Blogger Scheduling is Not Working

I am a big fan of the scheduling feature with blogger. It allows me to blog as much as I want, and stagger the posts to keep my content seemingly fresh every day of the week. Lately, I have been noticing that it has not been working.

I looked into it today (Finally) and it turns out that it is a known issue with Google, and their engineers are working one it. Here is a quote from the Google Known Issues blog:

Scheduled posting is currently unreliable for some users. We're looking into this and will post and update when we have more to share.

Thanks for your patience.

I am really hoping they get this fixed soon. It is one of the features I use the most. What about you? Do you use scheduled posting with blogger? Let me know in the comments.

Technorati Tags: blogger,scheduled,posts,not,working,known,issue

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Bypass MDS on Blackberry Devices

The other day I was told by one of our senior Systems Administrators that I needed to perform an upgrade to the latest version of Blackberry Enterprise Server within a few days to help us move to Microsoft Exchange 2007. We were running BES 4.1.4 fine, but apparently it isn’t supported with Exchange 2007.

No problem I thought, I checked the online documentation on the Blackberry Website. I canned Blackberry support to pick their brain, and to check my stuff to make sure there wouldn’t be any issues. After I was satisfied, I went ahead and backed up the VM that my BES is running on, took a snapshot of it as well, and backed up the SQL database. Yeah, perhaps I was a little over cautious, but Blackberry is one of the high profile killer apps at my company. I couldn’t afford failure.

I decided to go the in place upgrade route. It is was easier than the cutover process. The install for 5.0 was pretty smooth, and everything worked fairly well. Or so I thought.

The very next day I noticed that I couldn’t browse the internet any more. I would get an error saying:

A communication failure occurred with the selected Mobile Data Service. The server may be busy, please try again later. If the problem persists, contact your administrator.

Hmm, that didn’t sound good. I quickly logged into my BES, and saw that the Blackberry MDS Connection Service was stopped. I thought it would be a simple fix. I started the service and pow! Nope! The service would start, then after about five minutes it would stop.

I checked the BES log files and saw some of this awesomeness:

General Error connecting to the database.: application.handler.ldap.DEFAULT_PRT

Now, this whole time, everyone could send and receive emails, they just couldn’t access the internet through the MDS service. I called Blackberry support. They had me check some stuff, but after a while they were stumped and escalated the issue to their developers. GREAT! Now what am I supposed to do when the users come calling?

I’ll tell you what I had my users do. This of course is a workaround until Blackberry can get back to me with a permanent solution, but hey it works. I had my users perform the following on their devices:

• Go to Options>Advanced Options> Browser
• Change the Default Browser Configuration to use Internet Browser
• Press the menu key, and save the change
• On the main screen, open the browser
• Press the menu button and select Bookmarks
• Highlight your first bookmark, press the menu key and select edit bookmark
• Change the browser option to Internet Browser and accept the change
• Do that to any other bookmarks you may have.
• Once complete, try to browse the internet on your device.

Using The Internet Browser instead of the Blackberry Browser sends your users web traffic out across the carrier’s network, instead of back through your BES. This is actually fine for us as we don’t have any internet policies enforced for our mobile users anyway. If you do though, then this may still be a good temporary solution until you can get your stuff fixed.

Have any of you experienced problems with the MDS service on BES 5.0MR1? Did you fix it? Care to hook a brutha up? Let me know in the comments!

Technorati Tags: bes,blackberry,5.0,mr1,mds,browse,bypass,internet

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WOW Freak Out. Real or Fake?

Yesterday, one of my co-workers forwarded me this video allegedly of a kid who is freaking out because his mom canceled his World of Warcraft (WOW) account. At first I thought this may be a real clip of a kid having an emotional breakdown, but getting near the end of it, I started to have different thoughts.

Either way, if it were real, this is probably one of the funniest reactions I have ever seen to something as trivial as a video game. Sure it's easy for me to say, but then again I don't play too many games. Still though, no matter how important something was to me, I am fairly certain I wouldn't try to shove a TV remote up my rear end... Oh wait, you haven't seen it yet...

Before I get too much further, here it is, the alleged "Greatest WOW Freak Out Ever":



What do you think? Real? Fake? Have you ever got this worked up over a game, or anything else for that matter? Hit me up in the comments.

Technorati Tags: wow, freak, out, world of warcraft, humor, funny, video

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Forcing Demotion of a Domain Controller

The other day I was attempting to install a new antivirus software on one of my company’s remote domain controllers. Everything was going fine except the antivirus couldn’t create the user account it needs to perform updates.

I checked the knowledge base for my antivirus company (It’s Sophos if you must know) and they suggested trying to manually create the account in Active Directory if it is on a Domain Controller. When I opened up Active Directory Users and Computers, it defaulted to the next closest Domain Controller. When I tried to select the server I was on, I got an error message.

Apparently, one of our Systems administrators was doing some meta data cleanup a few weeks ago to try to fix some replication errors, and may have accidentally deleted this particular server’s roll as a Domain Controller. Ouch!

It was still a part of the domain, so I tried to simply demote it and re-promote it again. This is where I ran into an issue. When I tried to demote it I got the following error:

Error: An error occurred:
Win32 Error 8419(0x20e3): The DSA object could not be found.

I tried a few things with DNS, but nothing worked. I finally had to break down and force the demotion of the server. If you have never done it, you run the following command:

dcpromo /forceremoval

This runs dcpromo and ignores all errors. Once complete, the server will reboot and will no longer be a part of the domain.

When that was complete, I deleted the server object from Active Directory Users and Computers, and forced replication to the other Domain Controllers. I then ran the ntdsutils command line utility to make sure there wasn’t any stale metadata left over.

After that I tried to rejoin the server to the domain. I wasn’t able to, apparently the SID data was still in AD. To correct that I ran newsid from Sysinternals to change the SID and rebooted it. When it came back up, I rejoined it to the domain, and ran dcpromo successfully.

I’ve been keeping my eye on it, and everything seems to be replicating without issue. Hurray!

This just goes to show you that when trouble shooting the underbelly (AKA the Schema) of Active Directory, be careful, and pay close attention to what you are doing. One simple mistake can cause big problems.

Has anything like this happened to you? What caused it? How did you fix it? Did you do something similar? Let me know in the comments.

Technorati Tags: Error 8419(0x20e3),dcpromo,force,removal,domain,controller

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Alternative Mobile Voicemail

Many many moons ago, when T-Mobile first appeared in San Diego, my wife and I signed up for their service because it was the cheapest thing available. For the most part we liked their services, but what we didn’t like was that every time you got a voice mail message you got an alert on your phone saying you had a voice mail, you also got a text message. They have since removed that feature, but it was sort of annoying.

Currently I am on Verizon, and their voice messaging is okay. I mean, it does what it is supposed to do. What I don’t like about Verizon’s is that when I dial in from my cell phone I still have to put in my pin number, then to play a message, I have to select “1’ or something to play it. It is rather inconvenient when I am driving, and I am supposed to be “hands free” yet I still have to look down to dial pin numbers, and menu items just to check a voice message.

All of those annoyances have gone away for me though. My buddy recommended an alternative voice messaging service, that is free to use, and has some really cool features. The service is called Youmail, and here is what they offer:

• Visual Voicemail - See who called, from where, and even their picture
• Use your smart phone or your computer - or you can still dial in like before
• Save time - Point, click and play or delete
• Personal Custom Greetings
• Voicemail Sharing
• Unwanted caller blocking
• Voicemails at MP3’s direct to your email

Setup for me was really easy, and they have detailed instructions for just about every carrier out there to switch over to their service.

Another feature they offer (for a premium of course) is speech to text, so you can just read your voicemails. Pretty cool sounding, but I am not paying for that myself.

I have been using it for a week, and so far I like it way better than the stock Verizon voicemail. It is more convenient, and if I am close to the computer, I can play my messages through Windows Media Player, and I never have to call my voicemail.

What do you think? Do you find your current provider’s voicemail kind of annoying? What don’t you like about it? Have you tried Youmail? Know of a similar service? let us know in the comments.

Technorati Tags: alternative,voicemail,free,mobile,cellular

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Remember When Megabytes Were Expensive?

My buddy Sundance sent me this picture the other day, and I almost fell out of my chair. Looking at old advertisements like this makes you almost snicker inside considerent what you can get these days for under $30! Seriously, you can get a Bauer-Power Gear 4 GB USB drive for $24.99.

When you consider that, then paying almost $3,000 for 15 MB seems pretty outrageous. Back then though, it was probably a bargain!

Not only is the disk almost $3000 by itself, you also have to spend almost $80 on the appropriate installation kit! Are you friggin kidding me?

Check out the ad I'm talking about:

Thankfully I entered the I.T. game when I did. I couldn't imagine forking over that kind of dough for so little storage capacity. What about you? Were you working in the computer field when 15 MB was a premium amount of space? Do you remember paying these prices? Let us know know in the comments!

Technorati Tags: old, computer, advertisement, 15mb, hard drive

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New Contest: Win a Free Bauer-Puntu Computer!

Oh yes you read that correctly! I got my grubby little hands on a little mini computer, and I am going to be giving that mofo away free and clear to one lucky winner! This puppy will come with Bauer-Puntu Linux 9.04 pre-installed for some awesome hacking fun!

I will run this contest just like the last one which is via Twitter! It just makes things easy for everyone! Entering is really simple, and takes only a few seconds of your time. If you are a Twitter user you know how following someone, and retweeting a message only takes seconds of time, but in this case those seconds can get you a mutha friggin' computer!

All you have to do to enter is

1. Follow me on Twitter: (@ElDiPablo)
2. Retweet about this contest: (Click here to retweet correctly)

Doing those two very easy things will get you one entry in the contest! YOU HAVE TO DO THIS TO ENTER! If you want another entry all you have to do is subscribe to my RSS feed, and post a link to a screen shot of Bauer-Power in your RSS reader in the comments. If you want, yet another entry (Yes, three chances to win) write up a blog post linking back to this contest. Post a link to your blog post in the comments!

I will add each entry to an Excel spread sheet, and I will use a random number generator to pick a winner. Drawing will be July 3rd at 2:00PM Pacific time via Twitter.

So what kind of computer will you all be competing for? A used Compaq EVO D51e with a 2.0Ghz Pentum IV Processor and 1 GB of RAM. Sure, the specs aren't top of the line, but it runs Bauer-Puntu Linux like a son-of-a-bitch! Plus, it's small as hell and free (So stop complaining!)

In interest of full disclosure, I obtained this machine from my current employer (Who shall remain nameless) as we recently cleaned out our store room and designated a number of machines to be sent to the recycling center. My boss, who got approval from his boss, said that we could pick through these obsolete machines to take home. The only stipulation? We can't sell these for a profit (Which I'm not, I am giving it away). I have received a signed receipt from management authorizing me to have this computer.

With that out of the way, here is a picture of the computer:

What are you waiting for? Start retweeting, and tell all your friends!

NOTE: Contest Open to U.S. Residents Only

Technorati Tags: contest, free, computer, twitter

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Why an Ubuntu Workstation is better than Windows at work

A few weeks ago I decided to say damn the man and install Ubuntu as my operating system at work. So far there isn’t anything I am unable to do on Ubuntu that I couldn’t do in Windows to get my work done.

Today I was a little light on the workload so I decided to browse the Ubuntu repositories to see what games were available. Of course, two that popped right out at me were some of my favorite Open Source games;  Tux Racer and SuperTux!

These two games got me thinking about how much cooler the free games for Ubuntu are compared to the free games that come with Windows. I also got to thinking about how many people play solitaire and minesweeper at work.

Because of that, I decided to make this little video:

What do you think? Am I wrong on this? I suppose there are lots of free games you can download for Windows too, including SuperTux and Tux Racer, however these are available directly in the repositories for Ubuntu.

What games do you like to play on your Linux system? What free games do you play in Windows? Let me know in the comments.

Technorati Tags: linux,ubuntu,games,free,tux racer,supertux,windows,xp,solitaire,minesweeper

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The Best Non Adobe Air Twitter Clients For Linux

I have been using Twitter fairly regularly for a few months now, and I have been an active Linux user for over a few years. Since I started using Twitter, I have been playing with a lot of Twitter clients. If you have been looking for different clients to use, you probably already know that there are a bot load of clients made with Adobe Air.

That's fine, but what if you don't want to use Adobe Air applications for some reason or another. One reason I don't like it is in 64 bit Ubuntu. It is just too quirky, and you have to do a lot more tricks to get Adobe Air apps to work. No, in 64 bit Ubuntu, I would rather use a non-adobe Twitter client. If you have been looking, here are my two recommendations:

1. Twitux - This one is a very simple, and easy to use Twitter client. With it you can do almost anything else you can do in any other Twitter client, like update your status, look at replies and direct messages, list friends, etc.
2. Gwibber - Gwibber is my favorite non-adobe air client. The makers of Gwibber label it as a micro-blogging client because you can use it for more than just Twitter. You can update Jaiku, Identic.ca, Facebook, Flickr, Digg, and RSS. It even has Ping.fm integration for even more networks!

There are a few others out there, but these two in my humble opinion are the best alternatives to Adobe Air clients like Twirl, or Tweetdeck. Especially in Linux, where it is always better to support small, Open Source projects.

What Twitter clients do you guys use in Linux? Know of any other good alternatives to Adobe Air Twitter clients in Linux? Hit me up in the comments!

Technorati Tags: twitter, client, linux, alternative, adobe, air, twhirl, tweetdeck

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You Are The Controller

Have you seen it yet? I’m talking about one of the coolest things to hit the gaming seen since mutha friggin’ Frogger! Okay, so maybe Frogger wasn’t that cool, but this thing is.

I am talking about the new hotness that Microsoft laid down at the recent E3 Expo in Los Angeles. This is a new way to play games on the XBox 360, and that new way is without a remote. Actually, YOU are the controller to be more precise.

The Nintendo Wii has nothing on this sucker. Many people liked the Wii because it let them get up and get more involved with their games. The Wii however still required a controller. This new way of playing games with the XBox 360 doesn’t require a controller at all. It only requires You!

Check it out, Project Natal:

What do you think about this? When it finally comes out are you going to get one? I honestly think this is my IN to convince my wife to let me have an XBox 360.

Technorati Tags: xbox,no controller,project natal,e3

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My New Favorite Free Windows Screen Capture Software

I was watching IPTV shows on my Tivo again this weekend, when I came across episode 91 of Tekzilla, and they mentioned their free software pick of the week. This week they chose a free web capture software that is pretty robust, is easy to use, and is absolutely free.

Normally for screen capture in Windows I would use Camstudio which works pretty good, but I could never for the life of me get the audio to work. Also, I have found it to be rather flakey at times.

Good news for me that I watch Tekzilla though, because the software they mentioned is pretty awesome! It is called BB Flashback Express from Blueberry Software. Here are some of it's features:

• Webcam recording for that Picture-in-picture touch
• Record Windows, Full screen or region
• Record commentary or PC sounds
• Exports to Flash Video (FLV) or AVI
• One button web publishing to Youtube, Blip.tv, Viddler or Revvler

Here is a clip of Tekzilla talking about BB Flashback express:



What video capture software do you like to use? Know of any other free programs with more features than BB Flashback Express? Let us know in the comments!

Technorati Tags: free, screen, capture, windows, bb flashback express,

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Don't Laugh - I Am Talking About Real Super Heroes!

This one doesn't go in the tech category, no this has to get filed somewhere in the strange and geeky bucket. That's okay because geekiness and technology go hand-in-hand. Because they mesh so well, I though I would write a quick post on a phenomenon going on across America, and that is the uprising of "real" super heroes. Think about it for a second, when you were a kid reading comic books, did you ever once think that it would be cool to take down perps, and drug dealers while flying through the air in a cape and skin tight spandex? No?...errr.... me neither....

Anyway, I am not talking about one or two confused individuals, no there are hundreds, if not thousands of these guys taking to the streets, and assuming flamboyant persona's in the name of justice! Straight out of a comic book, and onto your streets, these guys are taking this very seriously.

Why, right here in San Diego we have our very own Super Hero that goes by the name of Mr. Xtreme. Mr. Xtreme has started his own local organization of Super Heroes called the Xtreme Justice League. I first read about Mr. Xtreme, and learned of this unusual phenomenon sweeping the nation in an article in the San Diego Reader. Mr. Xtreme, like most other "real" super hero's hands out food to the homeless and the needy, and patrols the streets of his neighborhood at night looking for evil doers.

Another super hero I stumbled on is Geist, who patrols the streets of Rochester Minnesota. So far, Geist has to be my favorite. Check out his MySpace page, and have a look around his pictures. They are seriously straight out of the movies. I don't know about how well he fights crime, but I can tell you this... He has a better costume than Mr. Xtreme from San Diego. Here are some of Geist's "interestests" from his MySPace page:

"Victims of tragedy, the homeless, general community service, charitable non-political causes, crime deterrence, obliterating graffiti, crime fighting. I give food and supplies to food shelves and animal shelters and toys to kids. Anyone who considers themselves one of the Forgotten. I patrol the streets to deter, prevent or report crime. Police, I'm just another pair of eyes and ears at your side. I'm not looking to get in your way, but will help as I can until you arrive."

Most of these guys belong to larger groups. Not unlike the "Justice League of America" from DC comics, or the X-Men from Marvel. Geist for instance is a part of the Great Lakes Heroes Guild with such super hero members as Razorhawk and Shadowflare. From what I gather, these smaller groups join forces, and network with groups in other areas to form a much larger network to strike fear in the hearts of those who would do evil! Speaking of Razorhawk, he did an interview with Fox News, check it out:

Do you think these guys are joking around? Oh no, these guys are serious as a mutha friggin' heart attack! Here is a video from "The Heroes Network" where a bunch of these guys got together to put the word out that they are taking back our streets!

So what do you think? Have you heard of this phenomenon in your town? Do you know any of these guys? Do you want to join them? I want to know your take on the whole thing in the comments!

Technorati Tags: real, superhero, super hero, geist, mr. xtreme, razorhawk, shadowflare, heroes network, great lakes heroes guild, xtreme justice league

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Besides Scribefire, There Are No Good Blog Editors in Linux

I am rather writing this out of frustration more than anything. I have been trying to find a viable alternative to Windows Live Writer for Linux. I know that I mentioned Scribefire a few months ago, but ever since my buddy Sundance convinced me to make the switch to Windows Live Writer (WLW) it has been hard to go back.

There are many desktop blog editors for Linux, just none as good as WLW. I've tried Drivel and Gnome-Blog, both are basically glorified text editors. BloGTK showed some promise, but it crashes when you try to run it in Ubuntu 9.04 (Known bug). There is Qumana, which is Java based, but it hangs when trying to post. There are a few others, and not one of them has the features of WLW.

Scribefire is still pretty good. It has most of the features that WLW has, except it doesn't do on-the-fly picture editing, which is the main reason I like WLW so much. I can just grab a picture from my desktop, import it into WLW, watermark it, add a drop shadow, and tilt it all in one program. I can't do that in any other editor, especially none for Linux.

So how am I working around it? I decided I would use Scribefire in conjunction with the Picture2Life, which is a free online photo manipulation program. There is also a Firefox plugin for Picture2Life so you can grab any picture off the web easily and load it into Picture2Life's editor lickity split.

Now Firefox is my blog editor of choice in Linux. I can blog in Scribefire, and in the window above Scribefire, i can make my edits to pictures using Picture2Life, download the edited pic, and re-upload it into Scribefire without minimizing my window.

It's no WLW, but it is the best blogging solution I have found for Linux that offers the closest-to-wlw experience I can get. So far, nothing else has come close. Above is a picture I did real quick with Picture2Life. I was able to watermark it, add a drop shadow, and tilt it all like I do in wlw. There are other effects you can add too like mirror, lighting, and cropping to name a few.

What do you use for blogging in Linux? Have you gotten BloGTK to work? Maybe you are using a lesser known Linux blog editor. Who knows? Let me know what you are doing in the comments.

Technorati Tags: blog, editor, linux, windows live writer, picture editing, drop shadows, water marks

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A Review of The Kodak Zi6 HD Pocket Video Camera

I am a cheap bastard. You guys all know that! That is why I have been using my crappy little Kodak Easy Share camera to film all of the Bauer-Power videos. Since I have been getting a lot of complaints on the quality of the videos, I decided I should get a better camera.

I was thinking about saving up about $500-$600 to purchase a Canon HV20 HD camera, but then I thought better of it. Besides the awesome video quality, the HV20 comes with a mic jack. The only problem is that my Bauer-Power video co-host and I have two microphones, and there is only one mic jack. I figured since I will have to record audio separately anyway for both mics to take care of our audio complaints, and dub it back in later, I might as well save a few hundo, and buy something less expensive.

Enter the Kodak Zi6 HD Pocket video camera. I have seen them all over the internet at various prices, almost all of them for under $150. I got mine refurbished from Geeks.com for under $99 after shipping and handling, but since last weekend, their price for the refurbished model went up to $99 before shipping.

Here are some of the camera's specs:

• Shoots in 720P HD at 60 FPS or 30 FPS
• Has a VGA mode to save space
• Has a 2X digital zoom
• Uses 2 AA Batteries
• Uses SDHC card storage up to 32GB
• Can take 3MP picture snap shots

I decided to shoot a quick video in HD at 30FPS. The reason I didn't do 60 FPS was that my video editor only outputs to 30 FPS, and Youtube converts to 30 FPS, so I figured I was wasting my time shooting a video at 60 FPS if I was just going to edit it and upload it to the internet anyway. Here is my video review so you can get an idea of the video and sound quality:



Final verdict? I love it! For under $100, I just don't think you can beat the quality. The only things I don't like are the 2X zoom because it is too jerky for me, and I don't like that there is no image stabilization. Neither of those things are deal breakers in my opinion though.

If you are trying to figure out whether or not to buy this thing, I say go for it! If you have any more questions about the Zi6, hit me up in the comments!

Technorati Tags: kodak, zi6, review, 30fps, test

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I finally Got the Global Address To Work in Evolution for Jaunty!

This post is going to be relatively small and quick, but I thought I would put it out there because I had the damnedest time getting the Global Address list in Evolution to work in Ubuntu 9.04.

First off let me say that I hate Evolution. I don't use it on my Linux machines at home at all! If only someone would make a good OWA plugin for Thunderbird, then things would be better! Until then, Evolution is the only Exchange game for 'nix systems in town.

So back to my problem. I could not access the Global Address List! No matter what I put in, I would get an error saying that Evolution couldn't access the Global address list. Depending where I was in Evolution, here are the errors i got:

Error Loading Address Book

Or I would get this error:

Error Loading Address book.

This address book cannot be opened. This either means that an incorrect URI was entered, or the server is unreachable.

It was my fault though, I mistakenly thought that I should be putting in the FQDN of the Exchange server were you input the URI for the Global Catalog Server. I also read somewhere that you are supposed to put the URL of the OWA server. None of those worked. What did work though was putting in the FQDN of the local Domain Controller!

If you don't know where to do that, click on Edit > Preferences. Select your Exchange account and press the Edit button.



Click on the Receiving Options Tab, and under Global Catalog Server Name, input the FQDN of your local Domain Controller then click OK. You will have to restart Evolution for the changes to take effect.



After I did that, I was able to access the GAL, and grab contacts straight from Active Directory!

Now I believe this only works behind the corporate firewall. I am not quite sure what to do if you are wanting to access Exchange email from home on your Linux box. If you have gotten the GAL to open from outside of the network, hit me up in the comments to let me know what you did!

Technorati Tags: evolution, exchange, gal, global address list, ubuntu, 9.04, jaunty jackelope

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Who Wants a Free Microsoft Technet Subscription?

I just saw a pretty cool retweet on Twitter from @digininja talking about a free Microsoft Technet subscription! Gee, do I want cool free exclusive downloads, IT news, and updates about the haps at Microsoft? Umm... Yes please!

Of course, this is available only to U.S., U.K., and Canadian Residents, so sorry to you other international Bauer-Power readers. Microsoft is basically saying you can go pound sand. Don't worry though, there will always be a special place for you in my heart ;-P

For those of you (like my boss) who aren't familiar with Technet, here is a description from Wikipedia:

Microsoft TechNet is a Microsoft program and resource for technical information, news, and events for IT professionals. Along with a website, they also produce a monthly subscription magazine titled "TechNet Magazine".

TechNet was originally available only to customers with paid subscriptions; however, it has been expanded to include public information, webcasts, local events, and free newsletters. They have also started an open source blog on April 6, 2006 called Port 25 to publicly explore that business model and provide discussion forums.

I signed up for mine, now I have free access to all of Microsoft's software including operating systems! I am downloading a copy of Vista Ultimate right now. Put that in your pipe and smoke it!

Normally a subscription like this goes for about $399 per user, so you HAVE to take advantage of this right now! This subscription will only last until September 30th (Convenient right? it ends just before they release Windows 7 to the public in October).

Okay, so how do you claim your free subscription? Just click one of these links of course:
(US)
(UK)
(Canada)

Technorati Tags: free, microsoft, technet, subscription

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How To Dual-Boot Windows 7 and Ubuntu 9.04

I usually wouldn't write something like this. I mean, everyone know how to do a dual-boot setup right? I thought this setup would be just as simple. I mean I've done dual-boot installs hundreds of times, why would this one be any different?

I don't know about your system, but when I tried to dual-boot my Dell Mini 9 with Windows 7 and Ubuntu 9.04 I had some problems. You see, I always start with the Windows Install first, then install Linux last so Grub can take over as the bootloader. I am sure most of you do too!

That's what I did first. I booted up with my Windows 7 DVD, and deleted all of the old partitions, then I partitioned my drive in half and installed Windows 7. After that, I booted up with Ubuntu, and started to install, and here is where I had the problem. Ubuntu didn't see the Windows 7 partition as an operating system! When the installer got to the disk partitioner, it showed that I had 32GB of free space! That was strange because when I mounted the hard drive from the live CD I could see all of the Windows 7 files. WTF!?!

I'm not sure what it is, but Ubuntu doesn't understand how Windows 7 does it's partitioning even though Windows 7 is using the same NTFS that we have all grown to love. Never fear though, I found a solution that works.

After playing around with different settings and installs, I finally found the best way to install it (for me anyway). Here is what I did:

1. Boot up with the Ubuntu 9.04 CD
2. Opened a terminal, and run Gparted
   
   >sudo gparted
   
   
3. Create an NTFS partion (I used the first half of the disk)
   
   
   
   
   
4. Quit Gparted, and reboot
5. Boot up with the Windows 7 DVD
6. When asked where to install, select the ntfs partition you created in step 3 and click next
   
   
   
   
7. Windows 7 will install
   
   
   
   
   
8. After Windows 7 Installs, bootup using the Ubuntu CD again and proceed with the install as usual to the empty partition
   
9. Ubuntu should now see the Windows 7 partition as a Windows Vista Partition, and now you can dual boot!
   
   
   
   

In the end, the moral of the story is that if you create your initial partitions with the Windows 7 DVD like you did in previous versions of Windows, then Ubuntu 9.04 will not be able to see the partition as an Operating System. If you use a third party partitioner, like Gparted, and install Windows to that, you will be good to go!

Did any of you have problems dual booting with Windows 7? Did you get it to work a different way? Did your's work out of the box? I want to hear about your experience in the comments!

Technorati Tags: dual boot, windows 7, ubuntu, how-to, hidden partition, can't see,

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The Best Video Editor For Linux

I have been searching, and searching for a long time to find a good, reliable video editor for Linux. I needed one that was easy to use like Windows Movie Maker, and just as intuitive. I believe I have found a good candidate.

I just started playing with it today, but so far I have to say this one is very intuitive, and have a very easy to use interface. It is called Open Movie Editor. Currently it is only available to Linux operating systems, so you Windows and Mac users can just suck it I guess :-P

I tried using Kino for a while, but it just wasn't working out for me. I also tried Cinelerra, and Jahshaka, but those are too advanced for me. There are a few others, but none of them frankly compare to Windows Movie Maker, and that is sad frankly because Windows Movie Maker isn't even that good!

Here is a screen shot of me playing with it:

Here is a video tutorial from the creator of Open Movie Editor:

If you are an Ubuntu user, intallation is easy. Just install it from the repositories using apt-get!

>sudo apt-get install openmovieeditor

So what video editors do you use in Linux? Know of a better one than Open Movie Editor? Hit me up in the comments with your favorites!

Technorati Tags: linux, video, editor, editing, alternative to, windows movie maker

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