Tucker Speaks!

That's what he said!

Dad's Death

On Friday November 27th, my dad, Bruce, died abruptly.

I want to thank everyone for their support with our family during this difficult time, and I would ask you respect our privacy during the days, weeks, and months to come. I will post when the funeral date when we know more.

I am so very thankful for everyone in my life and I love you all.

Thank you for understanding,

Tucker & The McCumber family.

21:09PM Edit: Visitation will be Monday November 30th, 4pm to 7pm at the Dahl Funeral Home. Funeral will be at 11:00am on Tuesday December 1st at Spooner Wesleyan Church.

VMware Server 2.0

I must say, I have been playing around with VMware Server for a few years now, but, now I’ve actually found a very good use for it. Every since I got my new laptop, I needed the option of running two Operating Systems without dual booting. My solution? VMware Server 2.0.

After installing Windows 7, I installed VMware Server 2.0 and configured two VMs. One is my primary workstation on my laptop. It’s used because I need my profile to be synced with my AD server, and Win7 does not have backward compatibility for WinXP, so I still needed to run XP. The VM I’m running has a gig of ram (perfect amount for internet browsing and some graphic work).  

I’ve also created another VM that is my test workstation. I’m able to install and do whatever I want in there and when I’m done, I revert back to a snapshot of the VM.

I must say, this solution is a much better solution than dual booting OSes and I like the option of jumping between my VM and my Win7 box.

Windows 7

There has been a lot of hype of the Windows 7 going on and it’s about time I take the time and rate it.

I recently just got a new laptop, it’s an HP EliteBook 2530p with a docking station (so I could have full functionality of a keyboard, mouse, and a big monitor) and it came loaded with Windows XP with Vista Upgrade media. I noticed immediately that it already was slower than it should be (most computers are with factory installed crap on them) so I decided to boot Windows 7 on it.

I faced a huge new problem: I speced this laptop without a CD Drive. It took me a few minutes (and some brainstorming) that I needed to do this off a flashdrive vs buying an external harddrive. I got a 4gb Sansa Flashdrive and with a little help, I had a fully functioning boot flashdrive with Windows 7 on it.

Windows 7 installed quite fast (especially off a flash drive) and I was up and running in about a half hour. I installed all my applications and I have had zero problems with any of my software installed.

Windows 7 also runs more quick than the Windows XP that was loaded on there and it also was more responsive than XP.

One thing I hated about Vista is that things were complicated. Vista was like your overprotective mom. If I even right clicked on something I shouldn’t have, Vista had an issue with me.

Windows 7 has fine-tuned the security aspect and it’s a lot more bearable.

My only gripe about 7 is the fact that it does not play nicely with Windows 2003 roaming profiles. Vista didn’t have a good time with that either. It takes the existing profile and converts it to a new profile name %username%.V2. It works roaming wise, but, I wish I had the backward compatibility with Windows XP profiles. I love my roaming profiles. Faced with this new challenge, I went out and grabbed myself a copy of VMware’s Virtual Server 2. I created two virtual machines, one is my production computer that I use and the other VM is just a test copy of XP. I’m posting this blog via my XP Virtual Machine running off Windows 7.

I noticed a speed difference with the two operating systems running, so I added another 2GBs of RAM to my laptop. I only was able to use ~2.93GBs because I was using a 32bit OS, so I copied my VMs off my laptop and installed Windows 7 64bit. It works even better and I now have two operating systems running and there is absolutely no speed difference between the two of them.

I love how Windows 7 is running; it’s a lot better than any operating system I ever have used. It’s just great and I enjoy every aspect of it. Microsoft has hit the nail on the head with this one.

Windows 7 is due out in October.

Screw you, Facebook.

I’ve been saying for years that Facebook is better than My Space, but Facebook has sunk to a new low for me.

Recently, I started catching up with a friend using Facebook’s Inbox service. Not a big deal, we sent a few messages back and forth (in fact, I talk to the majority of my friends on Facebook this way). I have always sent messages and in fact, a lot in a short amount of time.

Last night, I was doing the same thing. I havn’t touched my inbox in about 2 weeks and decided to start talking to someone again. Well, we talked. And talked. And talked.

Then I got a warning saying that I was exhibiting suspicious or inapprorpiate behavior that “others may find annoying”. I thought it was because I was using short sentences that may have sounded like a Spam bot or something but, alas, I was wrong. Before I had a chance to tell my friend to email me or something, they BLOCKED ME FROM SENDING MESSAGES.

This infuriated me, so I waited 24 hours to see if my account would be unblocked. It hasn’t. The specific error message was

You are blocked from sending messages due to continued overuse of this feature

Your failure to comply with an earlier warning has resulted in this block.

Continued misuse of Facebook’s features may result in your account being permanently disabled.

Which of the following links describes what you were trying to do? Clicking on a link will take you to more information on how to use Facebook’s features.

What the heck. So I click the I’m chatting with a friend link and it brings me to their help center on the subject.

It goes on to say that

Facebook has several features in place to limit the potential for abusive or annoying behavior on the site. One of these features is a cap on the speed and frequency at which a user sends messages to other users while using the Inbox.

Please note that even if all of your conversations were legitimate interactions with friends, our Inbox message service is not a chat client, and should not be treated as such.

As a recommended alternative, we suggest that you check out the Facebook Chat feature, which allows you to exchange real-time messages with your confirmed Facebook friends.

First off, I can see a spam bot or some one’s account getting hacked and seeing them being blocked, but, when a user is sending back replies to me, how does this justify “annoying or abusive behavior” on the site??

Second, they tell me to use their Facebook chat. I don’t want to use their Facebook chat.

I specifically lurk around Facebook and don’t want every person sending me a “Facebook IM” that has me as a friend.

I also am annoyed by three factors by this Facebook IM:

  1. No Opera Support
    1. My browser (up until recently) didn’t have Facebook IM and it works buggy in my browser.
  2. I don’t leave my tabs open for very long
    1. I don’t leave my browser window or tabs open very long. The Facebook toolbar at the bottom of my browser gets messed up when I have more than one tab open.
  3. It doesn’t notify me on new messages.
    1. Well, it does—sort of. It tells you there is one, but, it does not make a sound, flash my browser window or anything else like MSN works. If I wanted to use a chat client to talk to my friends, I’d use MSN or another chat client. Not some piece of crap coding off their website that wont’ integrate well with my Trilly.

Furthermore, I feel Facebook is discriminating against me and forcing me to use their chat. I do not want to use their chat and am not a repeat offender of their inbox rules. I don’t come home and send out 43 messages daily, I did last night in the first time ever.

There should be a different system in place for this.

Until then, Facebook, you’re ON NOTICE:

OpenID Should Die

EDIT: I should clarify that it’s not OpenID that should die, it’s MyVideoop. I’ve made corrections below to reflect this:

Lately, I’ve been having a lot of problems with OpenID by MyVideoop. The only place I really use this piece of garbage is on Twitter Feed. Twitter Feed, is the service responsible for updating my Twitter status (and subsequently my Facebook) whenever I post a blog.

I decided that I want to start using my Twitter Feed to start adding more things on my feed such as my Last.FM music scrobbles. I just wanted my recently played track to show up on my Twitter/Facebook every two hours to spruce up my Twitter.

Simple enough task, right? Wrong. I tried logging into Twitter Feed. It re-directs me to OpenID where I have to log in.

OpenID Videoop doesn’t use a password for “stronger security”. Instead, I have to pick images off their checkerboard of images (there’s like 12 images with categories, dog, cats, music, people, etc). Strike one against OpenID Videoop.

Well, I don’t use OpenID Videoop anywhere else but Twitter Feed. I always forget what images I have and guess what: The images change every time. Why can’t they stay the same? Strike two against OpenID Videoop.

I hit the “I forgot my picture combinations because your site sucks” button to send me an “authorization code” to verify it’s me. I enter it in, I pick my new images, and then hit save. I test it and it works.

This time I figure I’m going to beat the system. I wrote my three images down in order in an encrypted txt file for the next time I forget those damn images.

I set my Twitter Feed up for Last.FM and discovered it was posting URLs (I didn’t want this) so I tried logging in a half hour ago to fix this.

It forgot that it was me (could be related to me switching computers, but, roaming profiles should have kept my cookie, etc) so I tried logging in again. 

It said my combination was wrong, so I opened up my encrypted txt file to find my combination. I entered them in and guess what: It didn’t work!

Getting ready to throw something, I decided one more time to log in. This time, it flagged my account and wanted me to re-activate and start over FOR THE SECOND TIME TODAY.

I clicked the “re-send my code to me because OpenID Videoop is dumb” button and it gave me an error: Error sending out-of-band password. The final strike for OpenID Videoop.

Great, just what I needed. I can’t edit my Twitter Feed because it flagged my account because the site is so sucky in the first place.
Send me my email, OpenID Videoop. Until then, you’re on my own “On Notice Board”