Windows 7 and XP dual boot

In the last couple of weeks I have been using Windows 7.  Thanks to being a student and an associating between MSDN and our school we have access to download the OS and take it for a spin.  I installed Windows 7 on a Dell Latitude E6500 with an 80 gb hard drive and 2 gb of ram.  I downloaded the ISO file and burned it to a DVDRAM disk with iamgeburn which is a free image burning utility.  The install process took about the same amount of time as any other OS.  During the disk partition selection process I carved up my hard disk into two separate partitions so that I can dual boot Windows 7 and XP professional or Linux depending on what strikes my fancy later on. 

I was very impressed with the install process which gave me no problems to mention.  All of the drivers for my E6500 were found and I have been running Windows 7 without any incidents.  I was highly impressed that the Cisco VPN client for Vista installed and worked with no problems.  I installed Office 2007 , MIRC and several other programs that ran just fine.  Windows 7 has the same look and feel of Vista but I have to admit that it runs much better.  One of the features that I like on the start button is the ability to type the name of the program and it will give you a selection of applications you can click on.  Another program that I love is the Snippet Tool which is similar to SnagIT 8.  The Snippet Tool allows you to take a screen shot of any portion of your sreeen that you want.  This is a very useful tool if you are doing any kind of documentation and you need to show people screen shots of what you are talking about.

Today I had a break in the action so I made the mistake of installing Windows XP Professional SP3 on the second partition of my hard drive.  Everything went just fine and then the laptop rebooted.  Windows XP came up just fine but access to Windows 7 was gone.  POOF!!  Luckily for me I had not mistakenly overwritten the wrong partition during the install phase.  I installed XP to the second partition but I guess that XP overwrote the boot.ini file and replaced it with one for itself.  Needless to say I was a bit panicked after all the hours I spent installing software and configuring Windows 7 to be my primary OS.  I did what I always do when I have a technical problem and I started surfing the Net on the different techie forums looking for the answer.  I found a lot of information however I did not find the answer I was looking for.  I fixed the problem by booting the laptop to the Windows 7 install media and it gave me the option to repair Windows.  Repair windows had five or six options and one of them was to fix the boot up process.  BINGO!!  I selected that option and a dos prompt popped up in the bottom left portion of the screen and it magically fixed the issue.  I rebooted the laptop and now Windows 7 is once again available to me. 

I still want to dual boot another OS with Windows 7 so I will have to do some research on HOW to do this and then I will let you know what I find out.

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The Cowboys made me proud today

Living in the Lowcountry means that Dallas Cowboys fans are very hard to find. I had to go to King Street Grill this afternoon to watch the Dalls vs Tampa game and I was surprised to find four other Dallas fans that wandered in to watch the game.  At first I was a little bit concerned about the Dallas defense as I sat there and watched Caddillac from Tampa run through Dallas like they were swiss cheese.  The field goal kicker for Tampa missed two field goals which did not help their cause.  I was very suprised to see the Dallas passing game burn the Tampa secondary for three touchdowns.  Dallas wins 34 to 21 which made this Cowboy fan right proud. 

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Molly Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

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We will never forget

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Chocolate Sundae yummy
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Picture Perfect

At Seacoast west campus they wrapped up the mini series on Picture Perfect.  The series spoke about our lives and our families and how they are not always picture perfect.  No matter how good the portraits might be on the surface there is always some brokeness that is brought about by either a family member or members or external circumstances.  Every family experiences some sort of brokeness and how we handle that brokeness will determine how quickly restoration and healing takes place.  The pastor this morning gave some very simple guidelines for breaking the crazy cycle.

How to respond to brokeness from 1 Peter 3:8-12

A. Treat others better than myself

     1. When we are hurt we tend to respond with a victim mentality. I am hurt therefore I will hurt back.

B. Break the cycle of craziness

    1. Serve unconditionally, be nice to those who are mean or harmful towards you. 

    2. Do not repay evil with evil even if it is in our nature.

C. Seek and pursue peace

    1. We need to do whatever it takes to reconcile the relationship and pursue a peaceful restoration.

     2. We need to learn how to forgive others and release the bitterness, anger and hurt within us

     3. Unforgiveness only hurts us, not the person we are angry with

     4. If the other person is not willing to do the right thing then we can chose to be the one to do right

     5. If God is bigger than my problems and can forgive me then I can forgive others as well.

I think that this message speaks to all of us.  We all have been hurt and we have all been the victim at one time or the other.  Today is the day to release that pain and anger and bitterness to the one who is able to handle it for us.  God is bigger than all of our burdens and if we will only trust him with those problems he will help us to handle them. 

Does this mean that we are supposed to be door mats and allow people to run all over us?  No, of course not.  People need to own their junk and take responsibility for it.  If we approach people with the spirit of love, humility and kindness and work with them we can help them to see how they have contributed to the pain and hopefully restore that relationship.  If they refuse to own their junk and do not want to do the right thing then you have done your part and that is all God is concerned with.  Sometime healing and restoration is not instananeous and it may take some time, prayer and work.  There are resources out there to help folks with these types of issues and most of the time you can find it at your local church or community counseling centers. 

Our families may not ever be "picture perfect"  but with some help from God working through each of us we can learn how to love and enjoy one another and do better with how we treat one another.  

 

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Charleston Police Department and Community service

How many times do we call the police or have a need for their service? I would submit that our dealings with the police are relatively infrequent and most of the time when we call them it is because we need their protection or a crime has been committed against ourselves, our families, neighbor or property.  No matter what the situation there is usually a need to call for the men and women of our local police department.  The same goes for the fire fighters and so on and so forth. 

This morning at approximately 2:30 am my son and I stopped at the Shell station at Maybank Highway and Main road to stop and use the restroom and get a drink before we headed out to my office so I could take care of some backup tasks.  On the weekends we have stopped at this Shell gas station on several occasions and it is usually in the late night hours or early morning hours.  Since this is one of the few establishments open on Johns Island at this time of night there is usually a patrol car there from the Charleston Police Dept.  Personally I like the police presence because I feel their being there deters some wanna be knuckle heads from being stupid or causing problems.  I spent 10 years in law enforcement back in Texas and I know for a fact that the business owners and store employees appreciate the "men and women of law enforcement"  to hang around when they can. 

When we entered the store so my son could use the restroom I noticed the officer was leaning up against the counter reading a newspaper and keeping a watchful eye on the patrons which was cool by me.  For whatever reasons I did not engage the officer and maybe it was because I was tired and just wanted to get my stuff and get out of there so we could hit the road.  When we left the store and got into the vehicle my son looked at me and said ,  " that guy was a jerk".  I looked at my son and said " why do you say that son".  My son said, when I walked up to the front counter to ask about using the restroom I looked at the officer and said hello.  My son said his response was to ignore his effort at being courteous and to continue reading his paper.  My son said that the officer also made a point to watch his every move which made him feel a little bit creeped out.  My son thought that the officer just did not like teenagers and was overtly suspicious of him period.  I took the time to explain to my son that the officer might be having a bad day and that typically he is probably not used to citizens being overtly nice to him. 

My only concern is that the experience my son had was negative and now he may be a little bit leary of being nice to a law enforcement officer the next time.  I can not tell you how many times I have been in uniform in public and have had a parent admonish their child in front of me and tell them that if they do not behave they will " tell the big bad police man standing over there " come get you. When I would see this happen I would make it a point to try and defuse the situation by saying something nice to the parent and to assure the child that people in uniform are their friends.  We should want our children and young adults to seek out the services of law enforcement or any other public servant when they are in trouble.  We do not want them to be running away from them or to be afraid to say them because we have instilled in them some preconceived notion that people in uniform are there to do bad things to us. 

I am thinking that the officer in question would have just said howdy and acknowledged my sons attempt at being courteus and friendly that it would have gone a long way with his experience with law enforcement.  Now my son thinks the guy was a jerk and he may lump everyone into the same category when he should not.  As a parent who has been on both sides of the badge I will do my part to mold and shape that view point but hopefully the men and women in uniform will realize that even the smallest things they say and do can and will affect those that they serve and protect. 

 

 

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Jasper sitting on my study table next to chair
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Testing my pictures on Posterous

While getting gas at Walmart several weeks ago I saw this dog sitting in a side compartment of a bike.  He was so cute with his own goggles. 

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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I want to illustrate my thoughts here with words and pictures

Friday was a very typical Friday for me at work.  I am not sure why but Friday's are sort of like Monday's and they are both busier than I would like for them to be.  Support requests seem to ebb and flow and I some times wonder if the moon cycles have anything to do with how feverish the requests become. 

This last couple of months has been brutal thanks to an ongoing project to redesign and optimize our network services in such a way to provide optimal performance for all our users. So I get to juggle regular support requests along with the demands of the many redesign tasks and keeping those changes as invisible as possible to the folks that use it.  Oh, and lest I forget I am also juggling 12 credits worth of studying this semester at Trident Technical College via online courses.  There is no way I could work all day and then drive for an hour to get to the campus in North Charleston.  That means I can study and participate online via the Internet.  I am a virtual student who is fortunate enough to have 20 years of experience in the same technology I am studying about.  This semester is going to be easier than the next one because most of the classes are a review of things I have already been exposed to or have studied about before on my own through self help study materials over the years. 

One of the things that I love to do to unwind is to write or play Texas Holdem.  I play Texas Holdem online via Facebook and I also go play at a real game with real people.  I have been going to this particular place with the same group of people for the last year or so.  I take my son with me because it is something that we can do together and we both enjoy it.  I spend 20.00 and we both get about 5 to 6 hours of enjoyment and frustration.  Justin has become quite the poker star prodigy.  Justin has more free time on his hands being 14 so he plays Texas Holdem online at different websites and gets lots and lots of practice at it.  He has become a student of the game while I just dabble in it to have fun.  Justin says that he wants to be one of the players in the World Poker Tour or whatever it is called.   I told him he needs to get a good education so he can get into a good career path where he can make lots of money so he can come up with the 10,000.00 buy in that it will take to get him into that level of play. 

Yes, I know, playing a game with dice or playing cards is illegal in South Carolina.  My pastor told me that he would not come bail me out of jail if I get busted because I have not shared any of my poker winnings with him.  My pastor knows that I play Texas Holdem because he follows my posts on Facebook so I guess you could say that he is keeping a watchful eye on my activities.  The role of the pastor keeping a watchful eye on the sheep has become a little bit easier now that the sheep do not mind blathering about their life activities on Facebook.  How convenient is that pastors of America ?  If you want to know what your congregations are doing in their spare time just sign up on their Facebook pages, MySpace pages or follow them in Twitter.  You will know more about your church members than you really want to know and then some.  Oh, and if you have members in your congregation who are not as forthcoming with their daily lives online then that should throw up a red flag for you and those people are the ones that you really need to be concerned about.  They are probably the ones who are involved in all manner or shady and illegal activities.  LOL....  Ok, I know that my editors from days gone by are going to wag their finger at me for using  Internet Chat acronyms in my writing but guess what.  This is MY BLOG and I am really not concerned about every single rule of grammar.  This is my literary playground where I can blather and have fun and not worry about the 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration rule of writing.  I can just write and write and write and let the words leak out of my fingers at any ole format that I want them to and just have fun doing it. 

Speaking of writing , I am taking English composition 100 this semester.  Most of this stuff is review because I took this same class about 29 years ago back at Henderson Junior College in Terrell Texas.  It has been intersting to me to read the many responses of my much younger fellow classmates as they are reading the same articles I am and having to provide substantive repsonses for the teacher to read and critique.  At first I was appalled at the fact that many of my fellow classmates struggle with basic spelling and grammar.  My wife who is taking graduate courses tells me that a lot of her classmates online that participate in online discussions have no clue how to use spell check nor do they know how to formulate simple sentences or how to write susbstative responses that flow or make sense.  I have always told my children that they must get the basics mastered.  The basics are reading, writing and math.  If you do not get the basics down at a very early age then you are missing some very critical building blocks for the rest of your education and you will struggle from there on out.  Despite the fact that some of my classmates struggle with spelling and simple sentences it has been interesting to see how different people who read the same articles come up with different and varying ideas and responses to the article.  It is also interesting to watch all of us writing and responding to one another in the online discussion forums.  I guess it is all part of the learning experience. 

On a final note this morning before I jump outta here is this.  How in the world do you insert an image , picture or clip art into an article on Posterous.  If there is a way or you know how to do it please reply via comments or write to me at jcmoffittatgmaildotcom (have at that you spiders) and let me in on the secret.  I would like to have the ability to insert some graphics so I can illustrate my ideas and thoughts along with the words. 

Have a restful, peaceful and blessed Labor Day weekend folks. 

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Go Cowboys ! Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

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Happy Friday

Thank God it is Friday and the Labor Day weekend is here.  I try to thank God every day for life and for all of the wonderful things he has put in my life and around me for my pleasure.  I thank God for my health, for my family, for my job, for the things that I have.  I pray for my friends who I know that struggle with depression in hopes that God will allow them to enjoy some rays of sunshine in their lives.  I sometimes struggle with situational depression in which I go through moments of time where external circumstances or stupidity on my part causes me to get depressed or upset.  Luckily for me I have the ability to pull myself out of the slump and try to focus on the future instead of the past. I thank God that he is in control of the bigger picture and I am not.  If you think life or the world around you is messed up now, you have no clue how messed up it would be if I had the controls.  I am reminded of the young lady that won American Idle not too long ago who wrote the song Jesus take the wheel.  Like most of us we do not cry out to God until our lives are like the young woman in the car who is spinning out of control.  That is when we are more likely to call out to God and ask him to make everything right.  

I am looking forward to three days off away from work.  I am very thankful that I am employed full time and I have medical benefits for my family and we live in a very nice place.  One of the things that I am not to fond of about my job is the symbiotic relationship that I have with it.  In other words most of you when you leave your job do not have to think about it again until you arrive again for work on Tuesday morning.  I on the other hand am on call 24x7 and I can get an sms text message or an e-mail or phone call that will snap me out of my personal time back to the computer network that I manage.  Luckily for me our business is not 24x7 and our locations shut down sometime between 6 pm and 8 pm for the night.  That means that once I go to sleep around midnight or 1 am that I probably wont be disturbed until 7:30 am or later.  This also motivates me to make sure that all of the systems I am responsible for stay well maintained and that I have monitoring in place that will notify me at the first hint of trouble so I can log in from remote and fix things quickly before anyone else is even aware of it. 

Later on in September or early October we are planning to take an extended weekend and fly out to Denver Colorado to visit friends of ours.  I have known these particular friends since the early 90's and I speak to them online almost every day or several times per week.  My friend James has worked his way through the process of getting his private pilots license and is now able to do solo flights which means that he will be coming to visit us here in the Charleston area some time soon by flying here.  How awesome is that people? 

I need to pull my head out of the blogosphere and stick it back into the computer network that I am supposed to be managing and get back to work.  It has been nice to drivel in here for a little bit.  I love to write and to share this and that with the rest of you.  I hope that you have a restful, safe and blessed weekend over the Labor Day weekend. 

 

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Breakfast
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Tick Tock

I have four minutes, go!!  Hiding in lunch room eating food and surfing Facebook and my many other social networking sites.  Today has been very busy but not more so than most.  I have a 1 hour project conference call at 2 pm and I am hoping that some technical wizzards that are brighter than myself can help me solve a couple of very irritating issues I am having with network latency and an application server.  I am getting ready to pull out the OSI layer chart and my magnifying chart.   I am looking forward to the three day weekend.  I am hoping to spend some time in the great out doors and away from technology. Is that even possible for me? I can stay away from the Internet for all of 2 or 3 hours but then I start to twitching because of my desire to connect to the Net and see what all of my netcitizen friends are up to.  Ok, that is my four mintues, need to close this laptop up and get back to work.  See you later aligator!!

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This and that

How fast is your propeller turning today?  Mine is at about 50% today.  I am staying busy but nothing I am doing is really forcing me to put my brain into afterburner.  Yesterday was a difficult day for me mentally in that I found it hard to focus.   Last week was the first week back to school and it was pretty brutal.  I already have a job where I have to go to work all day and solve problems.  When I have to go sit down and focus and think about things that I dont necessarily want to focus on it makes it harder.  No matter how hard it is to focus my secondary job is to increase my knowledge and become more educated.  Yes, they will teach me things that I probably will never ever use for the rest of my natural life however they will teach me things that will make me a more rounded person.  Considering my physique I am not sure that I need to be more rounded but you get my drift.  

I think that old age is creeping up on me because I am having the hardest time remembering "Posterous".  I keep remembering it as "Proteus".  I think that must be because of the movie Matrix.  One of their ships was named that wasn't it ?  Anyway, good thing there are bookmarks or I would never find my way back in here.  I was speaking to my wife the other day and she told me that 60 is not considered old by her anymore.  I looked at her and laughed and said that is because you are in your fifties yourself.  Of course 60 does not appear to be old from that stand point.  I guess age is relative and you are only as old as you feel.   With my joints acting up like they have in the last couple of weeks I have felt like I was 70.  Thanks to the marvel of modern medicine I am walking again without a lot of pain. 

Currently I am scanning the network computers and servers for missing Microsoft Security patches and critical updates.   I am migrating users off of one Terminal Services server onto another server that has been configured for Terminal Services.  I am gearing up for an application vendor to arrive here tomorrow so we can all three put our heads together and find out why the HECK their application is running like a locomotive that fell off the tracks.   I have spent considerable time over the last 2 months agonizing over this and that trying to figure out why this application runs so slowly.  I have been up and down the "Please dont take my pizza away"  OSI network layer trying to figure out why it is so slow.   The Pizza saying is the word picture that I memorized so that I can remember each of the OSI layers.  Physical, Data, Transport, Media, application.  I think I have Media wrong.  Oh well, it is something close to that.   When data leaves one computer and travels across the network media it stars at the bottom of the layer and works its way to the top and then when it arrives at the receiving computer it works its way from top to bottom.   One huge cycle that goes around and around all day long millions of times per day as data packets are thrown around on the network.  Pretty amazing stuff when you think about the complexities of it all. 

 

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Happy Tuesday

It is now 12:19 am and I am still awake.  I am sitting here watching Conan Obrian and wrapping up school work.  I just checked one of the discussion boards and one of our students in one of our computer classes has been waiting for the book store to get some more text books.  I went online and searched Ebay, Textbooks.com and Amazon and could only find the older versions of this book.  How crazy is that?  I tried to help this chap find the book he needs but maybe he will have more luck.  Hopefully the book store will have some on back order.  I am glad that I went to the bookstore when I did and got all my books.  I had something weird happen tonight while doing school work.  Somehow I managed to get a week ahead in two out of four classes.  How the heck did I do that?  I also found out that I need to pay 197.00 to register Smartdraw which is an application for drawing network designs.  That price is 30 percent off of the regular price of 300.00.  Oh well, I guess I know where that much will be coming out of student loan money.  I better get to bed and get some sleep since I have another full day ahead of me in about 7 hours.  Nite Nite

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Home made chicken pot pie.
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SoundClick artist: Bob Doyle - Bob Doyle creates ambient, new age, orchestral, soundtrack, and other electronic music.

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Most of the time I listen to gospel and contemporary christian music. During my exploration of Posterous I found this artist who has some awesome instrumental music.

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Technology, Theology, and Anything In Between

Here are some ideas as a technology business that I’ve used in order to keep my fixed costs and expenses low. Maybe some of these will be helpful to those that read this blog.

1. If you use a dedicated server, consider a VPS or shared hosting. I was using a dedicated server, but soon found out that a VPS would work just as well for the number and kinds of customers that I have. The virtual private server allows me the same control as a dedicated server, but at a much lower cost. Some VPS packages also can be faster than a low-end dedicated server, simply because the VPS has to use much better hardware if it is split up between 4-10 users. One thing to watch out for: Make sure that page load times and database stuff doesn’t bog down.

2. VOIP. One of my recent posts covered this. The specifics here was buying a decent VOIP phone (Aastra 480i to be exact), and then using a SIP-to-Skype bridge (SIPtheeSkype). This combination allows me to use my Skype subscription for unlimited US calling, plus a inbound telephone number, for $54/year. This is much better than paying the phone company $40+/month, and with some companies, a contract is involved. DISADVANTAGE: You won’t be listed in the phone book. Considering the kinds of people that contact my business, this isn’t a problem. Who looks for a software developer in the phone book? Other VOIP providers worth looking at are Gizmo5 and RingCentral.

3. Business finance. I know the debt-averse attitudes many Christians have, but I can’t say I completely agree with them. Certainly, this economic climate which we are in is causing us to rethink our ideas about debt and savings, but debt still remains a tool for businesses to use, especially to float through hard times. My suggestion here is to find a local bank that has money to lend, and use a line of credit. Currently, my bank offered me a line of credit at 4% + prime rate, which last I checked made my interest rate 7.25%. Contrast this with Chase Manahattan, a business credit card that hiked my rates up to 14.24%. Most of my views on debt and credit are based on things I read from Gary Moore. He runs this website, Financial Seminary. My best advice with this point is look to get away from credit cards, and use bank loans and lines of credit. The APR is much better, and usually, the bank line of credit forces more payment of principal every month, so you won’t be in a debt for years.

4. Credit cards. I’m going to be accepting credit cards this year, to hopefully bring in more customers that will make small purchases. I’m going to use PayPal, which will give me better control over my costs. While the transaction and discount rates won’t be as good as a merchant account, there are no monthly minimums to worry about. Also, they have a money market account that earns 0.5% now, which isn’t great, but better than 0% in my bank checking account.

Hopefully some of these ideas will be helpful to you. We will get through this year and turn a profit!

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This is an excellent article from a friend of mine that I speak with on IRC. He said it was ok to share it here.

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