Brian-Foley.net

So I redesigned the website. It’s going to be a little easier for me to maintain now, plus it looks cool. I’ve also decided to just use smugmug for displaying and storing our photos online. I’ll add more to it as I get time.

Update 10/30/08: I figured out how to move over most of the content from my old website. The posts are here, but many of the images that were in the posts are missing. I’ll try to fix that when I get time.

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Oh My God! Speed Racer had to have been my MOST favorite cartoon when I was a kid. I used to watch that and wish that I was a racecar driver. I’d wander around the house singing the theme song “Go Speed Racer, Go Speed Racer, Go!” According to CNET, the cartoon is being brought to the big screen and should be out sometime in May ‘08. I’ll be there!

Apple has announced the release date for the much anticipated, highly acclaimed, shiney new iPhone! Set your calendars for June 29th! Steve Jobs has commented that if your looking to get one one the release date, that you might want to go to your local AT&T store first, as the Apple stores will be very busy.

I would LOVE to have one of these phones, except for the fact that I would have to switch my cellular service to AT&T (Cingular). I know that AT&T service is not very good around where I live, so I’d be getting less than stellar phone service on a (hopefully) fantastic phone. Perhaps AT&T will get enough new contracts that they can start investing more on improving their service. By then the iPhone might have had a revision or two out, until then I’m sticking with Sprint.

Check out the iPhone commercials Apple has released!

I have no clue what the kids in Redmond have been doing to the Windows/Microsoft Update site, but it seems like lately every system I’ve tried to run the updates on I get an error. After spending a LONG time checking for updates, it comes back with Error number: 0×8DDD0009. I should clarify that it’s always on Windows XP SP2 systems. So, I follow the instructions Microsoft has provided on this error page including emptying the cache, restarting the browser and… It still fails, all I’ve accomplished is wasting a heck of alot of time!

Next step, google the error, it turns out that this problem is common. I tried all the advice found on the net.

Open command prompt and run the following:

proxycfg -d
net stop wuauserv
net start wuauserv


This didn’t work. Next I tried re-registering the msxml3.dll.

regsvr32 msxml3.dll

Those steps USED to work for Windows Update errors.But now I’ve found that more drastic measures had to be performed, basically removing the ActiveX components and reinstalling from the Windows update site. Here’s the steps involved…

1. Clear Internet Explorer’s cache and then close the browser.
2. From a command prompt type net stop wuauserv.
3. Next, stop the Automatic Updates and Background Intelligent Transfer
   from the service panel (Start->Control Panel->Administrative
   Tools->Services).
4. Remove the following files/directories:C:\windows\downloaded program files\WUWebControl Class
C:\Program Files\WindowsUpdate
C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution
5. Unregister the wuweb.dll and rename some other files from a command prompt:cd %windir%\system32
regsvr32 /u wuweb.dll
ren wuweb.dll wuweb.old
ren muweb.dll muweb.old
ren iuengine.dll iuengine.old
6. Restart the Automatic Updates and Background Intelligent Transfer services from the service panel.
7. Open Internet Explorer and run the Windows Update. It should ask to install an ActiveX component,after doing that, scan for updates, and it should work fine.

I hope this helps someone to get their updates working again. I also hope Microsoft learns to test their products more before rolling out changes that ends up breaking things.

Recently I downloaded the audiobook “Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity” by David Allen. I’ve heard alot of good things about the GTD method of organization and thought it might help me to keep organized with new information that I’m exposed to everyday, as well as to help me keep on track with some new projects I’m involved in. Part of the GTD philosophy is to get all of the “stuff” out of your head, and either onto paper, or into an organization system.

I thought about buying one of the great software programs, like iGTD to help me out. The only problem with that is it’s a Mac program and I’m not always working on a Mac. So then I thought, wouldn’t it be great to have something online, that can be accessed from ANY computer I might be using. I stumbled upon this article that explains how to use another product from Google called Google Notebook. Google has ALOT of great products, that I use all the time, from Gmail to Web (Search) History and Calendar. I had never tried the Notebook, so thought I’d give it a shot. I must say, I wish I had this application a long time ago! It’s so convenient to be able to copy and paste something like an article or link into an online notebook and be able to access it later from any computer I might be using at the time. I had been carrying a small notebook in my pocket to write thought down, now I don’t carry it around as much. There’s also a nice add-on for FireFox that puts a little “Open Notebook” link the bottom corner for FireFox that pops up the notebook when I need it really quick. It’s very handy, check it out!