RasterWeb!

We went over some syncing stuff in Calendar Woes (Part 2), and needless to say, syncing is a major feature, and it’s one we want to work correctly, but sadly, it sometimes doesn’t…

I finally got around to reformatting my drive that had a 20 GB ‘Media’ partition and making it a 40 GB partition. In doing this I backed up my iTunes library, reformatted the drive, then restored my iTunes library. I used ditto to do this, and all files ended up back where they belonged. I lauched iTunes and it found everything just fine. (I won’t get into discussing inodes here, but they probably play some part in what comes next.)

Now that I had all this extra room, and all seemed well, I was happy. Until I decided to sync my iPod. Upon doing so, it seemed to think every single file was changed/updated/modified in some way. So the sync took hours and hours and hours. Hey, at least it worked!

As for the Nokia 7610, I solved one Bluetooth connection problem, and 99% of the time, iSync does the right thing when dealing with calendars and contacts, but every now and then, there is a slight freakout. Today it would not sync, so I ended up deleting the device in iSync and setting it up again (which I should not have done.) This was partly my fault, because for some reason Bluetooth was turned off on my phone. I say partly because I know I didn’t turn it off, so I assume it turned itself off. (?) Anyway, upon getting everything synced up again, iSync thought it was a new device (since I just set it up) and synced everything, which took some time. This time all of the 1-touch numbers (except for one) got unassigned. In the past I’ve managed to lose one or two of the assigned numbers, but this time almost all of them were lost. Sigh…

As much as I love technology and the gadgets that should make our lives easier, it’s sometimes a pain to deal with them…

Thanks for interest in the Mac OS X Virus! Please read the following to install.

Locate the “virus” file. (Your best bet in finding it is some untrusted source.)

Download the “virus” file.

gunzip the “virus” file.

untar the “virus” file.

su to root.

run the virus.

Look, I know it’s a lot of work. Honestly Windows is still light years ahead of Mac OS X as far as automatic installs of viruses.

TO DO: Write a nice GUI for the “virus” that has a cool Aqua look to it and asks for an administrator password before running.

Dear Charter… you still suck.

I guess it’s good that you upgraded your system but…

I try to log in, no good. I try to have you send me my password, no good. I try again, no good. I try the “live chat” support but it has been very busy and is currently unavailable, and it is a Saturday, and I should make a phone call. Right? I fill out a form complaining about your site and service, and after I submit it, I finally get the email that says I have a new password, good. I log in, good. I try to change my password, but you balk and say it must be at least 8 characters, even though the one you sent me is less that 8 characters. I then get another email, with another password, so I’m guessing you’ve given me a new one, I know most systems use some sort of URL with a hash value to actually change your password, but not you guys! I try to click on a link and it opens a new window, so I close it and attempt to open it in a new tab, but that fails because you are not using real links, but freaking’ Javascript pseudo-links, so much for accessiblity eh?

I’m guessing I may do the same thing next month when I want to pay my bill again. So if you get a chance, you know, you might want to make it easier for me to give you my money. Just a thought…

You know, years ago when the iPod first came out, I though “Damn, a decent MP3 player, that’s also an external hard drive… Nice!”

So I found it slightly amusing when I suggested to someone that they use their iPod as an external hard drive, and they indicated that it hadn’t really occured to them. Hmmm…

So in the spirit of a public service announcement, let me tell you that the iPod works fine as an external hard drive. Back up some files today!

Thank you and good night…