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Twitter, Twhirl, Adobe Air and uninstall

I installed twhirl a couple of months ago. Today it stopped working telling me that Adobe Air was broken.

There is nothing on Vista to let me uninstall, repair or otherwise tinker with Air and its applications. I found this timely blog post on uninstall:

http://blog.flashmech.net/2008/05/this-is-how-you-uninstall-adobe-air/

Quoted from his email, here’s how you uninstall Adobe AIR if it does not appear in the Add/Remove Programs control panel:

Download the latest installer and then pass it the “-uninstall” flag from the command line, like so:

AdobeAIRInstaller.exe –uninstall

Worked like a champ.

Vonage

We switched over our phone providers when we moved.

Here’s how it looks so far:

Utah:

Local – Qwest – $45 per month
LD/Intl – AT&T – $75 per month
DSL – Covad – $130 per month

Washington:

DSL – Covad – $130 per month
VOIP – Vonage – $30 per month

Most of our phone service was international to the UK – we made very few local or long distance calls. Now with Vonage we’re getting those as part of our plan.

The other big saving is in killing the local service. I got Covad with naked DSL (also known as a dry line) – so there’s no dial tone on the phone – just data.

Wireless

The wireless network is re-configured and running.

Finally I got the wireless network, IPsec and wi-fi security configured to let authorised laptops be part of the private backbone. No more uploading photos to the NAS server only when docked!

I had to swap out the old wireless router – an old Netgear – it would randomly drop DHCP offer packets from the backbone to the bridged wireless network. Even the online docs from Netgear say it’s problematic.

I upgraded to a new 802.11n router – works perfectly and gives great throughput.

The old Netgear is now the guest, non-backbone access network. Wireless access for guests and family without letting them loose on the backbone.

ITIL v3 Diploma

It’s ITIL reading time again.

Following on from the ITIL v2 Managers Certificate I am now working on the next step for the ITIL v3 equivalent.

ITIL_CREDIT_SCHEME_LRG

It’s been difficult finding the details – but what is now clear is that the route to the ITIL v3 Diploma is via the v3 Manager Bridge training.

To that end I’m off to sunny Brisbane in July (in the middle of the Queensland winter) to sit a 4.5 day Manager Bridge course and then a multiple-choice exam. The pass score for the exam is something like 80% – so I’m reading the ITIL v3 books – yes all five of them.

WordPress and WPG updates

Finally I got to re-rack and power up the servers after the move (that’s another post!)

Obviously being offline for a few weeks meant that there were updates to be applied.

One nice update that was available is the new version of WPG2 – the integration of WordPress and Gallery 2. The project is here http://www.wpg2.org/

WPG2 was updated to version 3.0.6 – which integrates with the new security model (password hashing) of WordPress 2.5. The update has been a few months in the works – kudos to ozgreg and the rest of the hackers on getting this out of the door.

I did the double upgrade to WordPress 2.5.1 and WPG2 3.0.6 – and so far everything is looking great on the main family blog site.

I’ll let this sit for a few days – and then update the other sites.

Microsoft internal videos

One thing that was new to me was the number of ‘internal’ promo videos made by each Microsoft BU. There seems to be a real drive to fill headcount by recruiting and poaching enocuraging people to move across.

During my New Employee Orientation (NEO) this was one of the better videos – for Entertainment and Devices (E&D). It’s pretty good; made better by the use of a cover of Girl from Mars by Ash. (Takes me back to the early 90s!)

 

What’s playing for the pack & load

I’ll keep updating this.

Tracks of the weekend so far:

The Ting Tings – That’s Not My Name (Tom Neville Remix)
Goldfrapp – Ooh La La
Happy Mondays – 24 Hour Party People (Jon Carter Remix)
Colin Meloy – lead vocalist of The Decemberists – live
Durutti Column – Sketch for Summer

Ah – Colin Meloy is playing in Seattle on our first weekend up there. What are the chances of a late pass with no babysitter?

The Durutti Column track is from their first album “The Return of the Durutti Column” – I first got a copy of this over twenty years ago on cassette. My only CD copy is on disc 1 of the FAC400 Palatine 4 CD compilation.