Category: Computers

Be it a discussion of software or hardware; it will be under here.

This morning while I was booted into windows and checking on the weather; I noticed that there was a high chance of thunderstorms. Having had enough trouble of late with my computer, I decided to shut it down while I was at work1. When I got home from work this evening, I let it try booting into Linux again as I wanted to grab the exact errors I’ve been getting so I could do some googling for a solution. Much to my surprise, it booted straight into Linux without a problem. Then I ran YOU and had it reload the latest kernel from SuSE and this time when I rebooted to complete the install; it came up perfectly. *schweet*

Of course, staying home to fix my computer means I missed another Mindbridge meeting but I doubt they’ll really miss me there as usually I just sit there silently. Hopefully next month, I’ll be able to make it to a meeting again And come to think of it, I probably won’t make it to next month’s meeting as that’s awful close to my wedding day. *shrug* You win some, you lose some.

1 Usually, it’s up & running either grabbing new, fansubbed anime via BitTorrent or transcoding video files for burning to disc.

This afternoon while I was home for lunch, I noticed that SuSEWatcher was showing this icon: There are new security updates available; hardware detection is idle.

This means that there are new security updates available. I launched YOU to get the new updates and noticed it was an updated kernel. I didn’t think much beyond that and let YOU do it’s thing. But after I rebooted I couldn’t get into my Linux install; it looks like some of the kernel modules didn’t get installed correctly. Specifically the one for the filesystem that my harddrive is formatted in. *grumpf* I’m doing research online to figure out how to revert back to a previous kernel to fix this.

That was the bad news. The good news is I got a bit ornery with my iPod not syncing with iTunes & fought with it again. After getting several BSODs, I just randomly decided to plug the iPod back into the onboard firewire port and for whatever reason it worked! Wheee! Now if I could just get my Linux install fixed; I’d be a happy camper…. At least until the next computer screw up!

Lately, I’ve been having problems with iTunes seeing my iPod and letting me transfer new songs to it. I’ve fought with this issue before but I don’t know what’s causing it now. I tried moving the Firewire cable to another of the Firewire jacks on my computer but that wasn’t helping. Then this morning, I booted into Windows to get the latest freebies from iTunes and it (sort of) detected the iPod correctly.

Initially, it acted as though I was attaching a new iPod, but then it was able to see all my playlists and other songs on it. As an added bonus, iTunes also automatically forwarded me to page where I could download a free music sampler. Most likely, you too can get the album by going to: iTunes New Music Sampler (Atlantic/Lava Edition)

Recently, I’ve been experiencing some problems getting iTunes & Windows to read/write from/to my iPod. Sometimes, both Windows & iTunes could see it but even then I could only transfer maybe 1 or 2 files before I’d start having problems. And occassionally, Windows should BSOD on me. I started browsing the Apple forums and found out I wasn’t the only one having this problem. But I’ve got an older iPod and my PC has onboard Firewire ports that I use to connect my iPod to. Finding somebody else reporting the exact same problems I was having was simple, but most times the solution mentioned was to switch from using USB connections to Firewire. After some more hunting around in the forums; I noticed that most people recommended using an Adaptec FireConnect 4300 to hook up your iPod to your computer. And yesterday while shopping for my brother’s birthday present at BestBuy; I noticed they had the card in the store. I thought about it but held off; as I hadn’t really tried out GTKPod under my Linux install yet. It started to work but my computer ended up freezing solid. I couldn’t SSH into it or get it to switch to another session to close out and had to power my computer off/on.1

So when that didn’t work; I decided I’d go back to Best Buy and get the card. I am ever glad that I did. Hooking up the iPod to the FireConnect 4300 works like a charm. Neither Windows or iTunes had any trouble reading/writing from/to the iPod and it feels like the music files get transfered over faster too. So if you’re having read/write problems with your iPod and you’re not using an Adaptec FireConnect 4300; buy one now!

1 I don’t blame GTKPod for this, as I’ve heard the 2.6.8 kernel has issues with Firewire drives and I am currently running a 2.6.8 kernel.

Bah, I’m still a bit torked off about yesterday. At work1, there’s been a person who keeps sending up emails with the wrong code in the subject line. We use these codes to route the issues to the correct person and putting the wrong code on the email can mean a delay of at least a week before the issue gets looked at. Well, this same idjit2 sent an email asking for an update on one of those issues. Since I was running a process at the time; I looked over the issue, found it was mislableled, forwarded it over to the correct person and then spent probably 2 hours writing up a diplomatic response explaining the difference between two of the codes we use.
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