Author: George

I have been in the IT profession over 27 years. Most of my experience was providing Workstation / Desktop support for several clients.

Google Voice added to Gmail

Post author By George
Post date August 26, 2010
1 Comment on Google Voice added to Gmail

Image via CrunchBase

About a year ago I signed up for Google Voice. At first I was a little skeptical about how well this would work. Do I really need another number for people to call me on, and what can I do with it. Well, I’ve used my Google Voice number as a primary contact number for people to reach me instead of my cell phone.

The client I currently work for has a shielded building. You can not receive a cell phone signal no matter how close you are to the windows. But what if I daycare needs to call me because of an emergency. Sure I can give them my office number, but I work at two different sites. They aren’t going to know where I am today. That’s where Google Voice comes in. I can give them one number and it will ring multiple phones at different times of the day.

Now Google Voice is connected to my Gmail account. When I access my Gmail account in Google Chrome, I can use my headset and call from my PC to any landline number in the United States and Canada for free. I can use the Google Voice mail system to store the messages, and enable all kinds of features.

One feature that I don’t think works all that well is voice mail transcription. I dumped that feature back in October 2009 after several failures. The transcriptions didn’t come close top what the message was. I might look into it again.

I’ve not tried the Google Voice extension / plug-in with Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Opera on my Windows 7 PC or my Ubuntu Linux notebook at home. I’ll try it out this weekend to see how well the video chat works compared to Skype. Maybe I’ll switch over to Google Voice for everything and use Skype as a backup.

Tags Google Chrome, Google Voice, Skype

Motorola Droid Personal Smartphone

Received Second OTA Update for Motorola Droid

Post author By George
Post date August 20, 2010
No Comments on Received Second OTA Update for Motorola Droid

Motorola MILESTONE smartphone displaying Wikip... — Image via Wikipedia

On August 19th I received the OTA update from Verizonwireless which brought my Motorola Droid up to version 2.2. This update includes the following features:

Speed boost: Any Android App will run 2 – 5 times faster thanks to JIT compiler.
Install Android Apps to SD Card: I would like to move all my apps from the internal phone memory and onto the card. Guess i need to wait for the developers to update the apps.
Flash: Android 2.2 natively support Flash 10.1.
Tethering / Portable Hotspot
Cloud to Device Messaging.
Android SDK 2.2
More Enterprise support

I’ve also noticed a few things right from the start after my upgrade.

I now have 5 home screens instead of three.
There is a popup menu on the home screen – deleted the Phone and Browser icons.
Apps menu will stay open after you close the app you were just in.
Camera has new controls to adjust focus, exposure, scene mode, picture size and quality, and color. Can also include location information, white balance, flash mode and zoom.
Screen orientation adjusts to all four sides while in camera mode (although that may have been available before, but I don’t remember.)
Allow automatic updating of any app.
Update all apps when multiple apps require updates (currently updating 2 apps at once.)

However, I noticed all of my custom ring tone and notification sounds that I installed and assigned to contacts were removed and replaced with miscellaneous songs. This was annoying because I had to reset about 30 contacts and add the sounds from the Star Trek Soundboard back into the database (scan bar code below.) Also for some reason, Swype beta was not working as the virtual keyboard. I had to remove Swype and reinstall to get it back.

While I was trying out the new OS, I installed Trillian beta for Droid. I like the interface, but was expecting to hear sounds while I had a chat window open. The only time it will play a sound when I receive an IM is when a new chat starts. Hopefully they will fix that or allow additional controls through the settings menu.

Tags Motorola Droid, Personal, Smartphone

Geek Stuff LinuxMint Windows Stuff Work

Used Linux Mint Bootable USB to Fix Windows Server 2003

Post author By George
Post date July 28, 2010
No Comments on Used Linux Mint Bootable USB to Fix Windows Server 2003

Image via Wikipedia

Today I was asked by one of our server administrators who was off site, if I knew how to reset the local administrator account on a Windows 2003 Server that was not communicating with the domain. I said yes, “let me get my Linux Mint USB stick and I can reset the password.”

The server was an old HP ML370 with a RAID configuration and 4GB of RAM. Once I was in Linux Mint 9, I mounted the local hard drive and navigated to the %systemroot%\System32\config folder. I right click that folder and selected Open Terminal here. Here is the reference document I use:

Open Nautilus and mount Windows HDD.
Right click Windows folder and select Open in Terminal.
Type cd System32/config and press Enter.
If account is Administrator enter sudo chntpw SAM.
If any other account enter sudo chntpw -u <account> SAM.
From menu select function.
Write hive files.

After rebooting the server I was able to log in as the local administrator and complete the repairs. Another justification for every IT Technician (server administrator or on-site workstation support) should have multiple tools to repair any computer on-site.

Tags Geek Stuff, Linux Mint, Windows Stuff, Work

Geek Stuff Sager Software Virtual Machine VirtualBox Windows Vista

Resize Virtual HDD in VirtualBox

Post author By George
Post date July 23, 2010
No Comments on Resize Virtual HDD in VirtualBox

Several weeks ago I created a VM of Windows Vista with SP2. It ran great on my Sager NP8690. Unfortunately when I created the virtual hard drive I made it a 20GB drive. After all the patches were installed, I was down to about 3GB free. So I read a few posts from VirtualBox Forums about how to resize the drive. Here are the steps I used from the post:

Close you virtual machine, leave VirtualBox running.
Create a new virtual hard drive with the new size (I went with a dynamic size with a maximum size of 80GB).
Download Gparted-Live CD ISO file.
Add the Gparted-Live CD ISO file as a new virtual CD in VirtualBox.
Adjust your virtual machine settings to add the second larger hard drive and the Gparted-Live CD.
Start the VM and boot from the Gparted-Live CD file.
Choose all the defaults and wait for Gparted to start.
Select the second hard drive and set the partition to msdos.
Select the first hard drive, right click on the graph and select Copy.
Select the second hard drive, right click on the graph and select Paste.
This will take some time.
Once completed, shutdown the VM.
Adjust the settings for the VM by removing the old hard drive and the Gparted-LiveCD. Add your Vista CD or ISO file.
Boot the VM and press any key to start from the Vista CD.
Select the option to Repair the OS.
Once it repairs, reboot the VM and do not press any keys. Vista should boot and run a check disk of the VM.

Now when I boot into Vista, I have a 80GB hard drive with plenty of free space.

Thanks to gushy and bwh1969 for the original posts.

Tags Geek Stuff, Sager, Software, Virtual Machine, VirtualBox, Windows Vista

LinuxMint Software

Modified Linux Shutdown Policy running from USB

Post author By George
Post date July 19, 2010
1 Comment on Modified Linux Shutdown Policy running from USB

Several weeks ago I installed Linux Mint 9 on my 16GB USB Corsair jump drive. I use it at work when I need to rescue a Windows PC (save a PC running Vista twice this month). What I didn’t like was having to authenticate my account to shutdown the PC. The system always displayed the message System policy prevents stopping the system when other users are logged in. I always had to log off first to shutdown the computer.

I found a fix at Len’s site which solved my problem. I am posting the modified org.freedesktop.consolekit.policy at my box.net as a reference for myself. Here are the step I used to fix the issue:

Open terminal and type gksu nautilis
Navigate to /usr/share/polkit-1/actions
Right click org.freedesktop.consolekit.policy and open with gedit
Scroll down to section org.freedesktop.consolekit.system.stop-multiple-users
At allow_active, replace auth_admin_keeps with yes
Scroll down to section org.freedesktop.consolekit.system.restart-multiple-users
At allow_active, replace auth_admin_keeps with yes

Now I am able to shutdown Linux Mint running from my USB jump drive.

Thanks to Marilen Aretius Corciovei for originally posting this fix.

Tags Linux Mint, Software

FaceBook Geek Stuff Home PC LinuxMint Sager Thunderbird Ubuntu Windows 7 Windows Vista Windows XP Work

Busy IT Month

Well it’s been a busy month for me at home and work. I migrated my Sager NP8690 to Ubuntu 10.04 and created three virtual machines; Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7. To my surprise Windows Vista SP2 is extremely stable as a VM. I disabled UAC because I don’t like being asked “are you sure you want to do this” from my PC. Both Windows 7 and Windows XP SP3 ran well also. Over all I was pleased with the performance from each VM. Of course that changed when I tried to run two VMs at the same time, I was running out of RAM. I think if I had 8GB installed, running two VMs would have worked fine.

However, I was never able to get get Blu-Ray running in any VMs or in Ubuntu. This bummed me out since I wanted I watch Star Trek. Maybe I’ll ask Santa to bring a Blu-Ray player for Christmas. Then I was informed by my wife that she needed Windows in order to work from home. Plus she was not too thrilled that I didn’t create a account in Ubuntu for her. Oops!

So I backed up everything (again) and reinstalled the image I took before wiping out my hard drive. Since I am dual booting between Windows 7 and Ubuntu 10.04, I deiced to leave Windows with a larger partition and keep all my videos there. I can access then easily enough from Ubuntu without much hassle. I still need to install a few application in Ubuntu (Thunderbird, Filezilla) but for the most part I am finished.

Instead of trying to use Gwibber a buddy of mine said I should look into TweetDeck. TweetDeck requires Adobe Air to install and run. Being Adobe has issues with x64, there were no .deb files for my OS. I downloaded the .bin file and from a Terminal window I typed ./AdobeAIRInstaller.bin. Now I can install TweetDeck and have access to my LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Google Buzz accounts.

At work, I was asked to test a kickstart install script for RHEL 5.3 (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) client install on a test PC. I used a Dell Precision 370 which has a Intel P4 3.4 GHz single core, 2GB of RAM, 80GB Sata drive, Nvidia Quadro FX 1400 card, and a DVD drive. Installation took about 30 minutes. I test several applications, accessing network shares, and printing to several network printers. I still prefer Ubuntu or Linux Mint over RHEL, but it was fun to be part of a Linux project.

I also help with installing a new Dell server this week. The job required us to install a keyboard/mouse tray, move an existing server and tape library up, install a new IP console KVM, and install the new ESX server. Due to space limitations, we placed a LCD monitor on the side of the rack. Because I hurt my back several day earlier I was asked not to lift anything. So for me it was more of a learning experience. Hopefully I will be asked to assist with other data room projects.

Right now I’m downloading openSuse 11.3 x64 on DVD. Maybe this weekend I’ll try it out on a VM to see some of the new improvements I’ve read about.

Tags FaceBook, Geek Stuff, Home PC, Linux Mint, Sager, Thunderbird, Ubuntu, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, Work

Geek Stuff Humor Video Windows Stuff

Developers, developers, developers, developers

Post author By George
Post date July 16, 2010
No Comments on Developers, developers, developers, developers

Posted because I saw it today while having lunch at my desk.

Tags Geek Stuff, Humor, Video, Windows

LinuxMint Open Office Sager Ubuntu Virtual Machine VirtualBox Windows 7 Windows Vista Windows XP

Issues with VirtualBox between Ubuntu and Windows 7

Post author By George
Post date June 15, 2010
2 Comments on Issues with VirtualBox between Ubuntu and Windows 7

My Sager NP8690 is one awesome notebook (except for the battery life). Right now I have it configured for dual boot between Ubuntu 10.04 and Windows 7. The only time I really use Windows 7 is to watch Blu-Ray movies and the occasional office document that down for display correctly in Open-office. But rebooting the PC to go back and forth between the two OS’s is an inconvenience.

To resolve this issue I installed Oracle Virtualbox 3.2.4. Currently I have one VM with Linux Mint 9 x64 which works well. So I attempted to install Windows 7 x32 just like I did at work on an old HP D530 tower. When the install reaches the point of Installing Updates the OS fails stating it’s unable to find the hard drive.

I searched for an answer but nothing really fixed my problem. Then I noticed the HDD controller for my Windows 7 VM was set for AHCI with a blank check box. Selecting the check box allows the VM to access the HDD controller directly. Installation of Windows 7 is complete.

Everything in Windows 7 seems stable and running well minus the Aero effects. I checked for updates and out of 21, only 3 installed. That’s no good, time to reboot the VM and tried again. None of the available updates would install. I found this solution for Windows Vista and it worked on Windows 7.

And since I am setting up VMs, I decided to install my copy on Windows XP and Microsoft Vista. Why Vista? Because I got it for free and gives me an opportunity to learn something new. Plus I have friends and family that run Vista and they call for help on occasion.

Unfortunately I made a small error when I installed Ubuntu 10.04. Since I chose to dual boot, I kept the Windows partition at 2/3 total drive space. Since I created four VMs I am down to about 7GB free on my Home partition. If I can get my Windows 7 VM to play Blu-Ray I will copy off all VMs, backup all data files from both OSs, and then rebuild with Ubuntu 10.04 and import all data. Looks like I’m in for a long weekend.

UPDATE:

After spending 2 hours reading posts about playing Blu-Ray in a VM, it looks like this is not possible. I plan on moving forward with the migration since I’m out of drive space. I read a solution in Ubuntu Forums that might work.

Tags Linux Mint, Open Office, Sager, Ubuntu, Virtual Machine, VirtualBox, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP