Long ago, last year to be exact my WordPress install broke, went out of date, or all the above. So I gave up on the whole blogging thing. However, I’ve had a few things I wanted to share lately so I decided to go through the upgrade process.
Also… The latest version of WordPress is really quite nifty. Very easy to use and … bubbly almost.
Good afternoon boys and girls! I know I usually complain about windows, but here goes… VMWare fusion is the topic tonight! I have had more issues than I can count. The latest one I found nothing online so I had to do some digging and experimenting.
I got a message that said the following when trying to start my VM… The state was saved, this turns out to be important… anyway the error text:
Unexpected signal: 10. A log file is available in “/Users/[my user]/VMWARE/Boot Camp partition.vmwarevm/vmware.log”. Please request support and include the contents of the log file. To collect data to submit to VMware support, choose “Collect Support Information” from the Help menu. You can also run “/Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/vm-support.tool” directly. We will respond on the basis of your support entitlement.
That last bit was especially encouraging! At any rate, I first got mad, then sad, then I decided to search online, not much there… I finally opened Text Wrangler and went to File -> Open Hidden and opened up the log file in the error message. Now … when you first open this puppy up, you are going to _____ your pants. Assuming you’re having the same issue 
Don’t worry it’s not all hex!
I found the following text close to the bottom :
Apr 13 19:06:04.040: vmx| FILE: ScanDirectory discarding M27100.lck from /Users/[my user]/VMWARE/Boot Camp partition.vmwarevm/Boot Camp partition.vmem.lck’: invalid executionID.
Apr 13 19:06:04.043: vmx| MM: using ‘/Users/[my user]/VMWARE/Boot Camp partition.vmwarevm/Boot Camp partition.vmem’ as a paging file
Apr 13 19:06:04.043: vmx| Opened paging file /Users/[my user]/VMWARE/Boot Camp partition.vmwarevm/Boot Camp partition.vmem
Apr 13 19:06:04.043: vmx| Lazy Restore with prefetch of 2076 MB
Apr 13 19:06:04.151: vmx| Caught signal 10 — tid -1610160352
That looked awesome!!
I know from past experience that the vmwarevm file is really just a giant zip type thing that can be explored… also known as a package. So after some strife and debate… I decided to go to Finder… navigate to the vmwarevm file, right click Show Package Contents and scope things out. In the window that opened I saw a file that was named Boot Camp partition.vmem and also a /Users/[my user]/VMWARE/Boot Camp partition.vmwarevm/Boot Camp partition.vmem.lck folder. After some debate… I deleted both… which wiped my saved state. At this point I’m 2 hours into this process so I just wanted my freaking VM to work!
Restart fusion, tried to restart the machine, it bitched that it couldn’t find the vmem … no ____ Sherlock I deleted it since you couldn’t load it or let me ditch it gracefully!!! Clicked ok to those messages, asked it to discard the state and start fresh. Problem solved!!!
God that was an ordeal!! Now… on to what I was going to do pre-explosion !
So a while ago I noticed that my mac was going crazy with some process… I think it was indexing service or some junk. Googled that and found out it was Silverlight going to town, eating up 100% of my cpu. So at the time I just nuked silverlight. Yes you can stop it, however it is somewhat involved. At any rate that fixed my problems.
A few days ago, as you may have noticed, Vista started to puke. SVCHOST.exe was going crazy, so lord knows what that could be… I shut it down a couple of times, killed automatic updates… AGAIN!!! Ahem.. So that gave me back some more control. But that rampant whatever it was was still going crazy. So I did a few things:
1. Killed auto update. I have it set to ask me when it wants to update. I’m pretty good about letting it do it’s thing and just playing xbox in the meantime.
2. Changed the Windows Module Installer service to be a manual start rather than automatic. This is related to updates. It actually installs the hotfixes and so on.
3. Killed Windows Search service. This is the same thing as that Silverlight indexing on the mac side.
Now, if you know me… you know I had some videogame that blew up OSX. It left some virtual adapter behind and OSX didn’t know what to do. So since that happened my Silverlight index service has been running again, and with updates and whatnot I have not seen it again. So it appears that Apple patched their stuff so it doesn’t eat 100% of my CPU. Microsoft still has to get there.
So doing those 3 things restored my Vista VM to normal. No more crazyness. I should fire up Windows 7 and see if they got rid of that svchost.exe bull in Windows 7. They really need to have processes that are easily identifiable so I don’t have to search for days to figure out what is causing me grief! You never know if svchost.exe is something legit or some virus…
This is how I felt about it earlier tonight:
WARNING: PROFANITY AHEAD. IF YOU HAVE SMALL KIDS, ARE IN AN OFFICE, ETC… PUT HEADPHONES ON!
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/sony_releases_new_stupid_piece_of
Only … Microsoft…
Ok… I have said this once and I will say it again. Vista is a plague! No… it is not a virus it is a plague! It just took me 30 minutes to get it to run properly! How might this happen you might ask? Well… the automatic update crap I have TURNED OFF !!! Was running, TrustedInstaller.exe ??? Are you f*ing serious Microsoft? . So after looking through some forums I find the error of my ways and that I have to manually shut down a bunch of services. GAAAAH!!! We are now talking 30 minutes. I had to shut down everything I had going, and being that all of it was slower than dog doodie on account of the automatic updates I dont have turned on … automatically running! … it took forever. Now after the restart a bunch more crap starts to run. WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY!?!?!?!?!?! I DIDN’T ASK FOR ANY OF THIS!?
I have tried Windows 7 and despite some bugs it seemed to run faster than Vista. Now let’s hope that they just fix bugs and leave the beta alone and don’t bomb it with a bunch of piss like they did Vista. If Windows 7 sucks as much as Vista I am done with Microsoft on the home front. That is it. Done. Finito. Fin. The end. Im out! Doing it at work as a necessary evil and that is it!!!
I’ll start writing Objective C if I have to. Granted X-Code < Visual Studio but at least I won’t have to worry about OSX taking a giant crap and wasting an hour of my f*ing life!
Note:
Just google TrustedInstaller.exe if you see it chewing up 100% of your CPU and don’t know how to make it stop. You’ll find the same jazz I did.
So I sent myself a SOW to work on at home, and saw this in google ads. Apparently I should purchase a pig slaughtering device ….
I was poking around MSNBC.com reading about how our economy tanking is taking out other markets around the world, and then I ran into this picture…
Doesn’t it look like they’re all talking into Hot Dogs ?!!?! I couldn’t help but laugh at that…
I recently read David Allen’s Getting Things Done and it was a great book! Most of the books I read are techie books and I felt a bit foo foo reading a productivity book. Far be it for a sophisticated and intelligent nerd like myself to admit I needed administrative help. It wasn’t that I wasn’t gettin ‘r done coding wise, much to the contrary that was and is going great, however I have about 50,000 people needing 5 billion things from me at any given point in time. This could include sending an e-mail about some issue, contacting a customer, setting up a meeting, going to a meeting, turning some tax form in, paying a bill, etc. I honestly don’t know how I functioned prior to this read.
Now don’t get me wrong I had gone through the seven habits of highly effective people and tried to set up a little system based on that, but it hardly worked out well for me. I did not know how to capture the things I needed to do, where to put them without much effort, how to build a general filling/refference system and so on. I ended up mucking up my calendar with the things I had to accomplish(mostly Next Actions), I would have to rearrange my calendar every time I wanted to capture something… took too much effort and my calendar looked like a computer monitor after a good unexpected sneeze…
I knew for a while that I needed help I just didn’t know what type of help I needed. I had heard someone mention the whole GTD thing but I never really looked into it. Everyone always yakked about lifehacker.com, 43things.com and so on ( not that I am an avid reader of either site now, but the book was great ), I just never looked into it.
So down to business… The few things that I gleaned from the book that help me:
1. Have a collection device with you 24/7/365, you never know when you are going to get a call, idea or meet someone. For me this used to be a PDA ( old old old pocket PC ). I bought a case for it from http://www.proporta.com/, awesome site. I got a case that was crafted from aircraft aluminum and fit perfectly to my PDA, I even sat on it and nothing bad happened. Pre-iPhone I had that and my wallet in my back pockets and my phone & keys in the front ones. I wanted a case that was molded to my PDA, I didn’t need to store business cards and other junk in it. I just wanted something that was mildly bullet proof and snug. So I got this thing: Aluminium Case (HP iPAQ 2200 Series)
2. I use Outlook/Exchange 07 primarily since they’re both pretty feature rich and work provides it. Set up categories in your Mailbox much like the book shows(Example below). This will help you find things and keep a clean Inbox. Be sure to keep this simple, don’t go all out and set up 50 billion subcategories… after all… you want to remember where you put stuff. Also don’t be afraid of that delete key, I know how much crap you get that you don’t even need to read. Cc and Bcc should be disabled for some people… you know the ones I am talking about. The ones that like to blow smoke up everyones nose and copy half the stinking company or department just to prove self worth. Most of the time you have to reply to these folks just to save your own hide and copy everyone yourself,and thus perpetuating the Cc/Bcc curse, or you are one of the other victims that wasted one to two minutes of their lives,which you will NEVER get back, reading something you didn’t have to read.
3. Using Outlook you can right click E-Mails that you get and add “Follow Up” tasks. So try it. Right click an E-Mail, go to Follow-Up, hit Add Reminder ( I think, I’m doing this on my Mac and don’t feel like hitting the VPN ), there you can set when you want the system to remind you about this actionable e-mail. This again is a way of collecting, I used my PDA ( prior to the iPhone ) and task list to do #1, and this. So I have 2 collection methods. You don’t have to have a PDA or iPhone to implement this system, you can have a Franklin planner but for me it’s a great deal easier to be digital.
4. Create a physical filling system where you can put all the papers that land on your desk that are related to projects. Personally I have a folder for each project, performance reviews, and so on. I did this at home too and re-filed all the stuff I would have never found. I have Contracts, Home Related, Bank Related, Tax Related and so on. It is nice to have someone doing work on your house ask to see their estimate they didn’t believe they wrote and see the look on their face when you don’t even sweat finding it. I use Hanging Folders with Manilla folders inside them so I can just grab the Manilla folder and run. You do have to label an item twice but I like that way…
5. Set up a 3 Basket system on your desk. In Basket, In Progress Basket ( WATCH THIS CAREFULLY!!!! DO NOT LET THINGS BECOME STALE HERE AND STACK!!!! ), and Out-Basket.
6. Keep your calendar sacred. Do not crowd it with To-Do items. Set up your lists that the book tells you to for that.
7. I keep my Projects list, Next Actions, Errands, Calls etc. all as Tasks in Outlook. I sort by category and minimize projects if I don’t particularly care to see that list because my Next Actions is full. It’s pretty cool when you can give your boss an exact list of what you are working on. Right now I can tell you if I were at work on a Tuesday exactly what I would be up to… after glancing at my iPhone ( PDA previously )
So by now you are wondering why I called this GTD with the iPhone because I’ve managed to mention it only three times. Before we dive into that, I have to say this: Buy the GTD book linked above, the afore mentioned behaviors are only what I gleaned and your system may be radically different. At any rate here goes…
I used to have to carry a phone and a PDA, the iPhone now integrates with Exchange. I can get my E-Mail 24/7/365 from work and my personal account, and if you’re like me you have to control an urge to respond to some flamers until you get in the office and not wreck your personal time… but you can just take some Fukitol ( the joke ) and chill.
So now you have your Calendar, Mail, and Contacts in your pocket… but you still need your task list. Well that doesn’t really get delivered via the Enterprise Integration, I believe Tasks are only stored in Outlook and are not punched up to the Exchange box. Which presents a problem, if that is that case I want to shake whomever thought that up… But not to worry, there is a way around that.
Sign up for a ToodleDo account, this is an online personal management system. You can just use this if you don’t have Outlook/Exchange. So now you have to sync your Tasks in Outlook with this system. That is where the ToodledoSync Application comes in handy. You install that and it will take your Outlook tasks and punch them up to the web. Nifty! Now what? You need an iPhone App … I recommend Appigo ToDo, it’s ten bucks and it works. There are two free apps out there but I didn’t mess with them.
Doing those few things I have my Lists ( in the form of Task Lists ), calendar, email, capture device, iPod, phone etc. all in one device where previously I was carrying three to five. So far I am loving the iPhone.
That is all… time for me to go do some fishin’ … Comment with suggestions…
Yes… I’ve gone and done it. I dropped Verizon and went to ATT for the iPhone. So far I am loving the device… Then again I’ve only had it for a few hours however it looks like it has successfully replaced my previous iPod, phone and PDA. So
iPod +
=
My pockets feel so much lighter … in that there is only one device in them now and it cost a few hundred bucks….