From bizarre to absurd

August 6, 2008

I wrote recently about the terrible G-Technology customer service experience with my G-Drive Mini Triple. After getting it off my mind I figured it would be the last I'd write on the subject. However tonight I'm convinced that there must be a time-sync or time-warp on the thing to go along with the impressive heat sync.

Picking up where the story left off I'd since sent two separate email inquiries about the status of the case. One, two and then three days passed with nary a response. In fact I still haven't gotten a response. I did, however, get a new drive so consider the issue resolved. And then tonight the event leading me to believe there is a hole in the fabric of time around this drive. I received an email from the store that sold the drive telling me my drive shipped today. At least the FedEx number was correct and correctly showed the drive arrived over a month ago.

So I'm cautiously loading the drive with some data. Hopefully it's not gone for good this time.

Cowboy Christmas 2008 edition in Las Vegas

August 6, 2008

Each day folks stop by looking for information on Cowboy Christmas so I guess it's never to early to post information about the 2008 show.

  • The Las Vegas Convention Center hosts the Cowboy Christmas Gift Show which is open 10AM - 5PM daily from Thursday, December 4 through Saturday, December 13 at the Las Vegas Convention Center this show bills itself as "longest running and only “Original” gift show of the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo"
  • My personal favorite the Ariat Country Christmas Western Gift Expo returns for the 15th year at the Sands Convention Center and runs from Friday, December 4 - Sunday, December 14. Their site doesn't give hours but it's safe to assume they will be similar daytime hours.
  • The Mandalay Bay Convention Center will again play host to the Cowboy Marketplace Western Lifestyle Expo December 5 - 13

    • So whether you're headed to Las Vegas for the NFR or just for some holiday shopping it should be a great time in Vegas again this year.

IP over Firewire sneaks back into Leopard

August 2, 2008

Some time back I was lamenting that IP over Firewire didn't seem to be working in Leopard. I routinely use IP over firewire in the data center to have out-of-band communications (backup, heartbeat etc) between servers. With an early version of Leopard (10.5 or 10.5.1) it wasn't working at all. Today I was getting back to checking for possible work-arounds. Fortunately before digging in too far I decided to try it and low and behold it works just like it used to.

Boise needs an Apple store

July 31, 2008

An Apple store is so very desperately needed in Boise. Please Apple if you're listening don't leave us stuck between long drives and our unsatisfactory local choices. Sure we have Boise Mac Life which looks like a great store. When you look a little deeper, though, the advice has been suspect (should one really wait six months to start using Leopard?), the prices are inflated (the "cash discount" price is the list price and the list price shown is higher) and the service leaves us wanting.

Earlier this week we returned home and the MacBook hard drive promptly died. When it came back today it had the wrong OS on it -- a problem I've never encountered with Apple's service directly. Sure it had a nice embroidered Marware keyboard cover, but the time I'm left looking at that waiting to reinstall the operating system on a blank disk just so I can then do the file recovery is making me not like it so much. (Though I sense there are some Drupal keyboard covers in the offing).

Communication is the key to customer support or why to avoid G-Tech

July 31, 2008

At the end of June I ordered a [amazon title B000YQWQ4I]. I've had the previous version of the drive for a couple of years and it just rocks. They are a little more expensive than other drives but it's loaded with features from a great heat sink, leather carrying case and a triple interface. The goal was to get it before the July 4th weekend and get some data loaded for the OSCON trip later in the month. Everything looked good and the drive arrived a day earlier than scheduled. Things were busy but I plugged it in a couple of times and then finally sat down to load it up. This was the third time I'd used the drive. When I came back to the computer the drive wasn't responding. After rebooting the computer didn't see the drive. Using several computers verified that the drive was in fact dead. Plug in any of the three interfaces and it wouldn't spin up. The light was on but the drive wasn't spinning for anything.

So on July 8 I went to the G-Technology website and created a ticket. Late the following day I got an email with return instructions and the following information about what to expect:

As soon as we receive the drive, we will diagnose the problem and either
repair it or send you out a replacement.
Turn around time is estimated at
a) Ok To Erase: five to ten working days after we check in your drive or
b) Save Data drives require ten to fifteen working days after we check in
your drive for service.

APC for PHP on Mac OS X

July 30, 2008

In talking to a fellow Drupaler recently I realized I'd started to setup APC on the server some many months ago and then was sidetracked before it got done. A quick search revealed this article has the necessary steps. (PECL installation doesn't quite work on OS X using the Entropy PHP distribution).

OSCON, Drupal and the greener conference circuit

July 25, 2008

OSCON is nearly done. It has been a great week and a couple of great days at the Drupal booth on the Expo floor. Sometime I hope to get a little more written about the experience. For the moment I'm in the Greening the Conference Circuit sessionhttp://en.oreilly.com/oscon2008/public/schedule/detail/2910 where we're discussing many issues related to encouraging vendors to be more environmentally friendly. It is nice to see how many of the great ideas being discussed were implemented by the Drupal booth.

One of the best ideas relates to reducing the amount of unused, non-recyclable material in the conference bags. The suggestion in the room is that we should spend more time with conference vendors, who like Drupal, didn't produce materials in the bag and aren't handing out things at the booth that will be taken by many folks and used by few. Not having a handout has several positive effects first and foremost there isn't the waste, either in unused materials or in folks who casually pick things up but don't really ever look at it again. On the other hand at the Drupal booth we were often stacked six or eight Drupalers deep each talking to one or more interested people about Drupal. And more than a handout placed quickly in somebody's hand we could direct individuals to the best places to get information for their particular needs.

As with most conferences the really good bits have come in the hallways and in the meeting of great people. The sessions have largely been solid with a few outstanding sessions to punctuate the week.

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