Phil's NewsPhlash: July 2005

Thursday, July 28, 2005

New Wireless IP Phone Debuts

This looks cool. I have been having issues with my Vonage setup for 4 weeks now. My trusty old Cisco ATA fried due to someone who we wont mention (Robin) put a stack of towels on top of it and it over-heated. The replacement came in and worked for a day. The replacement of the replacement came in and worked over the weekend…..

I am currently waiting for all the RMAs to sort themselves out before trying on device number 4… Sheesh. But I still like Vonage better than Bell South!!!

< ![if !vml]>< ![endif]>A new wireless IP phone from Zultys Technologies is designed to be compatible with any IP telephony system using SIP (Session Initiation Protocol). The WIP 2 phone offers two call appearances, voice encryption, paging, 3-way conferencing, instant messaging, and all standard telephony functions. In addition, the phone provides four hours of continuous talk time and 12 hours of standby time.

[The Wireless Weblog]

Japanese Develop 'Female' Android

This reminds me of the CitiBank commercial where the kid talks about having the money to build his “Girl Robot” for prom night. J

[Slashdot:]

Wireless Jammer

Yikes! I have a hard enough time getting a signal when on the road. This could make matters worse!

For a small fee of $445, you too can annoy thousands of people on a daily basis. This little device has the potential to jam wifi and Bluetooth signals. I predict those Amish are behind this, trying to put a halt to the Google takeover of the world. Unfortunately this gadget will start popping up all over the place and, well, sorry Mr. Company Tech guy—have fun troubleshooting when one of these devices is in the area.

Luddite invention will jam Bluetooth, wi-fi, vid cams [The Inquirer]
[Gizmodo]

Sunday, July 24, 2005

Microsoft Pre-Release Software Code Named “Avalon” and “Indigo” Beta1 RC (ISO) (Windows Vista)

Well, it’s not the real beta but it could be interesting to play with while we wait for “Windows Vista Beta 1”.

Indigo and Avalon are the codenames for two strategic developer technologies that Microsoft plans to ship in 2006 as part of the Windows "Longhorn" operating system. In addition, Microsoft is making these technologies available on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. The Indigo and Avalon Beta1 "RC" enables developers to continue experimenting with early builds of these technologies, get acquainted with the development experience, and provide Microsoft with feedback. More details about these technologies are below.

[ActiveWin.com Headlines]

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Originally uploaded by Phil Morrison.

Spanky ans Toby are playing with what is left over of a stuffed monkey toy.

Thursday, July 21, 2005

Longhorn's Offical Name is Windows Vista

I know there is a bunch of buzz out there on this but I just had to comment. ‘BOUT TIME!
[Slashdot:]

Numark busts out iDJ dueling iPod mixer

Hey, this is cool. I remember when Noggin did DJ work. He had a big mixing board with two turn-tables (remember vinyl)…. This is way cool.

Alright mixmasters, turns out that Numark dueling iPod DJ mixer we peeped back in April is indeed not vaporware. Numark will be announcing tomorrow the iDJ mixing console for iPod as part of their summer 2005 product lineup — a two-channel mixer that accepts all iPod models with bottom connectors and breaks out their controls into its dedicated interface. Both channels sport a 3-band EQ and gain control, and the unit’s got dedicated mic and phono/line inputs for bringing in additional signals. It’s also rocking some USB connectivity, enabling it to converse with your portable rig as a music-loading base. What we don’t yet know is the price, but y’know, if you’ve already shelled out for two iPods it’s probably not gonna break the bank either way.

[Thanks, Albizu]

Update: we’re looking at $399.00 retail/$249.00 street on this thing. Not bad, not bad at all.

[Engadget]

Sprint Plans To Update PPC-6600

[Homer Simpson] Woohoo![/Homer Simpson] I am soooo glad that they have announced this. I know many folks out there with the non 6700 devices will be happy with this bit of information.

Sprint has confirmed that they plan to update the PPC-6600 Series to support EV-DO. While the update is not expected before the end of the year, and must be approved by Sprint, it will enable EV-DO status similar to the Verizon version of the device.

[PCS Intel]

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Originally uploaded by Phil Morrison.

For my flickr badge

Wednesday, July 20, 2005

NFL teams using "Radio Pill" to monitor athletes' temperatures

This sounds neat. It made me remember the beginning of “The 6^th day”….

< ![if !vml]>< ![endif]>

Players on the Minnesota Vikings might soon be going on the pill — not to prevent pregnancy, but to prevent overheating. After former offensive lineman Korey Stringer died of heatstroke four years ago, the team began looking into ways to monitor athletes’ temperatures. They found HQ Inc.’s Cortemp ingestible core body thermometer pill, already in use by the Philadelphia Eagles and the Jacksonville Jaguars. The players ingest the pill, which transmits their body temperature to a handheld device for about 24 hours or so, after which it’s eliminated from the body. All the hardware involved here ain’t cheap — teams fork over $2,500 apiece for a few data recorders, plus an optional $4,000 handheld that serves as a central monitor for all the players. The bright side is it makes that iPaq hx4700 seem like a steal.

[Engadget]

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Originally uploaded by Phil Morrison.

Death to the HPUX boxes... They are all gone now.

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Originally uploaded by Phil Morrison.

Scott did it.

Moon Cheese?

Hey, check this out!

Google Moon

Then zoom all the way in to the most maximum setting......

Cheese!!! :) I knew it!

Tuesday, July 19, 2005

Egg and Muffin Toaster Warms Your Meat

Wow, for gadgets this is kinda neat! I would love to have one of these for home-made egg McMuffins…

The boys at DoubleViking sent this out to me. I mean for a site dedicated to naked 'tang and stupid nerd tricks, you can see where their interests really lie: in the search for the ultimate poached egg.

The Egg and Muffin Toaster is the apogee of egg and muffin evolution. This delicious sandwich creation station toasts your muffins and poaches, hard boils, or fries your eggs in seconds, allowing me to wrap your cracked, broken lips around a fatty every morning before that Price Is Right marathon. Mmm...

Available soon for $49.99, it even comes with a little screen to "warm your pre-cooked meat." ROAR!

Egg & Muffin Toaster [DoubleViking.com]
[Gizmodo]

Expanding a VMWare vmdk file

I needed to expand a 16 gig drive on a VM today and found this tool:

syntax: vmkfstools -X [new size]M [path]:[vmdk file]

Then boot the box and run diskpart:
diskpart
select Volume X
extend
exit.

The only catch is that you cant seem to extend a boot partition..... :(

Sunday, July 17, 2005

Josh is the king of Texas Hold'em!

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Originally uploaded by PappaD.

Re and Chani

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Originally uploaded by PappaD.

The thing I want to know is what is Jeffrey doing with his feet?

Friday, July 15, 2005

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Originally uploaded by Phil Morrison.

Vig won the first round.

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Originally uploaded by Phil Morrison.

Josh is running the table.

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Originally uploaded by Phil Morrison.

Poker vig...

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Originally uploaded by Phil Morrison.

Josh... Texas hold em king...

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Originally uploaded by Phil Morrison.

Jeff and vig on poker night.

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Originally uploaded by Phil Morrison.

Jim, barbie and robin... Poker night.

Sprint: PPC-6700 - A $649 Software Update? + EV-DO In August?

Argh!! Well, hopefully someone will get one of these jewels and figure out if the ROM will load on a 6600…

Sprint customer service representatives today have officially begun to inform consumers of an upcoming product, the PPC-6700. Readers will recall, that we speculated this exact name months ago (if Sprint took it from us or not is a question we are leaning towards assuming what the answer is internally) for the device.

The PPC-6700 is expected to be a $649 software update to the existing PPC-6600. Currently confirmed is that it will add EV-DO to the device, as well as Windows Media Player 10 (which we previously released in an unofficial update). It is not known if Windows Mobile 5.0 will be included or not. Microsoft has said in the past that no PDA/Phone device will be allowed to updated to WM5, so it is possible that Sprint is circumventing this by releasing a new product.

Sprint has declined to comment multiple times as to if the PPC-6600 will be updated to support EV-DO, and update, which, our own SPI Labs has confirmed they have had in their possession since before the device launched.

Sprint customer service was told that the device is expected to launch in August, which would mark the release of EV-DO handsets for Sprint and indicates the expected date of a consumer soft launch of EV-DO services.

[PCS Intel]

Sunday, July 10, 2005

Don't Look now...

Here comes another one...

TD5

Tuesday, July 5, 2005

MSDTC Failing in a Cluster

I worked hard this morning in Google looking for the answer to this. I found one that got me close but I had to change things up enough that I am reposting it here....

This is on Windows 2003 Enterprise for SQL Cluster. I tried to install MSDTC and it kept giving me an error...

Event ID: 4389 Source: MSTDC Client

MS DTC setup failed to populate the shared cluster registry. The DTC resource will not be able to come online.Error Specifics: d:\srvrtm\com\complus\dtc\shared\mtxclu\mtxclusetuphelper.cpp:120, Pid: 1296, CmdLine: "C:\WINDOWS\cluster\resrcmon.exe" -e 1012 -m 1252 -p 1672

After much pain, here is what I did...

Delete the DTC resource
Delete MSDTC shared folder from the quorum disk
On Node 1:
* Stop Cluster service
* Remove Enable network DTC access
* Run msdtc -uninstall
* Verify success in event log
* Delete registry keys:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CID
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSDTC
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSDTC
* Evict Node1 from cluster.
* Reboot
* Reinstall Enable network DTC access
* Add Node1 to Cluster
* Fail everything over to Node1
* Create MSDTC resource
Node 2
* Stop Cluster service
* Evict node from cluster
* Remove Enable network DTC access
* Run msdtc -uninstall
* Verify success in event log
* Delete registry keys
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CID
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSDTC
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSDTC
* Reboot
* Reinstall Enable network DTC access
* Verify service started, registry keys created
* Rejoin cluster
Then fail the cluster group over to the second node to verify that the DTC
resource comes online successfully on the second node. After that, reboot
both servers and verify that the resource would fail over properly to both
nodes with the rest of the group.