Bob Klass.Info

Cleveland Makes it Big (Bing) Time

2011-10-03T17:03:00.000-04:00

Cleveland was featured on Bing today:

Fremont Street Experience Las Vegas - Exceptional Cell Phone Video

2011-06-28T17:31:00.003-04:00

Cleaning up some my folders I stumbled on this video I shot last November. It was done with my Samsung Captivate (Galaxy S) cell phone. The original is true 720P. I'm not sure if the YouTube is really that good. It gives you a good idea of what it's like to be there when the video is playing. If you are in Last Vegas, be sure to check it out.

Rant: What kind of CSS could do this?

2011-03-30T16:12:00.000-04:00

I have thousands of SharePoint 2007 sub sites that use some old custom branding, but I don't blame the custom branding for the crazy behavior I have been observing.

I am doing one last version of the site template before we redo the whole thing for SharePoint 2010. In creating the site template, I noticed that the site home pages (webpart pages) started showing the webpart titles with a different color after opening the document library by clicking the title. This is sort of normal browser behavior for visited links, but it doesn't do it all the time.

When I first create a site from my previous template the links do not change after you open from them. I tried this on my North America, Asia and Europe farms and they all did the same thing. I really don't have time to debug the CSS (and I don't want to mess with it) - but I have time to rant. We don't want them to change after visiting.

Anyway, I need to edit the home page. So I add a new webpart to the page, edit it in a couple wonderful SharePointy ways (other screwiness and fun), and .... VOILA the other links all start changing. Definitely one of the funnier WFT SharePoint things I've seen lately.

Schoolboy Makes Disciple

2011-03-27T19:45:00.000-04:00

I have to admit that I have been trying to manipulate my BeerAdvocate.com "Beer Karma" rating (my BeerAdvocate personna is Schoolboy). Their ratings are based on a secret formula. I think that part of that rating is based on having a subscription to the magazine. There are initiates ad disciples that have contributed very little content - they have to be subscribers. I do not subscribe, so I have to have lots of content.

Lately I have been trying to post to forums and such whenever I contribute a review, just to try to get the points over 500. It happened today after 271 beer reviews, 23 forum posts, etc. Woo hoo.

Rock Hall Refresh

2011-03-05T16:50:00.001-05:00

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum seems to be making good progress on their refresh of the major exhibit areas. Some stuff has reopened. It's still worth visiting during the upgrades. I've been going at least once or twice a month. It's cool in the winter because you almost have the place to yourself (but it's cool in the summer because there are so many people).

Come on down to the most rockin' museum!

2011 Rock Hall Inductees

2010-12-15T19:04:00.007-05:00

The 2011 inductees were announced yesterday and ich habe eine kliene problemo avec deisem choices (paraphrasing Eddie Izzard). My problem isn't that they deserve to be inducted, I am fine with their induction. My problem is that they are too American. Where is the diversity? It's turning into the American Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. We can't have that. I'll have to have a word with them.

Fats Domino and Dave Bartholomew, American Music Masters

2010-11-15T18:00:00.001-05:00

On the evening of November 13, 2010 the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum Fats Domino / Dave Bartholomew American Music Masters tribute concert took place at the Palace Theater. The music planted a big chunk of New Orleans smack in the middle of downtown Cleveland, if only for a day. The more enthusiastic than usual (for an AMM show) crowd was treated to a really nice blend of music.

The Rock Hall recorded the event (video and audio) and Schoolboy also did an audience recording with a Zoom H2 (it sounds pretty good). The slide show is of photos taken with my Samsung Galaxy S.

Set List:

REBIRTH BRASS BAND -
Mardi Gras in New Orleans

JAMES ANDREWS -
What a Wonderful World

JON CLEARY -
Swanee River Hop

THE DIXIE CUPS -
I'm Walkin' (with Herb Hardesty)
Chapel of Love
Iko Iko

THERESA ANDERSSON -
It Keeps Rainin'
I Want to Walk You Home

ROBERT PARKER -
I Hear You Knocking
Barefootin'

IRMA THOMAS -
Blueberry Hill
Time Is on My Side

LLOYD PRICE -
Ain't That a Shame
Lawdy Miss Clawdy

REBIRTH BRASS BAND -
Shrimp and Gumbo

TOOTS AND THE MAYTALS -
Be My Guest
Let the Four Winds Blow
54-46 That's My Number

DAVE BARTHOLOMEW -
Blues in B Flat (with Amadee Castenell)
The Monkey (Speaks His Mind) (with Amadee Castenell)
Tenderly (with Amadee Castenell and Herb Hardesty)

DR. JOHN AND THE LOWER 9-11 BAND -
Who Drank My Beer While I Was in the Rear
The Fat Man (with Ernest McLean)
Blue Monday (with Ernest McLean)
One Night (with Ernest McLean)
I Can't Go On (Rosalie) (with Ernest McLean)
Walking to New Orleans (with Ernest McLean, Irma Thomas and Lloyd Price)

Everybody -
When the Saints Go Marching In

How to Get Full (not AT&T Sanitized) Android Market on Samsung Captivate

2010-11-08T23:08:00.000-05:00

It's time I started posting some of these tidbits. This one is real simple and it works like a charm.

I am pretty sure this works the same in 2.1 as it does in 2.2 (I've had the leaked Froyo on mine for a while now). All you need to do is turn on Flight Mode, then turn on Wifi, then go to market. You will see AT&T is missing. Download whatever it is you thought you could get from the full market and then turn off flight mode.

There seem to be a small number of apps AT&T is excluding. More nuggets to come!

BobKlass.Info is BobKlassInfo.Info

2010-11-08T10:15:00.000-05:00

Just a quick note, BobKlass.Info is now BobKlassInfo.Info. No big deal, I just like to have some kind of domain name out there (and I am going to extreme economy). I expect it may go back to BobKlass.Info in a year. Sorry if this causes confusion or broken links.

Setting Custom Ringtones on a Samsung Captivate

2010-08-30T19:00:00.003-04:00

If all you ever did was create contacts stored on your phone, you wouldn't be reading this, because you would just edit your contact, scroll down and set the ringtone. However if you are like me, you might not have entered ANY contacts on your phone. All mine came from Gmail, automagically. In those, you don't see a place to set the ringtone.

After a bit of trial and error (no, I did not RTFM), I found that if I create a new new contact on the phone with the same name as the Gmail contact it will be automatically associated and won't show as duplicates. At the top of the contact there are tabs for the associated contacts. For some reason some of mine have a number of associated Gmail contacts, but if you pick the Phone tab, you can edit the ringtone. Hit the easy button.

Samsung Captivate - My iPhone Replacement

2010-08-22T11:28:00.002-04:00

My AT+T family plan phone upgrade eligibility seems to waffle (even on the one iphone). One day they are all eligible, the next none are. This waffling even happens within the same day - stupid. It's a full five months before our "2 years" is up but some consistency would be nice. I won't even bother to tell you what the ATT person said, it just doesn't make any sense. What has happened, though, is I have been able to order my iphone replacement and my daughter ordered a new iphone (3GS, not 4, she needs to actually use the phone, not just look at it).

Over that past week I learned that ATT now has one of (if not the) best Android phones available - the Samsung Captivate (generically aka Galaxy S). It has a great screen, FAST processor, and lots of cool stuff you can do with it/add to it. Like Apple phones, these phones have some features (like FM radio) defeated on ATT.

An iPhone 4 will beat a Captivate in certain specs and performance - especially (for now) web page loading. That will change when the next Android OS (2.2) comes out for this phone, which will be very soon.The iPhone 4 takes better pictures. There also is no front facing camera (will we actually use these eventually? - it may just be disabled) or (almost useless) led "flash." The stuff it does do though is impressive, like great Office integration, easily replaceable $5 battery, cheap add-ons, Adobe Flash, etc. It is the best phone for gaming. Period. Too bad I don't do much of that.

It's $149 at Amazon for a family plan upgrade, $199 at ATT store.

And check out the do-dads, cases, etc.

Windows phones will be out soon. They will have better cameras and eventually a better OS (really, I am confident that WP7 is going to be a much more complete and robust OS than any previous mobile OS). But I had to jump on this - I am impatient and sick of my iPhone.

Android

I find it exciting to see a robust community of Android users. I don't think there is anything I will miss from the iphone world, application-wise. Some of my most favorite apps on the iPhone include Radar Scope (I found something just like it for Android), Stanza (ditto), Uverse (I don't think so, but it has to be coming) and Nano Studio (will be hard to beat except for the pathetic CPU of my 3G). Everything else is there (all those crappy apps, Android has them too).

ATT has their Android phones somewhat locked down (I just can't have that) but this is easily circumvented with Android Sideload Wonder Machine or very straightforward rooting. Tethering is easily available once rooted. All interesting and useful stuff. I plays flacs but I haven't figured out if I will be able to play flacs 24 bit flacs (I have my doubts). UPDATE: The samsung/att media player plays 24 bit 48 kHz flacs, but not higher. The stock android player does 16 bit flacs only, from what I can tell. Sounds great.

I was sick of Apple, iTunes, and the shape of the iPhone 4, and I don't want a Edsel-phone. Now I can leave that all behind me!

Is That All You Got?

2010-07-27T21:57:00.001-04:00

As a hi-fi enthusiast I am a magnet for good gear - it somehow finds me. My latest acquisition is an interesting little amplifier, a Carver M-1.5t, picked up for so little money it was a crime. This amp was an existing Carver design, tweaked to emulate a Mark Levinson ML-2. Knowing that Carver was very concerned about making practical amps that could be used where you would use tube amps like the ML-2, I figured I had a great test bed for it. This turned out to be very true.

My best speakers (and I don't even know how many great sets of speakers I have, but these are my best) are Acoustat Model 3 electrostatic panels. I've had these for a number of years. When I first got them, I tried every amp I had, starting with the biggest. All failed miserably, with solid state amps going into clipping without producing much volume (most popping like mad). I finally settled on a set of two Peavey Classic 120/120 rack mount amps (making 240/240!). These babies have 8 6L6 tubes in each amp. The 8 big tubes could not make an Acoustat get really loud, but they were loud enough to sound sweet and I have lots of other stuff to reinforce the sound.

Carver says the M-1.5t produces 600 watts in each channel when the max headroom light comes on (up to 750 watts into one channel). This max indicator was lit within the first 30 seconds of my test. My tests are incomplete, and all were done completely by ear, but this is what I heard:

More volume than the two Peavey 120/120's - not a lot, but more
Slightly less distortion than the Peavey's (that's not good - the Peaveys distort a lot when driven hard - the Carver seems to distort quite audibly as well)
The Carver definitely sounded like a transistor amp compared to the Peavey (duh - 20 output transistors vs. 16 output tubes)

This last point will take some better testing to see if it is really true. It seemed like a very simple bright versus warm, classic tube argument, but I need to level the field and use more similar sources. I definitely like the idea of getting more volume out of my flagship speakers and I am so proud of how they took 1200 watts from the Carver and seemed to say, "Is that all you got?" This testing is tough work but somebody's got to do it.

I Dodged the iPhone 4 Bullet ...

2010-07-21T18:23:00.048-04:00

... and now I think I am cured of iPhone desire for good. To think I nearly bought one on blind faith, but I was saved when I decided to wait for a white one.

After actually handling one, I decided there isn't anything compelling about it. Besides the much publicized issues of non-functional antenna design, weak blue tooth support and a flaky proximity sensor, I have these issues:

Boxy, uncomfortable shape - despite being smaller, it doesn't feel smaller (inversely, though, despite being heavier than my 3G, it feels lighter)
The display is good, but not so good I have to have it. Over-hyped.
Bogus multitasking - this is no way to operate a computer. How stupid.
Still not the strongest camera.

There are lots of things that are still issues like the lack of removable media, lousy bluetooth functionality, and being tied to the Apple ecosystem. Were it not for jailbreaking, the whole iPhone experience would be more like an iPod toy than a hand held pocket computer (which is what I really wanted in the first place). The jailbreaking community is the best thing about iPhones, and from what I've seen, there isn't much of a parallel in the Android world. When the Windows 7 phone OS comes out, I think it should quickly eclipse the Android user community (wishful thinking).

All this has led me to be happy with what I have for the next few months and see if something better comes along. The iPhone 4 now looks like it would have been a mistake. In the mean time, I bought a little 2.2 pound net book to play with. I know a lot of techies have tried and abandoned the net book genre, but I'll give it a try anyway. My consolation toy. Thanks to jailbreaking I will be able to tether it to my iPhone with MyWi (not that I ever really need to).

I Think I'll Settle for an iPhone 4 and a Cheaper Data Plan ...

2010-06-11T13:26:00.000-04:00

... in fact, I am thinking about getting THREE iPhone 4's next week (don't tell my kids). I'm thinking in public here.

The new AT&T data plans
When I decided I wanted a phone that could do more than a feature phone (mostly I wanted to access Internet resources), the cheapskate in me (with two kids in college at the time) REALLY didn't want a $30/month data plan. I love the freedom the unlimited data plan provided - do whatever you want. Stream audio, video (the biggest two consumers). Upload, download (what?). Tether the connection to your PC via wi-fi or bluetooth. No wait, AT&T and Apple won't let you do that. But I didn't like the high cost.

So here you had an unlimited connection, but in reality, the vast majority of users never used even 200 MB per month (the new limit for the half price, $15 plan). Streamed audio works pretty good - I sometime listen to Internet radio or Wolfgang's Vault while driving - but it sounds like satellite radio - compressed and crappy. Streamed video is barely practical over 3G - even AT&T's faster variety. You generally aren't going to be moving very large files around with an iPhone, so in order to get your data use up you will have to move lots of them.

And tethering, well, the jailbreak app MyWi works exceptionally well, giving you wi-fi or bluetooth (or USB) tethering, but how much do most people need to use something like this? It's sort of a last resort, when you are in a cheap hotel with no wi-fi, for instance. The phone gets really hot with all the radios going full blast and you better have a power source.

I have never used 200 MB of AT&T cell phone data in a month. I've come close but never gone over. I will take the rate reduction and lose my unlimited data plan forever (forever is a long time).

iPhone 4

Then along come AT&T and Apple allowing us to upgrade now instead of the previously posted October date for all the phones in my family plan (5). I always want to upgrade phones ASAP. The subsidies make them relatively cheap. You can resell phones on eBay. So an early upgrade is almost a no brainer.

Now lets see, though. I have to choose an Apple smartphone for this early upgrade - no Android, Blackberry, Windows, Palm, etc. Realistically, there isn't another phone that can do what this phone does any better or with more style. The UI is outstanding and the devices are extremely well made.

The other thing that has made me happy in the Apple camp are the many "others" (in Lost-speak) - a huge community of techies and hackers to keep Apple's "Dharma Initiative" (more Lost-speak) in check. iOS4 jailbreaks will be available.

I guess I can settle for a half price data plan and a new, much improved (over my 3G) iPhone. I'll be ordering phones next week!

Post Script: the manager I spoke with at the AT&T store (who was assuring me that, yes, once you lose your unlimited plan, it is gone, but you can switch any time between the remaining plans) told me the AT&T Uverse iPhone app will eventually have video streaming from your DVR. That would be nice - like a Slingbox without the box.

The iPhone and the Large Law Firm

2010-05-17T19:00:00.002-04:00

Warning - this post contains some of my thoughts about iPhone use at a large law firm from my perspective of an iPhone user who works in a law firm IT department. I have no practical experience with any level of iPhone integration in a large law firm.

Unfortunately, when one talks about things that law firms are commonly doing, it frequently doesn't include the largest firms. What works for most law firms may not work for one of the biggest. Yet there are some things that are common to most decent-sized firms. In large law firm IT departments, iPhones are very common, though probably not as prevalent as the officially supported (and subsidized) Blackberry. I know there has been some work by vendors to provide the necessary hooks to do some cool things with iPhones in large enterprises. It was encouraging to see this http://www.apple.com/iphone/business/profiles/sonnenschein-nath-rosenthal/, especially since it included SharePoint integration.

To me it seems like Apple's http://manuals.info.apple.com/en_US/Enterprise_Deployment_Guide.pdf misses the mark. I'm not sure how all large enterprises work, but I think most of them have no interest in providing the kind of support this manual suggests. I think they would prefer to carefully allow access to things like email, SharePoint or a Citrix Desktop from employee owned phones rather than owning and babysitting the entire operation. Coordinating phones from different carriers all over the world is much better pushed back to the individual (at least organizationally).

Various strata of integration could strengthen iPhone support in larger, more secure enterprises. Of course it starts with email, Lotus Notes integration being of interest to me. Sybase iAnywhere, IBM's iNotes, Notes Pro and maybe a couple other apps provide Notes email to iPhones. Mail should always work fine in this form factor, you just need to make the necessary security hops. There are a few others vendors that do some Notes database replication as well, but I don't see that as a strong draw since Notes has been dying as an application platform. Secure access to SharePoint servers providing mobile-optimized web pages could be useful, and fairly easy to establish. Attending meetings through a mobile device is a natural. A Citrix desktop might also be OK, but have you ever tried operating a desktop on a little touch screen? It's not a very useful capability.

Having a resourceful, always connected computer in my pocket has been great, and I don't expect to ever again be without such service. Integrating this level of mobile functionality into large enterprise will take some time and effort and I look forward to it.

Customizing SharePoint RSS Web Part

2010-05-05T08:20:00.000-04:00

I will be brief, because this is pretty simple and obvious. I have my favorite reader (Google on my iPhone) and the RSS web part sometimes seems crude, but it is sometimes very useful when a site really is crying for relevant news.

Don't be afraid to mess with the XSL Editor. Just copy the contents into Notepad - that's your backup. Now start hacking away. If something goes bad, paste back in your backup.

You want to remove the titles? Just snip out the whole node: div class="groupheader item medium."

So have at it!

Stanza Ebook Reader for iPhone With Calibre

2010-03-30T08:00:00.003-04:00

In my post about Kindle and the Kindle iPhone app I was a little off due to my new found enthusiasm for ebook reading. I've been having a good time reading several books on my tiny screen - it really works - using Kindle for the iPhone. My only apprehension is that the iPhone screen will not be good enough to use while basking in the tropical sun when I go to Cancun in May. But I picked the wrong application. The Kindle solution I proposed requires a jailbroken phone, which not everyone has, and there is a much better alternative: Stanza for the iPhone and Calibre on your computer.

At first blush, Stanza has many features Kindle does not, and I'm not sure if anything from Kindle is missing on Stanza. But Kindle does have a nice feel and good speed. Some operations on Stanza can be slower (especially on my 3G, the most brain dead iThing still sold) and the feel is different. But after a little digging, and working with the very good Calibre application and Stanza on the phone, I have concluded that this is a far better solution. There is nothing to prevent you from using both, but Stanza is the way to go.

Using them is simple - no instructions necessary - just get Stanza from the app store and Calibre here: http://calibre-ebook.com/download. Both are free.

Using the Kindle iPhone App for Reading Non-Kindle Ebooks

2010-03-23T08:32:00.002-04:00

Please see my update - I found something that works much better and does not require a jailbroken phone, which using a back door to the iPhone file system does. Read: http://bobklass.blogspot.com/2010/03/stanza-ebook-reader-for-iphone-with.html

I've tried reading PDF's off the iphone, but I really wanted to read big ebooks. It was very much hit or miss, mostly miss. The PDF could be too big or too small and would not reformat appropriately. Not useable.

The answer - Amazon Kindle. The Kindle itself is a great device, but one whose days are numbered (unfortunately - I think they are a great idea). The Kindle iPhone app is free. Kindle books are expensive, but there is usually a free download of the first few chapters which gives you a good idea of both the books' contents and the reading experience on the hand held. The XML-ish text reformats based on the size font you want. The PRC file format seems to mostly be XML and some binary compression standards. Bookmarks are kept. It all works nicely. And Kindle isn't a horrible deal right now - $259 for the device and free global wireless data access (for now).

PDF's, TXT or DOC files can all be turned into Kindle PRC files with a free app called MobiPocket Creator. Home made PRC's can be a little idiocyncratic, but they aren't bad. You sftp into your device (OpenSSH from Cydia and Winscp) and drop these files into your hand held (find the folder by searching for *.prc with Winscp). I am reading multiple books this way right now, and the Kindle app keeps my place nicely. Highly recommended.

FlashForward

2010-03-10T08:31:00.004-05:00

When ABC's FlashForward started last fall I was immediately thrilled with the premise - a mysterious temporal event takes place causing all human consciousness to see a glimpse of the future. The show's first 10 episodes were great, leaving me wanting more! My wife Gayle (who reads constantly) passed the Robert J. Sawyer book on to me when she finished it, thinking I would like it. She was right. It is a great complement to the TV series. The premise is similar, and the characters and feel of the story has some similarity, but they are different stories.

The book definitely is more satisfying. An easy, quick read, I recommend zipping through it before the second half of the first season is over. My only disappointment was the ending. After blazing to a blistering climax, things go a little too far, and it lost me (I guess I wouldn't be getting a second Flash Forward).

What are you going to see in your FlashForward?

SharePoint Fast Search Conceptual Speculation

2010-02-25T08:00:00.000-05:00

Excuse me while I think out loud here (what else is new). As someone who truly likes the SharePoint platform, and as an IT professional who had an opinion about Fast (that it was aptly named, a pretty good product and expensive) BEFORE Microsoft had anything to do with them, I have been trying to come to grips with what the Fast SharePoint marriage means to us all.

I think that to the portion of Fast's clientele that had no interest in SharePoint it may be an annoyance (that may be an understatement). Doubly so for any of them running it on something other than Windows. For the rest of us, though, it is supposed to be an easy path to a high quality enterprise search engine. It's funny, though, because I have been a proponent of SharePoint as a very good poor man's enterprise search engine. SharePoint 2007 search works well. Yes, it is a bit quirky, but it is pretty powerful. It has served us well (though not as an enterprise search engine, just for SharePoint search).

Microsoft isn't content to stand still, though, so they have added this great option. I have not worked with even a beta or demo of the product, and as far as I know, pricing has yet to be released, so my impressions are based on fairly thin marketing vapor, but it's still OK to start thinking about what it all means.

One would expect this product to scale better than OOTB SharePoint 2007 search, but I wonder if the this is really the case. After all, if you implement this product you probably will be taking it more seriously and devote more resources to it, so THAT will make it scale better too. Old SharePoint search can be scaled quite large without having to resort to anything magical. A million or two documents is a piece of cake.

But I would expect the product to deliver better relevance, with or without active intervention. I am anxious to seek how well search librarian tasks can be delegated - this is important functionality.

Unified installation doesn't look like it is really coming in 2010. From what I've heard, it may be in the same box (or on the same box) but the code base isn't really all that close to SharePoint. Unified administration, on the other hand looks like it IS in the box. But like I said earlier, administration needs to be distributable (think "librarians").

Soon it will be time to stop thinking about possibilities and testing the release product to see how it meets these expectations. Fast in SharePoint may democratizes enterprise search, but a lot will depend on pricing. Soon we will see!

Vambo Rools in Hot City

2010-01-17T06:55:00.007-05:00

The Sensational Alex Harvey Band is alive and well and living in Parma and Brooklyn and Cleveland Ohio. Playing under the pseudonym of Vambo Rools, SAHB can still rock the house!

Last night the Winchester Music Hall in Cleveland played host to a special tribute to the Sensation Alex Harvey Band, one the greatest things to come out of Scotland since Glenlivet. "Alex Harvey" doesn't seem to have aged much (unlike the hundreds of avid fans that turned out and overwhelmed the tavern's bartenders), but like his audience, Alex seems to have put on a few pounds.

Two fantastic 80 minute sets were unleashed on a big crowd that pretty much all knew where every chord, fill and cymbal crash were supposed to be. The band had the chops to pull it off. Playing much better than their MySpace videos, all aspects of the band were on. The latter part of the second set got a bit sloppier, but I am not complaining. It was a real rock show and a comprehensive tribute. The band consisted of two guitars, keyboard, bass and drums, with "Alex" playing nothing except an (awful) harmonica on one number. Alex and Zal Clemenson were in character ("Zal" with face paint and miming). "Zal" taunted Alex and chided the band in mime throughout the show.

Schoolboy's 96 kHz 24 bit Zoom H2 recording filled 5.85 GB! It sounds very good, and shows how nice the sonic balance was (there were only a few times where leads were a bit buried). I didn't remember the Winchester having the main PA speakers that were hanging from the ceiling. They looked like the same ones the Beachland used to have in the tavern, doubled, and they sound better in the Winchester's bigger room. Those same speakers used to be very harsh at the Beachland.

From what was said on mic, it seems like this is the second time they have played this tribute but that the shows may be at one year intervals. For Sensational Alex Harvey Band fans who missed it, it's a SAHB story - you missed the "Last of the Teenage Idols" but hopefully you will get another chance.

Vambo lives!

Demo Day at Holiday Valley

2009-12-29T11:59:00.000-05:00

The Saturday before Christmas (December 19th) was a great day to go to Holiday Valley. Although winter had been a little slow in our region, you can usually count on reasonable skiing in Ellicottville, New York this time of year. My son had a final exam (AND it was his 22nd birthday too) so he couldn't come. My friend Bryce, an excellent skier who has made the Holiday Valley trek with me (and Matt) a number of times, came along and brought HIS son and several of his friends.

Little Mountain Limited, a ski/sports shop and travel agency located about a mile from my house, had a very reasonably priced bus trip, so we tagged along. I intend to go on at least a couple more of their day trips this year.

It was "demo day" at HV. This is when ski manufacturer's reps set up tents and allow you to try the latest gear, all set up for maximum ski lust. I normally use some pretty old, long skis, and Bryce' are even older and longer. We signed up for demos, and each got to try two - one Blizzard and one Line. Both were great experiences. The Blizzards were the best skis I ever had on. It was amazingly easy to carve up even steep, ice crunchy sections of hills. Nice. The Lines were not so good for control but man were they fast.

From The End of the 00's

We had lunch at the brand new John Harvard's Brew House in the new Tamarack Club at HV. The place had been open less than a week, and you could tell. Everything was clean and the staff was green. Our server had no idea what kinds of beer were served (we were part of her first ever shift there). It turns out the beer is quite good. I had a pleasant stout and a good biting IPA. Bryce had an Amber ale he said was tasty. The food was much less memorable - the menu is pricey all-American fare ($15 meatloaf, $8 sandwiches with fries).

The Hearth restaurant at HV has been part of my New York skiing tradition for decades. It was always classy and there is a fantastic view. I still liked it even when they chopped off the better half of the dining room. The menu was old and tired, but not as boring as John Harvard. I guess I will go to the new place for the next few trips (my next trip is to Holimont anyway, and that is always a fancy bring-your-own-picnic and drinks affair, no restaurants).

After lunch we went to get more demos. The reps were all packing up because a storm was coming. We were at a ski resort where they get 300 inches of snow a year, for crying out loud. I called them a few very politically incorrect names and we went on our way, laboring with our old skis. The storm never came. Wimps.

Problems Indexing an EML Inside a ZIP in SharePoint

2009-12-28T10:06:00.013-05:00

Previously on Bob Klass.Info (I've been watching too much TV lately, re-watching several seasons of the "Dexter" series in the last few days):

"Friday, December 18, 2009

Adding Zip Search File Type in MOSS 2007

I am a little behind the curve on this. Better late than never.

Get the filter pack here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=60C92A37-719C-4077-B5C6-CAC34F4227CC&displaylang=en
Install it
Set up the item type in the SSP
Set up a new key for .zip in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office Server\12.0\Search\Setup\ContentIndexCommon\Filters\Extension\
Give it a value of {20E823C2-62F3-4638-96BD-90F4F6784EBC}
Restart the search service

That is the shorthand version! This is done for you in SharePoint 2010."

That was all fine and interesting, but then the real interesting stuff turned up. My Foxit PDF ifilter and standard MS text ifilters both seemed to function on files nested within ZIP files. But EML files did not (and EML's further have attachments!).

It turns out there is a property of the ifilter called "threading." This threading is simply an object property to say whether it works in single or multi-threaded modes.

A utility called IFilter Explorer will help you look at threading. I don't know if there is another tool like this anywhere or an alternative to this tool. Running this on my test indexer seemed to work OK, but it is old (in software years - like doggie years, it is about 80) and it seems to be an orphan (widow?). But it beats sifting through the registry manually.

Now it gets (unnecessarily) messy.

I was looking to find how EML indexing works. It uses:

c:\windows\system32\mimefilt.dll
content type message/rfc822
GUID of {5645C8C2-E277-11CF-8FDA-00AA00A14F93}
related PersistentAddinsRegistered of {89BCB740-6119-101A-BCB7-00DD010655AF}

I should have found the threading model set as "both" indicating that BOTH single threaded or multi-treaded daemons can use it. I found it marked as "Bo" in the two places in the registry.

I changed the first "Bo" entry to "Both" and the second one magically was fixed. Time to restart the services and re-try the indexing ... and ... it worked. Even PDF's attached to the EML inside the ZIP were indexed. This "Both" corrupted to "Bo" burned up a few hours of troubleshooting.

Dexter's usual actions would be justified if he could find a guilty party in this case.

Adding Zip Search File Type in MOSS 2007

2009-12-18T16:07:00.007-05:00

I am a little behind the curve on this. Better late than never.

Get the filter pack here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=60C92A37-719C-4077-B5C6-CAC34F4227CC&displaylang=en
Install it
Set up the item type in the SSP
Set up a new key for .zip in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office Server\12.0\Search\Setup\ContentIndexCommon\Filters\Extension\
Give it a value of {20E823C2-62F3-4638-96BD-90F4F6784EBC}
Restart the search service

That is the shorthand version! This is done for you in SharePoint 2010.

I've Been Promoted ...

2009-12-13T14:50:00.003-05:00

... from Acolyte to Initiate on the Beer Advocate web site. This is a promotion from the lowest of first time public users, to the next to lowest. Although I should consider this insulting considering the amount of premium brew I have consumed in my lifetime, and as a graduate of THE Ohio University in Athens, Ohio (a supreme school of partying for over 200 years), I am instead thrilled!

If you like beer a lot, you should become a member at Beer Advocate (http://beeradvocate.com). Although it is a great source of beer info, it is more importantly a great place where you can record your beer observations (in public). I have been doing this for four years, mostly for my own records.

For a while I have been wondering what criteria gets a person a promotion at this institution. I had been a member for a long time and I have submitted well over 100 beer reviews, but no promotion. Their system is mysterious, kind of like my employers' salary and partner info (but obviously of less consequence). Very hush hush. The writings I have published are far more interesting than the same old recanting of the color, head, aromatic characteristics, etc. I thought perhaps one needed to subscribe to their magazine or something, as some people seem to get promoted quickly. That's my guess since I never did that. But my efforts and long term advocacy of Beer Advocate have finally been acknowledged.

Take a visit to the Beer Advocate web site today and look for me there under my beer alias "Schoolboy."

Asus O!Play HDP-R1

2009-11-20T06:30:00.003-05:00

Sometimes I feel like I am a little slow adopting some technologies. Of course this isn't really true. There are just some I don't like. MP3's, for instance. They don't sound very hi-fi, like most digital TV (and it's all digital now, isn't it). I didn't get a DVR right away, but we've had one since we got Uverse (maybe a year ago) and we love it. I am almost always bleeding edge on Microsoft products. I convinced myself, I'm not a Luddite.

I like my video hi-fi too. The Uverse DVR is reasonably good (like the Uverse service), and I have a Blu-ray player, and that stuff looks and sounds great. I have a lot of video content (most of it high definition) on the 3TB of internal disc in my Windows 7 machine. I had been sneaker- netting it to my Blu-ray sometimes (or watching on the 25" LCD monitor) but I got the idea that a media player would be way better. This is also better than trying to attach a PC to my living room HDTV (I tried this in 2005 when I got it and it didn't work well - I needed better stuff).

Shopping for media players, I found there are a bunch. A few are expensive. A couple don't have a network connection (that won't do). I stumbled on the Asus O!Play HDP-R1 and gave it a long look due to the great price and the Asus name. When you are building a computer, Asus is always a brand you should consider - their stuff is first rate. This product is VERY new.

I don't know much about what is in the box. It's small, and consumes very little power. The Oplay is running some flavor of Linux.

The Asus forums had lots of posts from dissatisfied customers, but reading between the lines, I thought I would be able to make it work just fine and that it would do exactly what I needed - play just about any video or audio file, connect to my network, host ESATA, etc. It does all it was supposed to do, and well. This post on the Asus forum has the secret to getting it working with Windows 7.

If you buy one, it will probably come with firmware version 1.07N on it and the network will not work right for Windows 7 machines (other computers will be OK). Set up a Windows 7 user "OPlayer" with password "OPlayer" and give it permissions on shares that hold your media. Reset the Oplay to factory defaults, load firmware version 1.13N, and the network connection will work perfectly (UPnP will work too).

So I have another cool gadget! It is a highly recommended toy!

SharePoint 2010 (Caveman Edition)

2009-11-19T07:30:00.001-05:00

I am hopelessly (humorously) politically incorrect and caveman readers probably will be offended, but it seemed like the 2010 beta was aimed at them. I mean this as a big compliment to the killer Install Software Prerequisites option in the 2010 installer and the smoothness with which a simplistic stand alone install runs.

Install Software Prerequisites does the following steps from a one click operation:

Application Server Role, Web Server (IIS) Role
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Native Client
Microsoft "Geneva" Framework Runtime
Microsoft Sync Framework Runtime v1.0 (x64)
Microsoft Chart Controls for Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5
Microsoft Filter Pack 2.0
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services ADOMD.NET

Any installation "cookbook" will be streamlined by this (assuming it is putting in the right settings).

The configuration wizard of the 2010 install failed when I first ran it Tuesday morning. I got the same "Failed to create sample data" error lots of people did. I corrected it Wednesday (when I didn't see anything official posted) by removing the two references to "allowinsecuretransport" (deleting both entries entirely) from the Client.config file in the 14 hive /WebClients/Profile folder.

I don't think this change is recommended, but it gets you over this hump for now. This is a pain future cavemen will be spared. More time for Visio cave wall workflow diagrams.

I don't know Jack, but now I know Jorma

2009-11-12T18:10:00.001-05:00

Founding member of the Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna, Jorma Kaukonen, appeared at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame yesterday for the American Music Masters Series tribute to Janis Joplin. Jorma and Janis were part of the San Fransisco area pre-hippie scene and they shared some interesting early times before they were rock stars.

Per the usual Rock Hall format for such events, he gave an extended interview interspersed with a number of songs, followed by a meet-and-greet. As always, the fourth floor theater was filled to capacity and the sound and overall experience were first rate. Jorma was playing his new signature model Martin guitar (serial number 1).

Schoolboy was in attendance and I heard some of his 24 bit 96 kHz Zoom H2 recording and it is very good.

Afterwards, at the meet and greet, I asked Jorma to bring Hot Tuna to the Beachland. Hopefully I planted a seed in his mind. It would have been very cool if Jack Casady could have been there, but since he wasn't, I still don't know jack.

Adding a New Text Search File Type

2009-11-06T18:00:00.000-05:00

As heavy Interwoven document management users, we sometimes include Interwoven link files (.NRL files) in SharePoint document libraries. This doesn't give a whole lot of functionality in and of itself, but it is necessary. The NRL is a very simple one line text file that contains a library name and a document and version number. There are times when a user might want to search on the document number, so we needed to add the NRL as a searchable file type.

To do this, there are two places the extension needs to be added in the registry, and the SSP needs to know about the file type (Search settings / File types / New File Type). Your registry keys will look like the entries below. It would be good to verify the GUIDs with the TXT entries on your system. If you navigate in the registry to the locations below you will see how the keys look.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\12.0\Search\Setup\ContentIndexCommon\Filters\Extension\.nrl]

@="{C5BD8BA8-4209-4A15-B010-534AEB020A54}"

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office Server\12.0\Search\Setup\ContentIndexCommon\Filters\Extension\.nrl]

@="{4A3DD7AB-0A6B-43B0-8A90-0D8B0CC36AAB}"

Naturally, this would extend to other text file types and of course you will do this in your test environment first, etc., etc., blah, blah.

Fran Healy and Andy Dunlop in Cleveland

2009-10-29T18:00:00.003-04:00

If you are a Travis fan you have probably heard about Fran Healy and Andy Dunlop's current tour of North America. It brought them to my favorite concert club yesterday, the Beachland Ballroom in Cleveland. Everything you have heard about this show is true.

From Fran Healy and Andy Dunlop of Travis

The show is a very humorous look back on the history of Travis. There is as much dialog as music, and the audience is quickly won over by Fran's wit. This is a program that is best for hard core Travis fans, and that is pretty much all you had in Cleveland.

Schoolboy was there and made a 24 bit 96 khz hand-held Zoom H2 recording. I heard some of it and it is very nice. Nearly every person in attendance seemed to be buying the "official bootleg" (which is considerably shorter than the full Schoolboy version that is over three hours, including the meet-and-greet).

After the show, most of the crowd (that I would guess at around 150-200) waited around to greet Fran and Andy, and they took the time to chat with everybody. I think I was there for a good hour and a half after the show. In April, the Travis Cleveland House of Blues show proved to be my musical highlight for 2009. Last night was an extension of that great vibe.

Check out my photos and youtube. The video gives a good feel of what it was like.

SharePoint 2010: Honing Up on Powershell

2009-10-22T07:00:00.003-04:00

One of the interesting bits to come out of the SharePoint 2010 previews is the inclusion of more than 500 Powershell cmdlets. As a SharePoint admin or developer (remember, you developers, you have to know admin and end-user stuff so you know what NOT to develop) it will be important to know your way around Powershell.

I wouldn't call myself either a command line junky or command line phobic. I always liked command line scripting. Powershell is something I have used, but having touched the surface of it, I've known that I need to know more. I think most of you are in the same position (be honest).

A little knowledge, while being dangerous, can calm those feelings of ignorance. A quick search brought up this TechNet lab:

TechNet Virtual Lab: Introduction to Windows PowerShell

If you spend the prescribed 90 minutes studying it (and trying other stuff), you won't be an expert, but you will feel more comfortable when it comes time to sort and pipe and filter all those SharePoint 2010 commands that are coming your way.

Rounder Records 40th Anniversary Concert

2009-10-15T06:30:00.001-04:00

We made a little diversionary trip to Tennessee this last week. My son is an electrical engineering student in his senior year at Purdue and since they had a two day break, it was a nice time for a quick trip. We originally were going to go to Memphis and Nashville, but we didn't get going early enough to include Memphis. None of us had been to Nashville.

Along the way we stopped and took landmark photos at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and Churchill Downs in Louisville. We started exploring at Churchill Downs and found that there were no locked doors. That was fun. We ended up in a deserted top level Millionaires Club. Nice view.

Nashville is a nice town. It has a unique cosmopolitan flair. More sophisticated than I expected. I liked it. Much of the city is very beautiful and nicely kept. We walked and drove around quite a bit, seeing lots of nifty stuff, including:

The Broadway area (bars, shops, etc. downtown)
The Country Music Hall of Fame
Ryman Auditorium
The Parthenon
Bicentennial Park
The Grand Ole Opry House
Belle Meade Plantation

The weather was variable (cloudy some of the time, a little drizzle here and there, nice the rest of the time). It was definitely warmer than we are accustomed to in October. Nice.

I hoped we could catch a good show while we were there, but I never anticipated we would see such a great one. While we were at the Grand Ole Opry in the afternoon (October 12, 2009) we inquired about tickets to that night's performance. They had some floor seats at around $50 each, but they were selling good balcony seats for $12. What a deal. As it turns out, this hall is a good one. The balcony view and sound are first rate. They even have pews just like the Ryman Auditorium (but they are nicely padded).

Here is the lineup we saw. It was the Rounder Records 40th Anniversary Celebration.

Minnie Driver did a set and acted as MC for the show. She sang beautifully and was very witty. The Show was being recorded for broadcast on PBS in March.
Nathan & The Zydeco Cha Chas gave Matt and Gayle a nice introduction to live, jumpy zydeco music.
Bela Fleck did an interesting little set. Mesmerizing banjo, as always.
Irma Thomas had a special guest of Henry Butler. Very soulful.
Mary Chapin Carpenter was uplifting and inspiring.
Alison Krauss & Union Station featuring Jerry Douglas finished the evening with the most beautiful singing and string band playing you can imagine.

Over all, the show had the feel of many of the Rock Hall tribute shows (American Music Masters). They pulled it off better, but it was a smaller scale. It was a bit drawn out as it took time to switch the bands out. With the exception of Bela Fleck, these were good sized bands! The Grand Ole Opry House gets a 10. They even had a house beer (something like a dark lager - I think they called it Opryhouse Brew).

Goodbye to an Old ...

2009-09-16T20:46:00.004-04:00

... well I was going to say "friend," but it's really just a refrigerator, so friend is going too far.

In September 1974 I was a freshman at Ohio University. My first week there I decided a fridge was imperative, so I headed to a place where they rented them. I can't remember if rent was $40/year or $40/quarter, but I do remember that you could buy one of the well used ones for $45 - as-is, no warranty (or maybe a very short warranty). That was a no brainer for me. I bought it. For two years it served me well, and for the following two years I lent it out to friends.

Since then, it languished in the basements of the three houses I have owned since 1980. Most of that time it has been plugged in and running. The last 15 years or so it has been set on a very low setting to keep beer barely cold, the way I like it.

When I went to check on my stash of killer beers today, it was very warm in there. The compressor seems to have been running continuously for a while and it was very hot. I will try (not too hard) to fix it, but I think my old friend may have finally given up the ghost.

Another Use for AVCHD - Hi-Fi

2009-09-10T20:30:00.004-04:00

If you are coming into this cold, you might first read my other two posts about AVCHD.

Some audiophiles recently started burning AVCHD discs instead of using DVD-Audio or the LPCM capabilities of DVD-Video.

DVD-Audio and PCM on DVD Video both allow some pretty high quality audio. With DVD-Audio, you get two channels of 24 bit 192khz or 6 channels (5.1) of 24 bit 92khz and lossless compression. PCM on DVD video also goes to 24 bit 96khz, but they take a lot more space and I am not sure if anyone did much with multi-channel PCM on DVD-Video for this reason.

Lots of people have been using those formats for original recordings, vinyl rips and such, but now we have some AVCHD's starting to show up. This is somewhat lost on me because of equipment limitations. My Blu-ray player is in my living room home theater which has Pioneer/Bose audio which is very much inferior to what I use for hi-fi listening in my studio. So far I haven't gotten my studio PC to play these either (although I thought it might be able to with the right software). This will probably lead me to getting a Blu-ray for the studio.

I am exploring tools for authoring this content: http://www.videohelp.com/tools/sections/authoring-bd-hd-dvd. This may be a good way to go for the future. It's nice to have so many options, but I just recently authored my first DVD-Audio (of a nifty vinyl rip I made myself of The Three Sounds "Soul Symphony"). Now on to the next format!

Lastly, I will share some somewhat related links that are cool. The first is some analysis of various formats including vinyl, and the second is a look at DVD-A vs. SACD.

http://users.bigpond.net.au/christie/comparo/part4.html

http://ixbtlabs.com/articles2/sacd-dvd-a/

9-9-9 Beatles Remastered - Criticism - They Got it Wrong

2009-09-09T05:00:00.005-04:00

Today the long awaited remastered Beatles CD's were released. The new versions are not an improvement on the versions released in the 80's, unless you were looking for compressed dynamics and some tweaks in the bass equalization. Like many CD's being released today these days, the new Beatles releases were made to sound louder - they are less dynamic so they don't sound quieter than other recordings.

This of course is not a good thing. The one thing CD's can do well is dynamic range, but lately many CD's are all about being loud. Ultimately this will help kill the CD market and further deaden peoples senses, so they can be happy with horrible compressed audio (MP3, etc.). As far as the bass, I think I could have tweaked in a little bottom if I thought it was missing. I do not understand the whole mono thing (the new releases are available in both stereo and mono). These recordings for the most part were originally stereo, so what's with mono? I want more channels, not less.

My listening tests compared the new CD's with the old ones as well as with vinyl and some oddball Beatles releases like a 20 bit HDCD of Let it Be (Naked) and the Love DVD-Audio (remixed by Sir George Martin and son). As you may know, I am quite the audio snob, with some serious listening gear (electrostatic speakers, tube amps, etc.). I am also a long time Beatles fan - I have purchased pretty much the whole cycle at least two or three times.

So I would be lying if I said I didn't want these new CD's to sound great and jump out of my speakers like the Stones and Kinks and many other old rock groups' high resolution remixes. The regular 16 bit CD's can sound very good too. I wanted these to be good. But they don't offer any improvement for me. In fact, although I may change my mind after more listening, for now I prefer the old CD releases over these new ones.

I did not do any empirical analysis of the new versions of any of the tracks (maybe I could suck them into Sound Forge and measure the dynamic range - for now I used my ears). I also have a strong prejudice in favor of vinyl. Nine times out of ten the listening experience from vinyl (even somewhat worn) beats CD's, HDCD's, SACD's and DVD-Audio. It doesn't matter which digital media is used, vinyl is almost always significantly better. Remember, the resolution of analog signals is continuous, so it has infinitely higher resolution than anything digital. The best digital sound comes from DSD (SACD), but it's still not analog.

I imagine a lot of people will disagree with me, but time will tell as other audiophiles weigh in on the subject. I am sorry if I sounded harsh, I am just trying to steer you readers towards the best sound.

If you have the vinyl, play that, and enjoy the best there is. If you have the old CD's, you don't need the new ones. If you have neither, you can get the new (and hardly improved) ones or seek out old versions. Have they inadvertently created a new market for the vintage Beatles CD releases? Wouldn't that be something.

Oppose Elimination of Federal Thrift Charter

2009-08-26T19:00:00.000-04:00

I could say a lot about this subject, all from a semi-informed point of view. What I would like to express is that smaller banks used to play a very beneficial role in the building of neighborhoods in our cities. We have almost completely lost this and I don't think that is a good thing.

I sent this message through the ABA's web site to my congressman and Ohio's senators.

Representative LaTourette
Senator Brown
Senator Voinovich
Message text follows:

Robert Klass
(personal)
Mentor, OH

August 26, 2009

[recipient address was inserted here]

Dear [recipient name was inserted here],

As a constituent, I am writing to express my strong opposition to the
Administration's proposal to eliminate the federal thrift charter.

On the contrary, we should encourage the creation and maintenance of
community banks.

When I was a VP at an S+L in the 1980's I saw how regulators were
responsible for as many problems as they may have prevented. Had we
listened to them, we would have created variable interest rate loans which
would have been unaffordable and possibly unmarketable.

Our company became strong by lending in our area and making sound
underwriting decisions. Underwriting guidelines should be rolled back to
what they were "in the day" - 1980 style. 28% of income for housing, 36%
total debt ratio, etc.

Don't screw up this industry further. Turn back the clock and recognize
the benefits of smaller thrift institutions.

Sincerely,

Bob Klass

Finding a SharePoint Database GUID / Restoration Tips

2009-08-24T07:30:00.001-04:00

I needed to run the stsadm command preparetomove with the oldcontentdb switch (at least I thought I did) for a database that I wanted to restore in our testing environment. Running this command is supposed to fix sync issues when moving databases around.

Although there probably is a more efficient way to query the database (maybe a config database?) to get the database GUID, there is an ID parameter on some URL's. So I added the content database in Central Admin. After that you can take the ID from the URL for that database like so:

http://qapt03ms:8800/_admin/oldcntdb.aspx?DatabaseId=%7BF6FD3F98%2D1044%2D4728%2D8C6D%2D2A22140FFC13%7D

%7BF6FD3F98%2D1044%2D4728%2D8C6D%2D2A22140FFC13%7D

F6FD3F98 - 1044 - 4728 - 8C6D - 2A22140FFC13

Then you can run the command:

C:\>stsadm -o preparetomove -contentdb servername:databasename -oldcontentdb F6FD3F98-1044-4728-8C6D-2A22140FFC13

Operation completed successfully.

You can see that a couple characters get stripped from the beginning and end (%7B and %7D) and the "%2D" are the dashes.

I've done restores without cleaning it up this way but I figured it's time to start doing it the right way.

In Place Upgrade from Windows 7 RC to RTM

2009-08-08T06:20:00.007-04:00

When I loaded the Windows 7 RC on my studio PC (AKA the litterbox PC) I didn't think I would be able to upgrade to RTM. I thought that I would have to do a clean install. As it turns out, there is a simple procedure to allow an upgrade.

If you try to just upgrade form the RC or a beta, you get a message that you cannot do that, but there also is a little link that will take you to some instructions. Basically, you copy the install media somewhere and edit ..\sources\civersion.ini so that it reads:

[HostBuild]

MinClient=7100.0

MinServer=7100.0

Yesterday morning I dowloaded the RTM DVD from MSDN (it took around an hour - not bad), and in the late afternoon I ran the installation. I received warnings that iTunes should be deactivated (shocker there, that this peria would have a problem) and that there were two driver issues. For the drivers, I disabled the one device (one of the multiple disc controllers on this fancy-schmancy Gigabyte motherboard, and one I am not using) and I just plowed ahead on the other (the Edirol FA-101, about which I was confident things would be OK since I read it in such a fine blog).

Once again, Windows installer had maybe one more click, and then said I should just sit back and watch. It took a bit longer to run than the original amazing install of 20 minutes, and I could only watch the first 15 or 20 minutes because I was doing the whole thing via remote desktop! After the first reboot, it was another 20 minutes or so before I was able to RDP back in, activate Windows, and resume my BitTorrent seeding and whatnot.

Kudos to the many smart people at Microsoft who put together such a solid installation system for an incredibly complex piece of software. My cat thinks it is the most advanced desktop operating system in the world, but what does she know. In a couple weeks they should be releasing R2 for Windows Server 2008 for us MSDN subscribers. This is what I use for my desktop OS at work, and I think IT will be the most advanced desktop operating system in the world.

Take Control of Your SharePoint Crawl Schedules, Content Sources and Indexes

2009-07-31T07:30:00.000-04:00

All my farms were set up (the old way) with one server running Central Admin, and generally I use that for an Indexer too. On top of that, I use a certain utility (which I am not at liberty to discuss in detail) which also runs on the Central Admin server(s). This can sometimes put an intense burden on one server (while the others are loafing).

One thing I am going to do, is load balance my Central Admin and spread it (and that certain utility) around. My setup now is just plain wrong. But in my defense, at one time it was right, and when we did our sanity checks with other experts, it still was right. Once things started getting heavier (indexing 500 GB, then over 700GB of content), there isn't much room for error. Our data center is miles away, but I think I can hear the little fans in those blade servers cranking like mad from here. VVvvvvvv...

Until I redo my Central Admin sites, I have to be cautious about what activities that over-burdened server is doing. One thing I do is turn off indexing when I know I will need those resources. Indexing takes disc space and CPU. I've seen big full crawls fill up lots of temporary space. Be sure to factor this in. It's so easy to take control. You can stop a crawl, but better yet, just don't let a new one start. Change the schedule to fit your activities. Use something like "Every 20 minutes from 8:00 AM for 810 minutes." That will start the last incremental at 9:30 PM, and at 10PM, you should have all the resources of that server for other tasks.

This relates a bit less, but one of my regrets on my setup is that I didn't separate things into different content sources. The logical thing would be to break it up by web app. I will do this soon too. That way you can prioritize (by starting one first) or set separate schedules for different content.

In a really large site, I suppose you could use separate SSPs and manipulate where they are and what they are indexing. We started to go down that path, but if you keep everything together, and just watch how you set up content sources and crawl schedules, you can get a whole lot of useful search indexing (out of not much hardware). Under one SSP, you can have a universal, site-wide index, with no additional setup.

More on AVCHD and Blu-ray (and M2ts)

2009-07-30T05:49:00.000-04:00

First, read my first post on the subject. I talk about the utilities I have found that are great for manipulating MKV files and creating an AVCHD file system, suitable for use with Blu-ray players.

For whatever reason, I have found that demuxing into the AVCHD file system format has some overhead - maybe 5-8%. It really shouldn't expand, but for some reason it does. This is enough that sometimes it is difficult to get things into a size that will fit on a DVD 5. I don't have a solution for this other than using some other utility to re-write the file with more compression.

I have found that a 4GB M2ts (MPEG 2 Transport Stream) file will turn into an AVCHD with enough room left to be comfortable - a 100% success rate. Using TXMuxer and MKVExtractGUI I have made some disks that work great.

About audio with AVCHD, like a DVD-Video, you can have a PCM track, but there will only be room for that if the video is compressed like mad, so you pretty much need to resign yourself to (a high bit rate) AC3 5.1. Blu-ray has some wonderful audio capabilities, but to get those, you will need the extra space of a Blu-ray. The AVCHD is limited to the two formats.

Bing vs. Google

2009-07-29T05:33:00.003-04:00

A lot of people who saw me using Bing (ever since it came out) would chuckle and make remarks to the effect of having thought higher of me - that I wasn't a true Microsoft bigot. But I am, I give them a chance and the benefit of the doubt every time. They truly are a much more benevolent bunch than ANY of the large influences in the corporate world. But I try to be an open minded bigot. Hey, I got an iPhone (and learned how to make it work MY way), OK. That's my proof.

BING vs. GOOGLE

So Bing vs. Google. Google is an extremely useful tool. For casual users, it gives them what they need very efficiently. For power users, likewise, even better. It's indispensable. Bing comes at things from a completely different perspective. It seems to have a strong commercial slant. I am searching for something so I must want to buy it, or buy a book about it. This is great if I do, but more often I don't.

Bing also seems to have a strong bias to sites closely related to Microsoft and away from sites related to Google. If I search for topics on this blog in Google, they come up very high. Much less so in Bing. On SharePoint things they may not come up at all. That's not right. It could be said that Google has the bias toward their sites (which this is). Probably BOTH are true, but Google seem much better balanced.

Google is still much more useful for my day to day needs, and will be put back into the browsers where it was temporarily replaced by Bing. This will mean that I will Bing very seldom - probably about as often as I used Live - not very (but still more than I ever used Yahoo for anything - how could that mess be useful to anyone).

Bob Dylan Show Comes to Eastlake

2009-07-12T06:00:00.003-04:00

On Saturday, July 11, 2009 Bob Dylan, John Mellencamp and Willie Nelson brought their tour to the Captains minor league ballpark, Classic Park, in Eastlake, Ohio as a part of their tour of minor league baseball stadiums. For your $75 (including fees), they bring along a barely adequate (not good) sound system. The stage was decent. There are lights, but not what I would call a light show, and there is no TV. They are counting on the music to entertain you.

But the vibe was still nice, as were the performances. They had a redeeming gimmick - children 14 and under were free.

The whole show people were talking to me. They were saying, "C'mon Bob" and stuff. Wrong Bob? This stadium is about 2 miles from my house (in a straight line) so I felt very at home. It was nice to have Bob over so he could jam on his organ (unfortunately, he only played guitar for two songs).

Set list:

Cat's In The Well

Señor (Tales Of Yankee Power)

Rollin' And Tumblin'

Blind Willie McTell

Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum

If You Ever Go To Houston

Things Have Changed

Workingman's Blues #2

Highway 61 Revisited

Ain't Talkin'

Thunder On The Mountain

Like A Rolling Stone

Jolene

All Along The Watchtower

Edirol FA-101 Windows 7 64 Bit Drivers

2009-06-15T06:03:00.003-04:00

The original post I had here was a work around. Roland published Windows 7 64 bit drivers in late 2009 and I have found them to work well with Windows 7. Go to Roland and get them.

If anyone has tried these drivers with Windows Server 2008 R2, please let me know. Thanks.

You really don't need the following information, but I leave it here for historical purposes.

Original Post:

Windows 7 again impressed me when I needed to load up my FA-101. I use the FA-101 as the only audio interface on my studio PC.

Doing a quick search you will find that there are no Windows 7 64 bit drivers for this device and if you try to run the Vista installer (FA_101_Vista_x64_Ver.1.0.4) you will get an error that it will not run for this version of Windows.

All you have to do is run Windows 7's (very cool) "Troubleshoot compatibility" wizard.

You select "Troubleshoot program" and check the "The program worked in earlier versions of Windows ..." box. Indicate that is was Vista, and then the driver installs as it did in Vista.

I have found the FA-101 to be much less susceptible to problems under Windows 7 than under Vista. Although the FA-101 driver did not contribute to my former 64 bit Vista's instability, the driver itself would frequently seem to get stuck. I was very used to powering off the FA-101 to un-stick it. So far, that has not been necessary with Windows 7. It continues to shine!

Windows 7 Amazing Installation

2009-06-11T08:00:00.001-04:00

I lost one of the two 400 GB Western Digital drives in my RAID 0 array on my home "studio" PC on Sunday. The performance of two mediocre drives raided together has always been impressive, so I was determined to go back to it. This desktop machine was running 64 bit Vista, and was not particularly stable. I was hoping to put either Windows 7 or Server 2008 R2 on it, and I was going to wait until fall.

Monday I bought two Seagate ST31000333AS 1TB drives from Antares Computing which arrived yesterday. I recommend both Antares and these drives (both are fast!). I only recommend RAID 0 if you can deal with losing the array (as I could). Reliability will be low - performance high.

So I take out the two old drives and stick in the two new ones. It takes longer than it should - thirty minutes - a little bit of cable manipulation and contortion (I never remove the full tower case from the rat's nest where it lives). Next I stick in the Windows 7 RC disk and boot. I think I had two clicks before it took off, and 20 minutes later it was done.

This bears repeating. Twenty minutes later, Windows was installed into previously unallocated space on freshly installed hard drives. I am sure I will have a lot of playing around to do (but I enjoy that - hit me). Twenty minutes. No formatting. Nothing.

Fixing SharePoint Search Propagation Problems - Part II

2009-06-05T06:00:00.001-04:00

As a continuation of Fixing SharePoint Search Propagation Problems ...

In my previously described situation (stuck on propagation with a few other issues thrown in), the problem recurred, and repeating the procedure (moving the index file location on all query servers) again provided relief.

Since I needed more than a few hours of relief and I could see nothing new was making it's becoming available to search, I also stopped indexing. Over night, this allowed propagation to clear itself. Since all was well, I boldly turned indexing back on. More good results - all the new content made it to the query servers and continued to do so. I still may have issues because after a while, the propagating status once again seemed stuck, but content is getting added and we are otherwise healthy (otherwise - that is a big qualification).

It would be great to get an in-depth explanation of what the services are doing when they report various statuses. I wish I could give one - I want to get this explanation. My own experience has been that although monitoring the services can be alarming, they work well. Indexes are built and updated quickly, even when things do not appear to be working very well. This from a person whose life has been made much more stressful by having to watch over this system.

Using MKV Files With a Memorex Blu-Ray Player

2009-06-04T05:00:00.002-04:00

I naively bought a two Memorex MVBD 2510 players last fall - one for my dad and and one for myself. They were good Black Friday deals, so I have no buyer's remorse. I knew they didn't have an ethernet port, but I had no idea what good it might be. I still can only guess what utility I might get from having my player on my home network.

Like most of these players, it has a USB port, so I quickly got into experimentation and found that it would play MP4, AVI, and a mess of other file formats, but not every file format. Around the same time, MKV files started to become prevalent. The Memorex doesn't like MKV's but they play wonderfully from VLC on my computer (which has a 24" HD widescreen). I don't live and breath for this stuff, but I am an enthusiast, so it took me a while to understand why we needed yet another format!

MKV (Matroska) is a container. From what I can tell, it is lossless, and it gets a small amount of compression. They can hold a lot of stuff, but in order to use them with devices that don't support it (and aren't being well supported by the manufacturer), you have to do something with them. I have the answer for that!

You could get a conversion program that knows how to read these files and write them out to another format - like AVI or MP4. That means all your content is going through another rendering and compressing process. Although the results may be acceptable , I know there is no way doing this is going to improve the video or audio. And it takes a long time. We need something better.

The answer is demuxing the file (and maybe doing something cool with the demuxed content). Demuxing the MKV contents to a .ts file will work with the Memorex (and thus I would think many other - better - players). The tool to do this is TXMUXER. Demuxing is as fast as your disk (you will wish you had a fast disk setup) and there is no re-compression.

The only problem is (at least with the Memorex) that .ts files act a lot like AVI's or other files played on the Memorex - rewind, fast forward and other operations don't always work as you would like, but otherwise, it's not a bad arrangement. You get the nice menu from the player and you can select the files nicely (just don't make the name too long - no scrolling on the Memorex).

MKVExtractGUI includes the ability to extract files to a Blu-Ray or AVCHD folder structure that it creates. AVCHD is what you want. Many BD players (Memorex and Playstation 3 included) support AVCHD. It's basically a Blu-Ray file system for DVD 5 (4.7GB DVD recordable discs). I haven't explored all the audio possibilities of this (Blu-Ray includes several outstanding lossless formats). These AVCHD discs have no menu, but you can "join" multiple input files and add chapter stops at whatever point you like (think "episodes"). Just burn the two folders the process creates to a UDF file system on a DVD 5 (I have not yet tried this with a DVD 9, but that is coming).

With a little trial and error, I've come up with a nice way to play and store content.

Fixing SharePoint Search Propagation Problems

2009-06-03T13:17:00.004-04:00

PDF Ifilters in SharePoint - Follow Up

2009-06-02T11:26:00.010-04:00

I would like to add an addendum to http://bobklass.blogspot.com/2009/04/pdf-ifilters-in-sharepoint.html.

I was not aware of PDFLib's ifilter until I was near the end of my testing and procurement a few weeks back. Since I still had a pretty good test setup for this, and I needed to do some final QA, I decided to test PDFLib too.

Before you can test PDFLib you will need to get yourself a license from their sales group. They give you a reasonable testing period and the process is painless.

In today's test, PDFLib's installer didn't add both of the registry keys I mentioned in my last post, only the first.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office Server\12.0\Search\Setup\ContentIndexCommon\Filters\Extension\.pdf]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\12.0\Search\Setup\ContentIndexCommon\Filters\Extension\.pdf]

The GUID for PDFLib seems to be {47A1AF35-C345-475d-AE68-EB07E948BD07}

I added the second manually. I would guess it is not important if you have MOSS.

My test set was not a very challenging bunch of documents (about 680 MB, 1200 documents). In some previous tests, Adobe was much slower (as anticipated) but in the ones today, they all three were similar. I previously was running the test after resetting the content. On today's I did full crawls (to save time??).

Interestingly, the quality of Adobe was much lower. The same search terms produced far fewer hits with Adobe while Foxit and PDFLit had the exact same results. It almost seemed anomalous, but my main objective today was to review the installation process (I have beaten that to death, no?) and give PDFLib a quick test, so I don't have time for further tests.

We already bought Foxit. I may have been able to save a little money with the way PDFLib is licensed, but I think I made the right choice because of Foxit's more foolproof installer. Hopefully I can add one more follow up article once I have been running Foxit in a large production environment for a while.

Eric Brown - Kethani

2009-05-31T18:49:00.003-04:00

English author Eric Brown's 2008 sci-fi novel Kéthani shows an earthly world that is at once scary and intriguing. An alien race has left its' imprint on our society by giving it a boost to the future. The characters' lives are described by their central point of reference - the pub. We readers get to meet them at "the Fleece" for a few pints every Tuesday (and many other days that end in "ay").

Unfortunately, as a reader, I cannot be "implanted" and so the association must end. But I thoroughly enjoyed the company of so many of Brown's lifelike characters. So much so that next I will read his Helix (unrelated story).

Highly recommended: Eric Brown's Kéthani.

Nancy Kress - Steal Across the Sky

2009-05-29T14:25:00.006-04:00

A recent good and fast read of mine, Nancy Kress' Steal Across the Sky is a great romp through a near future world where we have made alien contact. These aliens had been here before, and they messed things up for us. But they came to make things right and thus they called themselves "the atoners." They send witnesses to see what they messed up and ... well I don't want to spoil it.

I do want to say that Nancy Kress is a great find for me. My taste lately has been to seek out new books and try new-to-me authors (hey, Robert Silverberg and some of my other old favorites aren't churning them out the way they used to). She reads very smoothly - crawls right into your head. There were some global warming related story points that are based on bad science, but like other bad sci-fi inventions, you can just look past that.

Nancy Kress is a celebrated author and with this, her latest, it is easy to see why.

... and sorry about the recent "test" post, everybody. We were trying the Word 2007 integration on our (new, not yet completed) standard desktop, only to find that it can publish to Blogger rather nicely if you know what you are doing (or almost do).

Cedar Point 2009

2009-05-21T18:00:00.006-04:00

What can I say about Cedar Point that I haven't already said? It is one of my favorite places, and I'll bet you would love it too. Yesterday we had a wonderful day. Perfect weather. Lots of great rides. The Dragster picture looks just like one I posted before (only a year older). The rest of the pictures (click) are seriously sun-drenched.

From Cedar Point 2009

We had one big mishap, and it paid some dividends. Early in the morning we were going to ride Maverick, which I had yet to ride. There were very short lines, but while we were waiting, it had a minor problem. A few minutes later they had it back up and we were riding. Maverick has two lift launches. On the second launch (which is out of a dark tunnel) we shot out as designed, but at the top of the hill the machine braked heavily and we slid back down backwards, all the way into the tunnel. There we sat for 40 minutes - 12 of us. Harnessed in with no way out.

Eventually they got the machine working and we were re-launched. When we arrived in the station they gave us a free no-waiting pass onto Top Thrill Dragster, Raptor and Millennium Force. We turned the Dragster and Raptor ones into instant front seat rides. Not too shabby.

In general, Cedar Point never looked better. The place is extremely clean and well manicured. Everything (well, most things) seemed to be in great working order. Even the ticket prices were reasonable (early season Internet specials). Famous Dave's was great, as always, for BBQ wings and Sam Adams. I hope the coming Memorial Day weekend turns out as nice.

Here's a tip:
save your parking receipt and turn it in for 100% credit at Famous Dave's. I've been doing this for years. $10 off! It works at some of the other places on the pennisula that aren't in the main park, but you won't find it printed anywhere.

PDF Ifilters in SharePoint

2009-04-29T06:00:00.003-04:00

See also http://bobklass.blogspot.com/2009/06/pdf-ifilters-in-sharepoint-follow-up.html

We have more PDF files than anything else in our SharePoint sites, by a huge margin. We also have some pretty over-sized hardware, so up until recently, we have been able to get by with the single-threaded free Adobe ifilter.

When the Foxit ifilter was released I did some testing and could not see sufficient benefit to make the change. I am pretty sure my testing was flawed, as others have confirmed the superior performance of the Foxit ifilter. I carefully retested it and with a relatively small sample size (less than 2000 files) I got a benefit of not quite double the throughput. I think that with a larger sample the benefit would be greater, but the successful test is sufficient for my needs and allows me to justify this purchase.

Checking Ifilter Registry Entries

Along the way I experienced some difficulties. The instructions for installing the Foxit ifilter are very simple, and sometimes they work as they should, but not always. If you are doing a first time installation of a PDF ifilter, follow Foxit's instructions carefully. For a replacement of Adobe, you simply uninstall the Adobe ifilter and then you install Foxit. I did this uninstall/install cycle a couple times. Either of the uninstalls may not always happen cleanly, so you may need to get out your SharePoint/IIS/Windows hammer and do a bit of tapping.

As I was testing, I was getting an error on all the PDF's that there was no ifilter installed. I ended up manually modifying two registry keys, at first just to put back Adobe so I could test that. Then the uninstall/reinstall worked, but I still checked it just to be sure. My problems could have been from not following procedures (starts, stops, etc.) or possibly from the install / uninstall not being complete. Checking these keys was a big part of my solution.

The two keys are:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office Server\12.0\Search\Setup\ContentIndexCommon\Filters\Extension\.pdf]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\12.0\Search\Setup\ContentIndexCommon\Filters\Extension\.pdf]

Their multi-string value should be the appropriate GUID for the classid for the ifilter you are using (I think that's what this is):

{987f8d1a-26e6-4554-b007-6b20e2680632} Foxit
{4C904448-74A9-11D0-AF6E-00C04FD8DC02} Adobe 6
{E8978DA6-047F-4E3D-9C78-CDBE46041603} Adobe 8 (or 9 or 64 bit??)

You also need to be sure to start and stop the search services and why not throw in an IIS reset while you are at it (hammer). Of course a reboot has the same effect (more hammering). After doing that, to make your tests cleaner, it's good to get the setup primed. You can do that by running it twice (reset the content in between), or just enough the first time to be sure that everything is running. If you monitor the index you will see a minute or two delay on an un-primed setup.

I am looking forward to getting this into a production environment with hundreds of thousands of PDFs. I hope I won't need my hammers, but at least I know where to look if it doesn't seem to be working.

Jeff Beck Cleveland Set List

2009-04-23T06:05:00.004-04:00

In response to a request for a Cleveland (April 15, 2009) Jeff Beck at the House of Blues set list:

1 Beck's Bolero
2 The Pump
3 You Never Know
4 Cause We've Ended as Lovers
5 Behind the Veil
6 Blast from the East
7 Stratus
8 Angel
9 Drums
10 Led Boots
11 Nadia
12 Space Boogie
13 Goodbye Porkpie Hat
14 Blue Wind
15 Bass
16 Day in the Life
17 Big Block
Encore Break
18 Where Were you
19 Scottish One
20 Theme from Peter Gunn

Tal Wilkenfeld-Bass
Vinnie Colaiuta-Drums
Jason Rebello-Keys
Jeff Beck-Guitar

You can probably find an active torrent of this show. I have heard two very similar sounding recordings (OK, but A- grade).

The show was a nice display of Jeff's guitar prowess and thoroughly enjoyable. A sonic treat. I was very disappointed that the "Jeff" album was not represented (I hoped it would be featured). Jeff's last three albums have been explorations in this direction, with Jeff being the pinnacle of the bunch.

Here's the set list for the show I am seeing tonight:

;<)

Cleveland Orchestra - Sir Colin Davis, guest conductor

Hector Berlioz - Overture to Beatrice and Benedict

W.A. Mozart Piano Concerto No. 25 in C major, K503

1. Allegro maestoso

2. Andante

3. Allegretto

Mitsuko Uchida, piano

INTERMISSION

Jean Sibelius Symphony No. 2 in D major, Opus 43

1. Allegretto

2. Andante, ma rubato

3. Vivacissimo

4. Finale: Allegro moderato

Travis Review

2009-04-22T11:59:00.004-04:00

This is the text from my gushing review I posted yesterday on TravisOnline.com:

What a lovely, lovely show. All day yesterday I had the Monday blahs. I was wondering how I could get myself up for seeing Travis. I listened to a lot of Travis during the day, and that helped, but it wasn't until Travis started playing that my day turned around. And it really turned around.

As the show progressed, you got the feeling that everyone was having the same beautiful experience. We were all feeling the power of the music. I had seen Travis once before in Detroit, several years ago, and it was the same experience, but on a slightly larger scale. The House of Blues crowd was less than capacity (it was a rainy, crappy Monday night) but that added to the intimacy of the show.

Having checked all the set lists posted on this site, I noticed that "As You Are" was missing. I was sad about that. You could feel that this was a really good show the band was playing - one with lots of positive feelings. When they played "As You Are," it went over the top for me.

It was a very special Monday. Thank you Travis.

Jeff Beck, Travis, Berlioz, Mozart and Sibelius in 8 Days

2009-04-15T06:00:00.002-04:00

Today begins a very full 8 day week of music. I have been looking forward to tonight's Jeff Beck concert at the Cleveland House of Blues for some time. Years, in fact. Fortunately, Jeff Beck has been touring a lot lately. He fronts a band with the highest caliber of musicianship.

Next Monday is the great brit-pop group, Travis, also at the Cleveland House of Blues. Travis latest album is similar to their other hauntingly dreary yet uplifting albums, but more electric.

I am looking forward to seeing both of those shows from the extreme comfort and sonic heaven of the HOB balcony.

Also a sonic heaven will be the Cleveland Orchestra with guest conductor, Sir Colin Davis next Thursday. Cleveland's Severance Hall is a wonderful place. My employer is sponsoring these concerts, so heavily discounted ($60 tickets for $20) were available.

Speaking of ticket prices, the Jeff Beck tickets were the most expensive I have purchased for the HOB at $99 each, including the ridiculous fees. You may or may not know, I used to boycott the HOB because they are an out of town company that received tax abatements so they could put local venues out of business. Once I broke my boycott, the flood gates opened, but I still bad- mouth it and the bar stinks (high prices and poor selection).

Aloha

2009-03-26T01:12:00.003-04:00

Greetings from Hawaii. What a crazy long way from home this is, but how simple it is to get here (put it into your favorite mapping program, it will tell you to just go straight across the Pacific - not a problem, but a jet helps). It's just another state. So everything works, U.S. money, bank cards, cell phones. The Outrigger Waikiki Beach hotel where we are staying is extremely hospitable. This should be a fun visit.

Live Recording with the Zoom H2 - Epilog

2009-03-18T06:26:00.001-04:00

See previous

Last Saturday I took the H2 to the House of Blues in Cleveland and recorded Dickie Betts. Dickie allows taping, but I thought I'd try out my stealth since they have overly strong security at that venue. I had no issues with stealthiness.

In general, I would say that recoding with the H2 is much less prone to error than with the Rockbox iRiver. Once it is set, just turn it on, press record to arm and press record again to confirm. I used the same levels I used for the last show (78, and it is set at the least sensitive level).

I have not used any of the compression or limiting and there hasn't been any issues with overload. The levels also haven't been too low. Just no issues (so far).

The recording is great. Betts brings a three guitar, two drummer (plus bass and keys) ensemble. They can do "Allman Brothers" style music very effectively, and as my friend Nick said, he obviously just loves to play.

How Bad Is it?

2009-03-09T20:00:00.000-04:00

8.1% unemployment. That's bad. Unemployment was much worse not that long ago. How about the entire period of November 1981 through December 1983. What was that like? In the media it was always somewhat gloomy, but it seems like the media negativism is worse this time. And even more mindless.

There have been some economic extremes in my lifetime. How about 18% mortgages? Or double digit inflation year after year. Globally. And whatever happens to the U.S. is usually much worse in most of the rest of the world.

Most people in the U.S. do well all the time. Some never do well. During such crises, there is a bit of crossover of the mosts to the somes. If the media didn't over play it (and we "mosts" never looked at our 401k statements), the mosts would hardly be aware of the crisis.

I truly believe that contributions from the media towards a negative psychological state of the masses are significant to overall trends. Most of it isn't news from a well-informed source, it's just drivel.

So the answer is, it's not that bad. Who do you trust, TV writers or me? At least I have an MA in economics. If you have some dough and can figure out some winners, it's time to buy!

Live Recording With the Zoom H2 (Part Two)

2009-03-06T18:45:00.003-05:00

New Photos From the Ice!

2009-03-04T06:00:00.000-05:00

I posted a couple new albums last night. The first is from a rec league all star hockey game at Quicken Loans Arena (where the Cavs play). the second is also the Q ice, the U.S. Figure Skating Championships from January. Both sets were taken by me with Gayle's cool Casio camera. It has a long zoom for a ultra compact camera (7x). Still, it's hard to get really great results without a faster lens, more light, etc.

All Star

2009 US Figure Skating Championships

IPhone = Lotus Notes

2009-02-27T05:59:00.002-05:00

I my have been drawn to this phone because this wonderful user interface is so similar to the "concentration game" tiles we have been using with Lotus Notes for DECADES.

Photo taken with an LG Vu!

Free the iPhone

2009-02-26T06:00:00.002-05:00

I've had an iPhone for less than a week. Sure it is very cool in many respects, but there is a big butt! Actually, there are a number of big butts, things about which an astute user might be upset.

There are the missing things, like Bluetooth for something other than a stupid earpiece. How about files and such. And MMS - we really need multimedia messaging - it will save the world and get us out of this recession.

And the dumb things that aren't there - like a clipboard. But of course there are good things. The UI, of course. And it works well as a phone. And many other things we expect a phone to do, it does well - play music, calculator, take pictures (this is really not that good), SMS texting, etc., you know, phone things. It is a great phone for those.

Then there are the crazy apps. The vast majority are crappy things - toys for wasting time. I am not a gamer, so I have not evailuated those capabilities (not do I care to). The minority of apps are somewhat useful, or gee-whiz information that is amazing to have so conveniently in your pocket.

I like it, and it can stay.

The Big Issue

There is something outside of my drivel that is a topic of contention - the freedom for an application developer to create something for the iPhone platform. It seems that Apple is trying very hard to stifle this. If you tried to create a new Mail client, for instance, forget it, Apple won't let you distribute it.

This is wrong. It's un-American. Remember? Freedom? We used to value it. We cannot let corporations or governments dictate our actions like this. We don't have to take this without a fight. Think about it.

Being locked to iTunes is simply silly. Tethering users to a moronic user interface, designed to sell them more stuff is insulting. So it should be obvious that I will be avoiding Apple's proprietary setup. Having a closed system so that something works reliably is OK, but having it so you can control consumer behavior is unacceptable.

The "Jailbreaking" community seems to have a lot of junk out there too, just like the Apple apps store. I think the only way for Apple to make this ethically right is to reconcile with Jailbreakers and mainstream the process of freeing the platform. From what I've heard, this is another point of view I have taken where I am on the losing side.

Launching Directly into Lotus Notes Applications

2009-02-25T06:00:00.001-05:00

Launching Lotus Notes directly into an application is dangerous to workstation stability. To qualify this statement, launches with versions up to 6.5.x were always unstable. I am an ex-Notes developer and a little behind. I am just getting into 8.5.1, but I am not going to retest this behavior until 8.5.1 is completely rolled out (and the need arises).

There are a number of ways to do launches directly - .lnk files, shortcuts into a document, the Notes://ServerName/Directory/DatabaseName.nsf format embedded in HTML. All of these work. Sometimes. For a while. If everything works out OK. But they will consistently fail and cause Notes to crash.

It would be great for a Notes guru, who somehow still cared about version 6.5, etc., to come along and tell me I am wrong. I welcome that. If anybody has had good experiences with Notes launches, let me know.

A little history: we use the Lotus Notes email platform because of it's ability to handle many terabytes of mail. It has aways been the most scalable and secure mail product. I have worked with Notes as an application platform since version 3 (1993), and it has always been one of my favorites. We put a moratorium on new Notes apps several years back. I was fortunate to have been assigned to creating our SharePoint environment, starting in 2005.

Along the way, there have been several attempts at links like this, and they have always failed. Also keep in mind that we work in a fairly well controlled environment - standardized desktop and server setups, etc., and it still always fails. I am not anxious to try this again with Notes 8x, but I guess that will be necessary at some point.

Easy Way How to Find SharePoint Subsite Size

2009-01-27T07:07:00.005-05:00

I was looking for a GOOD way to find out the size of subsites. It seems a lot of people are struggling with this. You could try SharePoint Designer. That's fun. When you ask it site properties, it will give you a different answer depending on what document libraries or lists you touched. Obviously that is not going to be reliable.

I'll cut to the chase (although I was trying to be as wordy as possible). This isn't a GOOD way, but it is a very simple way:

open the site in Windows Explorer
navigate to the root of the site or subsite in question
right click, properties

That may be a little resource intensive - it takes a while to open. I think it may have to open a lot more than it appears just to get you that number, but there it is in the properties window. Piece of cake.

Post Script: http://www.codeplex.com/SPUsedSpaceInfo is a console app to get a CSV listing of sites and their size. Beware that the setup is pretty heavy handed - a Dotnet 3.5 SP1 installation starts right up if you aren't there already.

Time Zones and Site Templates in SharePoint

2009-01-20T13:33:00.003-05:00

This little problem had blog entry written all over it. We use a site template created in the SharePoint user interface (not Visual Studio) in several farms. Maybe we should stop that practice as it is starting to slow us down, but that's how it is currently deployed.

Besides being a pain because the template needs to be re-saved in each site collection in order for our stuff to work right, we also have to do it to set the regional settings because:

When you save a site template in the SharePoint GUI, it saves the regional settings in the template.

Use this to your advantage!

See also my blog entry about how simple and straight forward time zone issues are in SharePoint: http://bobklass.blogspot.com/2008/06/regional-settings-are-simple.html.

Robert Gordon and Chris Spedding at the Beachland

2009-01-14T18:00:00.003-05:00

I have been going around saying that there weren't enough shows going on in Cleveland this winter, but maybe all I had to do was open my eyes. I nearly missed a great one this Saturday at the Beachland. Robert Gordon and Chris Spedding are so important to Rockabilly and yet I almost missed it.

Once I realized I was going to go to this I started getting psyched by playing the only two things I had of Roberts - the first Link Wray thing (on vinyl, of course) and a King Biscuit of the two of them from the late seventies. By showtime I was ready.

With no opener, the "7:30 doors/8:30 show" didn't start until after 9:30. I got there 8ish (it was a nasty weather evening, as they all have been - snow and ice and cold) and got a seat right by the mixing desk. Schoolboy was there with his Zoom H2 just sitting on the table in the little acoustically transparent black bag that comes with the Zoom. That worked out just fine for the whole evening.

This rockabilly revival with a brit twist (Chris) worked beautifully. Robert did a set, Chris did a nice set in the middle (doing fine vocals, tasty guitar, etc.) and then Robert did another set. The band was just Robert and Chris with a bass plus drums rhythm section (electric bass only, and I was a little disappointed in that). The band was well rehearsed - they do a great show.

The Beachland crowd was a lively one. Mixed ages in the 25-60 range - I would say average in the 40's, though. After the show I met with Robert and Chris. They were very gracious, but Chris seemed pretty tired.

Schoolboy's recording is outstanding - easily the best Beachland recording I have heard. The Zoom did well. At 24 bit 96 kHz, the show took up around 3.7 GB. That high resolution gives it a smooth sound and the great mic capsules in the Zoom perform well. Nice!

Indians Depth Chart - I Hope This Is Better Than It Looks

2009-01-03T23:32:00.003-05:00

I got a little depressed today as I was reading about the trade for Mark DeRosa. That seems to have been a good trade - he must either be expensive or not have a lot of time left on his contract, because they gave up very little for a good player.

This is the depressing part - the depth chart: http://cleveland.indians.mlb.com/team/depth_chart/index.jsp?c_id=cle. It doesn't feel like a championship team. It doesn't feel like a contender. I hope that changes. I have followed Indians baseball as a fan since I was a kid. It's always fun, even if they aren't very good, but right now there doesn't seem like there is enough there to make it fun.

The pitching depth is very questionable. Almost every position is questionable. Centerfield and catcher are pretty well covered. Hopefully I will gain confidence in these guys as they show up in their new spring training site.

Cannot Move Web Parts on Page

2008-12-16T07:00:00.001-05:00

This simple little issue has cropped up at least twice in our environment. Most recently it happened because we started using a new alternate access mapping. Previously we encountered it when migrating from IE 6 to IE 7.

The Javascript needed for editing pages (and other stuff, no doubt) cannot run without adequate browser security. Check that the site is included in Trusted Sites or the Intranet Zone and that your policies (for the zone for the specific browser version) enable scripting.

Migrating Content Databases from RTM to SP1

2008-12-09T09:00:00.007-05:00

We did a migration, copying a content database from an RTM farm with a SQL 2000 back end in North America to an SP1 farm (no infrastructure update) with a SQL 2005 back end in Europe (and another in Asia) in order to give a starting point for replication (using a certain major replication software).

It was easy. We restored a backup of to the new database server. It's now a SQL 2005 database. If you try to simply attach this database to the SP1 farm in the Central Admin GUI, when you browse to it you will get an error with a useless link to a Microsoft site (that's what we got).

To make it work, with the database not attached, we ran:

Stsadm.exe -o addcontentdb -url -databasename

If you want to check the database version, you can run:

SELECT * FROM Versions

There is a nice table of the database versions here http://blogs.msdn.com/shaden/archive/2008/01/10/migrated-to-sp1-checking-your-database-schema-version.aspx. You are looking for 12.0.0.4518 for RTM, 12.0.0.6219 for SP1. You can see the rest of the database versions in the post linked above.

Where's my Easy button? I hope this is really as good as it looks.

Live Recording with the Zoom H2

2008-12-03T06:00:00.002-05:00

New Look for BobKlass.Info

2008-11-23T09:04:00.002-05:00

I am a copycat. Scott recently added new theming and functionality to mylifeinaminute.com and it prompted me to look at some alternatives. After two or three minutes of shallow thought, a new theme was selected.

It looks and works better for me on my new studio monitor in 1920x1200 (yes, it's the month long Black Friday celebration when new gear finds its' way into my setup).

Prophylactic Reboots of SharePoint Servers

2008-11-12T06:00:00.001-05:00

Up front, I will admit that I've always been a fan of prophylactic reboots of servers. Any servers. In the NT4 world, weekly. In the Solaris world, monthly. And in the Windows Server 2003 world, monthly. But things are not always equal, and SharePoint is a huge wild card.

WSS/MOSS 2007 causes IIS some heavy duty pain. Put it up, leave it up, and eventually, it will die. We've all seen it, and I'll bet those of you who are lucky enough to run SP1 or other patched up systems have seen it too. Hopefully we will get all patched up soon too, but I don't expect that to make things perfect.

The unexpected crashes of IIS seemed to do the most damage to the indexing process. The indexer itself can take a hit and stop functioning (you probably will see a lot of junk in the event logs) or the web front ends it is trying to use might unexpectedly crash. We got slightly toasted (not quite burned) by this several times.

Since we started rebooting the farm Saturday night (before Sunday's full crawl), things have been better (I would hate to say perfect, but it has been perfect).

I know that server folks don't like prophylactic reboots. They really would rather address the problem, but since some of what ails SharePoint servers are real bugs, memory leaks, etc., this kind of thinking has to give way to good, old fashioned, weekly reboots.

Halloween Psychobilly Party to Remember

2008-11-05T06:00:00.001-05:00

Some of my friends call psychobilly "halloween rock." This seems especially appropriate when that season rolls around. Last Friday's show was a special kind of party because it marked the last Lords of the Highway show with Sugar on bass.

Lords fans are like a family (a family that likes to party!) We turned out in big numbers since this was a special occasion. Crazy people, some in crazy costumes.

The Music

The Slackjawed Yokels, Horror of 59 and Lords of the Highway were on the bill. The Yokels reunion sounded great and was a blast. I've seen Horror of 59 a couple times before. Since Sugar will be in the band from here on out, I will give them more attention. The Lords gave one of best performances (out of how many have I seen?? - It feels like maybe 50?? but probably less).

The Recording

Bob and Dale Boots had the recording rigs going pretty well (Keith the taper was there with his too). We got a feed off the soundboard to one iRiver and another room microphone up high on a mic stand to another iRiver. We haven't combined them yet, but it should make a great surround mix.

The Photos

I almost didn't bring a camera. I wish I could capture a night like this on video, but the Beachland Tavern is just too darn dark. I grabbed my old Cannon and had it in my back pocket most of the night. That's what you see above. I have Dale's pics on a different computer and maybe I'll post those too. He got some good shots.

The Beer

If the Beachland didn't make a killing that night somebody robbed them. It was flowing. I must criticize the bad Great Lakes on tap (I think it was Dortmunder, but it tasted like soap). I got it early in the evening (early was around 10:30 and my complaint was not answered with a free one as it should have been). I switched to other stuff, and had plenty! It was a good time for all.

I Wish I Took This Advice ...

2008-11-04T06:30:00.000-05:00

... then, as the man says, you couldn't blame me for any of the mess!

Do what you like today. I voted absentee a few weeks back. At least I could tune out most of the garbage that flies through the air during election time.

This Is No Way to Promote Tourism

2008-10-28T13:08:00.003-04:00

How about extreme nasty tours. The weather is Cleveland is turning sour. It should stay that way for a while. Tourists are now few and far between. But it's not so bad that one can't enjoy a brisk walk by the sea shore!

Beats me where the audio went on this, but just think shwwwwwwwwew ...

and a little rock and roll at the end.

I Verse Uverse, We All Verse

2008-10-23T02:00:00.000-04:00

Ma Ma Ma Belle! I'm not sure what the AT+T breakup was really all about in the first place, since so much of it came back together. Once upon a time there really was very little competition in the U.S. in most of what was then the telephone business, but look what it is now. AT+T has a few competitors, but it has huge market share in so many of today's (much broader) communications markets.

They now have all of my personal communications. And long before even cell phones, in the early days of home Internet service, I was wishing for a single provider to sell it all to me. Somehow I now wake up in the middle of the night and it has happened (it could be because I missed one of my Lyrica pills, though, because my skin also feels like it's peeling off).

My TV, home phone, cell phone, and Internet are all from the same provider. AT+T Uverse was the latest addition to this pile, with television and Internet services. So, what's it like? It certainly is impressive to look at the router config screen and see that 25 megabits of IP are coming into my house. I haven't had the service long enough to say much about reliability.

There definitely are limits to what it can do. I am supposed to have 6 mbit down and 1 mbit up of Internet. This seems to be rock solid, unlike the cable TV provider, which felt inconsistent. Cable was supposed to be faster on the down side, but it seemed to be spotty. On the TV side, yesterday we were recording two HD programs and watching one regular program in one room. When I tried to tune to an HD channel in another room, it said it could not (sorry, Dave). I can live with that (I watched a different, recorded HD program).

We bought the whole bevy of channels - 341. There are maybe 10 more HD channels than we had with cable (48, I think). It comes with a DVR you can access from other sets (or even control over the Internet). It can record 4 programs at once, two HD. American HD is a lot of data - 1920x1080 - so that's pretty impressive. Although we usually are not technologically deprived, we didn't have a DVR before this. It a keeper, something we can't do without. Pausing live TV. Gotta have it.

As a quality freak (but really only an expert on the audio side), I was concerned about excessive compression on the HD cable channels. With cable, you could see lots of artifacts if you looked at where subtle gradations of color were supposed to be. Uverse was supposed to be better, using MP4 compression. I don't think it holds up very well under close scrutiny either, though. Color gradations seem less blotchy, but animation of things like background colors is jumpy. Only a picky person would notice, and I would need side by side installations to give a more accurate account. And that ain't going to happen.

So, I am happy, but I won't save any money (not much, anyway) and the difference in the amount of service we are getting is negligible.

"Route 66" on WRUW

2008-10-22T09:00:00.004-04:00

Eclectic. To me, that's always a positive word. I suppose there may be some things eclectic that I would want to avoid, but I'm not sure what they would be.

The term is perfect for describing a radio show I have been enjoying the last few years. It is inexplicably called "Route 66." You can find this show on WRUW 91.1 FM in Cleveland or http://www.wruw.org/ every Wednesday from 9:00 A.M. to Noon.

Your DJ Carl's shows normally cover multiple genres, often within one set. It is always fresh and heartfelt programming. And eclectic. Not to the point of obscurity, but in range. You can get everything from jam bands to punk rock, classic rock, any form of jazz, world music, odd imports. Nothing is off limits (although I'm not sure I've ever heard him delve into any orchestra music). All mixed up and presented with a curious thread.

You can check out some older shows as well: http://www.wruw.org/guide/show.php?show_id=163

Carl - for that dip into orchestra music that I think you should feel challenged to make, rather than the usual 19th century longhairs, maybe some Moondog would work.

Happy Birthday John Lennon

2008-10-09T07:00:00.001-04:00

John Winston Ono Lennon

9 October 1940 – 8 December 1980

... and an early happy 72nd birthday to Bill Wyman (October 24, 1936). This is a picture of me with Bill a few years back. It was at a book signing at the Rock Hall. I was standing with a few other people waiting for Bill and didn't realize that I was standing almost right next to Gary Brooker ("Whiter Shade of Pale").

Relative URL's In a SharePoint Masterpage

2008-10-07T16:06:00.006-04:00

I've mentioned that I hate branding, right? It is kind of nice, though, when you get it right. I've had some recent little successes that have made me happy. Or it may be the Lyrica I've been on for the past month that keeps me happy (nice drug).

OK, so while you are out there messing with masterpages, you might want to add a static URL link that goes to the current site. Here's mine that worked so nicely:

NavigateUrl="$SPUrl:~Site/../Search.aspx"

Text="Metadata Search "

Target="_new"

runat="server" CssClass="ms-SPLinkButtonInActive" Font-Size="XX-Small"/>

"$SPUrl:~Site/../Search.aspx" goes to a page saved at the root of the subsite. Naturally, you could specify a path into the subsite as well.

There also was a significant amount of pain that went into the meticulous placement on the masterpage. I'm not sure if I am satisfied with the way I did that. We'll see when I roll it to the QA and production environments. It is pretty! Likewise, I'm still debating on the actual location of that file, etc., but in the mean time, you've got your relative URL.

Adding a "Fake" Item to the Views Dropdown

2008-10-03T07:00:00.002-04:00

I recently built some demos using Bamboo Solution's fantastic "List Search Advanced" web part. I called it "Metadata Search" since that's what it really is - a search on any of the columns (but not documents in a library). We needed to have a search limited to individual lists but we couldn't use the out of the box Advanced Search web part because it needs a defined scope. We have too many subsites (Microsoft recommends no more that 200 scopes, or something like that). We could have tried to roll our own, but Bamboo Solutions to the rescue! Highly recommended.

The primary use of the Bamboo search web part will be from a special search page that I will add to the site template. In looking for other ways to incorporate it, I came up with something interesting. I created a view called "search." It didn't matter what was on the view because I hid it.

Then I edited the web part page and hid the view web part (in the Layout section). It is now a web part page which shows in the view drop down, and I can add web parts to it. I added the Bamboo Solutions search web part, but it could be anything. Instructions, maybe.

Do not remove the list view web part from the page. If you do, the page will no longer show in the drop down. You may then need to delete it with SharePoint Designer.

The users turned down my idea, but it's still a nifty (stupid) SharePoint trick that I'm sure I will use someday.

SharePoint Search Hammers and Crowbars

2008-09-04T09:30:00.001-04:00

Search can get stuck in some funky ways. Who knows why - disturbances in SQL connectivity, disturbances in the force?

I recently had a rather nasty bout with some stickiness. One of the query servers was not communicating properly for some reason. Even after a restart, our full crawl would stop almost immediately (when it tried to propagate). The last message it would show was "the query server xxxxxx is not responding." xxxxxx was one of my web front ends and which also is a query server. As I said, the restart (small hammer) of that server did not help.

The BIG hammer I used to pound this out was to go into Central Admin and remove the search query service from this server and then re-add it. Ultimately, this got us past this bump.

Along the way, I was finding the full crawl stuck, and it would not respond to a stop command. The crowbar I used to get this done was to restart the Office Search service on the indexing server.

It pains me to do these things!

SharePoint Reminder - Tickler System

2008-09-03T05:30:00.003-04:00

OK, I know you really smart SharePoint people won't even have to think about this one. But I thought about my user's application needs for a good 10-15 minutes before I came up with this one. So for the really smart ones, this is no use, but for anybody not feeling quite that sharp, maybe you can save half that think time (you still had to google "sharepoint reminder" and find this post!).

So this is really simple. All you need to do is:

Have a reminder date (not necessarily the due date). This can be a calculated field, based on due date (like =[Expiration Date]-30).
Create a reminder view that filters based on the reminder date (is less than or equal to today).
Use an alert or an RSS feed (now that was easy).

This thing does not need to be any particular kind of list or library. I know it's a brain dead simple solution, but if you were having a mental block, maybe this will help.

Holy Cash Flow, Batman

2008-08-22T05:45:00.000-04:00

Scott Hoag pointed out that Bamboo Solutions has released this very interesting SharePoint price calculator:

http://community.bamboosolutions.com/blogs/sharepoint-price-calculator/default.aspx

We stuck in everything for our four farms and it spit out an estimate of the list price of the SharePoint implementation. It is somewhat staggering - list prices.

I have been a long time Microsoft stockholder. To me, this is further evidence that the stock is way undervalued (in case their outstanding earnings weren't enough)! Buy some stock today.

Dogfish Head 120

2008-08-17T19:08:00.007-04:00

Those of you who have known me for a while know that I have this thing about Dogfish Head brews. They are my favorite, even though I come from a town where we have one of the best craft breweries - Great Lakes - and I worked with the people who started the very large creative brewery, Crooked River (I think it was mostly software money that financed that company in the beginning). I probably told far too many people about the beer aging in my basement. There is a big pile of it. It's an investment! After you drink with me, you may think that I am this huge beer snob (snob is so cruel, I just appreciate the good stuff). I'm just a connoisseur for crying out loud.

So today I finally popped open one of the "holy grail" beers. A Dogfish Head 120 that had been aging for a couple years. Here is my review from BeerAdovcate.com:

"If anyone asks, Dogfish Head 90 is my favorite "everyday" beer. That's not to say that it isn't special, it's just that it is readily available and I wish I could drink it every day (but of course that would cause health problems). I have always loved it, and I have never aged any of it.
At first the Dogfish Head 60 was a disappointment to me. But I later realized what a dope I was. It was just something completely different. Now I love it, especially on tap.

"A few years ago (when my son started at Purdue) I was able to procure a few bottles of 120 in Indiana (they can't sell it in Ohio - too much alcohol). They were around $10 each. I just let the suckers sit in storage until today, when I finally had one (I have been meaning to do this). I had good reason, I wanted to relax and enjoy something special - I deserve it. 120 did not disappoint.

"I had an opportunity to buy preaged bottles of 120 at their brew pub in Delaware last summer but for whatever reason I passed (I am pretty sure the price was in the $15 range and I was already spending a bundle there). But the one I am drinking is one I aged myself. It's over two years old. Everything seems to be settling in on it.

"It is sweet, hoppy, well balanced. There does not seem to be a boozy smell whatsoever. The alcohol is definitely there, but the smell is not. The smell actually is a bit weaker than I would like. Everything else about this beverage is what I would expect from a well aged, over hopped, over malted ale. Smooth.

"It was worth the wait and the $10. Now I have to think about (1) when to drink the rest of them and (2) how to get some more to put up for later. And how the hell do you follow that act?"

The Curmudgeon's Guide to Practicing Law

2008-08-13T06:00:00.000-04:00

I can be a curmudgeon. For me it's "acting my age" (and settling in to the years ahead). I have a right to act this way. An example of curmudgeonly behavior in public might be insisting on being addressed as "Mr. Klass." At work or at home it might include niceties and protocols just "because I say so."

Our lawyers have an (at least partially deserved) reputation for curmudgeonly behavior. Many of them demand respect in a way that is difficult for the uninitiated (and especially IT persons) to appreciate. This has always worked OK with me since I naively give everyone credit for having made it this far through evolution. The fact that they are here at one of the biggest law firms in the universe must mean something. Never mind the amazing academic and professional accomplishments of these people.

This lawyerly curmudgeoness is amplified (exaggerated, at times) in Mark Herrmann's The Curmudgeon's Guide to Practicing Law. This nifty little legal best seller is required reading for new lawyers wanting to make their way through the ranks at a major law firm.

As a long time law firm IT person, I also think it is useful for non-lawyers to get the curmudgeon's pointers about quality of work, his basic rules for writing, etc. It is a quick read (more like a big pamphlet) and the humor makes it fun. So I declare it required reading for anyone who works in this environment.

"It's a shame that they waste licenses to practice law on people who ask questions like this."

Fairport Lighthouse Triathlon July 27, 2008

2008-07-28T06:00:00.002-04:00

Back when I ran marathons I got into quite a rut. Although I had traveled to some out of town races, I found it very easy to simply do Cleveland's in May, Erie's Eriesistable Marathon in September and the Toe to Tow (Towpath) Marathon in October. I think I did those same three races six years in a row. That's the definition of a rut.

Towards the end of my marathoning days I started doing the Fairport Lighthouse Triathlon. I have now done that race something like 10 out of the last 11 years. But it never feels like a rut. It is always exciting!

It never ceases to be amazed me how comfortably I can complete this race with little or no training. Yesterday was no exception. I went in worried (I had swam that distance once in 2008 and rode bike the distance only once, and never had I combined events). I have been running a little more lately, upping my puny mileage a bit.

I didn't worry about much else. I was forced to stick new tires on my bike on Friday, but that was an improvement. The race went very smoothly for me. I swam strong, biked strong and ran OK. I don't really keep very good track of my times on this race from year to year - they are always about the same.

Two of my close colleagues from the firm were also doing the race, making it that much more fun. Mona Lombardi, who also did this race last year, improved her time substantially. Jean Ference flew in from New York to do the race (bringing her bike on the plane!). She took second place in her age group. Jean just whizzed by me on the bike! I am honored to be in the company of these athletic women!

The race is one of Lake County, Ohio's best kept secrets. It may be run simply and the old fashioned way, but it works. It is a beautiful setting and the weather is almost always perfect. Yesterday was gorgeous. 168 men and 100 women participated. Since Jean won an award we stuck around for the ceremony. Check out the photo album - click on the photo-link (I will add a few more in a couple days).

They Don't Put Out Any Good Music Anymore -- NOT!

2008-07-25T06:00:00.002-04:00

I recently ran into an old acquaintance who is an aging rock music aficionado and he said something to the effect of "They don't put out any good music anymore." I think he meant it, and I told him he was wrong.

Last night I heard The Raconteurs "Consolers of the Lonely" for the first time. Right now I am listening to it for the third time. This album single handedly shoots my old friend's statement to pieces. Although I've listened to a bunch of other great new albums this year (how about Aimee Mann's "@#%&*! Smilers," for instance), this one is at the top of my best of 2008 list.

Great songwriting, brilliant production and a powerful rocking sensibility put this up there with the best albums in recent years. Get it!

Moving Central Admin (Again!)

2008-07-21T08:45:00.005-04:00

You will note that I wrote about misadventures moving Central Admin a while back (http://bobklass.blogspot.com/2008/03/how-to-move-central-admin-site-even-if.html). Maybe I should have read my post before I went to do it again, but things seem to have worked out OK this time, sort of doing it the right way.

We added two more servers to our main North American farm (now four WFE's and an indexer, and I'm not sure how we will distribute other shared services - Enterprise stuff is new to us). We had previously been running Central Admin on one of our two WFE's and the indexer ONLY indexing. One of the new WFE's is to be dedicated to indexing, and it seemed like a good idea to move Central Admin there. This will make even more sense when we add decent load balancing to this setup.

So I ran the Config Wizard for the first time on the freshly built box and indicated that it should host Central Admin. When it was all done, it pops up Central Admin, running off the old host. Hmmm. Time to read my old post. Those misadventures didn't really seem to be relevant, but I was considering running the Config Wizard on the old host to remove it. Or mess with alternate access mappings. I may still have to do that - there is some baggage in there.

In the end, though, I typed in the URL to the new host and Central Admin was running (in two places!). From the new one I just stopped it on the old and everything seems to be fine. I guess that was the right way!

P.S. - There was just one more thing. After an IIS reset the CA site stopped functioning (I don't even care why). So I went into ../_admin/AlternateUrlCollections.aspx and changed CA there to point to my new site. NOW I'm golden.

Elegant Solution or Kludge?

2008-07-16T06:00:00.001-04:00

According to those who know, SharePoint databases shouldn't get extremely large. What I gather this means, is 50 GB is large, 100 GB is very large and 200 GB is excessively large. In an industry like mine, that's not a lot of data.

Our main SharePoint litigation support application has been a big hit, and it is beyond very large and on its way to being excessively large. We present visitors to this site a "My Sites" table of contents as there are hundreds of sites but very few users are members of more than a couple sites.

With the success of the application, it is easy to foresee growth many times what it is today, so we needed a way to deal with this. Our solution is to have multiple site collections and a custom table of contents that represents them all in one place. Users create new sites self-service, so we just force them to the one site collection that is open for new cases. It's seamless to the users - they do not need to know anything about what is under the hood.

In answer to the title question "Elegant Solution of Kludge," I'll glom the two together and call it an elegant kludge. What do you think?

In Training

2008-07-07T05:30:00.002-04:00

Well, I am, sort of. Some of you might not know that I used to run marathons (very slowly). I quit in 2000 after about 13 years and 36 marathons (including three or so where I did not finish, but I did at least 20 miles). My time varied from 4-5 hours. Back in that day, I did have to follow a strict training schedule in order to get to the STARTING line (more important than getting to the finish).

Now ... not so much. I usually do the Turkey Trot in Cleveland on Thanksgiving (5 miler). And I may do the Johnnycake Jog in Painesville this month, just so as to get together with my old neighbor, Chris Emminger. My one big event is something I've done for the last 10 years or so, the Fairport Harbor Lighthouse Triathlon. It's a real mini - 500M swim in Lake Erie (can be a little choppy), 20 KM bike, 5 KM run.

I actually have been "training" a little - a couple bike rides, a very little bit of swimming. Lots of excessive eating and drinking (no, wait a minute). The first time I did the race I found out about it two days before and "trained" for one day. It's always fun (see last year's blog on it). July 27th, Fairport Harbor - come on out!

From "Summer" 2008

The other side of the "training" thing was going out to see my friend Frank Foti's steam engine running this weekend. This hobby is definitely model trains gone wild. They carry many passengers on these miniature trains, winding through the lovely woods in Kirtland.

Here is their track from the air.

Frank - Thanks for the ride.

Clapton, Return to Forever and Patrick Sweany

2008-07-03T07:41:00.005-04:00

Of these varied shows I've gone to recently, the most pleasing was the wonderful Patrick Sweany (Band) at the Rock Hall last night. Let me explain.

I saw Eric Clapton at Blossom a few weeks back. I had never seen him before (it's hard to believe because I have HUNDREDS of his recordings), and I wasn't doing anything better, so I grabbed the GPS, jumped in the tC and headed South. Traffic was horrible, and if it weren't for a bold move (passing the Blossom exit and using the GPS to take back roads), I would have been late, as was much of the crowd.

What we were treated to was vintage Clapton - sounding much like a 90's show of his. Doyle Bramhall II was his second guitarist. Even though he is a major talent, I wished I could see Clapton with Derek Trucks - or both Trucks and Bramhall. Trucks is amazing. As it was, it still was a quality show, and very exciting in parts.

I had poor seats, and the venue is too big - these are the reason I had never seen him anyway - he always plays big venues. Schoolboy was there with his iRiver H120 Rockbox and was sitting right in front of a speaker, so the recording sounds pretty good.

I saw Return to Forever last week in Cleveland's lovely (sort of) Plain Dealer Pavilion (at least the place is lovelier than the name). It's a 5500 seat outdoor venue with a pretty urban setting and a cute tent. Unfortunately, the seats (at least on the floor) are very uncomfortable (too close together), and the sound is bad. It was a first for me for both the band and the venue.

Return to Forever always was one of my favorite fusion bands. This re-incarnation of the band is the perfect line-up of virtuosos - Lenny White, Stanley Clarke, Al Dimeola, and Chick Corea. They played some of their challenging repertoire and schoolboy's recording shows that the performance was somewhat sloppy. The solos by Al and Chick made it all worthwhile, but the poor sound and seating made the concert a disappointment.

Patrick Sweany is one of the treasures of Northern Ohio. I've seen and recorded him several times. At last night's Rock Hall performance Patrick was his usual energetic and spontaneous self. Pretty much throwing the set list away after the first song, he worked the crowd, trying hard to include everyone. He was especially good at bringing the small children in attendance into the show - inviting them on stage and letting them screw up his songs.

It was all very entertaining and I wished I could have gone to Patricks other gig later that night, but I'll just have to vow to catch him more frequently. Keith (the frequent taper) was there with his family. I forgot that he has recorded Patrick hundreds of times. The crowd consisted of maybe 50% tourists and 50% hard core fans. We all enjoyed it.

I was disappointed to see he had a new bass player and drummer, but they were great. Part of Patrick's act is for the bass and drums to jam in between songs. The new guys did up some classic jams in the vein of John Entwhistle and Jack Bruce. Wonderful. The opener, Christine Jackson, was also very good. She had a full band (I had previously seen her open for Buddy Guy as a solo act).

So of these three shows, I enjoyed Patrick Sweany the best. Better than Eric Clapton or Chick Corea and Return to Forever. And it's not because I'm cheap (the Rock Hall show was free).

Changing Breadcrumb Text for a Sub Site

2008-06-30T14:47:00.004-04:00

We had some sub sites that had been created a while back and part of the breadcrumb was all caps. We since had changed the parent to be mixed case but the sub site still showed it as all caps (Firm > DEPARTMENTS > Subsite instead of Firm > Departments > Subsite ).

I tried re-saving the "Title, description and icon" but that didn't work. It was simple enough, though, to move the site elsewhere and then move it back. All better.

It may be kind of low-brow, but it works.

Regional Settings Are Simple

2008-06-30T13:03:00.004-04:00

Regional setting look like something they got right in SharePoint. At least sort of.

This very clear and simple article sums it up nicely: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointserver/HA101774731033.aspx

I will attempt to make things even more concise, so as to distill this down to what I needed to know as we prepare to roll out farms in Asia and Europe.

Don't set a time zone in the Central Admin Web Application General Settings as this will override the settings on the site collection or sub site (unless that is what you really want to do).
Users will need "Edit personal user information" permissions if you want them to be able to set "My Regional Settings" (off the Welcome menu).

When a sub site is created it inherits the locale settings from the parent. These can be changed at the site level.

If a user has permission, they can override the setting for the sub site. When they uncheck Always follow web settings, they get locale, time zone, calendar and alternative calendar(??), work week and time format settings.

That's pretty simple. I will need to verify that this works consistently.

Mike McCartney Gets It

2008-06-26T12:08:00.005-04:00

Last night I went to an event at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum where Mike McCartney, who not surprisingly reminds me a great deal of his older brother Paul McCartney, gave a talk about his photography (and life in general). As Liverpudlians always seem to be, Mike is very charming and talkative, and he has had many interesting experiences.

In talking about his work, Mike expressed a love for taking pictures. To him, having a camera around so he can capture images is an important part of his life. I think it it his most profound way of expressing himself. I was very pleased to see him expressing the opinion that, although it is important to know how to use the medium (craft), the quality of the camera (technology) is of much less importance. I very briefly talked with him about this, and he and I agreed that WHAT you are doing with the camera (where you point it) is what it is all about.

Unfortunately, people I know who fancy themselves amateur and "professional" (I don't want to insult anyone with a "wannabe" prefix) photographers don't seem to get it. Maybe you can be a good photographer, but you can never be any kind of artist unless you understand this. Seeing an image taken with a decent cell phone camera, for instance, would INSPIRE an artist to dump the expensive Canon (not forever, just for a bit) and take a series of crude but cool photos. I have been inspired by my cell phone camera many times (although that doesn't make me a great artist either). The musical equivalent would be a toy piano or a cheesy electronic organ. Or a Danelectro guitar.

The extremely low-light (cell phone camera) photo above was taken at the Rock Hall today. Mike was signing autographs and generally just hanging out and being the lovely man that he is.

Cancún Vacation

2008-06-25T08:58:00.004-04:00

Last week I traveled to Cancún with my wife Gayle, daughter Holly and son Matt. We all certainly needed a vacation, and we were glad to spend some time together. We went to an all-inclusive resort - you know the drill, all the food and drink is included. This was great for us as we felt uninhibited and ate a drank a lot. The food was great. The drink was plentiful (I got the most, but both kids had a quite a bit of alcohol on this trip).

It was beautiful and hot, and we would go again if the opportunity afforded itself. Check out our photos (this is just a sampling):

"Summer" 2008 - Has it Started

2008-05-30T08:18:00.004-04:00

It's been pretty chilly here - not quite summer - but we are trying to force our way into it. We shivered through an Indians game (if only we had been in the sun more the shorts would have been fine), went swimming (once), and now Cedar Point (on a very pleasant day).

How about those puffy cheeks from the "Rocket Sled" that is the front seat of Top Thrill Dragster.

Boilermaker

Not Quite Gilligan's Island

2008-05-11T09:00:00.001-04:00

I am headed to Cancun with my family very soon and we all may be in for some technology withdrawal. OK, so they have electricity, satellite TV, and some pretty lively entertainment, from what I've heard. Buses and boats and whatnot are plentiful too. Clearly our all inclusive hotel will qualify as an overindulgence of eat and drink. BUT ... no phone, no net, not a singly luxury ... as primitive as can be.

Although we should be able to get cell coverage, it will be absurdly expensive (for us impoverished gringos). We are all quite used to calling anyone, anywhere (in the US), any time, especially amongst ourselves. That's out.

I thought about using our FRS and GMRS radios that haven't seen the light of day for several years, but they aren't legal in Mexico. They have FRS (no GMRS) but our radios are not certified for Mexico. I might take a couple anyway, but my family always thought they were extremely hokey.

I have found that no hotels in the Cancun zona have free Internet of any kind and the only free Internet I have found was one spot at the airport. That would leave us paying $20/day at the hotel (I think) or something like $7/hour at a cafe. I'll probably have to spring for that.

Part of the purpose of the vacation (for me at least) is to get away from the keyboard, so maybe that's not so bad, but I hope the withdrawal symptoms can be mitigated with tequila.

It would be nice if the professor were there to figure out how to fix our cell phones and connect to the Internet with coconuts and bamboo.

Direct TV Dumping Satellites for Blimps?

2008-04-22T13:45:00.005-04:00

I look out my office window and see a Direct TV blimp fighting its way through the wind. I wonder: Is Direct TV dumping satellites for blimps?

Rock and Roll Boulevard

2008-04-21T07:59:00.004-04:00

Greetings from the corner of Rock and Roll Boulevard and Lakeside Avenue in beautiful downtown Cleveland. While I was in Vail, Colorado last December, an announcement was made that one of the main streets here (the one that terminates at Lake Erie with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, East 9th Street) was being renamed "Rock and Roll Boulevard."

This was pretty cool for me, as a charter member (and frequent visitor) of the Rock Hall, a native Clevelander, and someone whose office overlooks the Rock Hall. I'm not sure if they made a big deal of the announcement - I was out of town, but they have very quietly put up street signs underneath the East Ninth signs that say Rock and Roll Boulevard. Last week they also changed the signage on the building itself (see photo). Woo hoo!

What Constitutes Technical Competance for an End User?

2008-04-02T07:45:00.004-04:00

Unfortunately, IT people berate non-technical people all the time. Much of the time we don't understand why so many of them "don't get it" and why they are SO far behind. Although these attitudes are to be expected, they do not breed a good customer service environment. So try to put on your rose colored glasses and think that the glass is half full. There is (probably) a reason why this person is in the position they are - someone thought they were valuable (and people are WAY more valuable than machines - maybe not systems, but most machines - but that is a topic for another day).

With that respectful disclaimer in place, I have some ideas about good users vs. bad users. It's interesting, you have bitching and moaning from both of these. Good users bitch and moan constructively, and bad users, well, for many reasons. The constructive bitching and moaning is one way to tell the good from the bad.

What is the bad user bitching and moaning about? Sometimes it is everything. Nothing works. Everything sucks. Nothing is designed right. Everything is too slow. I have tried many times to turn such users away from the dark side and maybe I have even fixed a few of them - permanently - transforming them to competent users. Although this is a worthy goal, don't drive yourself crazy trying to save everyone from their (most likely self-inflicted) technological hell.

Just listen. Is there something they are doing wrong that you can correct? Is there something you can build to better accommodate their work?

Another way to differentiate the competent from the incompetent is by how well they can accomplish what they do with technology. Does it enable them, or get in their way? Most of the time we are not well qualified to make such judgments, but we are entitled to our opinions. Some people take what is given them and soar. Others get mired in problems they cannot overcome. I think we know which ones we'd rather have for customers, sponsors, etc.