End of Entourage
Goodbye, Entourage. This week I had my second major personal e-mail outage of the year. This time it was a silently corrupted identity in Entourage 2008. The symptom was that I stopped receiving mail. After several hours of diagnostics, I determined that Entourage could sync almost any folder with our Exchange server except the Inbox folder. I rebuilt my Office 2008 database (successfully, unlike last time), but the problem persisted.
I used one of my two free Office 2008 tech support calls with Microsoft to determine that the root cause of this was a corrupted identity, which can not be repaired. This despite the fact that the database tool could not find any corruptions. Their answer was to build a new identity, then export my 12000 e-mail messages from the old identity to the new one.
I asked about whether this could happen again, and the answer I got was "it depends. Some people have this happen more frequently than others.". As a manager with close to 40 people on my team and a variety of cross-functional responsibilities, my single most important work tool (besides my voice) is e-mail. I simply cannot afford the reliability problems I've had with Entourage 2008 in the last four months.
Therefore, I decided to export my old mail to Mail.app instead, and try it an iCal for a while. I ran into some problems with Entourage creating .mbox files that Mail gave up on reading partway through. The answer to that was to download Thunderbird 2.0 and use it to read the Entourage .mbox files, then let Mail.app import the Thunderbird .mbox files instead. This works, and now I have my entire set of mail stored in Mail.app.
We'll see if I can get used to Mail's oddities relatively quickly. I will miss how Entourage remembered the last ~20 folders I'd moved messages to, and made moving more messages to one of the same folders easier than it is in Mail. I won't miss that in Entourage dragging a message from the inbox to another folder copied it rather than moving it. I wont' miss Entourage's inability to create real HTML links in e-mail messages (where the text displayed is something other than the URL of the link).
Wish me luck.
Finally have Parallels working again
After an extensive amount of work, I finally have Parallels working again the way I want it to. One shared hard disk image for both my work and personal accounts on my mac, so I can use the same Windows install for both. The more recent builds of Parallels have change things a bit; they both now store the pvs files in the user accounts /Library folder; earlier builds of parallels could share a pvs file in /Users/Shared. Now I have the hard disk image in /Users/Shared, and separate .pvs files (virtual machine definitions) in each user account.
I also struggled with updating a copy of Windows from May 07 (my last good backup before the Windows config got hosed). Windows Update via the web browser just ran my CPU utilization up to > 100% forever without appearing to make progress. I restarted Windows, and set the windows update automatic timer to noon (so it would run while the machine was up). This worked, when I shut it down in the afternoon, it had 19(!) updates to install before shutdown completed. Hopefully that was all of them...
It appears that Parallels finally fixed shared networking to work properly. When I use it at work, I have a wireless network connection that requires a VPN to access the corporate network, and a wired Ethernet connection that does not. Earlier parallels builds insisted on using the wireless connection, and therefore being unable to resolve names on the network. This current build seems to correctly figure out that I have two connetions, and that it should try to resolve names on both before giving up.
Now that I'm done with Windows Update, it does seem that the VM is less of a hog; I don't notice as much that it is up and running in the background.
Trying Parallels build 5580
So I posted a couple of weeks back about how my Windows VM under Parallels had become damaged; I was no longer able to run Windows Update, and I kept getting a popup on each boot about "Error loading Tcp Mib library". I restored the disk image from a backup, and thought I was good to go. Earlier this week, I started up parallels to use IE again, and got an error message that the virtual disk was corrupted and could not be booted. Argh.
I wasn't sure how long this had been the case, so I checked my Time Machine backups to see how many different timestamps I had since I'd restored the original version. Only one, and it was corrupt too. Double argh. So today I downloaded the beta build for Leopard (5580), and again brought back the old Windows image from my April/May backup. Hopefully this one will last for a while; I really don't enjoy the extended process of parallels tools installs followed by multiple windows updates. That ain't exactly speedy.
I really, really wish Apple would build a full-featured Exchange replacement so that I could get rid of Parallels entirely. I would live with Microsoft's remote desktop client for IE when necessary if that was all I needed from Windows.
Installed my cell phone signal booster
My only reluctance in purchasing the iPhone was the relatively poor coverage that ATT has in my home and near where I work. I love having an iPhone, but hate that in my kitchen and most anywhere else on the first floor of my house I get really bad coverage. So I decided to try a cell phone signal booster. After looking around on the Internet, I settled on the zBoost YX510-PCS-CEL. It seemed to get mostly decent reviews, and promised to work for both the iPhone and my wife's Verizon phone.
I was hoping to avoid having to install the external antenna on the roof, and after crawling around in my attic with my iPhone set in field service mode, I was able to figure out that on one wall of the attic I got excellent (5 bars) coverage. I put the external antenna on that wall, and ran the cable through the ceiling of my linen closet (along with the power connector). Can't say it is the prettiest or most professional installation, but it is invisible from inside the house.
Once installed, I did see why some of the reviewers complained. Right next to the booster, I get five bars (instead of 2). This drops off pretty quickly; I only get ~2 bars downstairs. However, the call quality (as measured by talking to my wife when I called her on the land line phone) is distinctly improved (verified by unplugging the extender and repeating the same experiment).
Interestingly, the field test mode doesn't report that much of a boost (hovers around ~91 db for the best two towers without the booster, and ~70 db with the booster). Apparently, that is enough to make a quality difference on the call.
Safari & PDFs
Sometimes Mac preferences can be quite a pain. If you're struggling with trying to get Safari to either stop inline PDFs so you can use Viewer to read them, or to inline PDFs so you don't have to download and start Viewer, then read on.
[Read More]Upgraded to Leopard this weekend
So far I like it a lot. The tabs in the terminal window will be very useful; I think Spaces will be too, although the jury is still out on that.[Read More]
Things not to like about Numbers
OK, I said before that I was using numbers and liked it. I still like it, but I'm finding things that are annoying. So far these include:
- Fill colors tool doesn't remember the last color you used, so it doubles the work each time you fill a cell with a color
- No merge cells button for the toolbar, you have to use the inspector
- Split cells only splits cells in two, so if you merged 3 and then later want to split them into 3 again, it is impossible
- Can't have more than one header row if you use the built in header row feature
- Can't have more than one header column if you use the built in header column feature
- If you merge cells vertically, the alignment doesn't automatically change to vertically centered; you have to do that manually
OK, done with this spreadsheet without running into any more annoyances.
First real work with Numbers
Spent some quality time with Numbers, and am starting to like it![Read More]
Maybe I finally have all my sync issues worked out
Lots of fun trying to get my calendar and contacts synced up. I'm trying for a consolidated look at data from two accounts on my Mac plus my exchange server at work. Way harder than I'd hoped.
[Read More]Apple! Pay Attention! Now just build an Exchange client, Dammit!
iWork '08 looks great so far; now I have an OS-X native word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation software. The only thing missing is a real Exchange client from Apple.[Read More]
iPhone bug? Maybe, but not bugging me now.
I'm working with Apple support to try and figure out why I can't send mail from my iPod anywhere other than at home. As far as I can tell so far, this is because the iPod will not save the outgoing SMTP server password for my IMAP account. I can see the authentication failure in the server logs showing that an unauthenticated request for relay was received from the iPhone, and no matter how many different ways I try, I cannot get the outgoing SMTP password to save. So far Apple support has been very pleasant to deal with. I repeated all my diagnostic steps (and reloading the firmware) with level 1 support, then declined to wait an hour for L2 (this was on July 3rd). I called back on the 5th and talked to L2 for 20 minutes, and they're researching the problem now; I expect a call back tonight. Not too bad.
Update: I worked with two different folks in Apple support. During diagnosis with the second-line support person, I changed the SMTP configuration several times for testing. For some reason, the last configuration change (to get the exact error message) resulted in the password being saved, and SMTP working like a champ. No problems sending mail from the iPhone now.
Just got an iPhone!
Well, I'd originally planned to wait until a better carrier was supported, but the reviews were so good tha at I ended up taking the plunge today. So far I've played with almost all of the features exept watching video, and they are all great. I think the email reader is the best UI for working with incoming mail I've ever used. Using a touch screen to navigate your inbox is awesome. I am struggling a bit with the keyboard, but even that is getting better with practice.
Most surprising is not the computing or iPod features, but how well the phone works. Excellent voice quality!
Project Management Software for the Mac
Well, the good news for project management software on the Mac is that Microsoft Project isn't available for the Mac. Unfortunately, up until recently I thought that was the bad news as well, since I couldn't find anything else that had the ability to do basic project management tasks. Thanks to Rob Rohan's blog entry, I found Merlin.
So far, Merlin is great! It has multiple project views that I like better than Microsoft Project, and has significantly better usability than the other project management packages I tried for the Mac (SharedPlan and some others).
Aiport Express & iTunes Rocks
Man, I'm in wireless computing nirvana. As I type this, I'm listening to Nora Jones on my home stereo. The way the song is getting there is quite remarkable though. First, I have an AirPort Express that I just got for my birthday plugged into the wall behind my stereo, with an audio cable from it to the stereo system.
The AirPort Express is a wireless client of my existing home network. My Windows Media Center edition PC I bought over the holidays is running iTunes for Windows with the audio output set to go to the AirPort Express and therefore to my stereo system. This in and of itself is pretty damn cool. But wait, it gets better! I haven't copied my music library from my PowerBook to the Windows PC yet. I also have iTunes running on my PowerBook with a couple of playlists set to share to the network. So, my Mac is streaming Nora Jones to my Windows PC, which is streaming it to the AirPort Express, which my stereo is then playing.
Amazingly cool, right? But wait, there's still more! I'm not sitting near my Windows machine at the moment, and I want to change songs. Guess what! I'm using Remote Desktop on my PowerBook to control the Windows box and changing iTunes settings there! How many levels of indirections can I support?
Of course an astute user will figure out that I could just as easily gone directly from iTunes on my PowerBook to the AirPort Express, which is true. Not nearly as cool though...
For all of the things that suck about OS/X and the PowerBook in particular, I have to say that the iPod, iTunes, and Airport Express just freakin rock.
Another cool thing is that my Windows box doesn't have a wireless card; it is participating in this amazing setup through a traditional Ethernet connection.
In case you care, it took me about five minutes to set all of this up. I ran the AirPort Express setup wizard on my PowerBook, answered 2-3 questions, and bingo, I'm done. There's a little button on iTunes that asks me whether I want the music to go to my local machine or the stereo. I didn't have to TOUCH ITUNES AT ALL. It figured out the AirPort Express was there and what is was named as SOON AS IT JOINED MY HOME NETWORK. I'm betting if I didn't have WPA, I wouldn't have had to run the AirPort Express setup wizard at all.
New MacBooks look hot
I told my wife already that I'll be replacing my < 1 year old PowerBook with one of the new MacBooks as soon as I let the other guinea pigs work out the bugs in the hardware and 10.4.4 on Intel. I had enough early problems with Tiger that I don't want to be an owner of the first hardware run of the new Mac Intel boxes. Once I get one of these, my only remaining problem will be the crappy vertical screen resolution of the PowerBook screen. I now have a 1280x1024 19" LCD monitor both at home and at work so I don't have to put up with this too often.
Of course, I could always wish that web site folks would stop designing for 640x480 or 800x600 resolutions with sites that won't expand to additional horizontal space, but that would really be whistling in the wind...