Voodoo Networks

I’ve converted a total non-techie to the joys of home media computers. And it’s a miracle.

OK, it’s not really miracle, but it sure does feel pretty good.

While I no longer have the time (or the inclination to be honest) to sit around and watch a lot of TV, or specifically here, movies, I have five year old twins that love to watch movies when they are playing inside (and living in Seattle, inside is somewhere that you get to know very well). This could involve a ton of kids DVD’s, mixed in with my old 400+ movie collection, which usually ends up with lost or damaged media and the resultant complaining that a movie won’t play or can’t be found. I figure that I have a bunch of DVD’s that are one scratch removal away from disintegrating.

So the solution to this isn’t new, or even special. I ripped all my DVD’s and stuck in the originals in big binders a couple of years ago. I used a combination of tools until I found one that I liked, and spent months really ripping them all. They now reside comfortably on a NAS. I originally ripped them to VOB files, and played them as DVD’s, but have since converted them all the .avi files which tend to play better over the network and take up far less storage space. And I can live with the degradation in quality.

At the end of doing that with all my DVD’s, I did the same to all the kids DVD’s. And then went about explaining to my wife (ok – demonstrating) how to access them.

My setup is pretty simple actually. I had a bunch of Mac Minis sitting around from an old project that never really took off. So I placed one upstairs in the “theater” (actually my home office, guest room, workout room, etc), connected directly to the storage unit (pre-NAS) and place shortcuts into the local user Movies folder for Kids Movies, A-L and M-Z movies. And then I shared those directories. I hooked the mini up via a DVI to HDMI connector, fed the audio out to the audio inputs on the display, and setup the Mini to launch into Front Row at boot (along with all the other stuff like iTunes, reboot on power outages, no automatic updates, etc). And voila! A system that my wife not only uses, but prefers to use over the DVD player.

Now downstairs in the family room I hooked up another Mac Mini, connected it to the TV there, connected it to the shares on the upstairs Mini, and set it up like the one upstairs with the same shortcuts, apps on launch, etc. And it gets used more than the one upstairs, and once again, my wife actually likes using it. A quick change of input selection on the TV, and it’s movie time.

I have to admit that there are some issues that I have to deal with on occasion, usually disconnects of the shared drives, but they are minimal and easy to fix no matter where I happen to be in the world.

With the launch of the new Apple TV, I’m starting to think about reclaiming one of the Mac Mini’s for other uses, and using iTunes to index the movies on the upstairs mini. We’ll have to see about that. I like the setup I have, but having the AppleTV in place would probably remove the few issues that I have with share disconnects.

At this point all the movies that come into the house are ripped and added to the directory structure. And that is working great too. One side benefit of using this system in the house is that all the kids DVD’s are easily kept in little cases that allow them to be taken out to the car whenever a long trip takes place, and we don’t have to scramble to find stuff.

Another cool add on to the system that I just did was install AirVideo server on the computer upstairs and point it at the shares. It works great for me when I’m away, as it allows me to occasionally watch a show on my iPhone (and soon on my iPad). I actually can’t believe how well it works.

The one major problem that I currently have with my home media setup has nothing to do with the Mac Mini movie setup. It’s actually a Tivo issue. Or Comcast. We recently switched to Comcast, and guess what? Their set top boxes don’t actually work with the Tivos that we have. I could be using the IR transmitters, except for two things. One, they don’t seem to work with the little convertor box, and two, I only can find one set. Well, actually the real issue is that using the IR transceivers sucks. Since Comcast is using a box that doesn’t have a working serial control connection, and their IR in socket is completely different voltages than the Tivo one, I’ve had to order custom cables to connect them. They just arrived, so we’ll have to see if they work.

Sorry for the non-MSP or Networking post, but that’s how it goes. Sometimes you get tech info, sometimes you don’t.

Anyway, just something that was on my mind this week. Have a good weekend. And stay tuned to the blog, and to Voodoo Networks for the Monday announcement and update.

Quick update on the second half of the new business segment. Everything looks good for announcing to the world on Monday.

Can’t wait. We’ll have the new Voodoo Networks website up and running too.

Come and visit us then.

Had a laugh today, and thought I’d share it.

If you don’t know what the title refers to, try doing a search for “what’s in your bag?”. It’s apparently fairly common for people to spread out the contents of their daily bags, take a picture of the contents, and upload it to flickr or some other site, complete with descriptions. Who knew?

Anyway, back to today (and this is fairly common for me), I showed up at a client site that I’ve done a lot of work at in the past, including setting up network monitoring systems. I was asked back in to show the network team how to update the network weathermaps, so I showed up today to do just that. (Funny thing there too – I’m doing the same thing again at a different client on Thursday.)

So I get there, and put my messenger bag (a custom, medium size Timbuktu that I’ve been toting around for 4 years and it’s still going strong) on the desk that I used to work at, then walked over to say hi to a couple of people in the NOC and let them know that I was going to be making some changes. They came back out with me, and one of them tried to move my bag. Realizing how heavy it was, the other NOC admin tried too. By this point I had a few other people pop out of cubes to see what the NOC team was laughing about. I couldn’t help but laugh at the expressions on their faces as I unloaded the bag.

So they asked me to open it and show them the contents. Which garnered a lot of comments, and a comparison to Mary Poppin’s carpet bag. I was asked if that was normal for me to carry.

And it is pretty normal. Except for 4 things, it’s pretty much my daily carry bag, and doesn’t change much even going overseas.

So what’s the list? Here goes:

Main bag:
Timbuktu Medium Custom Messenger
3 year old Apple Macbook & power supply
Apple Mac Mini (old one) & power supply
Dell Mini 10 in neoprene case & power supply
Apple Bluetooth Keyboard and Magic mouse
Maxtor 320GB USB drive
2 Moleskin notebooks
2 large graph paper pads
3 file folders with various papers in them
Targus travel outlets (love this one!)
Surefire 6P flashlight
Minimaglite with LED kit and super switch
First Aid kit
Casio Exilim camera in case
Passport
Business card holder
Key leash with 2 keys and 3 tokens
About a dozen pocket size pictures of the kids
Breathmints
Ipevo universal phone handset
Double ended Sharpie
Ailph Jawbone Prime headset for my MacBook
Assorted pens and mechanical pencils
Various receipts and trash
Extra AA & AAA batteries
3 pads of PostIt notes
mini-tripod
Eagle Creek Pack-It Quarter Cube (contents below)

Pack-It Quarter Cube contents:
USB to Serial cable
Cisco Serial cable (about to be replaced with adapters, as soon as I have time)
6′ flat ethernet cable
Apple iPhone 3G USB charger (the little cube one)
Jawbone Icon USB cable
Jawbone Prime USB cable
Macbook to DVI and VGA adapters
Cheap 11 in 1 card reader
Ziplinc retractable USB 2.0 to mini cable
Kensington Cigarette lighter USB charger
Ethernet Crossover adapter
Female – Female ethernet connector
Retrak retractable USB to Apple 30 pin cable
Duracell DR7000Li rechargable battery
Original WiSpy 2.4 USB spectrum analyzer
6 USB Thumbdrives, ranging in size from 512M to 8GB
Little LED flashlight / keychain thing
About 6 extra 3″ pieces of velcro, same as the ones I use on the cables in the bag

I’m pretty sure that I missed something on that list, but it’s close enough for now.

I realize that a picture would be worth a thousand words, but the battery is dead on the Casio, and I don’t really feel like unpacking that again to take a picture. So words will have to do.

Now the Mac Mini, power supply, keyboard and mouse aren’t usually part of what I carry, but sometimes (when that isn’t in there) I carry an old powerbook around too.

As to the weight of that? Well, without the Mac Mini, and with the powerbook and it’s power supply, plus my noise canceling headset, it usually weighs enough that if it was luggage, I’d be paying extra. It frequently weighs more than my little carry on, and has at least once weighed more than my rolling duffle bag.

Hope they don’t start weighing carryon bags over on this side of the pond anytime soon.

I realize this isn’t really relevant to Voodoo Networks or Voodoo MSP, but it gives you an idea of what an IT consultant can ned up carrying to sites to make sure that they are ready to go, no matter what the problem is that they might walk into.

So the second part of my announcement about Voodoo Networks new services is taking a lot longer than I thought it would.

There are a few reasons – one is that the website is taking longer. Another is that I want to make sure that the main Voodoo Networks website is done too – it’s going to more closely match the Voodoo MSP site and the new services site.

A bigger reason is getting quotes for some of the gear that is going to be used in the second service. It’s actually a service that requires some unique gear, some custom mounts and enclosures as well as customization of a vehicle or two (the prototype is up and working, but the real ones are only planned).

Which leads me to a question: Why is it so hard to get pricing online for some things? I have seen one reasonable response to that on a website that for a product that I’ll be using. They said that due to their increasing international distribution they no longer have pricing on their site. Fair enough I suppose.

But really, everyone knows that products have different costs in different countries. Computers, food, travel, vehicles – you name it, it’s pretty much going to be a different price based upon the flag of the current country that you’re in.

And I have no issues with different pricing for different countries. Granted, some of them seem to be rip offs, but there is without a doubt differences in import tariffs, taxing, manufacture liabilities, patent protection, etc.

But I do have more and more of an issue with pricing that isn’t shown online, or easy to find. I don’t know about you, but I end up doing a lot of modeling and quoting of projects in the middle of the night or on the weekends, and to be frank, I don’t want to wait until a weekday during the day to call a sales guy about pricing for something that could be easily listed online.

Anyway, end of rant. Back to calling sales guys.

Or more accurately, the “joy” of virtual companies.

Most of the companies that we do Managed IT Services for have domains for their Windows systems, which is a real help when trying to manage all the systems.

But one of our clients doesn’t have a domain architecture. We can’t complain about the previous IT guys not setting one up as we did the technology design for the company. It’s a completely virtual company – they only own their laptops, monitors and a couple of printers. The rest of their systems are in the cloud – hosted Exchange, file storage, CRM, Fax & Phone services, etc. And the design was intentional. They have employees that work from home, coffee shops, wherever they have an internet connection. And it’s working great for them. (And it was quick too – from nothing to up and running and producing cash flow in less than 30 days – pretty quick if you ask me. Most of those 30 days were getting contracts setup with their main backend system provider.)

However it does lead to some issues that you could fix more easily on a domain / server / LAN based system.

A great example that I’m working on this weekend is moving them from the AV system that they had been using to a new system that we provide. Using the new systems Enterprise console you are usually able to do a quick deployment of the new AV software as well as distribute a package that removes the existing AV software.

Sounds great in practice. And it usually works great too. But for some reason it just wasn’t working for me at this company.

After perusing the support forums and KB for the product, and trying about 10 different suggested “fixes”, we finally found that the issue was UAC on the Windows 7 laptops that was causing the problem. Now if we’d been using a domain based architecture, the fix would have been simple. Use a GPO to give the needed permissions to install the software. And boom, you’re done.

However, in the absence of a domain, we ended up testing a couple of methods. First was simple – logging into the workstation and reducing the UAC level to basically nothing, then rebooting and pushing the AV package. That worked great, but wasn’t exactly the best way to go. There is also a method of doing this view registry hacks, which we haven’t tried yet (that’s todays project).

The second method that we tried was pushing a built MSI of the software out to the clients, and using our scripting engine to do the installation. That worked for the initial installation, but until I get into the office this morning and check, I won’t know if that actually runs the software removal job getting rid of the old software.

All in all, not that big a deal, and one that we’ll face again I’m sure. But sometimes it does make you wish for the old school domain method of building new businesses. Or for a better security method than UAC.

Stayed tuned for the second new division of Voodoo. We’re just waiting on getting the website up and running before we really talk about it. Hopefully by the end of the weekend.

But in the meantime, I had wanted to let everyone know about a really cool feature of Voodoo MSP services.

Being part of the Voodoo Networks has benefits, and one of the best is the free consulting that we provided each of our new clients. Eight hours of Voodoo consulting is included with every new contract for MSP services.

What can you do with that consulting time?

Pretty much anything. We really want to use it to help you with your technology planning, but if that isn’t something that you want to concentrate on, we can help you with network issues, desktop consulting, finding new vendors setting up a new system, software installs, pretty much anything.

And this isn’t the low man on the totem pole consulting, this is a high level consultant with experience in IT management, system architecture and high level network consulting.

We hope you take advantage of this consulting time to figure out the best path forward for your company, with regards to technology. Or at the very least get rid of that annoying bloatware on your new computer.

After reading a brief list of tips and tricks for traveling through airports on Lifehacker.com the other day, I came up a few tips of my own. Probably nothing new, but here are my tips for traveling these days:

1) Wear a shirt with a pocket. After checking in, place your ID and your boarding pass / ticket in that pocket so it’s right to hand for going through security. Much easier than digging through pants pockets. And it keeps the boarding pass neater too.

2) While checking in, or before getting in the security line, everything else you are carrying in your pockets (plus your watch) goes into a zipped pocket on your carryon. Make sure that getting your laptop(s) out for security won’t cause your wallet / phone / watch / etc to fall out.

3) Wear slip on shoes.

4) Once past the ID check, grab 2 tubs. One for your laptop (most airports require a separate tub for your laptop), and one for your shoes / belt / jacket / toiletries.

5) Try not to get too annoyed by the people who have done none of the above and are trying to figure out what to do next. Being annoyed only ruins your trip.

6) Speaking from experience tip: Don’t put anything valuable into the xray machine until there you are sure that you can walk through the metal detector without delay (lost a laptop that way before – guy in front of me buzzed repeatedly, and his partner was long gone with my pc when I made it through).

7) Best order for putting tubs through the xray machine is clothing, laptop, carryon bag. That way you can be well into getting your belt and shoes on before your laptop and carryon show up. Carry on bags always take longer to look at going through the xray.

As for actually being on the plane, I like to leave my wallet in the carry on, after I replace my ID in it. Much better than sitting on it for hours in the worlds most uncomfortable chairs.

I do tend to keep a credit card out now for drinks / snacks / wifi payment. I like to use a greendot prepaid card for that purpose. Then it’s not a big deal if I lose it somewhere – I’m out a few bucks, but no worries about my real accounts.

In my carry on I keep my netbook in a neoprene sleeve. In the sleeve (inside or in it’s pocket) I keep the stuff that I want on the flight – netbook, pen, moleskin, candy bar, mints). I carry that sleeve, along with my noise reducing headset onto the plane out of my carry on. Carry on goes into luggage compartment, the rest fits into the seat pocket. Takes all of 5 seconds to get situated.

Getting into a good routine that fits into what is expected or needed when traveling makes it so much easier to get through airports and flights. I don’t rack up the miles that I used too, but I still fly every 10 days or so, and having a good solid plan and habits make the whole thing go much easier.