Gnome screensaver stopped working

This one was weird. I run my home machine on Gentoo 95% of the time and a while back the Gnome screensaver just stopped working. Usual problem; I'd made a few changes at the same time. So was it an update, a change, settings, solar flares?

After some playing and testing it was an update but one that I'd not followed the instructions on and had caused me some other problems. Python had been updated from 2.5 to 2.6 and I noticed a few things wouldn't compile and I had to re do the python modules to make them work.

Turns out there is a nice python-updater program that does the work for you. So give that a go if your screensaver just stops.

Cisco taking on HP...

I think it's going to be interesting in a good way. I like Cisco gear. I push it where possible.

I think the infrastructure Cisco has will be what makes it succeed. If they stick to VMs, blades or rack servers and SANs they should be fine and good competition to add to the market.

I'm a network engineer. If I get on the phone with Cisco I will have a replacement for a dead router on my doorstep usually within two hours. I hear the server guys taking two hours just getting through to the HP call centre in India then then another two hours getting their problem across and it goes downhill from there...

Go Cisco! UC500s rock..

I bought one of these a while ago to do training etc on and ran into a few problems but it was pretty good.

One particularly annoying stumbling block was I use SIP trunks and when a call got transferred to voicemail or to an auto attendant the call would go silent and drop.

There was an Early Adopter (7.1) update recently and now it all works! I've alo been playing with several other things that are not listed as features or even mentioned as supported but seem to be working.

So you have one box that does telephony (SIP, analogue or ISDN), firewalling, IPSEC and SSL VPNs (with accelerator) which comes with 4 analog extensions.

In New Zealand something like 80% or our companies have less than 20 people so these are ideal. Now that SIP things work they're even better!

Mac RDP client to Windows 7

This may apply to other situations as well..

I was trying the Windows 7 beta and could not get the Mac to connect by RDP. I kept getting..

"You were disconnected from the Windows-based computer because of problems during the licensing protocol."

Easy fix.  Find a copy of RDP client for Mac 1.0 and try again.  You'll need to lower the security level in the remote access pane and maybe you'll need to remove the folder /User/Shared/Microsoft/RDC Crucial Server Information.

Absinthe and L&P!

A bit of a side track...

I have this bottle of Absinthe in the cupboard. It's been there a while. A friend said I had to try it so I did. Straight... almost spat it back out... Pretty scary stuff. Not surprising when it says 70% alcohol on the label.

Some months (or years) later, I thought it was time to try again. I got a small sieve and put sugar in it and poured the Absinthe through. It changes colour... cool. It even tastes better. OK it's not so bad..

The other night I thought that's a lot of work to go to. So I thought: could I just mix it with something? We have this softdrink (soda) here called Lemon and Paeroa (L&P) and pour this over Absinthe and it changes colour like doing the sugar ritual and it's even easier to drink.

So if you're in New Zealand or find some L&P, give it a go.. Add it to your list of things to do while visiting New Zealand :-)

Scam Websites

I found a charge on my credit card a while back

UOL THE NAMESDATABASE 866 395 4982 US
12.00 U.S.DOLLARS

Weird. Stands out given I only do transactions in US dollars every two or three months.

After some googling, it seems I am not alone with these charges.

Seems a couple of years ago I signed up to a website and paid to get in touch with an old friend. I thought it was a one off charge to give me access for a year but they keep charging you each year. Best part is try to get in touch with them to get them to stop and email is really my only option and they don't reply to those if you query why you are being charged. Others report exactly the same problem.

So these tossers just quietly pull $12 a year from thousands and thousands of people. If you're in the States another charge in US$ would just blend in. They must make a killing...

They seem to be associated with classmates.com as well so think twice before giving any details to these sites.

Do Western Digital drives suck or is it just me? Or maybe they don't?

Typical.. as noted I created a nice new system to test Windows 7 and what happens? My 250GB Western Digital drive now thinks it's name is

WDC ROM MODEL-HAWK-----

and it is 8 GB. Not that anything can see it anymore. It still in warranty but without any proof of purchase I definitely won't get squat...

In some countries I could march back in and say it's broken and they'd bend over backwards to help me. We don't really have a customer focus in retail in New Zealand.

We have a some law named the Consumer Guarantee Act but you still feel like you're asking someone if you can beat their mother up for even thinking about returning something.

Anyway this drive is broken and there are a lot of hits when you search for the phrase above. Looks like they're not the most reliable things on the planet. So I think I'll give them a wide birth for the moment...

Update a few hours later: I turned everything off for a while (this is usually a 24/7 machine) and the drive is back. Not sure how well but seems ok so far. So give that a go if you're WD drive goes weird...

Update some 18 months later...

I've had two more western digital drive die in the last few months and they were not coming back noway nohow. So in my eyes western digital have some very severe quality issues and I will not be buying any more anytime soon.

So I have two dead drives (both blue advanced format EARS models if any one is searching for "western digital dead drives are rubbish") fortunately both are backup drives but I now have no backup and my main drive is also a western digital so it's getting replaced as soon as I can get a new drive. Need to check reliability on other drive brands...