I had a laptop in the office that had some weird problems on it.
PowerPoint 2007 was extremely slow. I did a lot of research online, most of which suggested an issue with the default printer driver. This was not the case. Even other users on the laptop could run PP07 and edit the same file with no issue. It was specific to one logon account on the machine. I ended up fixing it by removing the user, copying all the profile data from the \Users directory, then recreating the user.
That seemed to work, until he took the laptop home and could no longer log in to it. He always got the error
The group policy client service failed the logon. Access is denied.
After some searching around, I found only a little help with this problem, but one thing got it fixed up just fine.
Open the HKLM/Software/Microsoft/WindowsNT/CurrentVersion/ProfileList registry key. Under this key, there is an entry for each user on the machine, they look like long GUIDs if they're domain users. Find the one with an entry under it called ProfileImagePath that points to the user directory that has the problem. Rename the key (the parent of ProfileImagePath, directly under ProfileList) for this user to anything other than what it is. Log in as that user.
This created a new user directory (in my case, user.domain instead of just user as it was already present) and completely solved the login issue.
Today is bad server mojo day or something. I've been having a weird connectivity problem on the network, pings are timing out when I try to reach several machines, and one of the servers lost all its IP address settings. Things seem to be working now, but it makes me wonder what's going to bork out next…
One day a year, the company I work for gives us a day off as long as we use it to volunteer in the community. This year, many of us got together and volunteered our time with Habitat for Humanity North Idaho. They have a small development with about a dozen homes in Post Falls. Several of us did landscaping work, and the rest of us stained a fence. The fence was several hundred feet long, surrounding the entire community, so it was a bigger job than it sounds. Unfortunately, we ran out of stain twice, and the second time it was too close to quitting time to get more, so we had to leave the job unfinished, but it would only take a single person an hour or two to finish.
We had lots of drinks and a pizza lunch, but the feeling of helping people out is the best part of the day.
I played Spore for a while last night, and got to the tribal stage. Here is my creature, the aptly-named Sporlon:
His magic mouth-rings allow his lower lip to pass through them. In case you were wondering.
I've been fighting this weird routing issue in the office today. Apparently our web developer was seeing it since he started working this morning, but I didn't notice it until he brought it up with me. I didn't notice because I hadn't yet ssh'd into one of our servers yet today.
What I saw was about a 20 second lag, every minute or two. I could work for a while, then all of a sudden I get no response from the server for about 20 seconds (but don't lose the connection) then everything catches up and I'm good for another couple minutes.
I ran a traceroute while the "outage" was happening and when I got to the router before my server, I didn't get any reverse DNS name resolution, and I got 6 hops of timeouts before it reached my server (server ping time: 3.301ms, 2.825ms, and 2.803ms—yes, I have a fast connection there). As soon as the problem resolved itself, a subsequent traceroute showed a resolved router and direct hop to my server, but with higher (80+ms) latency.
My gut reaction was a problem with our Colocation facility's router, so I called them about it. They weren't seeing anything on their network. The technician tried from another connection outside their normal network and it worked fine, too. He never saw the latency issue.
Just as I was suspecting it may be something weird with our switch being overloaded and/or dropping packets, I get a call back from the technician and he tells me he just found out there is a known issue with a new router with incoming connections through XO Communications (our Internet provider here). I was relieved to know it wasn't any of my equipment, and about 30 minutes later they discarded the route that was going through the router in question.
So now the problem is gone, and not many people on the outside world even experienced it, but on the down side my route is now 17 hops long instead of 7, and my latency is about 60ms. Still, I'll take it over a broken route any day.
I ran across this picture the other day and had a good laugh.
PS. The opposite of irony is wrinkly.
As promised, here are some pictures of the books I've been working on lately.
Some notes about these books:
- The are covered in bookcloth, a much less expensive alternative to leather. Especially when you're practicing.
- They have folded corners. I can also do library corners, tabbed corners, and pleated corners.
- Each of these books was covered using a different method, allowing me to find the best way of making books that works for me.
- I did all the typesetting and printing of the book blocks. I can only blame myself if pages get sewn in out of order.
- I use Wausau Exact Opaque paper, Natural color. It starts out 11x17 and is 24/60lb text. This paper has a long grain, so I get it chopped in half to make short grain 8.5x11 paper, which I then fold in half to make 8.5x5.5 books with the paper grain aligned with the spine (for durability and longevity). Plain white paper is too bright in a book, IMHO.
I recently found some screw presses on Rockler and will use them to make my own book press, laying press, and plough.
I love sloppy focus in a windowing environment. It makes me happy. I shouldn't have to click on a window and bring it to the foreground for it to have focus and be able to accept input. I should just be able to slide the mouse over the window, and as long as it doesn't exit that window and hit another one, the window I rolled over should get focus.
I am so used to this behavior after 10 years of desktop Linux usage that I'm always thinking it works the same way in Windows. But I was wrong—you have to click windows before they accept focus.
Except I'm wrong again. You can have sloppy focus in Windows. I just modified Vista to have sloppy focus!
In Regedit, set the 0x1 bit (thanks to Sam for the clarification):
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\UserPreferencesMask
In my case, the value was set to 9E 3E 07 80 12 00 00 00. This value is little-endian, which means the least-significant-bit is first. So in hex, this is 0x0000001280073E9E. Adding 0x1, we get 0x0000001280073E9F. Reverse the bits and you get the new value: 9F 3E 07 80 12 00 00 00.
It's simpler to just increment the first bit in the sequence, but this is so you really understand what is going on.
Log off (no need to reboot) and log back in. You now have sloppy focus. This works in Windows 2000, XP, 2003, and Vista.
I recently configured a WebDAV server and was having strange access errors. The client would report
Listing collection `/': failed:
XML parse error at line 1: Extra content at the end of the document .
When I tried a directory listing.
On the server side, I was getting the error
Provider encountered an error while streaming a multistatus PROPFIND response. [404, #0]
Turns out the solution is one I don't really even understand. Under my Apache config, I changed the <Directory> directives to <Location> directives and everything started working.
According to the Apache online manual, you should only use Location when you're applying directives to directories outside the local (jailed) filesystem. These are simple, local directories I'm configuring.
Like I said, weird.
I've been making several books lately, two copies of Treasure Island and one 260-page journal. I'm experimenting with different bindings and styles, trying to find what works best and is durable. Some of the things I've learned so far are:
- PVA glue is great for quick work, but I shouldn't use it to set bookboard covers—it dries too fast.
- Hollow-back spines save wear and tear on the outer spine material, be it leather or cloth.
- I should pay attention more and not reverse my covers by putting the inside part on the back of the outside and vice versa.
- Bookbinding is something I really enjoy doing.
I'll add some pictures soon.
The community Messiah choir is starting up again. First practice is tonight at 7pm. I'll be heading there after work. Here's to writing off at least one evening every week and several saturdays for the next three months.
I just ran across Nice Critic, an easy, anonymous way to send a short message to someone.
Some of the funnier messages are:
- Please refrain from slapping people's buttocks.
- Not sharing your candy jar makes you look somewhat unsociable.
- Please consider wearing a more updated tie.
- It seems like your thong is showing.
- Your shirt/blouse seems to be a little tight.
Funny, they don't seem to have a Your shirt/blouse could be a little tighter…
Spotted on an eBay auction page:
How many vintage items? ALL OF TEHM!!11oneone
I played Stump the Boss today. He usually tries this on me, so I thought I'd get even. He asked for the square footage of a certain area in our building, so I pulled up the plans and found that it was 1066 square feet. When he asked for the answer, I told him the battle of Hastings. He asked "what kind of answer is that?" to which I replied, "ten sixty-six."