www.JonathanHardison.com

I have began the wonderful process of migrating my site from being hosted at GoDaddy to JustHost.com. What’s my reasoning? First, cheaper… and second faster! That’s right, two that should not go together.

Either way, I will update when it’s complete. For now just take note that this is the first post on the new site.

Update 5/2/2010:
So I have finished moving my site, but not DNS yet. I’m testing that on my alternate domain.
As of now I have mirated my WordPress site from an IIS host to Linux(Cpanel).

Everything appears to be up and operational, and I have began looking at name server migration.
The new host, JustHost.com, appears to be much  quicker than GoDaddy. That performance increase is very noticeable in CPanel as well as the admin portion of WordPress.

Update 5/10/2010:

DNS migration has been completed. There is an hour delay in creating sub domains at JustHost.com, but that is not an unacceptable time. So from my experiences so far the host is very reliable. Couple that with the 3 tickets I’ve had closed for cname and a record creations, their support has proven very responsive and talented.

I’ve added their add to the sidebar, if anyone wants to jump on their services, it’s worth the jump. Especially if you are moving from GoDaddy, king of slothville.

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Man I haven’t had to do this in a while since Vista and Windows 7 all have the Automatic (Delayed) start option for services. But in case you need to delay start a process on xp/2003. Find the service in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetServices

Add a new value (REG_MULTI_SZ) and call it “DependOnService” without quotes.
Next put the value as the service you want to delay the start until after. The processes normally used are Spooler and Messenger.

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So in case you missed the news the other day, Ubuntu 10.04 LTS has been released to the world. Some of the yummies that are immediately visible is the fact that it has gone pretty!

Other than a horde of new features, and some drastic design changes, this version feels more usable by the masses simply due to the visual changes. Because lets face it, the majority of computer users want something elegant and flowing that they are drawn to, not something clunky and ugly.

Even installing additional software that used to be in an eye draining list, is now glorified with melded information pages and install status.

Hit up the link for more!

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Office 2010 and SQL Server 2008 R2 have gone RTM.

Office 2010 should be available on MSDN shortly, with SQL 2008 R2 to follow.

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So after finishing the installation of Team Foundation Server into my VM managing my source control, and deploying VS2010 and the TFS Explorer on my two development systems… I have migrated my WME application for SourceGear’s Vault into TFS2010 and have began the creation of the new WPF version of the application.

My first impressions with the RTM build of VS2010 is that it is extremely stable, and the XML editor/designer speed has increased dramatically. Just building the basic outlay of the application has produced zero hickups. Which is surprising including the fact that I have applied a custom theme with merged resource dictionaries.

Of course everything else in the product also feels faster and more stable. Personally I am happy to put my source control back into TFS, I had not used it in a long time since I removed my spare server from the network that was running it. Of course, Vault wasn’t bad, but it just was not as embedded as I wanted it to be. TFS 2010 by far is the easiest setup of the many permutations of TFS that I’ve done in a long time. To put it simply, it just works!

More after I have a chance to digest!

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That’s right folks, the launch of VS2010 and .NET 4.0 have ran the gauntlet. 10am PST is their official launch time, although the blogs are already pointing to it’s availability for purchase. MSDN subscribers watch for it to post at 10am PST.

Lovely monday!

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So with MSDN being down for maintenance, from friday until monday… it makes me wonder if it is down intentionally to allow for VS 2010 to get uploaded. Time to wait for the starting bell!

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Yesterday evening I got a call that they had located the issue in the Springfield CO, in particular on the VRAD my gateway ties into. Apparently this known issue involved a reboot of that VRAD which could not be performed until their maintenance window between midnight and 4am.
But, now that it is complete, my speeds are where they should be and it is great!

Sounds like someone failed to do a firmware upgrade before U-Verse service was turned up. But hey, that’s ok I’m sure they’ve been overly busy since someone had the bright idea of advertising in the form of an interview on the nightly news.

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Ok hear ye hear ye…

ATT now says it’s a “known issue” and will be resolved durring their maintenance window tonight since there are too many users on the system to reboot any other time. But whatever the issue, it should be resolved for any user or future user of U-Verse that happens to connect to this particular VRAD. I might just stay up late enough to test it, but then again maybe I won’t. After all tomorrow is my last day at home then it’s off to Texas. Funny how that works. Get U-Verse installed and cannot even experience its goodness …

Oh well, I will update when I see it improve.

Oh and by the way, where was the VRAD? In the Spring

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Short and sweet here.

1. MUX replaced. Issue remains.
2. Tested with RG plugged direct to the MUX by taking it outside. Issue remains. Officially no other items at customer location to test or rule out. Everything has been replaced or removed from equation.

Now the good part. What is the one thing that ATT cannot see with their uvers management system (CMS or whatever). The Springfield MO CO, specifically the group I will not so lovingly refer to as ASI.

I have found out that another user in Republic Missouri is having a speed issue where they get roughly 5 meg on an 18 meg package. And the common point of failure is … ASI.

Now I wait to see who will beat some big sticks across their head.

Put simply, the tech’s that have come out have done everything in their knowledge to do and have been very nice and professional. But in the end, my harping is getting heard. I have been asking all parties, what is between myself and ATT that can still effect provisioning speeds. Everyone wanted to say nothing, until I walked through the connection with them.

Where does the video service feed from since it is always a separate feed in IPTV from the Internet feed. Answer Kansas City Missouri. Ok, so what feeds the Internet? And the path to the light apparently shines now.

Update after I throw some rocks.

*UPDATE*

So the premis guy just left, shaking his head. They basically went back through everything, and I’ve explained that we’ve done everything possible to replace or remove the customer side from the equation. And he admited that he didn’t think there was a single thing he could do but tell level 2 what he saw. Which he did.

So level 2 opened a case with UPak, or something like that. But all of us that have been on this side of the problem see it as a problem in the CO. Whereas the uverse tier 2 people think it is customer side issues. “You must be running a torrent” or “changing the internal IP of the router to a non default ip will cause this.” Yea ok, reset to defaults and let the ATT guy plug himself in by himself. Same issue? Yea, must be running a torrent on the ATT laptops then. Grrrr.

Anyways, I’m waiting now for a call from these guys. Hoping someone somewhere will actually take ownership of the problem and start looking at things outside of the box and NOT on the script. I don’t know how many people they will send to my house before the stop looking here.

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Ok, a recap of all that has been done.

1. Swap of modem.
2. Removal of all devices except test system. (several used, including the att tough book. One at a time, hard wired.)
3. Disable all unused ports, PNA, Wireless, USB, etc.
4. Downgrade of service to 3mb plan to verify provisioning profile is updated. Confirmed worked.
5. Upgrade of service back to 18mb plan. Confirmed worked, but speed still limited to 1-6mb.
6. Line guys came out and recertified the fiber, it passed well under their allowed loss.

Line guys are leaving and will be back in the morning to replace the MUX on the side of the house. After that they are out of customer side equipment and everything else would be at the CO. He would be leaning on the ATM guys at that point as the fiber tests good.

Boy this be fun! At least the ATT guys are all nice professional guys. Feel bad cause they are all scrambling to catch up since ATT made the oh so nice mistake of advertising as an interview on the nightly news. That just blew their work load so high they will be at it for months before catching up.

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Ok, so I dived into this hoping it would go smoother but I should know better. This is the week of release in my area, and I knew there would be problems. I only was optimistic to prevent myself from seeing the truth.

Only a day after U-verse was installed, we have identified several issues that were not caught on install day (that ended at 8:38pm).

1. VOD performance is sluggish. (Chopping audio and freezing video)
2. Internet performance is below or equal to old DSL package. (no greater than 5-6 megs on testing for an 18meg package.)

What we have identified is that the priority queuing for streaming video to the sets is working as expected. As we do not see any issues with video playback. VOD is a different story as for some reason it is not being classified in the same priority queue, and winds up with our Internet speed issue.

The speed issue has been tested and they swear everything is correct on their end. And they have gone as far as swapping the U-verse modem thinking it would be the culprit. We’ve stripped down to only a single system wired to the modem with no voice, video, or wireless services active. And after that, now they think it is in the fiber which is a call to the outside guys.

That all is fine as long as they fix it, but it feels like they are heading the wrong direction. The streaming video works, and uses a larger portion of bandwidth for HD and 2 additional sets, without a hickup. Which makes someone like me, think more on the line of something in the priority queues or our provisioning is not being released to the full 18megs. But hey, I will patiently wait while they decide to fix it.

I know in the end this will work great, but this is quite a hurdle to jump in the first days. All of which I’m sure they will be more than happy to bill me for.

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Working with the Ribbon Bar (Fluent) in a rebuild of an app I wrote, I am toying with it being more than simply the control doc for buttons and such above a single form. I’m expanding it to be the doc for user input floating above independent grids displaying content for the current tab item in the ribbon. Why? BECAUSE I CAN! Buwaa aa aa aaaaa.

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I’ve recompiled WME with x86 set instead of x64. I was running it 64 bit on my dev machine during some bouts of testing in .Net 4 and simply forgot to reset it.

This has been corrected and should now run correctly on all systems.

I’ve also uploaded the “Updater” and will show for any previous client using the correct updater. Worse case, simply uninstall and download the new copy. (It also includes Updater v1.0.2.1)

Remember if you want to convert to MP3, you will need to obtain the lame.exe and place it into the install directory.

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