Category Archives: Uncategorized

Free Hold Music

At a couple points in the past I’ve attempted to scrounge around on the Internet for royalty free hold music that we could use at my place of work.  I must admit that I was never successful, but I also must admit that I can’t remember why.  If I had to guess I would say that it was for reasons similar to my hunt for royalty free artwork: the quality was poor, or the license allowing for it’s free use was dubious at best.

When looking for royalty free music there’s two hurdles: is the song itself public domain, and is the recording.  The former is easy enough as anything more than a hundred years old is pretty safe, but the latter is quite tricky since recordings have been known to fade in and out of ‘public domain’ access.

However a vendor that I called on had quite horrible hold music and I was pondering their logic of torturing their customers thus when I realized that their work around was to record MIDI music of public domain songs.  Well ‘song’ was more like it, and the MIDI chip they used sounded like it had been resurrected from the mid-80s, but the approach was novel!

A better approach than the one they used is to use classical harpsichord music (the tinny sound of that instrument doesn’t lose much in the translation to MIDI) and then use one of the commercial MIDI-to-WAV/MP3 converters (or if your so given, record the MIDI output on your computer).

Food at the Ballgame

I recently attended an event at Progressive Field as a guest of Sirius Computer Solutions to watch a Cleveland Indians game. I’m thankful to Sirius for inviting me along, even if some of the speakers that they brought in left something to be desired, however there was something else at the game that was beyond their control that I didn’t care for: the food.

The food looks great, but after one bite I was reminded of a game I attended late last year at Progressive Field where I ate a good deal, but after the fact realized that in my speed of eating I had missed the fact that I didn’t really care for what I had eaten. Part of where this stems from is my part time hobby of cooking. That’s not much of a hobby in my mind, but I’ve met enough people who don’t cook much or at all to know that my limited cooking knowledge can bring to light things that I would probably gloss over if I lacked the little bit of knowledge that I have. I’ll start with the rubens that they served at the game since it’s a great example of what they do wrong there:

Progressive Field Rubens

It might not look it, but the presentation on this was actually very nice. The corned beef was ‘real’ meat and not ‘flaked and formed’, the bread was a nice marbled rye and the portions were quite (and some would say ‘too’) generous. However, the whole experiment suffered from flaws that makes one think that food served at Progressive Field begins with good ingredients and ends with looking good and not much in between. The grilled bread tastes like it was fried in mildly used fryer oil, the beef had been seared, concentrating the taste and saltiness of what is already a strong, salted meat, and a layer of soulless sauerkraut made the sandwich too salty to consume and ill tasting at that.

It’s as if no one bothered to taste the stuff .  Needless to say other items pulled the same stunt:

  • Brownies that someone obviously put a lot of time into crafting, but lacking in sufficient cocoa to taste chocolatey enough to cover up the oil (not butter) base.
  • Pretty sandwiches with too much thick, bland bread that washes out that taste of the pleasant and mild meats and cheeses that they contain.
  • I recall a cheese platter from last year that had a big spread of European ‘style’ cheeses, with exactly one cheese that was worth anything.

And those were the star performers, other less desirable entrees were the ridiculously oversized hotdogs made from nothing but salt and grease and pizza from Pizza Pan (seriously, is the worst pizza joint in town the best you can do?).  In fairness though what makes me truly sore is that by and large it appears that they use great ingrediants, but the execution of assembling them is so awful.

I seem to remember someone telling me that the kitchen used for the luxury boxes is the same one used for the elegant Terrace Club, but I’d more likely guess that ‘box’ food comes from the depths of the lower levels, or maybe the Terrace Club staff is too busy making the great, elegant dishes for their main restaurant to bother with the stuff for the luxury boxes.

Either way, vendors don’t have to bother to invite me back there as the food is….disgusting; and I’m not a picky eater.

(If anyone is doing a Browns game though….oh my goodness that’s good stuff!)

When Upgrading Equals Lost Features

I remember an old version of Exchange had the ILS service and upon ‘upgrading’ I noticed that the feature had been eliminated, and nothing much added to the package, apart from management headaches (“You want to flush the queues? Sorry!”). For SMBs, the highpoint of Microsoft Exchange was version 5.5, though the RPC over HTTP feature which was added in 2003 is a notable exception.  I never got a chance to really use ILS so I didn’t really miss it, but I thought the functionality was promising and it provided a nice feature beyond a generic IMAP/SMTP setup.

A little bit ago I upgraded our Exchange 2007 to 2010.  Although we got the upgrade ‘for free’ via SA, the main driver for the migration was so that I could allow an Apple Mac user to access file shares via OWA (Outlook Web Access/Application).  With such a nice feature it didn’t even occur to me that Microsoft would dump it, so when I read up and learned that A) OWA on Exchange 2007 only supports Premium OWA on Internet Explorer and B) Network file share access is only available under Premium OWA and C) Exchange 2010 supports all platforms/browsers under Premium OWA, ergo D) Upgrade Exchange to 2010 to allow my (important) Mac user to access file shares via Premium OWA.

But alas no; even though the Exchange 2010 console appears to support file share access, it has in fact been removed:

OWA removed features

I browsed the ‘”What’s new” for Exchange 2010, but unfortunately I don’t see anything in there that I can hang my hat on that makes it worthwhile to have spent a weekend upgrading it.  There’s the advantage that I’m now very early in the upgrade cycle so it will be some time before I have to upgrade again, but that’s just upgrading for the sake of upgrading (which is not without it’s appeal, but still…).

Carriage Belt Replacement in the DesignJet 450C

These points are based off of the instructions posted here. I did not write that procedure and do not claim to be any sort of expert on DesignJet repair (which will be apparent in a moment). I also got the HP service manual from here (should be a PDF link).

Many years ago I started into the IT business as a hardware repair tech. Part of the duties of this position included repairing HP LaserJet II and III (yes, that long ago) so I wasn’t afraid to tackle this repair job. However, I should note that once I got the 450C halfway disassembled I realized that I didn’t have a ‘spare’ waiting for me at the office if I goofed up along the way so there wasn’t any margin for error. I will note now that these are expensive machines (unlike the now nearly disposable laser printers) and if you feel uncomfortable repairing it you’ll be better off calling someone in!

Anyway, I depend on the printer I am repairing for network diagrams, but unfortunately the plotter doesn’t fall under the purview of the same cost center that employs me so I couldn’t command anybody to have it repaired. If the cost center in question wanted to leave it unrepaired for years that was entirely up to them. At this moment however I am working on some rather involved network architecture plans and really needed the DesignJet to be up, so I took it upon myself to fix it.

As a note, as I discovered later that our DesignJet 450C is the ‘E’ sized version which uses a belt with part number C4706-60082. I had initially ordered the ‘D’ sized belt by mistake (part number C4705-60082). I acquired my new belt from our sales rep Judy Nerone over at Microage.

Before beginning work I unplugged the data and power cables:

Next I removed the cover by first popping out the right most tab and sliding the cover to the left in order to clear the other tabs:

(Old plastic alert: these are old systems and the plastics, which were of the brittle variety to begin with, are very prone to breaking. Be as careful as you can (most of the steps that involve plastics usually require some decent force) and have some strong glue on hand).

Remove the power button.

Remove the roll feed supports (if necessary) by removing the single torx 20 screw from both sides and sliding the arms out.

(Note: I had to go down to Home Depot to pick up the torx 20. Ido havea torx 15 leftover from my Compaq days).

Remove the right cover gently as the control panel is attached to it (the left one is less of worry and comes off the same way). I really had to force the front tab but I was able to remove it without any tools.

The procedure I am referencing says to remove the control panel and leave the cable attached, however I opted to lift up the retaining tab on the control panel cable and disconnect it from the unit. The reason being that I wanted to minimize the cables contact with the sharp medal of the frame. If you do it like this, when reassembling the plotter make sure to reattach the cable before reattaching the spittoon since that will maximize the working area.

What it looks like so far. Note the poor condition of the belt which was obviously suffering from some severe dry rot. In this picture I’ve also loosened the white trailing ribbon from some it’s clips.

Next we have to remove the spittoon. Note the cables attached to the spittoon (#1). The screw which mounts the spitton to the frame is #2. #3 shows the cutter, when reattaching the spittoon make sure the cutter is in the same place.

Next remove the encoder strip. Take special care with this part as it tells the carriage assembly where it is at. There are two (I believe 1/4″) nuts on the right (pictured) and a torx screw on the left. Both mounting locations feature holes stamped through delicate medal. Although it did not happen to me (fortunately), I can see where it would be real easy to rip this; on the right side especially. After undoing the nuts on the right, push (hard) on the front part of the medal bracket that it is mounted to(to the left) and there should be enough slack in the strip to disconnect it. Note the third arrow on the right, take special note of how the end of the strip is supposed to mount when reassembling. I’ll also point out that I’ve removed the trailing white data ribbon from its clips and put it around the back right corner of the plotter.

The bracket that held the encoding strip on the right side is then removed by removing one torx screw.

The cutting arm is then removed.

After removing the inks(and taping paper over the heads) I then removed the carriage assembly. At this point the defective belt can be removed from the carriage assembly

Although not required, I found the trailing ribbon cable much easier to disconnect from the carriage assembly after removing it off the rails. I was only able to do this because the belt was so shredded that it wasn’t even connected to the pulley or motor; otherwise you’d want to disconnect it from the carriage assembly before removing the carriage assembly to remove the belt. (I’ll note as well that I cleaned ink off of everything).

To remove the belt push the motor (#1, on the right side) in towards the left. Where #2 is you should see the spring you’ll be pushing in against.

At this point the printer is disassembled as far as it’s going to go and the new belt just has to be added (put on carriage assembly, then pulley, then motor) and the unit reassembled. Note though that I had to air hose out the unit since it was covered with shredded belt, and I had to scrape ink out the belt grooves on the motor and (especially) the pulley. In fact I had to remove the pulley on the left side (sorry, no pics) by pushing on a release clip that is beneath it under the frame. The pulley assembly consists of the wheel, axle, and a washer.

(Update 2/9/2016: I forgot to mention that this article is old enough that I actually had this happen to me again.  I have some nicer photos that I keep meaning to post; it’s on the list.  I figured I’d also mention that I have to keep an old 32bit server around since it is the only one with the original HP driver that lets me compile the job in memory on the PC, since even at it’s max, the printer memory cannot handle a lot of jobs.  I’m still surprised that this gets as much traffic as it does since so many moderately newer plotters can be had for cheap on EBay, if you’re fortunate enough to be near someone who is selling one).

Head in the Clouds

Cloud computing is the ultimate vendor lock-in strategy.

Before the ‘cloud’, vendors had to rely on poorly written software that would work to extract maintenance fees from customers who were looking to make the software they had already purchased operable.  Now though, vendors don’t even have to worry about that!  Like a landlord over a renter who lives on the top floor and owns too much furniture, cloud tech vendors only have to wait until the customer has a sufficient block of data or resources in the off-site app and then they can put them on the treadmill of increasing ‘tech rent’.