I know, catchy title isn’t it. Last week I finished Administering Cisco Unified Communication Manager 7 & Unity Connection class in order to help with my overall understanding of our telecom infrastructure at the school district. It was a great class on really filled in the fundamentals I was missing. More importantly, on one of the labs, I noticed a message that CUCM was running under VM. I did some more research and Cisco actually allows this!

When I got home on Friday evening, freshly excited about the class, I grabbed the CUCM 7 media and fired up a new fusion VM. Settings are as follows:

1. If you have the iso, click Continue without disc and then select the disc image, otherwise insert the CUCM7 installation disc
2. The system will detect RHEL4 which is correct, press continue to use the disc, then continue again at the OS selection screen
3. Uncheck Use Easy Install (don’t we all wish), click continue
4. Click Customize Settings
   1. Sharing: Disabled
   2. Applications: Menu Enabled (don’t think this matters)
   3. Processors & RAM: 2 CPU 2048 RAM (this does matter)
   4. Display: 3D disabled (doubt it matters)
   5. Printers: Enabled, match default (doesn’t matter)
   6. Autoprotect: Disabled (doesn’t matter)
   7. Network: NAT (more on this later)
   8. Hard Disks: IDE Disk, 80GB, uncheck Pre-allocate disk space, check split into 2GB files (80GB is necessary, I think IDE is)
   9. Everything else, defaults
5. Start it up
6. Media Check: Your choice, I choose No and all was fine
7. vmware Found screen: Agree (a big thanks to Cisco for allowing this, they didn’t have to)
8. Product Deployment Selection: Cisco Unified Communications Manager – OK
9. Proceed with Install: Yes
10. Platform Installation Wizard: Proceed
11. Apply Patch: No (haven’t tried this yet)
12. Import Windows Data: No
13. Basic Install: Continue
14. Timezone Configuration: America/Denver for me
15. Auto Negotiation Configuration: Yes
16. MTU Configuration: No
17. DHCP: No
18. Static Network Configuration – This is where things get a little complicated. Start a terminal session and type ifconfig. Note the IP address for vmnet8. Mine was 192.168.223.1. This is the NAT network for Fusion. IP addresses .3-.127 are statically assignable. Thanks to Michael McLaughlin for this information. Note that if you do not setup the network correctly, the system will not install and will die with a Security configuration failed (1) error.
    
    1. Hostname: FusionCCM7
    2. IP Address: 192.168.x.3 where x is the third octet of the IP address you discovered in step 18
    3. IP Mask: 255.255.255.0
    4. GW Address: 192.168.x.2 where x is the third octet of the IP address you discovered in step 18
    5. Press OK
19. DNS Client Configuration: Yes
    1. Primary DNS: 192.168.x.2 where x is the third octet of the IP address you discovered in step 18
    2. Secondary DNS: blank
    3. Domain: cucm.local
20. Administration Login Configuration
    1. Administrator ID: ccmadmin
    2. Password: c123sco (a mix of letters and numbers is required)
    3. Confirm Password: c123sco
21. Certificate Information – Your locale information
22. First Node Configuration: Yes
23. Network Time Protocol Client Configuration: Yes
    1. NTP Server 1: 64.90.182.55
24. Database Access Security Configuration
    1. Security Password: c123sco
    2. Confirm Security Password: c123sco
25. SMTP Host Configuration: No
26. Application User Configuration
    1. Application User Username: ccmadmin
    2. Application User Password: c123sco
    3. Confirm Application User Password: c123sco
27. Platform Configuration Complete: OK

It took me about an hour for the full install and then I had my system up and running. Enjoy!

About a week ago I took the plunge to upgrade my MythTV system to .22 using Mythbuntu. My original backed and bedroom front end were getting on in years and it was time to take advantage of the new package. In order to preserve as much as possible and provide quick back out in-case things went south, I purchased a new 500GB HD to put the OS on. It’s overkill but space is cheap and I got a great deal on it.

The other big feature of MythTV .22 is support for hardware acceleration on certain NVidia cards. I looked up VDPAU and selected the least expensive card that supported all of the features. I found a great deal on a  PNY VCG8600GXXB GeForce 8600 GT on NewEgg for a mere $25 after MIR.

When everything arrived, I set aside a full day for the upgrade. I moved the whole MythBuntu install onto a USB flash disk using Unetbootin, backed up the old database and the etc folder, disconnected the old HD and installed the new HD. Booting from the flash disk worked fine and I was quickly into the setup. Installation was a snap and recognized all of the hardware immediately, a task that has taken many weeks before. I followed the steps from MythPVR.com to migrate existing recordings to a new server. There is a comment at the end of the article that if the database is different enough, you should add a -f option to the import which did the trick for me.

I pointed the storage groups for videos at my already installed media drive (640GB) and then hot plugged in the old 500GB HD (love SATA), mounted it and then copied the recordings to the new recordings path. I launched the frontend and recordings were up and running. I was a little bummed that the video metadata didn’t come through but instead of going back to the original database, I used the included jamu script to gather metadata for all of my movies. It looked a lot nicer and the information was much more accurate and detailed than before.

I went into the Playback settings and set it for VDPAU+. The difference is amazing between the old video card and this one. It’s not just the VDPAU but having a dedicated card that seems to make the difference. The one major problem I did run into was pixelation of anything that was in MPEG2 format (recordings). I finally tracked down a thread that this is a known bug on certain motherboards and they are working on a fix. In the mean-time I have reverted to CPU Slim.

Overall I am very pleased with the new software and distribution.

There are few things in this world I detest more than having to write something down from an electronic device just to have to type it back to same said device. After several miserable incidents of trying to copy the access number down for a conference (or even worse, memorize it!) I decided to go hunting for a better way. What I really wanted was a way to copy and paste the conference code into the dialer, what I found was better.

Thanks to a wonderful poster going by the name of droptopMBP in the Apple forums, dialing those pesky numbers is now easy with a small amount of up front work. In the notes field for your conference call event in your calendar, simply add a tel URL in the following format:

tel://+15551212p123456789

Note the p for a pause. The only shortcoming of this little shortcut is the inability to add a # at the end, but hey, one button instead of memorizing 9, I like it. The only problem I had is the need to wait a few seconds (like 5-10) for it to finish dialing the access code before I hit the # key. If you listen very carefully, you can hear it mashing the DTMF tones long and slow.

Here is a copy of the exact post with links to details on formatting the string properly:

1) Place the phone string in the “Notes” field (doesn’t work in event title or location fields)
2) Prepend the phonestring with the HTML telephone URL “tel://” (ref: https://developer.apple.com/iphone/library/featuredarticles/iPhoneURLScheme_Reference/Articles/PhoneLinks.html )
3) Follow the remaining rules for embedding telephone URLS which you can read here: ( http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2806.txt )
4) Use “p” in place of “,” for Pause
5) Don’t include “#” (haven’t identified a substitute yet

Example: The following works to dial the number 555-555-6543, pause 1 second, then dial the passcode string 123456. You would need to press # on your phone keypad to end the passcode unless the conference service you’re using automatically accepts the code after a timeout…

tel://+1-555-555-6543p12345

Now, go forth and conference without driving off the road.

I am working on some code for a client that involves a tabbed interface containing a User Control in each tab. This nicely separates out all of the UI logic for each of the tabs so you don’t end up with one monster file with every control from every tab. Trying to be a considerate UI citizen, I am trying to populate the ListBox controls asynchronously using a BackgroundWorker.

When the user clicks on the tab, it populates a loading message as the first item for the listbox and then makes a call to the database to load the items. When the database call is finished, it clears the listbox before populating it with the data. I’m not sure if it’s the clearing of the listbox or the population of the data but as soon as the control is placed on the tab, Visual Studio actually tries to execute the code of the user control! This is happening in design time! I have had several odd behaviors because of this behavior of Visual Studio.NET 2005 and 2008.

At another point in the project, I put in some error handling in a similar tab-contained User Control that would throw an exception if the database string wasn’t populated. Visual Studio would execute my code as soon as the tab was selected in design time, throw my exception and then close because the code was calling Applcation.Close after telling the user to fix the connection string.

This seems to me to be a serious bug on Microsoft’s part and I submitted it to Microsoft Connect.

I am officially up and running on this (hopefully) long and fruitful journey with my Mac. I am currently installing the Codex application developer tools on my system so I can use make. I needed it today to compile dhcpd and couldn’t believe it wasn’t already there. A little search through my original box and there was the original install disc.

I have had some minor problems with Virtual Box. The newest one is that I can’t save new documents to the shared directory between my mac and Win7 image. It seems to be common and I will look into it later.

I had to take a screenshot. Shift-Command-3 takes a full screenshot and puts it on your desktop, Shift-Command-4 lets you select a region and does the same. I miss putting it in clipboard a bit but it’s a minor issue.

If you are contemplating making the switch, go for it. I can say the water is safe and you won’t be stranded. If you have made the switch. I hope that last 7-days of my experience helped you. Please feel free to comment and post feedback and I will grow these articles to hopefully be a resource for others.

Happy Mac-ing!

Monday was the first day back at work with the MacBook Pro after a weekend of installing software. This is trial by fire for me since there isn’t much time to fix anything that has gone wrong. I moved my Dell into another bag and left it in the car for the day. Far enough away that I wouldn’t chicken out and grab it at the first sign of difficulty but close enough that I could get to it in an emergency. I ran into some minor missing software, things that OpenOffice didn’t handle like Microsoft Project and Microsoft Visio files I needed to reference. I was lucky that some of them were in PDF format so I could at least reference them, if not edit them.

My other challenge of the day was incorporating the MBP into my desk arrangement. My Dell had a complete docking station setup which, apart from the occasional refusal to switch to the external monitor, was quick and efficient. I had to buy a mini-display port to DVI adapter for my monitor. I will probably also need a mini-display port to VGA for projecting. I need to buy another power adapter that I can leave at my desk so I can route the cord instead of draping it behind the keyboard tray. I broke down a grabbed a mini-usb hub for my headset, keyboard and mouse, one too many devices for the inexplicably limited number of USB ports on the MBP. I also routed my Ethernet cable over to my MBP to be a good office mate and leave the wireless for those who were actually without a direct connection.

Due to the lack of productivity software, I spent another evening installing software in Virtual Box. It was the first time I have actually had problems with VBox. I have been futzing with the settings to try to make it have a smaller memory footprint and slowly reducing the memory allocation as well. The VM screen is all black until you move your mouse over it, it wouldn’t recognize a real DVD and it was hanging up a bit. It seemed to stem from the switch between resolutions due to the external display while using seamless mode. I will give the VM a reboot and see if that clears up the issue.

I installed wireshark which requires you to dump some files in /usr/bin. As a very competent Linux user I was comfortable moving the files but couldn’t get Finder to show me any of the system paths. My trusty Google led me to an article on showing all files in Finder. I guess that is one of my Windows steps, keeping the OS from hiding anything from me. The good thing is that I can see the whole file-system now, the bad thing is that the dot files are now showing up all over the place. It’s a good trade off and simple enough to turn back off should I need to. I feel better now that the OS isn’t hiding things.

At one point, I needed to access a file from my home computer (Windows 7) so I fired up the Microsoft RDC Client and tried to connect to my home machine without success. I Googled an article from 2004 which states that the Mac RDP client doesn’t support alternate port numbers and ignores the :port syntax at the end of the host name. I wasn’t able to verify this but this will have to be worked out somehow.

I also needed to do some advanced computing to setup a network device. I needed to run a DHCP server on my Ethernet port while still accessing the rest of the world through airport. The research lead me to believe it’s a fairly simple process but I have yet to implement it. This was something I did on my Windows machine regularly and was the first time I felt a twinge of regret at switching over. It’s the same pang I get when using Skype on the Mac, it just doesn’t feel right and seems to be implemented all wrong. I was also frustrated a few times trying to drive the machine with the keyboard. I never thought I would say it but I really miss Windows Explorer. I desperately wanted to hit Win-R and type out the full path to my software share but it seems the mouse must be used and Finder isn’t quite as powerful a navigator of the share world.

I am sticking with it and overall happy with the experience. I am hoping to get used to this brave new world.

Man have I been busy with this new Mac. I figured out how to turn on tap to click and the trackpad is now my best friend. I adapted to it’s functions so quickly that the trackpad on my Dell is now a joke as far as functionality.

I ended up installing Sun Virtual Box, installed Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit and got Microsoft Outlook up and running. That has always been my crutch and deal-breaker, I am an Outlook addict and it drives all of my daily activities. I have OpenOffice installed on the Mac side of things though and will do my best to stick with it for my daily office-esqe stuff.

The biggest thing I have notices is that there is a lot more to OS X than just the OS. StuffIt is a very complete compression program, I don’t need DaemonTools for iso mounting (honestly, it should be part of the OS). Still running with no antivirus and haven’t been worried yet. The oddest part is the lack of a hard drive light. My windows machines would freeze from time to time and the hard drive light would quickly indicate why. Since there haven’t been any OS freezes, I haven’t needed to check.

I am very, very pleased with Virtual Box. I will eventually give VMWare fusion a try but with Seamless Mode enabled, it just so naturally part of the environment that I haven’t been found wanting.

I found an article on installing FastScripts so I could have a quick shortcut to the terminal. My job requires quite a bit of SSH and instead of needing Putty, terminal does a great job with built in SSH. I had it down to a single keystroke in Windows and don’t feel like giving up on that.

Day 2 has been almost all building and not yet a lot of playing. I hope to get to productivity (ok, maybe a little entertainment) sometime tomorrow. Until then, this was a very pleasant conversion.

I sit at the virgin screen of a new MacBook Pro with no idea what to do next. I have been a Win/PC expert since Star Trek: The Next Generation was running new episodes. I can bring up a new Windows system in my sleep.

• Install Antivirus
• Install WinZip
• Fix Explorer so it doesn’t hide anything for me
• Firefox
• DAEMONTools
• Microsoft Office

I start my adventure by doing updates. People have been talking about Snow Leopard on twit.tv and other such podcasts and web sites. By checking the version, apparently I have it. Huh.

Since I have a Windows game plan, I will see how it works for Mac.

Antivirus – Skipping for now

Install WinZip – Macs seem to use DMG or disk images for installs, it’s build nicely into the OS so I don’t yet have a need for that. Stuffit Expander handles the rest.

Switch the OS into expert mode – I’m not crazy enough to try that yet. I don’t even know if there is an expert mode apart from the terminal prompt.

Firefox – I need at least something familiar in this odd jungle of a new OS. Safari is rumored to be faster but I need something to compare it to.

I have noticed the touchpad already, very nice. I am trying to get used to a click feedback since I have been tapping on the pad on my Dell D630 forever.

Noticed ctrl-click works in Safari – good. So far, very good experience.

Whoops, lost already. It shows dragging a big Firefox Icon to a folder with an A on it. Using brain leads me to guess this is the Applications folder, ah-ha, there is an icon like that in the dock.

Ok, now I am a little perturbed with the touchpad. Why when I hit the edge does it not keep moving the icon in the direction I was going. Fine, I will try again starting from further up on the touchpad, that will take some getting used to.

I click on the Applications folder and it nicely pops up the applications but I don’t see the happy FireFox icon. I finally get to reading the titles of the icons and see a missing icon one named FireFox. Clicking launches a download/setup and I am up and running in FireFox. I can see where someone would get lost in this process. Missing Next -> Next -> Next -> Finish install process that pops the icon on the desktop and in the Start Menu.

Installing LastPass in FireFox, easy, good.

DaemonTools – No idea, don’t have Mac software in iso format yet so no need. (Later I found out this is also, built-in, noticing the theme yet?)

Microsoft Office – I think I am going to try Open Office and see how close I can be to making a complete break from Microsoft. It may not work out but I can be idealistic.

I wrote this up in the Jeep Commander forum. Enjoy!

http://www.jeepcommander.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9322

I detest car dealerships. The whole experience for me is akin to using a porta-potty at a festival. You feel dirty the second you open the door and even if you get the business done successfully, you know there was a better way. I think I found it.

Several years ago, Melissa purchased a Mazda RX-8 via eBay. She got it for the opening bid amount which was roughly $6000 under Kelly Blue Book value. It seemed too good to be true but after a leap of faith and a flight to Florida, we had one of the best auto purchasing experiences of our life and got the car for a steal, I wanted this experience again.

I have known for several years now that it was time to get into a bigger car. 2-kids, 2-dogs, 4-bikes and all of the gear that goes to support us takes up a lot of space. I have been driving the 1999 Jeep Cherokee since the day before we brought our twins home from the hospital over 8 years ago. It’s a great car and it took us to both coasts on multiple occasions but I just needed something bigger.

I spotted the 2006 Jeep Commander in 2005 at Boo-At-The-Zoo. I knew immediately that this would be my future car. The only problem is that I would have to wait 3-years. For anyone not in on the finer points of depreciation, most vehicles lose more than 50% of their value in the first 3-years. After that, it’s a nice gentle decline until the vehicle no longer has sale value. It had enough room for all of us, including the dogs I didn’t know we would have yet. I liked the idea of a 3rd row so my folks could come with us out to dinner and share one car. I liked that Jeep Commander and would patiently wait until 2009 for it.

Melissa started hitting craigslist and eBay looking for 2006 Jeep commanders earlier in the year and has been reminding me that the time had come. All of her experience told us that we were looking at about $22k for one with the features I wanted. The biggest requirement was a new technology called MDS that shuts off 4 of the 8-cylinders in the engine to conserve gas when the engine isn’t stressed and the car is at cruising speed (e.g. road trips). This happens to only be available on the HEMI engine (no, that didn’t hurt my feelings… HEMI good). We finally found one on craigslist and I called only to find out weeks later that the owner was going through a divorce and the ownership kept changing hands. I relayed this story to a gentlemen by the name of Davin at our quinennial garage sale. He told me he happened to be a car broker and had access to the local auto-auction where I could get a great deal on the vehicle I wanted…

Could this be possible?

I took Davin up on his offer to send me a list of the 2006 Jeep Commanders going at the following weeks auto-auction. The list I got in the email had almost 50 Jeeps! I used an online VIN decoder to determine which ones had the HEMI and shortlisted 20 Commanders.

On a warm Tuesday afternoon, we met Davin at the auction lot which was a bit of a drive near I-70 & Airport Blvd. It was really nice. There were thousands of cars as far as the eye could see, every one of them had the keys in the ignition and not a sales-vulture in sight. We located the rows containing the 20 Jeeps I wanted to drive and took them to the test track. It’s not the racetrack you might think. More like a one-lane quarter-mile straight-away to test acceleration and breaking. The first one drove fine and had more features than I could have imagined. The afternoon quickly progressed into evening and we worked our way through the cars. I brought a notepad and wrote the ID number of each car, what I liked and how much I wanted to pay for it. We ended up there past closing time for the lot because I had to drive a 2009 Mustang Shelby GT 500 (come on, you would do it too if you had the chance). I got home, discussed the cars with Melissa and settled on prices. I emailed Davin the 5 ones I liked with the prices I was willing to pay.

The next day was Wednesday, auction day. Davin had replied that he thought my numbers were a little low. To be fair to him, every one of the prices I gave him were under Kelly Blue Book private sale. There is only one problem with an auction broker and that is how they get paid. Their pay comes from the difference between the price they get it for at auction and the price I give him that I am willing to pay. This puts us a little at odds with each other so I had to determine what his services were worth. I would have rather paid a flat fee for the service and had Davin be 100% on my side of the deal instead of trying to do backwards math on the selling price of the car.

I got a text message on my iPhone at 10:18am: -

Jim the 1st commander just sold for 19500.. The hemis are bringing all the money. Can we go to 20k on them? I can get one there.

Another 06 limited without the hemi just went for 19k

It had 31k miles on it..

This was not a good time for me to be rational, I ended up catching a bit of a cold from staying out the night before and had taken a healthy dose of cough syrup (the good kind) that morning. I relied on Melissa to keep me straight and replied back:

We can go 19.5k total including fees on ones under 30k miles

The next set of text messages were much the same, Commanders going for higher than my maximum. The good news was that this auction would happen every week so I wasn’t in a hurry. I justified my patience… I could take the family on vacation in the Cherokee one more year. Oh, but I wanted a new car and the experience the night before was fresh in my head. I put my phone down, un-paused my movie and decided not to think about it anymore.

Several hours later my phone rang, it was Davin. “We got the 2nd to last one”, he said. As the day had progressed, dealers had left after getting what they came for. The crowd was thinner and therefore competition wasn’t as fierce. I pulled out my notepad and looked up the 2nd to last one. My notes:

06 24k miles – dark khaki – doesn’t start (dead battery) – flat RR tire

Oh God, what had I gotten myself into. Davin had told me that all vehicles sold would run, have any flats fixed and anything missing replaced. They also went through a full mechanical and frame inspection before delivery. The Jeep was also under factory warranty until October or 36k miles. Davin said that I might not be able to pick it up that day since it took a bit of time to get them all through inspections. No problem, no rush (patience Jim, patience). Later that day he called and said the car ran great, it was loaded with features and I had gotten it for a steal. The one minor problem was some road noise while making gentle right turns. He was going to take it into the dealership to have that fixed.

Thursday – Still being repaired

Friday – Still being repaired

Saturday – Still being repaired

Sunday – Umm, closed.

Monday – It’s ready! They ended up finding the problem being that the front drivers side tire had worn funny. Nothing mechanical. All was good. Melissa and I drove to Davin’s office and signed the paperwork, very easy. I was a little frustrated with the $150 dealer prep and handling fee but decided to let it go seeing how much effort had gone into inspecting, repairing, riding the dealership and even detailing the car.

I love my Commander. It has more features than I could have imagined. I will have to write up a better detailed review in another post. For now, here’s what you should do if you buy a car at auction:

• Get a list of cars that match your criteria and map out your path
• Set aside lots of time to try them out
• Take lots of notes on the cars and don’t set prices until you are home and thinking clearly
• Use Kelly Blue Book to get a starting point and don’t be afraid to go under their prices
• If at all possible, get one that is still under factory warranty
• Don’t fall in love with any one car, be open to options
• Prices on cars later in the auction (higher auction numbers) will be better with less competition. There is where you will find your deal
• Get a broker you can trust
• Remember that you don’t have to get a car at the first auction. You may just want to get a list of cars that your broker can note how much they go for. For our auction, they had a bunch of Jeep’s every week and I could have waited another week, or two, or three..
• Have fun. The buying process shouldn’t give you an ulcer. If you don’t feel good about it, don’t do it. Wait another day, another week or even another month.

Happy buying, please leave a comment if you have any more suggestions or to share your experience.