Degen.Net

So after years of procrastinating, I got off my rear and set out to hardwire my home network. When I had the house built a few years ago, I specified that Cat 5 needed to be run from my office to all rooms,  the difficult part of a desecrate wired network installation, but leaving the finish work of terminating it all to me.

Since I had a functional Wi-Fi network that I moved from the last residence, I did not set aside the time to wire each room. Till this past weekend.

With complaints from the wife (on wireless) about slow photo editing performance and the hope of soon integrating an Xbox 360 as a media extender for Windows Vista, I tackled those two rooms first, Lynnette’s office and the Media Room.

A trip to Fry’s and a couple hours later – we were enjoying the goodness of switched Gigabit to areas that previously struggled do to distance from the Access Point.

All this to say, if you have the opportunity to run a connected LAN at your home, take the time to deploy it. Yes Wi-Fi is easy and inexpensive, but with video and other high bandwidth apps edging closer to main-stream wireless just can’t compete with a solid physical connection.

 

Just a small sample, as promised.

OKay, I will be the first to admit that I turn my nose up at celebs who get those gift bags full of shwag worth thousands. I mean they can afford that elaborate stuff they are given, “Oh Paris, look, we got you a MotoRazor”, as if. Anyway I appreciate shwag of the kitchi kind found at trade shows and training presentations. If you ever get to a CES, grab a bag (they provide the shwag bags) and dive in . Almost every booth and vendor display desk has somthing to get you over for a business card exchange. You leave a card (so they can call you) and you take a pen, portable eyeball, Taiwanese doll, whatever.

I did partake in the shwag fest at CES as did Mr. Degen, “shwagger” extrodinare. My goal, CES must keep me in ink pens until….the next…CES. Here is a look at some of the goodies.

So after the abysmal failure of the Upgrade, I’m now attempting a fresh load in a dedicated partition.

Upon booting the Vista DVD, I select a custom install (the only option available.) Vista is offering a new GUI fdisk utility. I figured I need to go into this utility and clean out the old (now non-accessible) Fedora partitions. This proved trying.

Since the old drive was a dynamic disk the installer wanted nothing to do with it. After about 30 minutes and several reboots I found it impossible to manage the partitions effectively with this new tool.  With the help of a trusty old Windows 98 DOS boot disk and fdisk I was able to clear the partitions enough to progress farther through the Vista installer.

After the initial copy of files to the hard drive the system rebooted and resumed the install – this is better progress than last nights upgrade attempt.  Another few minutes of finalizing the install and yet another reboot.  Interestingly aside from the original product key and EULA sign off, the only prompts I encountered during the install were for the disk location, none of the usual Network, time zone, options questions we have all grown accustom to from the many windows past.

Finally, after this second reboot I am asked to select a username and picture.  This is a local user account and can not be administrator, I have to assume that user is already generated as I am not allowed to take that name.

After username you are asked to enter the PC name and it’s background. Then Windows update preferences, followed by time zone.

That about sums up the install, now I’m looking at a very pretty screen and need to figure out where everything is – more on that in future posts.  

It’s 11PM on a stormy Friday night and I can’t get to sleep so I figure, “hey let’s start my Vista upgrade, what could go wrong!”

First off, I run the Vista pre-install inspection validation thing, after it grind away for a bit it comes back with a series of messages indicating that I have a couple of verboten apps (Nero and Alcohol), so traveling the safe route go ahead and un-install these, reboot and let the install/upgrade begin.

My first choice is do I want to hit MS (internet) prior to the install to incorporate any new Vista updates; sounds like a great idea, so I give it a go. After about three minutes of a scrolling progress bar the message pops back that this connection could not be made and I will need to run updates later.  Ok, sure whatever, next.

Ah, next comes the opportunity to enter my Software Key. I slap in my MSDN Vista Ultimate key – ok done. Thinking… Thinking… Another few minutes go by, and I’m confronted with a list of apps that might not work under Vista. This appears to be the same as the list I say in the Analysis tool I ran before, these are listed as warnings only, so I proceed with upgrade.

Finally I get a screen with some kind of numerical progress info.

Coping Windows Files XX% …

Gathering Files

Expanding Files

Installing features and updates

Completing upgrade

After about 20 minutes of grinding away, the Vista Upgrade was ready to reboot and continue the install.

Upon reboot my lilo Linux boot loader, was gone – in its place a windows boot selector, with options to load the previous version of windows (XP Pro) or to continue the upgrade, when I selected continue I was greeted with the Blue Screen of Death; just lovely.

I verified that my XP install was still intact – thank goodness, next let’s scrap the upgrade and go with a fresh install. 

So about an hour or so invested to discover that just like many previous builds of Windows, in-place upgrades are not the way to go 🙁.

So I wanted to show off a little school pride for Kennedale on my Moto Q, and thought hey maybe others would like to put the wildcats on their background. Follow the link and you can install this onto a Motorola Q or it should work on any Windows Mobile 5 device.

CES was not the only industry show this week. Over in Detroit the world’s largest automotive show has been in progress, and while I thought the weather in Vegas would be preferable to that of the Motor City, I could not pass up the opportunity to blog about the fusion of both Cars and Gadgets – so enjoy! 

Every Holiday Season it happens; and no, I’m not talking about a pandemic of passed out relatives after hitting the eggnog a little to hard, I’m thinking of the “December to remember sales event at your local {insert name of luxury vehicle here} dealer.”  You know the advertisements, right? Elated holiday revelers wake up to find a new car in the drive with a big red bow affixed to the top.

Now aside from the pure, unadulterated, jealousy that these ads evoke, as I’ve yet to wake Christmas morning to such a display of affection and extravagance, I have to ask, “Who really gets/gives a new car as a holiday present?”  Well, this year I can bear witness first hand to just such an event. My mother-in-law was the gleeful recipient of a new Nissan Altima, a very fine present indeed. But what makes this event noteworthy was what happened next, as Donell entered her car for the first time and prepared to rev its engine to life she made a shocking discovery, there was no ignition key. It was then that her husband handed her a small stick of buttons and explained that this device was the “key” and that as long as it was within a couple of feet of the steering wheel the car would start with push of a switch!

So how does this work? What is the magic of this transmitter, can I now jack cars left and right with a Bluetooth headset?

Nissan Describes this marvelous break-thru as: Intelligent Key with Push-button Ignition“You won’t find this on other cars in the class: Intelligent Key with keyless push-button ignition, which comes standard on every Altima. All you have to do is push the button on the dash, which signals the standard Intelligent Key in your pocket or purse to start the car, and you’re off.”

But what is my neighbor, or more likely a gang of 15 year old geeks decide they are tired of jacking WiFi hotspots and want to move up to GTA: Key FOB City instead? Apparently there is not much to stop them as reported by leftlanenews in their story, “Gone in 20 Minutes: using laptops to steal cars” or as documented on the J-Walk Blog’s, “Keyless Entry Hack”Kind of makes you long for an old hand crank to start your ride! Happy Friday everyone!