying to make sure that ATI card sees the Samsung Monitor as a new monitor, and tries to set itself up for it. OK - resolution defaults to 800x640. Go to resize - hey, instead of having 20 random sizes above 1280x1024, now there's only two - 1440x1080 and 1600x1200. That's promising. Try 1600x1200. Same damn problem - you see 1280x1024, and can "pan" left/right or up/down to the see the remainder of the screen. Check ATI software, and it's sure that the Samsung can only display 1280x1024 natively.

Which is exactly what it said 2hrs before I started the whole "re-install" process. But, at least when I talk to the ATI tech support folks on Monday (no weekend phone support), I can say "yes, I updated all the drivers and software", and "yes, I then did it again, after removing all previous versions", and "yes, I did crawl into the room naked and groveling", so maybe that'll speed-up the process of them giving me to someone who may be able to help.

New laptop working fine - I wanted to remove the free McAfee security tools, and install Norton. I've used Norton for years, and they've got this hook into me - every time I need to re-subscribe, I can pay something like $15 more and just update to the latest / greatest security and utility suite. And you can use it on 3 computers. And I like to have all the computers in the house running the same basic software (OS, security, office tools), so that it's easier to support and network them, and if I screw something up on one, I know how to make the same mistake on the others ones.

Amazingly, McAfee pissed Nava up more than Norton did, so she demanded I remove it. I was pretty sure she would go with the "change as little as possible" on the new laptop, given the recent tech problems we've had. Which would be a shame, as futzing with electronics is one of the things I really enjoy. Nothing like getting into the guts of hardware or software, finding the little ways of make it do things slightly better (OK, slightly different, but to me it seems better). Having another screw or widget to add to the box of "wonder where that came from" parts.

But, since the monitor / video card didn't agree to play nice together within ~4hrs of labor, fun hobby turned into a chore.

Now you know why I don't fix my own car. If the computer crashes, odds are it won't kill anyone. OK - Nava may kill me, but no civilians. (Statistics say if you are killed, it'll likely be by a loved one.)

Just When You Thought It Was Safe To...

Hate Dell.

Had 2 problems on Saturday, as LavaN describes here
- the "back-light" in our Samsung Syncmaster 204T, after a bit of vigorous dusting. Well - average dusty, and then vigorous pulling to try to get it to raise back to the right height.

Good news - it's under warranty, and Samsung offers a replacement program (same or better monitor, you get the new one and send back the old one, which they fix and pass on to the next person).

Then there was the home laptop - Dell Inspiron 500m. The damn "loose" power cord finally caused it to die. Nope - not the AC Adapter, but the DC Jack it plugs into (little metal cube at about 1 o'clock from the fan). Damn Dell "advanced" power-supply, that guarentees you can't use someone elses, as there's a chip in the AC Adapter that talks w/ the laptop, and won't recharge the battery unless they say Howdy to each other. Unlike most AC Adapters, that slip onto a metal pin, since the Dell needs 3 connections (power, ground and signal), the metal pin is replaced by a plastic protrusion, which has connections on inside and outside. Kind of like a cross between a coax and a power plug.


And the AC adapter part slides onto it, connecting on the outside of the ring, inside of the ring, and the pin in the middle. Well - that's what it's supposed to do. Only has 3 problems:

1. The AC Adapter plugs "straight" into the back of the laptop, instead of using an angled plug that's less prone to wearing out. Don't know why the Dell ones fail for me, while the IBM ones I use at work don't, but they do. See Exhibit #2.





2. Don't know why, but the either the adapter plug expands, or the DC Jack end contracts, cause the combo loosened up after the 1st year. Power cord kept falling out on it's own - you'd get the low battery alarm, and then notice that the power plug was just sitting on your leg instead of powering the laptop.
   
3. Plastic - somewhere between styrofoam and balsa wood for strength. Didn't last. Broke off. Caused short. Caused fire / melting components. Caused laptop to no longer get power. Caused laptop to break.

Since the laptop was >1 year out of warranty, I figured I'd take it apart and see how bad the damage was, and if I could potentially fix it. Motherboard looked fine, but the DC Jack was deformed, and clearly smelled of burning.

So - I took the hard drive out, opened up the desk top, slapped on a 2.5" IDE to 3.5" IDE converter, and booted up the desktop to recover the data. Now we run into problem #4 - if you use the "HDD Password" (aka Hard Disk Drive Password) to prevent thieves (or at least hinder non hacker types) from being able to use your laptop if it's stolen, it also makes the hard drive non-readable in any other system, until you disable the password.

Google it - find out there's a few DOS utilities for helping do this. Go try them out - they say I have the right HDD Password, but can't disable it. I take a guess and figure maybe if I get the "Master" (instead of my User password), I'd be able to overcome this, so I fire off a note to Dell support.

Get a reply the next day from Dell support, which said

1. The laptop is out of warranty


2. But, because they give excellent support, if I want to send it in, they'll gladly take a look at it , and let me know how much to fix it.

Now, I know the answer to #2, unless I get lucky and get a service technician who's hands don't drag on the ground. Default answer is the mother board is bad, and it'll need to be replaced. $435 plus labor.

Don't want that - I want the $20 DC Jack replaced. If it works, great. If it doesn't, frack the machine, I'll get a new one. But this isn't what my email to support was about. All I wanted to know was did Dell ever set the Master HDD Password, and if so, what was it, so I could disabled the User HDD Password.

So I reply to their reply saying:

1. Previous reply unacceptable
   
2. I don't want a fix or even a diagnosis
   
3. All I want is to get in touch with someone who's heard of HDD Passwords before, and can find out if they did set a Master HDD password, and if so, what is it.

Get a reply late today that best thing would be to call and talk to a technical support person directly, so it doesn't take a long series of email exchanges to resolve. But, I can try email again if I really want / need to.

Call up Dell tonight, and while I'm waiting, take the HDD out of my work laptop, and slip the HDD I'm trying to "unlock" into the work laptop. Boot, get the password prompt, type in the password and it goes through - aka the password storage wasn't scrambled, so maybe the HDD is fine. Since my home laptop HDD is for a very different system, the work laptop BIOS nicely informs me I'm crazy, and asks me if I'd like to go into BIOS Setup instead of trying to boot. Exactly what I want. Try to disable the User HDD Password, and the IBM BIOS Setup Utility tells me I can't do that without first entering / unlocking with the Master HDD Password. Try every password I can imagine I could have set the Master HDD Password to, to no avail.

By this time, I've gotten thru to the first level of Dell support, and have been basically told to GFY. Push back and the support tech says he shouldn't even be talking to me, as he's just a "home / home business rep", and can't see my records, as I purchased it through their Business group. Cool - this laptop was part of a "home PC program" thru my work. Cool part is the Business techs tend to be a bit more savy.

Get thru to Business support group, explain my problem to the guy, going back to the home laptop being totally dead, due to a melt down in the power system, and explain to him that all I'm trying to get from Dell support is if they ever set a Master HDD Password on these machines, and if so, what the heck is it. This was a fun process, as the Business support tech wasn't just a script reader, like the first two I dealt with on this issue, but knew less about these things then I did. So I walked him through how what a HDD Password was for, how it's setup. How I should be able to disable it, but it's not working, and the BIOS utility is telling me I need the Master HDD Password.

This process takes about 30 minutes, as the tech support guy chats with me for 2-3 minutes, taking notes, and then going off to talk with some more senior one, and coming back with either more questions, or things to try that I tried 3 days ago.

After the 3rd or 4th round of this, the tech comes back and says "the whole reason you're doing this is because of the laptop not working. Tell me again how it's not working." So I go into the story, in more details, including my wife using it at the time, low battery beep, plugging in the cord, no joy, then burning smell and scream from the Mrs. (LavaN that is). Tell him what I tried to get after that, and how it always comes back as the laptop ain't getting no juice. Which is why I opened it up, and am trying to download the data onto the desktop.

Off again to chat, back online, making sure that no one was hurt, there was no fire or anything. Says they have an unusual response.

1. They never set Master HDD Passwords, so don't know what it is, so from here forward, there's nothing they can do to help me with that.


2. But, they are concerned that the laptop failed in this way, and if I'm willing to accept that they might not be able to give me an identical system, they would like to send me out a replacement, and one that I should be able to plug the existing hard drive into and boot and have all my data.

The replacement may take 2-3 weeks to get here, as Inspiron 500m / 600m / 700m systems haven't been built for a while, but he thinks they should be able to find one and get it out to me pretty quick. No cost to me. Sorry for the problems.

So - just when I thought it was safe to really start hating Dell, they do this.