weneversleep

Installing Windows 8 Server Beta in VMware Workstation: enable “Accelerate 3D Graphics”

weneversleep — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 23:11:11 +0000

Quick tip for those of you playing with Windows 8 Server Beta in a VMware virtual machine:

If you install VMware Tools, make sure you enable “Accelerate 3D Graphics” in the Display settings section for the virtual machine. Otherwise, you’ll see a black screen when you log into the server console, either locally or through Remote Desktop.

Took me a while to figure this one out…

New Yamaha YSP-2200 soundbar

weneversleep — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 16:04:02 +0000

I’ve been using a Sony HT-CT100 for a few years, and I just got a new Samsung 55″ D8000 TV, so I figured a new soundbar was in order. I prefer soundbars to separates; I just like the “continuous” soundfield effect.

I bought the YSP-2200 about a week ago, after much research on this forum and reading reviews. I was considering the 4100/5100, but I decided to try the 2200 based on its supposedly newer technology. I also considered the B&W Panorama, but price and the fact that it didn’t have HDMI inputs turned me off.

Initially, I have to admit, I was underwhelmed. I did Auto setup a couple of times, and while it yielded consistent results, I just didn’t get the surround effect that I was expecting. I do have 3 walls, with a partially open wall on the right that goes into the kitchen, so I realize that I don’t have a perfect room for a YSP.

Tonight, I read the manual thoroughly, and decided to try Manual setup. I went through every setting, but the one that made the biggest difference (by far) was the beam angle adjustments for each channel. I closed my eyes and tried to “place” each “speaker” in the proper position.

I then put on my favorite surround test scene, the launch scene from Apollo 13.

WOW.

Completely different experience than before. I can’t believe I waited this long to do the manual setup. Tomorrow night, I’m going to try fine-tuning my room measurements and some of the other settings.

Moral of the story: if you have a less-than-perfect room, don’t just do the Auto setup with the YSP-2200. (or probably any other YSP) Take some time and do the Manual setup; it is like night and day with this unit.

AX88178 USB Gigabit ethernet driver and Mac OS X Lion

weneversleep — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 14:58:14 +0000

UPDATED: see below

Big Lion install fest yesterday. Other than a few hiccups, all went well on all of my Macs.

However, I ran into two problems:

1. When the Lion installer rebooted on my 2006 MacBook Pro (Core 2 Duo), it booted into the recovery partition. I quit the installer, selected the boot disk as the startup disk, rebooted back into Snow Leopard, and restarted the Lion installer. The install then worked correctly. Not sure why that happened; older hardware?

2. On my Late 2010 MacBook Air, I use the Monoprice USB Gigabit ethernet dongle so that I can connect wired at work (yes, it’s USB 2.0, so it’s only ~200 Mb/s, but that’s better than 100 Mb/s). The Lion install was flawless, but when the new OS came up, I had no wired Ethernet connection. I downloaded and re-ran the AX88178 driver for Mac OS 10.4/10.5/10.6 installer, and after another reboot, the dongle worked correctly. I have noticed that sometimes it autoselects 100baseTX instead of 1000baseT now, and I did have one crash (not sure what that was related to). Hopefully Asix can release a new 10.7 Lion driver soon.

UPDATE: Asix released a new driver for Lion here.

Linux for non-nerds: still fails

weneversleep — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 18:58:21 +0000

Disclaimer: I’m a nerd, geek, whatever you want to call it. As proof, I spent a Sunday afternoon installing Mint Linux (10) into a virtual machine on my Mac Pro. No real reason, other than I wanted to test out a non-Windows VM in VMWare Fusion, and because I haven’t installed a Linux distribution in a long time.

Install was extremely simple, other than the fact that vmware-tools wouldn’t install because I was using the “light” install of Fusion. A re-install of the full Fusion solved that issue.

I then upgraded all of the packages. Great.

Fired up Firefox. It’s version 3.6. I wanted version 4. Should be easy, right? Download it and install. Not so fast.

I went to the package manager, looked for FF 4. No dice. After a bit of searching, I realized that I had to add the FF repository to my repository list. Once I did that, I could upgrade to FF 4.

I then took a look at the direct download (compressed archive) file from the FF site. You have to unarchive it, then do some command-line work to actually get it installed. Of course, you will still have FF 3.6 and FF 4.0 installed.

Now, none of this was difficult for me to do, and probably for most people who are using Linux, it’s obvious and expected. However, I’m starting to look at things from a non-geek point of view lately, and this is a total disaster for non-geeks who just want to install the latest version of Firefox (or any other software install that isn’t already in the default repositories). On Windows, I just double-click the installer and go through the simple wizard. On the Mac, I just drag the icon to my Applications. Easy, simple, upgrades are done for me.

The worst part is: it’s not like Firefox is some obscure tech-head application; it’s probably the most-used application on a Linux system.

If Linux ever wants to move past the non-geek-user phase (i.e. to the point where I would recommend it to my mother), it had better get this kind of stuff cleaned up. Honestly, I would have thought this kind of thing would be made so much easier by the time 2011 rolled around, but apparently we’re still stuck in 2000.

Slides from my Houston TechFest 2010 presentation

weneversleep — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 16:29:12 +0000

Here are the slides from my “Understanding SharePoint Disaster Recovery” presentation that I gave at Houston TechFest. Judging from the comments I’ve gotten, it was a well-received presentation.

Understanding SharePoint Disaster Recovery (Houston TechFest 2010)

No blog entries in a while, just Twittering

weneversleep — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 04:29:39 +0000

I’m a Twitter convert. SharePoint, trading, personal stuff, whatever. Just quicker and easier than writing blog entries. Is micro-blogging it an excuse for not writing full-length posts? Maybe, but I’m not alone.

Moral of the story? Follow me on Twitter: @weneversleep.

SharePoint 2009 Conference in Las Vegas

weneversleep — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 21:22:16 +0000

I’m in Las Vegas this week for the SharePoint 2009 Conference, at Mandalay Bay. 7500+ people. Twittering status on@weneversleep.

Follow me on Twitter

weneversleep — Sat, 16 May 2009 20:51:25 +0000

@weneversleep, or go to my Twitter page.

DeVotchKa in Houston last night

weneversleep — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 15:20:07 +0000

An old friend of Lori Ann (and her brother), Tom Hagerman, was in town last night, touring with his band, DeVotchKa. Tom called us, and gave us all-access passes to the show. We got to go backstage before the show and hang out with the band, drink their beer, and catch up with Tom.

And then we watched the show. Crooked Fingers opened, and Tom played some songs with them. Then DeVotchKa came on. What a show. We had to leave before they were done (work night and all), but we really enjoyed ourselves. Very talented musicians, especially Tom, who not only plays the violin, but also the accordion, keyboard, and who knows what else. They even had a Theremin on stage.

Lori Ann and I both realized that it had been too long since we had gone out together to see live music. It was good to break the daily routine, and we need to do it more often. Thanks Tom!

First date night since Brandon was born

weneversleep — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 17:04:38 +0000

Lori Ann and I had our first “date night” since our son was born this last Saturday night. I arranged a special meal at theRainbow Lodge with their new chef, Randy Rucker. It was an eight-course “degustation” food and wine pairing.

And it was amazing.

I will post pictures of each dish soon, but until then, here are my comments on Randy’s blog posting:

I don’t know how Randy could have enjoyed it more than we did. This was our first experience with Randy, after reading so much about his artistry on various foodie blogs.

We were blown away. The food was absolutely amazing. Absolutely genius combinations of various flavors, textures, smells… truly a feast for all of the senses. My personal favorite was the crudo of tilefish-even though it would be gauche to compare it to sushi, the only way to describe it is to say “this is what sushi is trying to be”. The sweetness of the blood orange marinade, the spiciness of the Thai chili, the texture of the fish… just wonderful.

And, we marveled at how in isolation, some of the flavors were odd, but when the entire dish was taken as a whole, the true beauty blossomed. For example, the strawberries in the dessert course were macerated in lime juice, and couldn’t really be eaten alone. But, when eaten with a bite of the bittersweet chocolate, well, it was a transcendent experience.

Our thanks to Randy and the Rainbow Lodge for making our special occasion truly one of the best meals of our lives. We look forward to experiencing more of Randy’s food, because we need to encourage and support this kind of dining experience here in Houston.