On Sunday Jackie, Berna and I spent all of our afternoon at the mall. When we got to Dulles Town Center we went straight to the food court to make sure we had full tummies before shopping.
I took Jackie with me, and Berna went her own way. I mainly shopped for Jackie's things as she needed more winter clothes. Jackie and I had a fun time together. We passed by EB Games and in the store window was a big cutout of Link - a promotion for the new game for Wii - Zelda the Twillight Princess. Jackie stopped and exclaimed "That's Link!" and proceeded to pull my hand leading me in to the store. As we entered the store she asked me where the DS stuff were, so I pointed at the section. She spotted the game titled "Yoshi's Island" . She pointed at the game and said, "That's what I want for Christmas". I told her that maybe she should tell Santa about the game, and she said "Yes, sir!" I don't know where she got the yes sir thing, but it was funny!
One of the things I bought her at the mall were a pair of boots. She picked them her self. She wanted to wear the new boots so I lifted her up into the counter so the cashier could scan the tag. My four year old never seizes to amaze me!
When we got home I ate dinner and started to watch Superman starring Christopher Reeves (released 1978). But 5 minutes into the movie Don appeared from the basement and asked when the Christmas tree would be up. So I put the movie on pause and followed Don downstairs to get the Christmas tree from the garage. What fun to put up and decorate the tree! Jackie had a blast. She was in charge of hanging the ornaments. It was funny because the ornaments ended up on just one section of the tree. LOL
I managed to video taped the whole activity. Oh joy, more videos I need to capture. And speaking of videos, I still have tons to capture!! The DV capture project has been postponed until after Christmas ;)
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
Saturday, November 25, 2006
Short but Productive Work Week
Because of the Thanksgiving holiday work week was short. The absence of our boss allowed me and Drew to finish rebuilding the two old mail servers. These servers will host Praetor G2 - our mail filtering software. One of the servers had 6 gigs of RAM and the maximum amount that the motherboard could recognize was 4 gigs. So I took the extra 2 gigs and moved them to the other server which only had 1 gig. Somebody screwed up! Those two servers were supposed to have identical configuration.
Friday we racked the servers (10U total) in our critical servers rack. We turned the lights off in the server room and the place looked like a spaceship with all the LEDS flickering. It was pretty cool.
It was a quiet week. I even had time to vacuum the build room!
(The cleaning people are not allowed in our office if nobody's around).
Friday we racked the servers (10U total) in our critical servers rack. We turned the lights off in the server room and the place looked like a spaceship with all the LEDS flickering. It was pretty cool.
It was a quiet week. I even had time to vacuum the build room!
(The cleaning people are not allowed in our office if nobody's around).
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
House Rules
Last night, Berna told me Jackie was pretty excited about taking shower early in the day (the girl does not like baths). Jackie gets up around 10 a.m. and usually, if she and Berna took their time, they're cleaned up after 1 p.m. The new house rule was the motivation for showering early. The new rule is that video games and TV will only be allowed after noon, and not after getting cleaned up. With this new rule our days can start early :)
Monday, November 20, 2006
Techie Stuff and Not So Techie Stuff
So my weekend was a technical failure. I was not able to accomplish my project. I had zero video captured!
Monday morning I took my video camera to work to test the firewire ports on the brand new latops - same model as the laptop that I had problem with, the Dell Latitude D820. All three did not detect my camera, but when I plugged in the camera to a Latitude D420 it instantly detected my camera. Again, this proved that my camera and cable were working. Now I am convinced that the design on the D820's is flawed.
Monday night after dinner I started researching the firewire issue again. This problem was a great challenge that I had to keep going. You can say that I am not a quitter :)
Anyway, I painstakingly verified each IRQ settings on the devices. I had a suspicion that it was some type of hardware conflict. Alas, my hard work paid off. I found three entries in the Device Manager with the same IRQ address. It was IRQ 19 assigned to the IEEE 1395 Host Controller, the 02Micro SmartCard BusController, and some Intel port under the System Devices. First, I disabled the 02Micro SmarCard and deleted the IEEE 1394 device, and then rebooted the laptop -- leaving the camera plugged in via firewire. After the reboot a new hardware (one I had not seen before) popped up with the yellow exclamation mark. I felt a little excitement - I was into something, getting close to proving my earlier assumption that it was a conflict issue. I tried to update the new hardware, but the update failed and the device disappeard from the list. My next step was to disable the Intel port that had the IRQ 19, and again I uninstalled IEEE 1394 (leaving the 02Micro disabled) and then rebooted the laptop. After the reboot the IEEE 1394 was listed in DM with the yellow exclamation mark. I updated the driver and after the driver update I heard two dings and couple of balloons popped up stating that the A/V digital device was ready for use. YIPEE!!! It was a great satisfaction to figure out the problem.
Although the camera was listed under Scanners and Cameras, Adobe Premiere Elements 3.0 could not detect the camera for capturing. And the weird thing was that I could control the camera to play the movie through the software. I launched Microsoft Movie Maker to see if it would detect the camera, and it did. Looking through the properties and settings I discovered that Movie Maker had the capability that I wanted. It could capture my videos and keep the quality intact by capturaing in DV-AVI format. This format would take up 178MB disk space per 1 minute of video. No biggie, I have plenty of HD space. Well, my happiness did not last long. After about 5 minutes of capturing an error message popped up stating the device failed. I guess I had not totally figured out the problem - the system was not stable. After the reboot the camera was not detected. I tried a few more reboots until I finally gave up and turned in for the night. I had to wake up at 5:30 the following morning.
I have decided that I am not going to use the D820 to capture my videos, instead I will try to use a desktop computer (Optiplex GX745 with Core2Duo) to capture my videos. Besides the hardware on the desktop is more capable in that it has a good video card along with a 3Gbps SATA drive.
The Not So Techie Stuff....
Despite the technical hurdle, this past weekend was pretty good. We went to Costco on Saturday to get some things for our Thanksgiving trip to PA, and to check if Don's (my husband) glasses were ready. Don's younger brother invited us to spend Thanksgiving with them in Pennsylvania. It turns out that our trip is going to be cancelled because my brother-in-law's wife's grandmother passed away (she was 99 years old) and the funeral is on Saturday after Thanksgiving. Don thinks that the trip it would be a good idea to skip the trip because his brother and his wife is going to be busy with the funeral stuff and we would just be a burden.
Jackie spent most of Saturday afternoon playing Kameo on Xbox 360. She can only play video games after noon. On Sunday I tried to give her some Edys fudge swirl ice cream (on cone), which she immediately pushed to Berna and asked for the "other" ice cream on a big container (making the hand motion shaping a rectangle). In the past, we had been buying Bryers chocolate ice cream which is in a rectangular container. It was quite funny. I had to explain to her that mommy has chocolate ice cream but it is in a round container and I had to show her the content. After she saw the ice cream, a big smile on her face and said "Yes, that's the one!".
Monday morning I took my video camera to work to test the firewire ports on the brand new latops - same model as the laptop that I had problem with, the Dell Latitude D820. All three did not detect my camera, but when I plugged in the camera to a Latitude D420 it instantly detected my camera. Again, this proved that my camera and cable were working. Now I am convinced that the design on the D820's is flawed.
Monday night after dinner I started researching the firewire issue again. This problem was a great challenge that I had to keep going. You can say that I am not a quitter :)
Anyway, I painstakingly verified each IRQ settings on the devices. I had a suspicion that it was some type of hardware conflict. Alas, my hard work paid off. I found three entries in the Device Manager with the same IRQ address. It was IRQ 19 assigned to the IEEE 1395 Host Controller, the 02Micro SmartCard BusController, and some Intel port under the System Devices. First, I disabled the 02Micro SmarCard and deleted the IEEE 1394 device, and then rebooted the laptop -- leaving the camera plugged in via firewire. After the reboot a new hardware (one I had not seen before) popped up with the yellow exclamation mark. I felt a little excitement - I was into something, getting close to proving my earlier assumption that it was a conflict issue. I tried to update the new hardware, but the update failed and the device disappeard from the list. My next step was to disable the Intel port that had the IRQ 19, and again I uninstalled IEEE 1394 (leaving the 02Micro disabled) and then rebooted the laptop. After the reboot the IEEE 1394 was listed in DM with the yellow exclamation mark. I updated the driver and after the driver update I heard two dings and couple of balloons popped up stating that the A/V digital device was ready for use. YIPEE!!! It was a great satisfaction to figure out the problem.
Although the camera was listed under Scanners and Cameras, Adobe Premiere Elements 3.0 could not detect the camera for capturing. And the weird thing was that I could control the camera to play the movie through the software. I launched Microsoft Movie Maker to see if it would detect the camera, and it did. Looking through the properties and settings I discovered that Movie Maker had the capability that I wanted. It could capture my videos and keep the quality intact by capturaing in DV-AVI format. This format would take up 178MB disk space per 1 minute of video. No biggie, I have plenty of HD space. Well, my happiness did not last long. After about 5 minutes of capturing an error message popped up stating the device failed. I guess I had not totally figured out the problem - the system was not stable. After the reboot the camera was not detected. I tried a few more reboots until I finally gave up and turned in for the night. I had to wake up at 5:30 the following morning.
I have decided that I am not going to use the D820 to capture my videos, instead I will try to use a desktop computer (Optiplex GX745 with Core2Duo) to capture my videos. Besides the hardware on the desktop is more capable in that it has a good video card along with a 3Gbps SATA drive.
The Not So Techie Stuff....
Despite the technical hurdle, this past weekend was pretty good. We went to Costco on Saturday to get some things for our Thanksgiving trip to PA, and to check if Don's (my husband) glasses were ready. Don's younger brother invited us to spend Thanksgiving with them in Pennsylvania. It turns out that our trip is going to be cancelled because my brother-in-law's wife's grandmother passed away (she was 99 years old) and the funeral is on Saturday after Thanksgiving. Don thinks that the trip it would be a good idea to skip the trip because his brother and his wife is going to be busy with the funeral stuff and we would just be a burden.
Jackie spent most of Saturday afternoon playing Kameo on Xbox 360. She can only play video games after noon. On Sunday I tried to give her some Edys fudge swirl ice cream (on cone), which she immediately pushed to Berna and asked for the "other" ice cream on a big container (making the hand motion shaping a rectangle). In the past, we had been buying Bryers chocolate ice cream which is in a rectangular container. It was quite funny. I had to explain to her that mommy has chocolate ice cream but it is in a round container and I had to show her the content. After she saw the ice cream, a big smile on her face and said "Yes, that's the one!".
Sunday, November 19, 2006
Technological Frustration
While waiting for my Windows updates (16 new updates currently chugging along) I decided to do some research about blogging. I have been wanting to write a diary, but I keep failing with the upkeep. I thought with a web based journal I would be more inclined to keep it up since I am on the computer all the time. I am keeping my fingers crossed - I am a procrastinator.
Anyway, speaking of failure....
I wanted to capture all the videos on about 20 miniDV cassettes. So I brought this pretty powerful laptop from work (2GB of RAM, T7400 2.16GHzCentrino Core Duo with 75GB SATA hard drive). To make the story short, the IEEE 1394 port would not detect my camera. I have spent several hours on getting the firewire to detect my device and I had also spent some time with the Dell technician. No go... When I get to work on Monday I will check the other laptop that is identical to this one and see if this problem is specific to mine. I am now attempting to use a desktop computer to capture the videos. The new 'victim' is one that I had just rebuilt. This desktop PC is running Window Media Center Edition. And again to make the story short -- more technological frustration! Adobe Premiere Elements is complaining about not being able to load audio drivers and that I must reinstall the application. The reinstall did not work (of course, who said this will be easy?) and forums suggested that it is related to my audio card driver which is the reason for Windows updates. Oops, I better check on my Windows updates....
Alright, I am back. Yet another reboot. The Windows updates did not do a thing. Still, Adobe Premiere refuses to launch! I am pulling my hair now! I downloaded audio drivers from the Dell site and it requires a reboot which I am doing now. I have to run downstairs so I can hit F1 otherwise the computer would not boot. The system fan is the cause of this problem - that's another story.....
Anyway, speaking of failure....
I wanted to capture all the videos on about 20 miniDV cassettes. So I brought this pretty powerful laptop from work (2GB of RAM, T7400 2.16GHzCentrino Core Duo with 75GB SATA hard drive). To make the story short, the IEEE 1394 port would not detect my camera. I have spent several hours on getting the firewire to detect my device and I had also spent some time with the Dell technician. No go... When I get to work on Monday I will check the other laptop that is identical to this one and see if this problem is specific to mine. I am now attempting to use a desktop computer to capture the videos. The new 'victim' is one that I had just rebuilt. This desktop PC is running Window Media Center Edition. And again to make the story short -- more technological frustration! Adobe Premiere Elements is complaining about not being able to load audio drivers and that I must reinstall the application. The reinstall did not work (of course, who said this will be easy?) and forums suggested that it is related to my audio card driver which is the reason for Windows updates. Oops, I better check on my Windows updates....
Alright, I am back. Yet another reboot. The Windows updates did not do a thing. Still, Adobe Premiere refuses to launch! I am pulling my hair now! I downloaded audio drivers from the Dell site and it requires a reboot which I am doing now. I have to run downstairs so I can hit F1 otherwise the computer would not boot. The system fan is the cause of this problem - that's another story.....
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