Customize a New XP Installation
I found this site when I was browsing info on MS Exchange. I used several of his tweaks. The most important thing I learned was how to get rid of the hibernate file. It is not needed on my desktop PC and was using 512 MB of disk space.
Over the last couple of days I installed the 1.0 preview release of Firefox and Jedit 4.2 using the windows installer. Firefox is a great browser. I especially like its conformance to standards, tabs, and small size. Live bookmarks is a fascinating new feature which I learned about by accident. When I went to one of my websites I found a RSS down in the lower right hand corner of the browser status bar. Firefox had figured out that the site had an rss feed and was willing to add the rss feed to my bookmarks. I added the feed to my bookmarks and then found that I could view the posted items via the browser.
I installed the Jedit 4.2 again recently. My previous verions had some files types associated with Jedit. Since I had uninstalled the old versions prior to installing the new version I had lost the file type associations. Unfortunately after installing the new platform independent version I could not associate file types. So I researched the problem and found that the jedit launcher was no longer part of the jedit package. I found a user supplied alternative and it worked but it was a little clunky. For awhile I seriously thought about fixing the clunky version. I even downloaded a compiler! Then I did a little more research and found the answer. If you use the windows installer version to install jedit it will add registry entries to make jedit available on the context menu. So I downloaded the windows installer version and installed it. I was almost there. I could now right click on a file and use the “Open with jedit” option. Since I was almost there I did a little more research and figured out how to associate a file type with a java program. I had to use a bat file but I can now double click on a file to edit it with jedit. Whew!
I finally got around to creating a print.css for one of my phpWebsite-based websites. The site is an almost table-less design so all I had to do was turn off the blocks I did not want to see on the print document. I was kind of forced into creating it since the default print icon provided by article manager and elsewhere created a printable document with too much of the basic formatting stripped out. Now the printed documents are pretty usable.
Yesterday I decided to update one of my sites to the latest version of phpWebsite. I had already transferred the file to website when I accidentally went into the Fantastico script facility. I had used Fantastico to install phpWebsite successfully. I assumed Fantastico was used to “just” install new applications. Updates are much harder than clean installs. So I was surprised to see it tell me that some of my applications were out of date and that I could update them. I know I had gone into Fantastico before and never saw these messages. Since I had a current backup and already had a copy of the config.php and my customized theme directory I decided to give it a try. It worked! Better yet my customized theme and my third party mods still worked despite the disclaimer messages from Fantastico. Fantastico is great!
I updated my main machine to SP2 on Sunday. Although I had Automatic Updates on I decided to get it over with on Sunday. Upgrading on Sunday is a much more convenient day for me. I knew that this would be a long process and I wanted a couple of days to test it before I ran payroll on Thursday. I started the download at about 9am and it finished at around 530pm. It took about thirty minutes to verify the download before starting the installation process. I went off to our family Sunday dinner after I got the installation started. When I came back later that evening it was ready to reboot. The boot process took a much longer time than normal. It asked me only one question, “Whether I wanted to turn on Automatic Updates?” Otherwise it appeared to be completing the final SP2 upgrade tasks even though there is not a lot of feedback on the process. Once it was finished I was able to login and everything seems to be the same except for an occasional popup asking me if I wanted to allow commnunication between specific programs and the internet. So far… so good!
I guess everyone is talking about SP2 for XP but there are a lot of updates that have been released recently. I took the opportunity to download and install a few of them.
Upgrading to Media 10 was a no brainer. I occasionally use the Windows Media Player and I like it. I doubt this will break anything except Windows Media Player. The other two service pack updates for .NET are probably required to support SP2 for XP. They could cause more damage if there are any problems but are probably necessary. I guess it is time to start believing that service packs are stable upgrades.
Mastery, Mystery, and Misery: The Ideologies of Web Design (Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox)
Summary:
Simple, unobtrusive designs that support users are successful because they abide by the Web’s nature — and they make people feel good.
A couple of days ago I had to look up some information on a website that will remain nameless but it violated some of my pet peeves of web design. It had a splash page, an unusual navigation bar, html idiosyncracies, and no search page. Their real mistake was to ask what the public thought of their “new” web page design. Since I was in a ornery mood I fired off a flame about my pet peeves while apologizing at the same time. I dislike flames but this site was so retro. So here I am a week later reading Jakob Nielsen’s article on why simple, unobtrusive designs are successful and wondering why those folks did not read his recommendations before redesigning their site. Jakob has been recommending these design principles for at least six years. Although I do not feel obligated to rigidly follow all of his recommendations I find most of his ideas to be useful, practical and easy to implement. It is the web designers who combine Jakob’s recommendations with a pleasing and interesting visual design who I respect the most.
Yesterday I removed a few programs I was not using and ran Spybot to check and clean my PC. Somehow I broke QB 2004 in the process. When I tried to open it I got this message:
an unrecoverable error has occoured exception MSXML could not CoCreateInstance HRESULT=80040154 thrown with error code-2147221164
Function: ADR::Repository DoInitialLoad
File: ..srcRepository.cpp
Line: 81
After some investigation I found out that I was getting a non-serious error with IE about “cannot read properties at this time” and the Windows Update service was failing with a 0x800A01AD. After some research and some failed guesses I fixed the problem by re-registering msxml3.dll with the following command, "regsvr32 msxml3.dll". This must have been inadvertently been un-registered when I uninstalled Salesforce.com’s sync software.
DoubleClick found that 19.1% of Web site visitors in Q2 2004 used the search function, up from 15.1% a year ago. Search now drives 8.4% of online sales, with most shoppers still browsing online menus. Software company Endeca said its 120 clients who adopted advanced search tools saw an average of 20% increase in order size and 30% increase in conversion rates for customers using search, who as a group have a higher conversion rate than visitors who don’t use the tool. Conversion rate for…
[Via AlwaysOn Network]
I posted this link because I have always been a fan of search and occasionally have had a hard time convincing some people of its value. I may want to return to this article at some future time for more background material.
Well, I finally succumbed to the urge and created a partition just for temp files on my workstation. I have been mildly annoyed that I have not been able to defrag my disk completely. Defrag would complete but the next time I ran defrag, it would still recommend that I defrag my disk. I was not sure if the number of Temporary Internet files had anything to do with the problem but I thought I would give it a try. The process of moving my Temporary Internet Files over to the new partition took some time since there are over 18000 files. I ran the defrag but defrag did not completely defrag the disk. So I rebooted into safemode(command line) and ran the chkdsk and defrag. Chkdsk found something it did not like in the MFT but otherwise was okay. Defrag ran for what seemed forever. I wasn’t sure it was running so I bailed out. After booting normally I checked the disk and it was almost completely defragged. Finally!
After running a few days with swap space on a second drive I believe both the server and the workstation have been more responsive. I cannot say for sure but I think the periods 100% cpu utilization are shorter. I am guessing that I had a mild bottleneck accessing the swap space.
The symptom I was getting on the SBS2K3 server was that the DNS was not dynamically being updated with A and PTR records despite the setting in DHCP saying it would. At the workstation I would get a daily error in system events about being unable to update the host information in the DNS. Otherwise, this error was transparent to me. I finally traced this error back to an improper setting in the network identification at the workstation. It had the correct host name but it did not show the full network name which includes the primary domain suffix. To add the primary domain suffix, go to Control Panel-System Properties-Computer Name. Click on the button to change the computer name and then click on the “More” button on the next screen. The next screen will allow you to change the primary domain suffix. In my case I needed to add the primary domain suffix. After clicking Ok and rebooting, the A and PTR records appeared correctly in the DNS.
This is not really a bug but it definitely is a gotcha. Mailwasher Pro has a spam learning feature which was working okay until several weeks ago when it started to indicate obvious spam as needing to be designated as legitimate mail or spam. This is not critical since I use several methods of identifying spam but I do like the databases to vote the same way so I have a backup. I was mucking around the Mailwasher configuration today where I found a configuration parameter that limited the database size to 4 MB but the note attached to it recommended setting this parameter to 8 MB. I quickly checked my database size. Yes, I had already maxed out. I went back into Mailwasher and set it to 8 MB. Since then it has done a better job of identifying spam.
I have avoided learning to much about TweakUI since tweaking frequently can lead to instability. This is a throwback to my Win98/Win95 days. I finally succumbed to tweaking my Local Places since the default locations were not much help. I left in Desktop, My Documents, and My Computer but I added Favorites and Downloads. Downloads is a network directory I use to store all my downloads. I could get to it via Favorites but since I use Downloads a lot I opted to save a click.
PAUD – Parted And Utilities Disk
Today I used a PAUD boot diskette to resize two of my windows partitions. It worked. It is best used by those people who are semi-comfortable with running Linux from the command line. PartitionMagic is easier but more expensive.
I am still playing with separate partitions for the swap and temp space. I had originally planned to use Knoppix to resize my partitions but my PC had problems booting from the CD-ROM. I had booted from it on a different PC so I am confused.
How to configure paging files for optimization and recovery in Windows XP
The optimal solution is to create one paging file that is stored on the boot partition, and then create one paging file on another partition that is less frequently accessed on a different physical hard disk if a different physical hard disk is available. Additionally, it is optimal to create the second paging file so that it exists on its own partition, with no data or operating-system-specific files. By design, Windows uses the paging file on the less frequently accessed partition over the paging file on the more heavily accessed boot partition. An internal algorithm is used to determine which paging file to use for virtual memory management.
I have been playing with pagefiles recently and came across this recomendation. W2K3 complained when I tried to remove the pagefile from the boot disk so it was nice to see this explanation. Windows XP did not complain so I probably will go back to create a minimal pagefile on the boot disk. Since the W2K3 Operating system exists exists on a RAID drive, creating a new pagefile on the old IDE drive will probably significantly help out the server. It makes more use of the pagefile than most SBS 2K3 installs since I did not install enough physical memory for the processes it runs.
The development team at Appalachian State University has released version 0.9.3-4 of phpWebsite.
Version 0.9.3-4 contains mostly bug fixes which were found in the 0.9.3-3 release, but there are some new features/enhancements.
Form Generator
Notes
Control Panel
Other:
Download the full version.
Download the core-only version.
Remember to read the docs and go to /setup/ when upgrading your installation.
Enjoy!
I am finally at the end of the project to transfer the accounting data from Peachtree to QuickBooks. The biggest change was to change the account and job names. I opted to follow the recommendations of Intuit and others to use the Unified Chart of Accounts. This chart of accounts is very close to the chart of accounts recommended by Habitat International. Both of these chart of accounts are already set up to tie into the IRS Form 990. In fact the biggest change I made to Habitat International chart of accounts was to take advantage of classes to break out the different program costs and the administrative costs. Using classes to separate costs seems to be the trend among non-profits. The QuickBooks reports are geared up to take advantage of classes. I can always go back to the old account numbers. Being on the board of directors I think I would like to see a 990 like report so we can focus on what is program and what is administrative costs.
It took me a couple iterations to create the spreadsheet to transform the Peachtree data into the import format usable by QuickBooks. Splitting the bills into program(i.e. homebuilding costs) and administrative data was the key to increasing efficiency and accuracy. The homebuilding costs are always charged to a house using an item. The administrative costs use expense accounts directly. The import transactions are slightly different but if I used the job ledger report to build the input file for homebuilding costs I had all of the data in one report and I could eliminate manual entries. The purchase report had enough data to build the import file for the administrative costs. The final keys to efficiency was the use of the OFFSET(), ROW(), and VLOOKUP() functions. The OFFSET and ROW functions were necessary because the input and import data was spread over several rows and I wanted to use copy and paste to duplicate the formulas. I found I could minimize my manual entry by using VLOOKUP.
I installed the updated junk filter and SP1 for Office 2003 yesterday. I have not had any problems with either update so far. Today I installed the Business Contact Manager SP1 for Outlook. I am amazed how many COM add-ins I am running in Outlook without it croaking. I am running Plaxo, Lookout, and SpamBayes in an Outlook that also supports Business Contact Manager. Whew! I need to knock on wood.
I finally researched the last problem preventing me from having a clean XHTML validation of my website. PHP tags a session ID on some links. It appears on:
Another way to look at it is that all links except those that are hard coded or are in the Navigation menu have session id’s. I tried a couple of ways to turn off session id but they did not seem to work. I was finally able to turn it off in a php.ini in my root directory but it caused the core.php to generate errors. Hmm…what a pain in the butt!
Well I guess I could not put this one down. I decided to use the “Validate Local Html” option from the Web Developer plug-in. This way I could focus on the errors I can do something about. So after fixing the ArticleManager.php inproper use of the <center></center> within a header and the missing ALT parameter in the tracking gif of googlesvcs it validates. I wasn’t too happy to find the tracking gif but I will leave it in for the time being since it works and I appreciate their contribution of this mod.