steven n fettig's Jitterin' Thoughts

Note: I'll try to update this post if I resolve the issue.

This morning, I am trying to install Windows XP on a new iMac I purchased for our Secretary/Order Administrator. I have gone through the Bootcamp procedure of creating a partition on the Mac in question and install Windows XP like normal. Seems easy enough given that it has always worked under Bootcamp Beta on Tiger (aka 10.4.x). I start the installation and eventually get to the point where I need to reboot. I reboot and the following pops up:

"Disk error

Press any key to restart

No bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key"

None of the above works. I've tried starting the installation from scratch and get the same error. So, I go to trusty ol' Google and search using the last line of the error. I come across the following note in this discussion:

"Ok. Still a problem. No luck on the last answer. I think my computer just plain hates me -.- I tried both my Leopard disk and my Tiger disk. Luckily, I'm not mad enough to rip my phone book in half." (emphasis mine)

I love it. At least the guy retains humor in a frustrating situation. It made me decide not to get mad and simply go on and figure out the problem.

Update 11:07 -600GMT: There is an Apple Info Article on this very topic (Article 306504) and gives a very, very simple solution. In the Windows installer, reformat the partition you have just created and do NOT leave the current file system intact. I don't quite understand why this solves the problem, but it does.

I've had a good number of thoughts on two businesses I'm involved in and what we can do to overcome a struggle that each is individually facing. Both businesses are in dissimilar industries and their problems are not even remotely similar. One business is struggling hard with failure and the other is not; it is struggling how to grow its business after a period of significant change.

The key to each business's success will be innovation. There is nothing that says this innovation needs to be life-changing. In fact, the concept I have is that the innovation will be decidedly non-life-changing - i.e. we will remain who we are but modify what we actually do and say. It will be simple steps in the direction of improving how we conduct ourselves and communicate with our customers. A few of the change we need to make are not without much work and dedication towards modifying how we do certain things.

At some later point, I hope to delve into one of the details and to talk about what my thoughts are, but to keep this short, I wanted to add only this: The idea that innovation in simple steps will be necessary and bring about positive results came to me when I was looking at a website of a competitor. In reality, we wouldn't dare compete against them because they really do a much better job than us in being good at a large number of items that we don't have the staffing or equipment to handle. Plus, they have the resources to take on much larger projects than we could hope for. We are comparable to them in terms of pricing and personalized service. While we win in pricing, we fail miserably in personalized service/support. We also fail horribly at collecting on payments owed to us. Both of these items are 100% our fault. We have continually over-promised and under-delivered. We have not taken the necessary steps to guarantee payment (as much as anything can be guaranteed) either. Both of these items should be easily resolved. We need to ask customers whose service we cannot hope to manage to find another vendor and we need to make sure that those we keep and those we add are within our sphere of capabilities. When this requires growth, then we have to bite the bullet and grow.

The above is just a short version of what we need to change about what we are doing. To top it off, if we look at reality and ask the question about whether or not we are even capable of providing the services we promise, we can't. Not with how we are currently conducting the business. We will need to innovate what and how we do things to meet these needs and fulfill our obligations. The innovation I have in mind is not revolutionary, it is evolutionary, and without burden of not having to create a new paradigm, we can take the slow, measured steps needed to be inventive and improve. And, we will improve and we will succeed.

So, the key to our success is innovation. The reason for our disappointments has been failure to do so.

I love little applications that just work™. Back in my Windows days, I remember coming across an application for network throughput monitoring at analogx.com (NetStat Live) and thought, "how awesome! I don't need anything complicated, just a small app that shows network throughput on my system... and here it is!" The same thing occurred today. Now that OS X 10.5 (aka Leopard) supports bluetooth stereo audio via the A2DP BT profile, I purchased a BT dongle that I can hook my headphones up to so that I'm not tethered to my office desk. (See the IOGear Audio Transport.) Once I got the dongle paired up with my workstation, I couldn't seem to connect to the stereo side of the headset. I was getting monaural sound, but not stereo. (Which, by the way, worked previously in 10.4. You could connect to a bluetooth stereo headset, but it would only pass audio in mono to the headset, not stereo.) I'm very familiar with how OS X handles audio input and output vis a vis System Preferences, but for some reason, I couldn't get stereo output.

I did a quick search via Google of the A2DP profile in 10.5 and found mention of Rogue Amoeba's SoundSource in a forum (I can't find the forum right now). I downloaded the app and had my problem solved in 30 seconds - literally. SoundSource is very good at showing sources and outputs for audio (the headset I'm using doesn't show up as well on their menu as in the Sound menu in System Preferences, but it is more intuitive). Just select and change source or output on the fly. It is that simple. To top it off, since it is free, there isn't a reason not to try it.

Screenshot:

I remember when this was 10 times the size of my hard drive in a Tandy 1000 20 lbs personal computer/"laptop." I weighed four times that original machine when I received it (read stole) from my father. I have Photoshop files as large as this...

Years back I asked myself the question of why I even try to maintain a weblog and host my own content. Obviously the topics I choose are random and span across the different interests I have (whether it be today's obsession with photography or tomorrow's problems with getting widget XYZ to operate the way I want), but when I do take the time to sit down and write something, I'm hoping that it will provide a tidbit of information or guidance to others. (That's the ego side of this venture.) Why do I put the effort, though, in controlling the bandwidth and machinery that hosts my site(s)? Why not use Blogger for my weblog, Flickr for all my photos, YouTube for videos, etc? Because they are all out of my control. I have no idea whether or not any of these services will be around in ten years. I've been blogging for over ten years. The internet archive only goes back to a site I had running in 2001, but this is quite a bit after I actually set up the first website and I'm not sure why the earlier ones don't show up. Every post I've made to my blog that has something to do with a picture or video requires that that specific picture or video (or whatever else) remains available to visitors. More importantly, because I use this weblog as a method of keeping a sort of exhibitionist diary, I want access to that content forever. If I were to take the time and go back through the archives, I'm sure I'd find many a place where I had posted something, linking to another site, and now that site is gone. That breaks the usefulness of this blog, in my opinion. What good is keeping the here and now intact and yet destroying the history? To me, that's a waste of the effort I've put into this all these years.

Today, I stumbled across a blog I hadn't visited for quite some time; jayallen.org, or more accurately, jay.vox.com. Jay linked to a hilarious video on YouTube that was a clip from Saturday Night Live's PUNCHED! bit. This is a screenshot of what I encountered:

Of course, this is not Jay's fault. How could he know that the video would be removed from YouTube? I encountered this all too often, though, when linking to articles, etc. If a website owner chooses to change their url style (which has undergone major shifts across the internet in blogging) - i.e. going from something like archive/category/000010.php to archive/url_now_is_readable_instead_of_cryptic - they break all of the links that were made to their website at one time. One solution I thought of is that instead of linking to specific urls, I should just link to a Google search term that will likely bring about the current url of the link I want people to access. The problem with this is the same as the problem with visual or audio content; what if Google disappears? Who would have thought in 1996 that Google was going to be a search giant monster and AltaVista would be nothing?

This is why I find it so important to host my own content. I hate it when things break. I don't understand why you would design a blog (or anything you put a lot of effort into) around a method that will naturally break as the years go on. If all you do is provide links to other stuff, then it is likely that some day, the content you worked to create will become meaningless. I like to have historical reference to who I am and what I do. Without working links, I can't. (This is my purpose, however, and I'm sure it does not match other's.) I limit what I put here even on the basis of whether or not I can quote or copy to embed someone else's content. I feel safe embedding the above screenshot because it is what I saw when I visited Jay's site and I'm not trying to blatantly steal his creativity. The line of stealing someone else's work becomes thinner, though, when you want to embed their complete thoughts and or creative works on your site. It is something one needs to be wary of. It is also the reason why the images I host on Flickr are there with the Creative Commons license of Share-Share Alike-Non Commercial (so is all the content I put on the web). I want people to feel comfortable taking and redistributing my works, as long as I am give credit and they do not use my works to make money. Why the last part? Because, I want to control making money with my content that I've worked hard to produce. It's that simple.

So, if you have any concern about the longevity of the work you do, it helps to think about these things. I'm certain that even since I became aware of this conundrum, there are plenty of items here that are broken. Every week, I search a bit for them and try to fix them. Since I don't want to be forced to do this for eternity (fixing past content every time I decide to change something or someone decides to remove what they have done), I'm going to be more cautious about what I post here and how I post it. And, I'm going to continue hosting my own content so I can retain this control.

I would like to know what idiot (or group of idiots) decided to enact the rule that goes into effect in one day (and a few hours) that could limit you to TWO extra Li-Ion batteries in your carry-on luggage depending on interpretation. A quote from safetravel.dot.gov on "What's New" (as of Dec. 30, 2007):

"The following quantity limits apply to both your spare and installed batteries. The limits are expressed in grams of “equivalent lithium content.” 8 grams of equivalent lithium content is approximately 100 watt-hours. 25 grams is approximately 300 watt-hours:

* Under the new rules, you can bring batteries with up to 8-gram equivalent lithium content. All lithium ion batteries in cell phones are below 8 gram equivalent lithium content. Nearly all laptop computers also are below this quantity threshold.
* You can also bring up to two spare batteries with an aggregate equivalent lithium content of up to 25 grams, in addition to any batteries that fall below the 8-gram threshold. Examples of two types of lithium ion batteries with equivalent lithium content over 8 grams but below 25 are shown below.
* For a lithium metal battery, whether installed in a device or carried as a spare, the limit on lithium content is 2 grams of lithium metal per battery.
* Almost all consumer-type lithium metal batteries are below 2 grams of lithium metal. But if you are unsure, contact the manufacturer!"

Yet on other pages, the rules are very unclear as to what these gram equivalents actually mean. I travel with four spare Nikon EN-EL3e batteries, two extra batteries for my MacBook Pro and an extra battery for the second laptop I always travel with. Even before I was into [digital] photography, I always have three or so laptop batteries with - especially for those long trips. I don't understand how the TSA and flight carry-on rules could get any more convoluted. If I understand the watt-hour equivalent rules, I actually am still under the threshold of allowable batteries with two MacBook Pro (17") batteries and four Nikon EN-EL3e batteries by calculating the approximate watt-hour capacity of the batteries (the MacBook Pro batteries actually have their watt-hour equivalence written on them - 68 Wh). Yet, the language refers back to carrying two spare batteries... For what??? Two spare batteries for each device that uses them (in that case, I would fall perfectly within the rules) or two spare batteries, period? I'm going to print out all of the rule material I can find and hang my hat on the above language that allows me to circumvent all of these different calculations. Here's how it works (in my opinion):

The two additional MacBook Pro batteries would fall under the category of having less than 25 grams of lithium (if the way of calculating lithium content is accurate in that 100 watt-hours is equivalent to eight grams or less of lithium). The second bullet point goes on to say that "You can also bring up to two spare batteries with an aggregate equivalent lithium content of up to 25 grams, in addition to any batteries that fall below the 8-gram threshold." (emphasis mine) All of the AA and Nikon batteries I carry are below the 8-gram threshold and the wording reads that in addition to any...

The language on the referenced site and above still make no sense and are very difficult to understand. Even if you weren't like me and travel with decent amount of electronic gear, you could be over this limit if a TSA employee were to interpret the rules to mean that you can only have two rechargeable AA batteries with. Of course, this would completely ignore the rules that apply to the total grams of Lithium or the total Watt-hours your batteries add up to, but TSA are (rightfully) given latitude in determining what those rules are. I say rightfully because I think TSA's rules require a bit of intelligence on the part of the employee and interpretation to some extent is ok. In this case, though, I don't even know where to start because the language open to interpretation is so bewildering.

If someone has an explanation as to how to clearly calculate whether or not you fall within the rules, please write me. This rule effects anyone who flies with extra power for anything from cell phones to laptops and is clear as mud.

Link to pdf of page at safetravel.dot.gov.