Met the Champ once Again!!!

I was on vacation in Las Vegas and visited the Mayweather gym. Roger Mayweather was there. We had a great convo for about an hour.

Met the Champ Again!!!

Met the Champ!!!

Here's a photo of me and "Sugar" Shane Mosley.

Defrag Your Hard Drive

I returned off of vacation to find that my scheduled task for defragging my hard drive was failing on my machine. Come to find out, the defragging process had not been started for over three weeks. Scratching my head, I went to investigate why. Well, right before I went on vacation, I was prompted to change my Windows password (The company I work for has a 90-day change password policy). So, I changed it and thought nothing of it. As you know, in order to run a successful scheduled task for defragging, you must provide a username and password. If you change your Windows password, you must change your password for your defrag scheduled task as well. If you don't, your "Last Run Result" will display a FAIL!!!

Lesson learned: If you have a company password change policy, ensure you update you defrag password as well.

Magic Jack and Me...

I ordered Magic Jack a few months ago in order to get a cheaper rate for home-phone service. I originally had Skype but, their setup was a bit too much; if you did not want to be tethered to your computer. I heard that a person would be able to hook up a base unit with other extended phones with just one phone line. Needless to say, it worked out well; for a while.

I had (have) an old desktop that I was not using and decided to use it as a dedicated Magic Jack machine to route all of my calls through. I proceeded to put my old desktop on my existing network and access it via Remote Desktop.

One day, I decided I needed to access the old desktop Remotely while trying to setup my fax machine on the box as well. Well, low and behold, my Magic Jack was not working properly; meaning, I got a dial-tone but could not call out.

It took me a while to figure out the problem. Once I found out that in order for Magic Jack to continue working properly, I would not be able to access it Remotely while using the local resources on the box I was Remoting from. Once I changed the options to use it's own local resources, everything worked!

I'm guessing that the Magic Jack needs to use the local resources when Remoting in order to produce sound correctly.

Cat5e, Routers, and Crimpers OH MY!!!

I set out to wire my home instead of continuing with wireless. With all the potential interference of the microwave and wireless phone, I wanted to stop the madness.

I started by getting some Cat5e cable from a co-worker/friend of mine. I then borrowed a crimping tool from another co-worker/friend of mine. Needless to say, this saved me a lot of money. I am grateful to Carl and Victor for the hook-up.

Once I had all of the materials, I proceeded to the attic to drill holes and run the cables. Needles to say, the crawlspace can get quite tight (I've now gotta fix a small crack in the ceiling where my foot slipped and caved it in).

To speed up this story, I will give a few of my shortcomings; in which I solved. Here is a list of things to remember when going through the process:

• If when you plug in your network cable and there is some resistance, ensure you have crimped the RJ45 jack flush (mine wasn't flush, thus no connection)
• When hooking up to more than one router, ensure you disable your DHCP (all except your main router)
• If you have the money, hire someone to do it for you

I think I lost about 5 pounds while running that wire to and fro in the attic.

Palm Pre & EAS

I bought the Palm Pre a few weeks ago. I really like the phone, its UI (User Interface), and other features that are too many to be named. I ran into a problem getting my company's email loaded on my phone. When I went to add the Microsoft Exchange Account, I could not get logged in because of my company's non-trusted certificate.

When setting up an account, the Palm Pre does not ask if you would like to accept the non-trusted certificate. The Palm would just spit out a message that says, "No Trusted Root Certificate Authority." I Googled to see what would rectify the problem. Needless to say, I did not find the answer I was looking for.

So, to solve the problem, here is what I did. I actually navigated to my company's webmail Outlook Web Access via my Palm Pre and attempted to login there. Low and behold, I got the prompt to accept the "non-trusted" certificate; in which it somehow downloaded to my Palm Pre. I then went to setup my account on my Palm Pre again. Wh00t! I'm in. I can now receive my work-emails on my Palm Pre.

General

I'm having a heck of a time trying to get no-ip.com up and running on my Desktop at home. I would like to periodically log into my home computer to grab some music or just grab some files that I might want to check; and also, I would like to navigate to some websites that are websensed at work. I'm going to continue my efforts when I get home tonight.

It gets frustrating when you think you've followed all of the directions and still can't get the thing to work!

dynamic link library LIBEAY32.dll. ERROR!

After running Oracle SQL Developer, I would always get this error message:

What I did to get rid of it was to remove the LIBEAY32.dll file from the system32 folder. It seems that Oracle SQL Developer should've been looking for this .dll in another place; not in the system32 folder. At any rate, problem solved!

Michael Adkins

How to get the information you want.

I heard something interesting that made me say, "Hmm." There has been a lot of press about the use of waterboarding and how former VP Cheney said that because of their waterboarding tactics, the process of waterboarding saved a lot of US citizen's lives.

However, former Governor Ventura said that if waterboarding worked so well on Guantanamo prisoners and the like, why isn't our local law enforcement using it to save US citizen's lives?

That kind of statment can lead to a lot! So, one of my questions would be, how do we know, that local law enforcement is not already using this tactic.

XNA Gaming

On April 6th, 2009, CTXNA (Central Texas XNA) was launched. We had our first meeting to kick off this exciting journey. I'm totally stoked and pumped about developing games using XNA. Mark and Tim are the leaders of this grassroots organization. I think they have what it takes to get this thing off the ground. There were a total of 5 people that showed up; there would've been more but the others had prior commitments. Nevertheless, I think CTXNA will continue growing. We were told that only good things are destined to come. Like freebies from Microsoft!

I'm really looking forward to the collaboration with other developers. I believe this will help me with my "day" job. Mark is working on the website as we speak. I'm by no means proficient at game programming, but I have a willing heart to learn. I just hope I'm not the stumbling block for the rest of the team. At any rate, I believe we all have something to add.


Michael Adkins

Toolbox

I've been working in the .NET Framework 2008 and was attempting to add a component to a form via the toolbox. When I went to "Add Items" the IDE closed out completely! Mind you, I attempted this twice; thinking it was just a fluke. But, low and behold, it was not. So, I googled the problem, and come to find out, Microsoft is aware of the problem. The fix is to start up Visual Studio in "Safe Mode." You can do this by navigating to your Visual Studio command prompt and typing, "devenv /SafeMode." Needless to say, I did not feel safe. But, it worked! Symptom solved (not the actual problem). Google is your friend. :-)

Michael Adkins

User Interface

I was looking at the new User Interface for the upcoming Windows Mobile 6.5. I feel that it may rival the infamous IPhone User Interface; but will ultimately come up short. The fluidity of the IPhone is second to none! We live in a world of psychological obsolescence; dissatisfied with the old, in order to upgrade to the new.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Windows Mobile 6.5 will surpass the IPhone's UI. But at this point, I doubt it. There is no question that Windows Mobile does beat out the IPhone when it comes to usability. But I think we all love the bells and whistles of any new thing.

For the most part, we buy an automobile for its looks alone; forget about the safety features and performance! At any rate, I'm going to try out the new Windows Mobile 6.5 when it becomes available.

Generations

I just saw the most incredible thing.  Please watch this video; it will bring you back in the day and bring you up to the present.  It's about 10 minutes long but well worth it.  Too funny!

http://www.blackbottom.com/watch.php?%20%20v=BdXxuqt6rtt

Basic coding!

What's funny is that I've been preaching POCOs for all the time I've been at my present job. I liken programming to professional basketball. The basics and fundamentals of basketball are taught at an early age. When players get to the pro's, for the most part, they stop using the basic fundamentals; like boxing out to grab a rebound, cutting off the baseline and forcing their opponent back to the middle of the floor, etc...

The point is, you have very talented developers that would like to use the latest development tools and methods, but the basics will always pull you through. You can get yourself into uncharted territory when you attempt new things. Just ask Shaq when he tries to shoot a three-pointer when his skill level is really inside of the key.

This is not to say developers should not try new things, but try (and succeed) new things when you are not under a strict deadline.


Michael Adkins