Sunday, July 11, 2010

Sunset and Sunrise Pictures

I have always loved taking pics of sunsets and sunrises here are a few of my favorite ones

Sunsets:

Montreal 2008












In-Laws Cottage July 2009 through the mast of my father in-laws Catamaran

Another one at the in-laws cottage
Sunser over Chantry Island












Sunrise:



Sunrise Gull Lake my sister and brother in-laws Cottage

Friday, July 9, 2010

The Gadget Debate

The Windows vs. MAC vs. Android debate and who's gadget is better will it ever be settled

The Apple Company i find is for the gadget person driven more by the philosophy of keeping up with the Jones's ... You have the IPOD the IPOD touch the IPHONE and now the IPAD.  Just little gadgets to proove what really.  Do they enhance our lives.  Maybe but in what way really.  The IPAD is just a glorified IPHONE with a larger screen it has no expansion capabilites heck you can't even plug in a USB device to it.
You can't even hook it to your TV.  A mere toy in todays robust world of IT with no ture purpose I find just something for the people that every gadget out there.
I have no idea what the hype is about an overgrown IPOD or IPHONE.

The one thing I have always asked myself in life is when looking at something will it help me in life will i get enjoyment out of it, is it something I will put in a shelf and forget when evaluating something.

If I am going to buy it the value must be tangible and make sense my guidlines below
1. Will it enhance my life
2. Will i use it regularly
3. Will I get bored with it if yes .. don't bother buying it.
4. Does the value make sense

Those are just a few.

I am strong believer in items that are of use The PC world doesn't focus on the gadget side of life but on the true purpose of what people use a PC for Business, E-mail, Surfing the Internet Video streaming and Gaming of course.

The Apple world is driven bt propritary technology devices that serve no value in life just another gadget that is not really needed.   The IMAC and the IBOOK i don't consider them in this debate.

I guess we can also bring the cell phone in to this debate as well since I am taking about the Iphone do we really need a device to link the world to us what ever happend to a simple device for e-mail and making phone calls and of course a calendar.  I have no desire nor can I understand why people need to post to Facebook or Twitter from a phone.  What type of shallow existense has the world come to when we need to live our lives plus the lives of celebrites and friends.  If i want to know what a friend is up to I will call them I don't care when they get there coffee what line they are in at the grocery store.  If I am at the grocery store and see them I will say hi.

Ok I veered of a little but I think you get my point.
Do we really need all this what are we doing to our children?
think about it was your life growing up that bad without being in constant contact with the world around you.
I don't think so.

Just think about it feel free to comment

XP - Vista or Windows 7

This is a qestion that will be around for awhile as businesses and home users alike have their preferences.


I have ran all three and continue to run all 3 all for different reasons

My XP machine believe it or not is my oldest machine but yet it is a work horse none the less. It chugs along and doesn't care that it houses my Virtual Environment on it running VMWARE Workstation. He continues to play along and have fun. His memory is taxed at times since my Virtual Environment has an MS 2003 Server R2 with Exchange 2003 running on it.  I have my monitoring software for my network on this old machine as well sending me notifications of issues with my network I have a free version that I use that is to customize and powerful for a free version.  The program that I use is Total Network Monitor the program can be found at http://www.softinventive.com/.  This little machine also serves as a web server and an FTP server to boot. 

I have a Laptop running Vista not sure why I am runing it still. it keeps giving us greif I am going to have to redo it yet again. ... I think when a get a chance it is going to Windows 7
This machine works in true Vista fashion like a boot without an anchor it just drifts in its own world.  It looses our Wireless network at home on a regular basis  chooses to connect to what ever network it finds.  Where we are there are 2 unsecure networks it connects to them regularly.  wouldn't allow my wife to login to her profile yesterday told her she wasn't valid on the domain anymore.
It even crashes running Windows Media Player had to put Divx Player on it.  I know it is better but streaming videos and music is supposed to work well when it is set as a media center I set it up this way for easy of use.  and it doesn't want to play. ... no pun intended  with the palying of music and video.

Windows 7 on to Laptops .. they just work a few little issues like with any OS but not the continaul crashes that occured with Vista.  I did have Windows 7 on the machine that i reverted back to XP since it had issues with the Video editting software and allocating the resources to my Virtual Environment.  Other than that I can't really say that much bad about Windows 7.  It does take a bit to get to used to since items are in different locations.  but from a General user stand point it is relative easy to use.

All in all I think the OS issues are simple avoid Vista unless you like pulling your hair out or  wanting to throw your computer out the window.  Vista is like a 2 year old.  XP like the mother or father and Windows 7 it is like the 20 something child still at home.  It has issues but is an evolution in the right direction away from the nest.  Windows 7 can almost clain to be as robust as Windows XP was after years of evolution that got XP to where it was.  Before XP there was Windows 95 then Windows 98 built on that there was NT4 and then decided on the Window 2000 Environment for offices to follow on the stability of Win NT4 successful it was. 

The home world took a dive with Windows ME it just was a plain disaster. I know I personally didn't touch and rolled alot of my clients back to Windows 98 for stability. 

Then Microsoft combined the knowledge of 98 and Windows 2000 together to give you Windows XP.  Then came along an idea born from not XPerience and that was VISTA a problem from the get go... they decided to reinvent the wheel and well outit came with broken spokes and sort of flat on one side.
Now we have Windows 7 a combination of knowlege and failure heading in the right direction and learning from past mistakes and failures. just like we do in life itself.

If you have a machine designed for XP it might be able to handle Windows 7 depending  on its age if you have one that came with Vista I strongly recomend upgrading to Windows 7 or rolling back to XP if you have the option

Can We Control Google

Came in to work this morning and had a ticket in my queue
That just blows yor mind it come from one of our Senior Web Editors where I work as a Systems Administrator.

I looked at it thought oh my god ....
The ticket in a nutshell said we have changed a website and replaced content that used to be in this folder and moved it to this one. Google is still pointing to the old one can you have Google re-index this for us issue them a 301 request. ...
We want this change made immediatley.
As if we can control Google indexing we have no way at all.  Google is a 3rd party solution.
They will just need to wait until Google reindexing...
The dumb thing is they have the link right there front and center for you to click so people will find it anyway.

Thursday, July 8, 2010

Its Official House for Sale

After 6 days of cleaning and more cleaning .... purging and back putting into storage it is finally up for sale
Here are pics of  the house now should have done before but oh well

The house with sign


Living Room


Kitchen



Solarium / Office





Bedrooms







Back yard


Wednesday, July 7, 2010

SharePoint Designer Server error: There is no Web named " ".

This issue happens if you try to remove FP2000 Extensions from a Virtual Directory from the IIS server
discovered in IIS 5.0 XP version.

I experienced this issue with one directory, while all the others worked just fine. The strange part was that I was able to open the subdirectories of the failing directory. With this in mind, I made a new directory and began copying separate files to the new folder. After a few files, I tried to open it with SharePoint Designer and this was always succesfull. When I copied one of the last folders - which was a hidden folder - I got the error again! From that moment I knew what the cause of the problem was.

When using SharePoint Designer to open a site directly from it's directory (like E:\site\ ) via the "Open Site" button, it is possible to receive the above error.
Solution to solve the error:

It is the hidden folder "_vti_pvt".
Delete the folder and all its contents everything will open like it should.
Issues might arise with FP extensions if files were in the folder but you should be able to recreate it if needed

Monday, July 5, 2010

Weekend of House Staging

What a weekend after a four day long weekend of Cleaning in and out it is back to work. ... to relax for a few hours

We spent the weekend staging our house to put it on the market so we can upgrade to a newer house.
What a lot of work it is to get ready to sell the house.

Our living room is bare with the exception of a few things the couch, a few of Mattis's toys and the TV and Stereo everything else has been packed up and put in to storage oh yeah and some key pictures are still up

The backyard has had an overhaul and has been cleaned down the bank to the River wow a lot of work here and  tank of gas in the whipper snipper.  The front Garden has also been cleaned up and given a little bit of a face lift as well

The solarium is clean as well and a lot of items from there have been put in to storage as well

The kitchen is almost there just the table to clean up and the floor to clean.

Target is on the market on Wednesday ....