It feels SO good to finally get the re-vamp of Digital Media Thoughts launched, with the name changed to Digital Home Thoughts, a new template, and hooked into our new forums. It took a lot of work from a lot of people (Fabrizio, Jorj, Janak, myself) and was on the heels of a double-server hack, so my life has gone from massively stressful to just a trickle of stress. Up next, migrating Pocket PC Thoughts…
I hope everyone has a very merry Christmas and happy holidays! Me, I’m still migrating servers in between family events. I can’t wait for life to return to normal…
DNS issues with domains are, frankly, some of the nastiest, ugliest Web-based problems you can have. The reason why is that they involve computers that you can’t control directly (such as the 13 demi-god root servers). I won’t go into the ugly details about what happened with a family member’s personal domain today, but suffice it to say that it was one of this DNS situations where a DNS server wasn’t giving out the right information, and that had the chain reaction of breaking all sorts of things, including email. I spent 45+ minutes trying to convince their tech support people that something was wrong with one or more of their DNS machines (they couldn’t see it because they were connected to a different DNS), but I finally decided to try a long-shot and I added a new record (a CNAME) and voila, within an hour everything was working again. So, when faced with bizarre non-updating DNS records, create a new entry to force the update process to kick off again.
VIOLANTE – Crystal Alison (nee Hehr)
March 2, 1976 – December 12, 2007
“It is with profound sadness that Crystal’s family announces her passing after a courageous battle with cancer. Crystal passed away on Wednesday, December 12, 2007 at the age of 31 and will be missed immensely by those whose lives she touched.
Crystal was born in Calgary and attended Mount Royal College, graduating in 2004 with a Bachelor of Applied Communications (Public Relations). She met the love of her life, Anthony in 1999 and they have been inseparable since. Crystal loved music, dancing and traveling but her biggest joy and passion was Anthony and Mattea, family and friends. People were drawn to Crystal because of her passion for life and her magnetic personality; her motto was “love always, live life and no regrets.”
Besides her loving husband Anthony, Crystal is survived by their daughter Mattea René; mother Mavis (Gary) Nugent of Creston, B.C.; her sister Holly Hehr of Calgary, AB; father-in-law Domenik (Patrizia) Violante of Kingston, ON; mother-in-law, Barbara Violante (Bryon) of Chestermere, AB; adoptive father Murray Colclough (Jo-Anne) of Calgary, AB; grandmother Mary Hehr of Caroline, AB; and numerous extended family and friends.
A Celebration of Crystal’s Life will be held at McINNIS & HOLLOWAY’S Chapel of the Bells (2720 Centre Street North) on Sunday, December 16, 2007 at 2:30 p.m. In lieu of flowers, tributes may be made directly to Rosedale Hospice c/o Hospice Calgary, Suite 900 833 – 4 Avenue S.W., Calgary, AB T2P 3T5, Telephone: (403) 263-4525, www.hospicecalgary.com. Forward condolences through www.mcinnisandholloway.com. or visit www.loveforcrystal.com.
In living memory of Crystal Violante, a tree will be planted at Fish Creek Provincial Park by McINNIS & HOLLOWAY FUNERAL HOMES, Chapel of the Bells, 2720 CENTRE STREET NORTH Telephone: (403) 276-2296.”
I’m in the midst of working on several things for Crystal’s funeral, and wouldn’t you know it, one of my servers got hacked. Not just hacked, reamed. I can’t receive email on any of my personal or Web site accounts (just my Thoughts Media account), and none of my team members can receive email either on their respective Thoughts Media accounts. It’s a complete friggin’ disaster. Thankfully Jorj and Janak are helping me with this, but the timing couldn’t be worse – we have to burn the box (abandon it and re-format it), so now my “I want to switch to a new server” has become “I need to switch to a new server right now.” What a day…
A few minutes ago Ashley called and told me that our friend Crystal passed away. She had been in a local hospice for the past couple of weeks, and her body finally succumbed to the cancer that was ravaging it. The world is a darker place today without Crystal in it – she had such a light, such a love of life, such vibrancy. Crystal loved butterflies, so the above photo is for her.
Cherish your loved ones today and always – you never know when life will turn your world upside down.
A couple of weeks ago, I ordered a Dell Vostro 1000. Then I cancelled my order to buy an HP instead. Then I re-placed my order when the HP sold out before I could order it. When the Vostro arrived, right on schedule, it was pretty much what I expected when I unpacked it: big, black, bulky. It was a business machine after all, and I wasn’t buying it for looks. What I wasn’t prepared for, however, was how bad the 15.4″ LCD screen was.
I haven’t seen a screen that bad in years! It had a matte finish, which I was expecting, but the back-lighting was uneven and it was the most dull, lifeless screen I’d ever seen. Everything was also vaguely out of focus. I wasn’t expecting it to be that bad, and even though this machine was only going to be used for Web access and basic word processing, I wasn’t willing to grimace every time I used it. I figured I’d give it a few days of use to see if my initial gut reaction faded, so I began the long process of patching the Windows XP OS it shipped with (why Dell doesn’t ship the machine with the latest patches is beyond me). After getting it patched up, I uninstalled the Google junk it came with – I consider Google Desktop Search to be no different than the trial versions of the other applications that Dell’s consumer laptops ship with, and I thought the Vostro machines were supposed to be junkware free?
I used the included Dell Support software to check for newer drivers and whatnot. It’s bizarre that Dell’s support software tool isn’t useful enough to actually report to the user what version of a certain driver they have and then report if there’s an updated version or not. Instead, you have to go the driver page, look at the date on each driver, and guess if you think your Dell computer has that version or not. Ridiculous, no? I saw a few drivers and a BIOS release that looked quite new, and seeing as how Dell shipped me the Vostro lacking the past half-year or so of Windows XP updates, I figured the drivers might be equally out of date. I installed the drivers, then got to the BIOS update and let it run as well. At the end of the BIOS update, the laptop rebooted, and I sat staring at a black screen. Nothing came up after the reboot. I held the power button down, which forced the power off, and booted it up again – nothing. I then pulled the battery, left it for a few minutes, and tried again – nothing.
I was baffled as to how Dell could offer me a BIOS update that fried the machine, but I called tech support and they arranged for a courier to come and pick the unit up – this is after the tech told me that I had damaged the machine myself by updating the BIOS, but they’d repair it anyway. The courier was supposed to come on Friday, but didn’t arrive until today – the laptop is now out of my hands and off to be repaired.
Technically I still own the Dell Vostro, but as soon as it gets back from tech support, I’ll be calling customer service and sending it back for a refund. The poor-quality screen is the biggest reason, but the way the machine tanked after the BIOS update is the rotten cherry on top of this whole situation.
I think the above questions say it all. I’ve been answering an endless stream of questions on YouTube after posting a bunch of Zune videos, and with some of them, I feel like I’m an AOL forum moderator in 2001 fielding questions from people who are looking for the “Any” key. I don’t know how some of these people even manage to work a Web browser, let alone post a comment on YouTube…
No, that’s not just two sweaty men rolling around on a mat: it’s a screen capture (thanks SnagIt!) of the most recent episode of The Ultimate Fighter. Yup, I’m a fan. What’s notable is the fact that Rhapsody is a sponsor on the mat, and off-camera to the right is an Old Spice sponsorship spot. Rhapsody and Old Spice? Brands I actually recognize! The UFC is growing up. The era of Toyo Tires and Mickey’s Malt Liquor is coming to an end: the UFC has come into the next stage of its evolution, and as those multi-year sponsorship contracts expire, I expect to see the big brands start to capitalize on the audience that the UFC has so ably captured. I’ve read that among the highly-coveted 18 to 25 male demographic, the UFC is pulling in higher numbers than the NBA (I couldn’t find the source on that though). Where there are big numbers, the big sponsors aren’t far behind. Zune needs to get on board and ride that train…