jason.heydasch

Recently had an issue wherein pulling up a PDF within Acrobat would cause my NVIDIA Quadro FX 880M driver to stop completely. Very annoying. Turns out the driver that was installed was an NVIDIA driver from 12/2010 (it’s 9/2011 right now). So, I updated the driver from NVIDIA’s site and that appears - at least for now - to have fixed it. We’ll see. (File this under: “troubleshooting” and “just in case someone else encounters this and looks for a solution.”)

I was in search of a way to determine from where our Windows 7 / Windows XP workstations were getting their local time. Well, we knew they were supposed to be getting their time from our DNS server but we just wanted to verify that.  Turns out you can run the following command on Windows 7 to see just that: w32tm /query /status

This cmd returns the following information:

Leap Indicator: 0(no warning)
Stratum: 3 (secondary reference - syncd by (S)NTP)
Precision: -6 (15.625ms per tick)
Root Delay: 0.0779877s
Root Dispersion: 0.1328926s
ReferenceId: 0x0A000014 (source IP:  10.0.0.20)
Last Successful Sync Time: 8/26/2011 10:12:19 AM
Source: myserver.mydomain.org
Poll Interval: 11 (2048s)

Source: http://newforma.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/453/~/how-to-tell-from-what-server-a-computer-is-getting-its-time

Yeah, so, I noticed about a day ago that my mouse cursor would move - ever so slightly - all by itself. My wireless mouse - which is plugged into my laptop - could be perfectly still but the cursor would still wiggle its way over my screen, slowly but surely. I could even unplug the wireless adapter from the USB port and the cursor would *still* move by itself. I looked up similar problems on Google and most of them were virus-related. (Be sure to have anti-virus software installed, do full scans, blah blah blah, etc.) In my case, however, it turned out that I had another mouse… plugged into my docking station! The sensor for that mouse, also optical, was resting on top of a cord and was causing the cursor to move around on its own. So, there ya go. Problem solved. Be sure and make sure there are no other pointing devices plugged in anywhere. Alternatively, make sure you have full anti-virus protection running at all times. (Believe it or not, I personally recommend Microsoft’s “Security Essentials” a/v product. Free and unobtrusive.)

If you currently own, or have owned in the past, an Android-powered handset like the Motorola DROID or DROID X, you’ve most likely been annoyed by the same issue I have: not being able to clear just ONE notification from the slide-down notification panel.

Here’s a description of the problem:

“Currently, there are only two ways to clear a notification. The first being clearing all notifications the second method being clicking on a notification (which loads to program calling the notification.) There are times I would like to clear a single notification without having to load the program.”

According to issue #1374 on the Google Code project page for Android, this may be resolved soon. A user, KHudson31, posted yesterday that “we have something of sorts under development… should be available on the marketplace in a few days.” I’m not sure who KHudson31 is, as this appears to be her only post on Google Code, but she might be an official developer with the project or a 3rd-party developer - one that’s part of a team to build an app to control these notifications.

Here’s hoping.

I just want to be able to clear all of those annoying “updates are available for your apps” notifications but NOT clear my Remember the Milk task reminders.

Just putting this information out there for anyone that might need it…

I recently got to a point at work where I needed to frequently perform a “recycle” event for an IIS application pool that we have running. (Had to do with a known bug in the software we were using - iMIS - and frequent recycling was the only temporary fix.) Anyway, instead of manually doing that every 2 hours or so, it turns out that there’s an option to set that schedule.

If you right-click on the application pool in question and select properties, you can specify the following section: “Recycle worker processes at the following times:” and then just enter whatever times of the day (in military time) that you’ll be needing to recycle.

It seemed like this was working but I wanted to verify that the recycle was actually taking place. Turns out Microsoft had some information on adding IIS recycle events to the system logs / Event Viewer.

Just open up the CMD prompt, change the directory (in my case it was C:\Inetpub\AdminScripts) and run the following CMD:

cscript adsutil.vbs Set w3svc/AppPools/DefaultAppPool/AppPoolRecycleSchedule true

Voila. The W3SVC event showed up on time in the System Event Viewer. Now I know the recycle event (Event ID 1076) is happening at the specified time.

I’m a bit surprised at how antiquated iMIS, even the most up-to-date versions, acts and looks. Please, people… it’s 2009. We don’t have to program like we’re in 1998.>

Okay, I’ve recently been accused of being a little too negative lately…especially when it comes to tech. (This company sucks, that service is horrible, etc.) So, I’d to try and reverse this trend if at all possible.

Now, there are a select number of individuals (those who sit near my cube) that know of my, um, dissatisfaction with HP. The last few years, their PCs and laptops have gone downhill (still better than others), their tech support has become HORRIBLE and even their ever-reliable printer line has become something I don’t want to deal with.

I will, however, say that I love the fact that they have a live chat support option on HP.com. Granted, I just went on that site and tried to initiate a session only to be told that the desktops we purchased about one week ago aren’t supported products for live chat - but that’s beside the point. Kinda. The mere fact that it’s there, and has been quite handy in the past, is worth mentioning.