Andrew's Sprocket

So this was probably my own fault because I had Mac Updates set to automatically download. This wasn’t a problem before I was counting megabytes. This is now the case using Verizon’s monthly broadband access, which comes with a 5GB cap and $0.25/MB over that. I have been doing a lot of development lately and this update, automatically downloaded, pushed me over the cap, which wasn’t difficult at 442MB for the 10.5.7 update. Maybe they could disable this auto update if your on an EVDO connection.

As for the update it can be found here. But looking through the KB it didn’t seem there were many worthy fixes, certainly not $110 worth.

The bigger problem is with this cap that Verizon and Sprint are now putting on their EVDO broadband access. At first it was all you can eat, kind of like text messages when they first came out. Then they started charging per message and then bundle monthly subscriptions. See this slashdot article on the subject and how the 160 byte service transmission was easily turned into a cash cow. Anyway, yea caps suck. But wait you can pay to raise your cap. 5GB is $60/month but as a Verizon rep told me I could go up to 10GB for only $200. Now that just didn’t make a hell of a lot a sense to me. I mean I am from the south but I know when my beans are cooked and when to pull them off the fire. I told her I would consider $120 for 10GB, although that is ridiculous since it wasn’t long ago that they offered unlimited service. I guess I could just get another card, which means another account and another bill and another number. Well that is cheaper than 5GB at $0.25/MB which is $1280. Where is the FCC on this? This should be criminal. Changing plans quietly, vauge language around “unlimited”. Unlimited to anyone means one thing but not to these companies who think they can call it unlimited and put restrictions on them. AT&T charges by the Kb at $0.00048 per Kb. Pricing it this way may look cheap but it actually is just to confuse the user who should know that it is actually $0.50/MB, twice Verizon. Here is another frustrated users response.

Guess I will be a coffee shop coder until my usage gets reset. Mmmmm, iced latte, with soy milk and four shots….or an iced soy quad latte.

Oh, a few side notes on getting into your VZAccess Manager with more options.

option-D
Pass: diagvzw
Also Pass: 000000 seems to be a default.

These are some useful commands I found for dealing with annoyances in Vista.

Disable annoying confirmation boxes:
Type msconfig in the search, Goto Tools tab and Launch Disable UAC.

Auto login a user:
Type netplwiz in the search, Uncheck “Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer”, enter the users password.

It all started with a howto blog about setting up a home file server using the newly released Solaris ZFS. I placed an order with Newegg for all the parts necessary; four Western Digital 750 gig SATA hard drives along with a motherboard, AMD 64 bit processor, 8 gigs of RAM and whatever else needed for this redundant, resilient and robust back up system.

After spending a few hours assembling all of the pieces, Note that the hard drives did not come with SATA cables and the motherboard was OEM so it did not come with any. This was a big pain in the ass since I had to strip ones from other machines.

Finally the moment all DIY computerist wait for, the boot screen. The BIOS recognized 3 out of the 4 hard drives. There could be several reasons for this. Faulty SATA cable, faulty SATA connector on the MB, bad hard drive, bad power connector, etc. I then powered down and checked all connections and cables. Powered it back up and now I saw all 4 drives. I then installed OpenSolaris and started configuring it. Then OpenSolaris only showed 3 drives. I thought it was a connection again so I swapped the cable and MB connects of the drive not being recognized and powered up again. The drive still did not show a sign of life in the BIOS. The SATA connection and cable worked on another drive without problems so it was safe to eliminate that. I tried this a few more times with intermittent results. Sometimes the drive was there sometimes not.

I requested an RMA from Newegg and sent the drive back for another one, $10 and 10 days later I received another drive. The box was banged up but this is not surprising since I have seen the UPS guy toss packages from the sidewalk up a flight of stairs to the neighbors front porch. This could definitely do some damage to a hard drive, although these things most likely come from China and have had a long trip and have been jostled long before this. Still, it doesn’t help when I am trying to diagnose bad hard drive issues on a “New” hard drive.

Well this drive was recognized by the BIOS but now OpenSolaris could not access it or write/read to it. I then booted up with SpinRite to test the drive, which responded:

“Empty Drive” and “Unable to access the entire range of sectors occupied by this region of the drive”.

I have never seen this error but it appeared to be a terminal one. Newegg was as always very good about returns and even paid for shipping this time. I’ve yet to get another one but can’t help to think if UPS wasn’t to blame? I have never had a problem with a new Western Digital hard drive but it’s still a mystery.

On a closing note, OpenSolaris was a huge disappointment, I am too used to Linux tools and features and sad Solaris doesn’t offer some of them. On the other hand FreeNAS was an easier option but that left me dealing with RAID and there are also issues with that.