Friday, February 6th, 2009
I recently made a little vow to myself that I would try to learn more about this BMW iDrive that I encounter every time I drive around. It is quite the computer system and it has a lot to offer. The only problem is that it has a lot to offer. I know, I just said that. I am a “get in the car and drive” kind of guy, so this whole iDrive thing goes a little against my grain.
I guess my grain is changing, because I started fiddling with some stuff the other day. I came across a really cool feature that I have been playing with ever since. It’s the “Trip Computer.” I am sure lots of cars have this, but since this is my first experience with one, I though I would share it with you.
Basically, I clicked the “Menu” button and then “Car Data.” From there, I visited the “Trip Computer.” There are three options…Start, Stop and Reset. Since there was already data stored in there, I chose reset and then start. I think they do the same thing. Then, I drove for a little while. It was really cool.
Yesterday, we went to Costco in Enfield, CT. I thought that the trip would be a great opportunity to show Laura the new feature I discovered. As it ends up, she didn’t express all that much interest in it. Actually, I suspect she is wondering why anyone would spend any amount of time making this feature in the first place. Funny how people like different things.
I left the house and set the trip computer up. When we arrived at our destination, I took a photo.
As you can see from the photos above, the trip computer tells you the departure time, the trip duration, the distance traveled, the average fuel consumption and the average miles per hour.
The area I like the best is the average fuel consumption. While I the highway, we were averaging over 21 miles per gallon, but things got worse when we turned on the back roads. The stop and go doesn’t do any favors. The sales guy said that some people report over 23 miles per gallon on the highway.
Now, let me assure you that this type of fuel consumption doesn’t really excite me. What does excite me is that BMW introduced its new diesel engines into the American market this year. The X5 is getting 26 MPG on the highway with the diesel engine and the 5 series gets up to 36 MPG. Now, that’s something that excites me. I just wonder how they handle the whole “diesel fuel gelling up on really cold mornings” issue.
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Saturday, August 2nd, 2008
Just a word of warning, I really don’t know what I am talking about in this post. I gathered some fragments and decided to talk about them.
Ok, since I have been using this new computer, I have had a little issue. When the computer would go into sleep mode, things would be normal. When I would shake the mouse to wake the computer up, sometimes it would hang. After a while, I would get the blue screen that gave me an error. It was “kernel_data_inpage_error.” After the blue screen, the computer would automatically (after a dew seconds) go to the welcome screen and then start as normal. When it started, I would get the normal error box that pops up in Windows that told me the computer didn’t shut down properly and asks if I would like to report this to Microsoft.
Last night, I decided to call Dell support. I spoke with a guy who used a program to take over my computer so he could check some stuff out. He said that it was most likely a driver that was causing the issue. He then checked the paging file size. Reminder…I am running Windows Vista Ultimate. He said, “Hmmm, this is probably causing the problem.” I didn’t get a good look at it, but I believe the paging file size was too small. He increased it to 1000-6000 and things seem to be running smoothly.
After a few minutes, I realized that this computer is now much, much faster. I am assuming this has something to do with the paging file size. Now, it feels like I am working on the computer I bought.
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Friday, July 18th, 2008
Ok, so on to the installation of Joomla 1.5.
Before I did anything, I bought a domain name and pointed it to my server. That is basic stuff. I set the domain up on my server and created a mysql database for this application. That’s more basic stuff.
After that was all good to go and the domain resolved to the server, I went over to Joomla for the latest download, which happens to be version 1.5.4. I clicked the link in the left navigation column and downloaded the “Joomla_1.5.4-Stable-Full_Package.zip” file and saved it to my desktop. I unpacked the zip file and placed the contents of it in my website folder. Since I already had the FTP account set up on my server, I uploaded to contents of my website folder to my server. Here is a word of warning…there are almost 4,000 files. If your host has file limitations, you should find out what they are. Since I have a dedicated server, I am not worried about that. Also, remember that your database is still empty. That will be populated during the install.
After all the files were uploaded, I headed back over to Joomla and clicked on the “New Installation” link about half way down their homepage. Since I am familiar with these types of installations, I skipped past all the upper links and clicked right on “Installation.”
Apparently, there are two different types of installs…one being the web browser method and the other being the manual install. In this case, I did the web browser installation.
In my case, I am did a remote installation to the domain root directory. I did not use a sub-domain, a local install or install the package in a sub-directory. If you would like to, there are instructions on how to go about this on the Joomla website (the same instructions I am using). Basically, you have to visit your domain and, if you have done everything correctly so far, you should see the first Joomla installation screen.
The first screen asks you to choose your language. Simple enough. Since I speak English, I kept the default “English” setting and hit the “Next” button.
The next screen checks the server to see if everything is set correctly and if Joomla is able to utilize it’s resources. In my case, everything checked out fine, but I was told that the “configuration.php” was not writable. After reading the instructions, I found out that this is a regular occurance. I actually didn’t see a “configuration.php” file. I clicked to the “Common Issues & Error Handling” page and read about it. The page gave a few options:
* Do a manual installation
* Create a completely empty file, name it as configuration.php and upload it to your joomla_root/ directory before commencing the installation. Joomla! will then enter the details as the installation proceeds as normal.
* Wait until the end of the installation when at Step 7 the Finished Screen is displayed a list of the variables and settings for the configuration.php file will be displayed. These should then be copied and pasted into a new text document and saved as configuration.php
* As with the last suggestion wait until the end and using the information provided in Step7 manually alter the content of the configuration.php-dist file (this is simply an example file and not a part of the functioning installation) included with all Joomla! installations. There is clearly a greater chance with this method of making mistakes so greater care should be taken. Once the variables have been correctly edited, change the name of this file and save it as configuration.php
I decided to go with creating an empty file named, “configuration.php” and upload it to the root directory. I also chmod the file to 777.
This time, everything checked out, so I clicked the “Next” button.
The next screen is nothing but the license agreement. I read the entire thing and understood it. Then, I clicked the “Next” button.
The next screen is the database configuration. Remember that empty database you have sitting there? Well, you have to fill in the required information.
I entered the information and clicked the “Next” button.
The next screen is the FTP configuration. This is the first time I have come across something like this, but I filled in the FTP information. They suggest to create a local FTP account and not use one that can control the entire server.
Since I am getting slow in my old age, I placed in the FTP username and password and then clicked the autofind path button. That worked and filled in the path automatically.
The next screen is the main configuration. I placed in the main (Super Administrator) email address and password. Then, I clicked the “Install Sample Data” button. I was told that the sample data imported properly.
A word of warning: My first attempt at installing this application gave me an error message that read, “Error: the XML response that was returned from the server is invalid.” on the FTP page and when I tried to install the sample data on the main configuration page. The reason for this had to do with the “configuration.php” file. I needed to upload one and set the permissions correctly. After I did that, I was able to pass those pages. You can read more about the issue here.
The last page looked like this…
Basically, the page gives you the option to view your site or log in to the admin section. I always like to log in to the admin section so I can get the URL. Also, the system says to delete the entire “installation” directory. Lastly, I like to download the now populated config file for backup.
To log in to the admin area, the username is “admin.” Obviously, you should change this.
You can take a look at the site I just set up at http://www.fiixer.com. Next up, configuring and customizing Joomla. Ye haw.
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Thursday, July 17th, 2008
One of the things on my task list today was to order the new computer that I have been considering for the past few months. Laura’s computer started acting up yesterday and that gave me the push to get it done. We can’t be without these kinds of things.
So, here is what I got:
1 Dell Precision T7400 Mini-Tower, Quad Core Xeon Proc E5405, 2.00GHz, 2X 6MB L2 Cache,1333MHz
1 2nd Processor, Quad Core Xeon Proc E5405, 2.00GHz, 2X 6MB L2Cache,1333MHz, Dell Precision T7400
1 4GB, DDR2 ECC SDRAM Memory 667MHz, 8X512MB,Dell PrecisionT5400 (I couldn’t go to the 800Mhz with these processors. Bumping up to faster processors added thousands to the cost.)
1 Entry Level, USB, No Hot Keys keyboards, Dell PrecisionWorkstations
1 nVidia,NVS 290, 256MB dual DVIGraphics Card, Dell Precision T3400
3 146GB 3Gbps SAS, 15K RPM Hard Drive, 3.5 Inch, Dell Precision T3400
1 C23 All SAS Hard Drives, RAID 5 for 3 Hard Drives, Dell Precision T7400
1 NO FLOPPY DRIVE, Dell Precision 490/690, Factory Install
1 Vista Ultimate SP1 with Media 32 Bit English Dell Precision (I decided to stick with the 32 bit operating system. I don’t need any surprises at the moment.)
1 Dell USB 2-Button Entry Mouse with Scroll for Dell Precision
1 16XDVD-ROM, Data Only, Dell Precision T3400
1 Cyberlink Power DVD 8.0,with Media,Dell Precision
1 Internal Chassis Speaker, DellPrecision T7400
1 Dell Wireless 1505 PCIe WLAN Card, Dell Precision Workstation
1 Resource DVD contains Diagnostics and Drivers for Dell Precision T7400
1 PERC6/i SAS/SATA Hardware RAID Card – For Connecting Internal Hard Drives, Dell Precision
7400
1 Norton Internet Security 2008 English, 2 Year,Dell OptiPlex Precision and Latitude
1 Dell Hardware Warranty Plus Onsite Service Initial Year
1 Dell Hardware Warranty Plus Onsite Service Extended Year(s)
1 ProSupport for End Users: 7×24 Technical Support and assistance for end-users, Initial
1 ProSupport for End Users: Next Business Day Parts and Labor Onsite Response Initial Year
1 ProSupport for End Users: Next Business Day Parts and Labor Onsite Response 2 Year Extended
1 ProSupport for End Users: 7×24 Technical Support and assistance for end-users, 2 Year Extended
Basically, the reason for this new computer is get some beef in the processor department as well as the additional and faster hard drives. I added RAM to my current computer and while I got a minimal performance increase, I don’t think RAM was the issue. I also thought that getting the on-site support was important.
I should get the system next week and will continue to use my current computer for other, non-critical tasks.
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Thursday, October 4th, 2007
Ever want to know a little more about your town? Hmmm…do your neighbors have any money or are they broke? Are you broke? Maybe, maybe not.
Check this out. My mother emailed this link to me this afternoon. You can get the skinny on your zip code. Check out the average educational achievement of your area, marital staus, household income and even various occupations.
I am not sure I like this. I guess I do, since I put a few zip codes in. I am mainly interested in finding out about towns I am considering moving to. I wouldn’t mind a nice high educational achievement level as well a high household income. I could care less if you were married or not. I think I would care a little about what you did for a living. I would like to be around white collared folk. They have fewer tractor trailer trucks parked in their yards.
This website reminds me a lot of epodunk.com. They kind of do the same thing, except they don’t compare to surrounding areas.
Hmmm…I wonder what I will find.
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