Blue Probe

Can’t use WD Elements as internal drive anymore

Ken — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 16:47:41 GMT

YouTube is full of How to open Western Digital… but things have changed. In an external USB drive enclosure there used to be a plain old drive with a small circuit board plugged in the back. I found a closeout 1.5TB at Target for cheap and picked it up to put in my Media PC. oops – the circuit board is now completely integrated with the drive enclosure.

Eclipse Helios- Error installing JBOSS tools

Ken — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 04:08:00 GMT

I kept failing installing the JBOSS tools into Eclipse. I even tried downloading the archive to install from https://www.jboss.org/tools/download/stable/3_2_GA. The problem was Java 1.7. Even with my classpath and JAVA_HOME set to point to Java 1.6, there was still something out of whack (java –version would show 1.7). Stopping Eclipse, and uninstalling Java 1.7, proved to be the solution. Here is the error:

An error occurred while collecting items to be installed

session context was:(profile=epp.package.jee, phase=org.eclipse.equinox.internal.p2.engine.phases.Collect, operand=, action=).

Comparison method violates its general contract!

Took the Ooma plunge

Ken — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 00:43:37 GMT

I always think the market leader (aka Vonage) in any geek related product is just milking its gorilla game position, and so look for that hungry edge play. In this case Ooma. I did my standard Google due-diligence and searched on “magic jack sucks”. 26,000 and counting… But the Ooma, not so much. I use it as a 2nd line in my house strictly as my home office phone. $250 for the initial box. Quality has been fantastic.

“ooma sucks”, by the way, only gave 200 hits.

Outlook phone dialer quits when Microsoft Communicator is running

Ken — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 01:27:13 GMT

Our company does not have a full SIP phone integration with with Microsoft Communicator. It is used for presence and IM. In Outlook, I like to use the Dialer (as I have my laptop modem plugged into my Phone {which is plugged into OOMA – yea baby!}) to save all those seconds. However, if MOC is running, then when I launch the Outlook Dialer, it pops up MOC and tells me that feature is not operational. Here is how to use the plain old TAPI dialer.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\Outlook\Call Integration – then add TAPIOVERRIDE as a DWORD=1. You may have to add the key Call Integration.

Question: If you know how to allow MOC to use the dialer, let me know. i.e. if I right click on the presence indicator and choose call, I want it to launch the Outlook Dialer.

Winforms application settings using custom types

Ken — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 22:59:21 GMT

I started down the path of saving window size settings in the application settings. The fact that I was repeating the same basic info for each form led me to investigate using a custom type to encapsulate this info. The custom type you want to save will have a couple of properties on it, but when you add it to the application settings, you just configure 1 setting. I couldn’t just use the utility to add my type, I had to edit the file. Here’s the steps:

1) Update the settings.settings file

2) Make your custom type [Serializable] – don’t forget to make the class and properties public

I created a custom type to save window settings. With the following signature for the save settings method:

public void SaveSettings(Form aForm)

I was then able to use the following to save my custom type and its properties. Notice that I use the Default[string] method instead of designer created method like Default.MainForm

Properties.Settings.Default[aForm.Name] = this; //Save my custom type

Properties.Settings.Default.Save();

Goodbye Dash, Hello Jack

Ken — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 15:12:38 GMT

I ditched my T-Mobile Dash. If you’ve read sluggish, that’s an understatement. Imagine pressing and holding the #1 key for a shortcut to VME, but the device doesn’t pick it up, pauses, and types eight 1’s across the display – rrrrr! Plus, one would think the apostrophe is worthy of the keyboard. It’s a f’n ‘. Put it on the keyboard!

The Samsung Jack is the same WM 6.1 phone, but speedy and few more keys (hello apostrophe!). Plus 3 bars in my basement office on AT&T vs. the <=1 on T-Mobile is rock solid.

I've just rebooted my answering machine

Ken — Tue, 19 May 2009 22:04:22 GMT

I have 3 ATT Cordless phones (700021) and a base. They stopped working and all just display Place in Charger. ATT FAQ says to unplug everything for 1/2 hour including the handset battery.

LOL - It worked.

MS Sync Framework now in SyncToy

Ken — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 18:19:44 GMT

I use the free tool MS SyncToy to do simple backups. It's even scheduled on the Wife/kids PC to run nightly. I upgraded to SyncToy 2.0 an noticed on the install that it now includes the MS Sync Framework. I suppose if you've got "sync" in your name, it's hard to get away from dog-fooding that one. You can checkout the video webcast of one of the providers, the file sync provider, by Ashish Shah.

Adobe Forms missed the Disconnected Boat

Ken — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 21:37:41 GMT

Man I love InfoPath. I've only used it a bit, but the whole XML in the background, generate your own schema or use one to start with, then save or submit to W/S - it just is cool! I bet the productivity of those who use it regularly is off the charts. On the "oh crap" side is the fact that everyone needs to purchase a copy to use it (there is a web version but that's different).

So when a new project required disconnected forms based input, I looked to Adobe LiveCycle Forms ES. Just the mention of this I knew I was in for a trip down the Amazon (think snakes and quick sand). So I downloaded the 1 month trial, and within 5 minutes was emailing the XML output from a completed form. WOW! it's almost perfect. All I need is to change that to SAVE the XML and we've got out Disconnected scenario. Enter snakes and quicksand. It doesn't exist. You need a copy of Adobe LiveCycle Forms ES on each laptop to save a form's data to XML. There is even talk of licensing terms which limit a forms use to X number of activities.

The form is like an app - treat it that way. Why can a dev tool like VB create an app to be freely distributed, but a dev tool that creates forms cannot?

ProxyPal hot key

Ken — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 02:27:34 GMT

I use ProxyPal to turn on/off the proxy setting in IE7. When I'm VPN-ed into work, I want it on, and when not, I want it off. The problem is that <Alt+T> opens my Tools menu, but there is no hot key for ProxyPal. So add one - in regedit look under the following for the ProxyPal entries:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Extensions\

and change MenuText from ProxyPal to P&roxyPal.

Now <Alt+T> <Alt+R> will run ProxyPal as a hotkey combo.