Born and raised in the midlands of South Carolina, I've been working in the IT industry since 1997, and building websites since before that.4 months ago
Author Archives: jeremiah
The Tablet Conundrum
Should I buy a tablet? Would you buy a tablet? Is the tablet the missing link in my IT chain? Will it make me more productive, more mobile, and generally a happier person? Will a tablet solve world hunger? If I buy a tablet, which one is the best? Which one do you recommend? Is there anything that an iPad can do that a Nook can’t? I can’t sleep at night because I want a tablet so badly!
These are the rants, questions, and statements that get thrown my way on a daily basis these days. Everyone seems to be attracted by the idea of owning a tablet of some kind. What used to seem outrageously over-priced and gimmicky now seems like essential technology, both for personal and for business use. But is the tablet the way to go mobile? Are we looking at the future of computers?
Android Envy
As a career IT guy I’m constantly looking at new gadgets, either for myself or when I’m advising others. For the last couple of years I’ve owned (and loved!) my HTC Incredible. It’s been the perfect device for me– small, sleek, pretty, powerful, and well-built. I’ve not had too much of a problem with HTC’s “Sense” UI that they put on all their Android phones, but I haven’t loved it either.
My “new every two” upgrade is available tomorrow, and as I looked at what device I’d like to have next I’ve come to like the Samsung Galaxy Nexus phone a lot. And that’s an understatement. From the large 1280px screen to the svelte, understated body to the instant camera, it’s what I think of when I think of a well-thought-out, forward-thinking, Google-designed device. But what I really can’t wait for is Android Ice Cream Sandwich it its pure, unadulterated form. At first I was more interested in the Motorola Droid Razr for its thin yet solid body, but the Motorola Blur overlay that they add to their phones has always looked more like a toy, or an older “smartphone” that someone like Nokia would put out. The more I look and research, the more I see myself sporting a Galaxy Nexus for the next couple of years.
The one thing that may change my mind is the price.. currently the phone is priced at $300 and it’s been out for a couple of months already. I’ll probably wait until a price reduction before jumping on it, so if another “latest greatest” comes out before that time all bets are off!
Dropbox vs Google Docs
When it comes to simple, pain-free cloud storage, Dropbox has risen to the top of the heap. For years I’ve used my free 3GBs of space from Dropbox between my laptop, Android phone, and business desktop, and recently my new HP Touchpad. The only problem has been the amount of free storage. 3GBs doesn’t go very far these days, but to jump up to the next level (50GBs) it takes a subscription of $10/month, or $120/year.
Admittedly, that’s a LOT of cloud storage for only $120/year, and the service works great. But I’ve never been able to make the jump with a price that high. Call me cheap.
But as my life becomes more mobile, and my devices varied, I felt like the time had come to search out a more affordable path to a cloud existence. I calculate my “net data” to be around 100GB including my music, movie, and photo collections, and to have those items available on the go, at the office, or anywhere else for that matter is the next logical step.
Yes I Own A Touchpad
Which means that this is good news!
What Is The Cloud?
Over at The Cason Connection Blog I had an article published today regarding the term “the cloud” and what it all means, check it out!
Updating Sharepoint WSS 3 to Foundation
Sorry for the lag in posts around here, it’s been an incredibly busy July for me. I had a son in mid-June and am moving at the end of July, so everything in between has been dominating my schedule. Hopefully I’ll get back to in full very soon!
Anyway, over the last couple of weeks I’ve been attempting to update our Sharepoint WSS 3.0 server at work to Foundation Server 2010. When I started out, I didn’t think it would be that big of a deal. Both of them are made by Microsoft, this upgrade has to happen all the time, right? Well… not exactly. Not from what I found out anyway.
Google Music Review
A few posts back I wrote a quick note about my pending invitation request with Google Music, and a plea for an outstanding online music player. Well, after waiting for a few weeks I finally got my invitation, and wanted to post a few opinions on the service, both likes and dislikes.
On the whole, the music player is OK. I’ve read some reviews that are blasting it for not being enough of a “music store” like Amazon’s Cloud Player service, as well as some praising it for being completely wonderful. So that I don’t bore you with the details of the service, here are a few of pros and cons from my perspective:
Windows Server Time
The last few weeks at work I’ve been struggling to keep our server clocks synchronized. We have around 10 servers in our domain, a few of them physical but most of them virtual. The problem is that our primary domain controller is a Server 2003 box that we’ve been relying on for far too long. Every morning when I arrive all the client PC clocks across our network are several minutes slow, in comparison to the actual time as well as to our PDC’s clock. After reading up on how this should work over at the Windows Server Time blog, I’m still baffled.
According to the design, all the secondary domain controllers should be pulling their time from my PDC, so whether the PDC’s clock is set by its own internal clock or from an external source is irrelevant. That’s not happening though. When I check the 3 domain controllers, the two secondary DCs (running Server 2003r2 and 2008r2, by the way) are exactly the same, and they’ve strayed away from the PDC’s time by several minutes. Every morning. And not by the same amount. Sometimes it’s 1 minute, sometimes it’s 5 minutes, sometimes 10 minutes. It makes absolutely no sense to me!
My plan of attack is to move our PDC emulator role to the 2008 DC, then set that server to rely on an external time source to stay accurate. The only thing I can think is that there’s something weird about having a 2008r2 server relying on a 2003 box for its time, but I can’t find any evidence to back that theory up. There could also be something going on with the virtual host –> virtual server hierarchy, but I also have not found evidence about that. If anyone has any ideas for me, please feel free to shout out!
