a.k.a. Little L

🎵 Listening to Jonathan Livingston Seagull soundtrack for the first time in 40+ years(!) A quiet and contemplative album by Neil Diamond. 👍

We’ll-produced and sounds good and modern-ish. (That is, clean, has air and good performances)

Had to make a late night run to my office to drop off some tech for the morning crew. This guy was out in the back field behind my office. He kept an eye on me as I walked to my car. I won’t lie, I was a little nervous. I said “Hello!” and that only seemed to encourage him.

Taking down Christmas decorations. Recent winds blew down this door and half a tree.

I’ve been looking for this CD, “Live Dog 98” for years! I have never seen it in a record store. I’ve never seen it available on the artist’s or label’s website.

It’s lived for years at the top of my “CDs to Look For” note, the note I use to refresh my memory just before I go into a record store.

Like the great white whale, it had become more of a legend than an actual CD.

So imagine my surprise when I opened the gift from my sister.

I was so taken by the surprise, that I didn’t even notice the autograph on the front cover!

In the photo, above, I have the Live Dog CD on top of one of my other prized Bob Mould CDs, a promotional version of his first solo album, “Workbook.”

🎵

Beautiful and Delicate 🎵

music.apple.com

Of course, an excellent recording by ECM. Nice space, intimate and airy. Really good performance, too.

This is a color photograph

If you recall the format of Hypercritical (which I think set the pattern for many subsequent podcasts), John and Dan would talk about a topic, and then in subsequent episode, John would follow up with a correction or additions.

Luke Burrage created a nifty meta-podcast where he organized and collected snippets from episodes of Hypercritical into related topics.

Brilliant!

Just upgraded to MarsEdit 5. Using the new Micropost feature. I like this little window! I like the Markdown formatting!

Thanks for all your hard work @danielpunkass!

Beds are Sleeping

My current mood.

Hello all from the Pacific NW corner of the US! It’s partly cloudy, 39 degrees. Chilly.

I’m saving up for my next iPad. I’m 99% certain that I’m going to get a 9.7” Pro.

For the past year, I’ve been using an iPad mini 2, and I really like it. I could do a lot of my work on a mini. Before the mini, I had used a 9.7” for a couple years. It was indispensable for what I do (mainly tech support, photography).

When I first started using the mini, I wasn’t sure if it would work. I missed the real estate. My older eyes disliked the squinting.

But, now, about a year later, my 9.7” feels like a brick! (admittedly, my 9.7” is a 3rd gen, so it’s the 1st get Retina, and was just sluggish and heavy)

But, I’m thinking that my next will be a 9.7” Pro, because I want the speed and power of the pro line.

A 10.5” iPad, while bigger, might be a very appealing size. Two iPad mini’s? Yeah. I’d take that.

Why would Apple release a 10.5" iPad?: ""

(Via .)

NAYA was closed today, due to snow. When I tried to remote in to check my servers, I was not able to see all of them. So, I drove in check on things.

The roads were covered with packed snow, but, not too treacherous. (if you drove sanely, that is).

Fortunately, someone had driven through the parking lot, which allowed me to get up to the door.

The front “yard” is covered with snow, and beautiful.

Ted is setting up one of the custom case PCs that had been set up for FreeNAS. He’s installing W7.

It will be connected to the big TV in the IT Office.

This will enable us to put a PC on the big screen.

• This will have Windows 7
• MS Office
• Itunes
• Windows Media
• Adobe Reader
• Bookmark the Merakis

I’m wondering if we should use Wordpress or Igloo for internal intranet.

So far, multiple successes.

Effective meeting, where I learned that I was not stupid.

Setup new users and made them happy.

Fixed odd printer issue.

Note: The solution, outlined, below, resolved the problem. I had to log into her machine with my credentials to make the changes. Even if I supplied my credentials while she was logged in, it would not let me restart the spooler.

Description:

Ashley reported that she didn't have any printers

I visited her desk, and that was true. (Surprising, because she had them in the past).

I looked at the Print Spooler service, and it was not running.

I restarted, and printers appeared.

Ashely tried to print, and no printers appeared in her list.

The spooler had stopped again.

Found several suggestions:

Unplug the HP at her desk, and perform the following:

I was having the same issue with a Dell system (Windows 7) and HP printer, Arthurs steps ABOVE fixed the issue. The directory is hidden so if you are not displaying hidden system folders than you should just copy and paste this path into windows explorer: "C:\Windows\System32\spool\PRINTERS" delete any files in this directory, then unplug the printer, restart the print spooler service and plug the printer back in. Worked like a charm for me. Thanks ARTHUR!

Check for the spooler whether it’s turn on in services
1.       Start > Start Search > services.msc
2.       If spooler is not on, turn it on. If after turn on, it turn off automatically, proceed to step 3, if can turn on go to step 4
3.       Start > Start Search > C:\Windows\System32\spoolsv.exe (Right click > Properties)
4.       Click on Security Tab > Advanced > Owner. Take ownership of the file and give full permission to the file. Once done, close everything and try to start the service again.
5.       Start > Start Search > cmd (Run as Admin)
6.       del /Q C:\WINDOWS\system32\spool\PRINTERS\*.* > Press Enter
7.       Once done, try to start the spooler in Services

I finally got my spooler problem solved. Restarting spooler services does no good on its own, finding the underlying cause is the trick. I deleted the files in these two folders:
c:\windows\system32\spooler\printers  and
c:\windows\system32\spooler\drivers
Then I removed the USB cable on each for 2-3 seconds and reinstalled. Then I restared spooler services and viola--all printers now work. It only took 2 hours of research and trial and error. The one thing I did that may have helped was one suggestion to change the ownership of the file as outlined by Freak05 in a post above. Could be a combination of these steps ultimately fixed the problem.

[source: [social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/wi...](https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windows/en-US/fd7f46d3-baa1-4a38-9ad3-dec5426d9297/print-spooler-keeps-stopping-on-windows-7?forum=w7itproperf) ]

I’ve noticed that one of the teachers always uses an external keyboard with her MacBook.

I thought she was being particular, but then someone mentioned that some of her keys don’t work.

I’ve met with this teacher multiple times, about other subjects, and she never mentioned this. Yes, I know I’m busy, but you can tell me about it. I may not be able to act immediately, but I’ll add it to my To Do list. 

I know she is being considerate of my time (she sees me running around all over the place), but I’d rather know about it than have her dealing with a broken thing.

It’s possible that it is an easy fix. 

I did stop by and blow out the keyboard. That helped a few keys.

But there are still a couple that aren’t responding.

I found a support article over at Apple with some good keyboard troubleshooting tips.

I found a very nifty poster/graphic that shows the different types of PC slots, plugs and interfaces.

Super handy!

[sonic840.deviantart.com/art/Compu...](http://sonic840.deviantart.com/art/Computer-hardware-poster-1-7-111402099)

I just plugged the WASP WCS3905 bar code reader into a Raspberry Pi that I have at my desk.

A few seconds later, I heard the handheld device beep. I didn’t have to install any drivers or other software.

I launched the built-in text editor, Leafpad. Then, I aimed the bar code reader at a bar code. BEEP! The serial number on the box appeared in the text document!

The WCS3905 had been used with our inventory system. But, the inventory laptop crashed about a year or so ago, and it’s been just gathering dust.

I’m trying to get a better hold of all the tech that goes through my office, to be more organized, accountable. This will be a huge boon for me. I can now start scanning hardware as it comes in, capturing information quickly.

I’ve been thinking about building a little inventory control database, and this will be a great part of that.

I’ll go into more detail, later, but I’m grabbing this link for a script that will give me a listing of the Mail & Public Folder sizes.

Reporting Storage Size in Microsoft Exchange 

This will be more efficient that poking around and grabbing my calculator.

Oh man! This will be a very handy tool to have.

At work I use Apple Remote Desktop to manage the school’s computers.

One of the features of Remote Desktop is the ability to run shell scripts on any or all of the machines.

Sometimes, my shell-script-fu is weak, but I know how to do it with Applescript.

But, Remote Desktop doesn’t allow me to run an Applescript in the same way. That is, I can’t send a string of Applescript commands to a machine over the network, and have it do the bidding of the Applescript.

I have created some Applescripts and I’ve saved them as applications, which I then trigger from Remote Desktop. But, sometimes, I need to just do a one-off task, and don’t want to write the script, save it as an application, copy the application to all the Macs, and then run the application.

In the past, I’ve seen ways to wrap an Applescript in a shell script, but I haven’t used that before.

I have a task now, where I want to have the computers tell me their names. I was thinking of modifying a script that creates a text document, identifying the computer by name, and then sends a print job from each computer.

But, I thought, what about this fancy Notification Center. Can I tap into that?

Turns out the answer is yes!

How can I trigger a Notification Center notification from an AppleScript or shell script?

(Via Ask Different as Stack Exchange.)

There are times where my only tool is my iPad. As such, it limits me for testing code.

When I’m at work or at home, I can connect to a server. In those cases, I use Diet Coda. Or I jump onto my laptop and use Coda.

It looks like WriteCodeOnline gives me a way to test some code. This might be interesting.

I was working on a user’s MacBook Air, trying to resolve a kernel panic.

I had been working in their account (the only account on the machine). I shifted my attention to something else.

After being unattended, it locked the screen.  The user was not around, and I was trying to figure out the version of the OS. Looking at the logs, it looked like it a networking library was missing or damaged. I suspected that a system update would fix this. But, how to figure out the OS version, when I couldn’t log in?

I thought I could reboot into Single User Mode and find it that way. 

Sure ‘nuff!

Here’s the string: 

sw_vers | grep -0 '[0=9]*\.[0-9]*\.[0-9]*'

It was running 10.9.2. I restarted the system, which then told me it had updates to install. I clicked on “Install Updates and Reboot.” A few minutes later, the Air restarted. I held command-S, and booted back into Single User Mode.

Ran the sw_vers again, and it replied “10.9.4"

Sweet!

(I had discovered the utility of SUM a few years ago, when I trying to troubleshoot lost user accounts. It’s been a very handy tool on some of the more odd or difficult issues, since)