So Much For That…

A while ago, as part of the overall Technical Preview program for Windows 10, Microsoft released a Technical Preview of the phone version for Windows 10 to those brave souls willing to take the risk of "bricking" their phones in order to test and help improve the latest mobile offering from Redmond.
However, due to an issue with the size of the install partition - a boring technical issue that I won't get into - only a limited number of phones were eligible to run the pre-release OS.
My phone was not one of them.
Recently, they announced that they would be releasing a new build that would be available for a wider range of phones, including mine, and provided a release date and time of April 10th at 10 AM PDT.
I decided to give it a shot - in the worst case, it would brick my 2+ year old phone and I'd pick up a cheap, low-end Windows Phone off-contract to tide me over until MS finally releases a new "flagship" phone later this year along with the official release of Windows 10.
Having gotten distracted by something else, it was a few minutes after the launch went live before I fired up the Windows Insider app to start the update process.
I was promptly greeted by a server error.  I tried again off and on for a while, and checked online to see if this was a known issue and if there was a fix in the works.  It was, and there was, and some hours later I was able to get the ball rolling and the update downloading.
It took a lot longer for the update to install than any other update I've done on my phone, but eventually the phone rebooted and I was greeted with the new look of the Windows 10 UI.
I was not, however, greeted with much in the way of actual functionality.  Most apps would immediately crash upon opening, and the battery was draining at a pace that would make Barry Allen say, "Slow down, Turbo."
It's worth noting that one of the few apps that I could get to work properly was the Photos app.  I found this amusing because on the PC version of the Windows 10 Technical Preview, the Photos app is the least usable app an can barely be said to function at all.
The new Outlook Mail app would open and bring me to a "Getting Started" screen to add accounts, as it didn't appear to carry over any of my existing e-mail accounts.  I attempted to add my GMail account, and it went through all the steps, including bringing me to the screen from Google asking me to authorize the app's access to my account.  At that point, however, a message popped up saying, "Oops!  Something went wrong!"  It then sent me back to the "Getting Started" screen, which had become unresponsive and would not allow me to try again until I closed and reopened the app, which would result in the same error when trying to add GMail, and no error message, but a return to the unresponsive "Getting Started" screen if I tried adding any other type of account.
I decided that a reboot was probably in order.  However, upon starting back up, the phone indicated that there was no SIM card present (there was), and that no wireless networks were available.  Another reboot did not solve the problem.
Before running the recovery software to attempt to go back to the previously-installed OS, I decided to do a hard reset, which would wipe all the data on the phone and give me a fresh start.
Once the reset was done, it attempted to restore some of my data.  Mostly preferences - account information, Start screen layout - etc. but there were several items that couldn't be restored because they depended on features that are no longer supported, or required files that were no longer present.  A particular folder of photos that I had pinned to the Start screen couldn't be restored, for example, because the photos it contained were wiped from the phone's storage.
I wasn't terribly concerned - there was nothing on the phone that was irreplaceable - particularly given that it was now recognizing my SIM card and was able to connect to my wireless network.
Additionally, upon launching the Outlook Mail app, I saw that all of my existing accounts were in place, though I did have to log back in to each of them.
With the Technical Preview up and running, I can share my initial reaction to some of the changes and new features, as well as some of the bugs I've encountered.
Let's start with the Pros:

Outlook Mail and Calendar - The two apps can be accessed separately, but are directly linked, and they look great.  Evidently they leaned heavily on the look and functionality of the recently-acquired Accompli in designing the apps.  I love being able to swipe to delete a or flag a message.  Not thrilled about the "hamburger" menu, but that's a battle that I think users have lost at this point, unfortunately.
Project Spartan - It's still extremely rough around the edges, but just the fact that Microsoft's next-generation browser is included in this build at all is a good thing.
Action Center - There have been multiple improvements here, including the option to Expand and see additional actions and settings.  Also, the ability to interact with notifications inline - being able to reply to a text from the notification without having to switch to the Messaging app, for example - is pretty damn cool.
Messaging - It's a nice - if long overdue - touch to actually show the contact picture for the person you're communicating with in the view of Conversations.  Also, the individual conversation threads themselves look somewhat more modern with the changes to the message balloons.
Settings - Being able to pin individual settings to the Start screen is a handy feature.
Bluetooth Keyboard Support – Another “about damn time” feature.  Of course, I wasn’t able to get this to work; while it attempted to pair with the one Bluetooth keyboard I had handy, much like Jon on a date* it wasn’t able to seal the deal.  Of course, that may have been a user error problem (again, much like Jon on a date).

...and I'm not going to list the Cons, because just a little while ago the Technical Preview bricked me.
Fortunately, I was able to roll back to 8.1 using the Lumia Recovery Tool, but making my phone completely unresponsive is the biggest Con there is, so no point in listing the other issues right now.
In fairness, it is an install-at-your-own-risk piece of pre-release software, so I can't complain too much, but until they provide a more stable build, I don't think I'll be making any further attempts at using it any time soon.
That said, I did have the opportunity to provide some feedback (which is what the Technical Preview is for), and to at least add my own to the chorus of voices calling out for some specific changes and improvements.
In the meantime, I'll keep using the PC/Tablet version on my Surface Pro 2 and providing additional feedback there.

*Though the fact that it was even able to attempt to pair puts it well-ahead of Jon on that front.

Frustration

Thanks to everyone - all one of you* - who suggested possible titles. I actually sought out assistance in the Comments over at Slacktivist and went with one of the suggestions from someone there: Blood Drift.
Even after switching to the different wireless adapter, Munin continued to exhibit the problems it had been having under Windows 7.
I decided that the thing to do was to restore it to factory condition, download a BIOS update that I didn't think to download before upgrading - and which wouldn't run under Windows 7 - and some firmware updates for the hard drive and DVD drive, then try a clean install of Windows 7.
During one of the brief periods in which I had Internet connectivity I found a newer driver for the built-in wireless adapter, but installing that didn't fix the problem.
That didn't really surprise me, as it was clear that the problem was bigger than just that one driver, as no USB device connected to the computer would work properly.
Attempting to copy files to an external hard drive, for example, would result in the transfer eventually stalling out and the hard drive light actually turning off. The drive would still appear to be accessible - I could explore it, but not actually open any files on it - but clearly wasn't working.
This was actually a major fly in the ointment, as I needed to back up my internal hard drive before doing the factory restore, which reformats the drive and erases everything on it.
After several vain attempts to get the files copied over to my external drive I finally hit upon an idea: download an .iso of some Linux distro, burn a CD, boot from that, and copy the files over to the external drive.
So I found some random distro, burned it to CD, booted...and found that it didn't have drivers for my display, so once it actually loaded up I couldn't see anything.
Undaunted (well, somewhat daunted), I found a distro of Ubuntu Linux, burned the .iso, booted from that, and success!
With that accomplished, I dug out my recovery CDs, booted up...and realized that I didn't actually need the CDs, as the recovery files are stored in a partition on the hard drive and I could have just hit F11 during bootup to run the recovery from there.
Worse, I completely forgot that the restore process actually gives you an opportunity to run a back-up before proceeding, so it's possible I could have skipped the whole Linux process (though I'm not 100% sure on that; choosing to "Backup Now" might have just booted me back into Windows, where the backing up wouldn't have worked, given the USB communications issues.)
After doing the factory restore I found that my BIOS was actually up to date anyway.
*Sigh*
It was very late by this time, though, so I waited until this morning to reinstall Windows 7.
This time around the problem with the wireless adapter appeared right away.
I didn't even bother trying to download the new driver.
Instead I opted to disable the adapter and pick up one of those power line networking kits.
It actually works pretty well. You hook one adapter up to the router, then plug it into the wall outlet. Then you take the other adapter, hook it up to the computer you want to add to the network, plug it into the wall outlet, and voila, the network signal is traveling through the electrical wiring in the house. So far with that method I'm able to network Munin without the problems I was having with the wireless adapter(s).
I may buy another adapter so that I can hook my Blu-ray player and media extender up to the network (it's faster than the wireless connection my media extender currently has, and the Blu-ray player doesn't have wireless).
So it took more than a week, but it seems that - knock on wood - I finally have Windows 7 running properly and can now actually enjoy some of the new features.
Apart from messing around with Windows 7 and doing the usual comic book and grocery shopping, in the late afternoon/early evening I decided to bail on any trick-or-treaters and see a movie. Unlike last year, when I bailed on them but left candy - which some little bastard promptly stole, apparently - this year I said, "Screw you, kids!' and left nothing.
The movie in question was Zombieland, which was freakin' hilarious.
I'm not sure how much posting I'll be doing for the next month, as I'll be working on the novel trying to churn out 50,000 words in 30 days.
This time around will be more of a challenge than the other two times, as I don't have as much free time as I did back then, what with the four days off (and having time to actually write while I was at work), and I really want to write something that's at least halfway decent this time around. Of course, that's what I wanted to do the other two times, and that really didn't work out, so I'm not terribly confident that this year will be different.
In any case, I'm not going to blog my chapters as I write them like I did the first time around, though, unless it turns out to be complete garbage (there's a better than average chance of that), I will probably share it in some fashion once I'm finished.

*I'm honestly not bitter about the lack of comments in the Comments. I'm a realist; I know how little traffic this blog gets and how little there is to actually comment on. Seriously, I'm not bitter. Well, not terribly bitter, at any rate. I mean, it does bother me a little when I explicitly ask for comments and don't get any (other than from Scott), but it's not like I expected any, so I guess it all works out.

*Sigh*

It was bound to happen.

Everyone and his brother bitched about all the problems with Windows Vista and how much it sucked and meanwhile I had very few issues with it, and actually kind of liked it.

On the other hand – with the usual dissenters – most people agree that Windows 7 is teh awesome and report very few problems with it, while I end up having all of the problems they apparently had with Vista.

Still, if I can get past the problems, there are a lot of things I like about Windows 7, though many of them are simple “gee-whiz, tha't’s kind of cool” things rather than major changes to performance and the interface or anything like that.

The Good:

The “Peek” function is cool.  If you have a bunch of windows open you can just hover over this button in the lower right-hand corner and all of the open windows turn transparent, allowing you to see the desktop. 

Thumbnail views of open windows when you hover over them on the taskbar are also cool, and it makes use of the “Peek” function:  if you hover over the thumbnail, all windows in front of it turn transparent.

I really like the idea of using Libraries to organize content in a disorganized fashion.

Grabbing a window and “shaking” it causes all other open windows to be minimized.  More fun than functional, I guess.

Jumplists, an evolution of “Recent Documents” is pretty sweet.  When a program is “pinned” to the Start Menu or taskbar, you can right-click on it and see a list of files recently opened by that application.

Native support for .iso burning is a long overdue new feature.  Right-click on the file, choose “Burn to Disc,” and you’re all set.

I like the new look of Media Center – and the rather ostentatious new start-up sound – and I’m hoping that more content will eventually be added to the Internet TV function.

The Indifferent:

Along with native burning support for .iso files, it would have been nice to have a built-in feature to mount them as drives.

I’m not seeing the supposed native support for .mov files.

The Bad:

Still no native Blu-ray support?  I don’t buy the “it would add $30 to the cost” argument.

The Downright Horrible:

When I got home on Friday I decided to try playing around with Windows 7 on Munin before installing it on Hugin.

However, the network status icon was showing me that my computer had “limited connectivity,” in that it was still connected to my network, but couldn’t access the Internet.

I tried the standard fix action:  a reboot.  This caused it to get as far as the “Shutting Down” down screen, but no further.  Eventually I had to kill the power.  Once it booted up, though, it was back on the Internet.  For a while.  I tried to adjust some of the network options for it, but the network options screen froze as soon as I tried to change anything.  So I went into Device Manager to try to uninstall the driver so that it would reinstall upon reboot.  Device Manager froze.  I rebooted.  Stuck and “Shutting Down.”

After the reboot, it was back to normal, so I took advantage of the brief window of opportunity to try to locate a new driver.  None available.  The loss of connectivity would happen at random times, and would always cause the failure to actually shut down and reboot, and even began interfering with transferring files to and from a USB drive.

I searched in vain – on the other computers – for an answer online.

Meanwhile I was dealing with some post-upgrade issues on Hugin, though those were less severe.  However, I do have on major problem:  Photoshop isn’t recognizing the pressure-sensitivity of my Cintiq.  This is a very big deal, as even the lightest press results in a thick, flat line.  Pressure-sensitivity is working in other applications – including other Adobe apps, like Illustrator – but not in Photoshop.  Not sure what to do about that one, since, as usual, the Internet is no help.

In any case, to resolve the wireless issue on Munin I decided to just disable the built-in adapter and use one of my old USB adapters.  I didn’t have a flash drive handy, so when I downloaded the drivers for the USB adapter on Hugin I saved them to my network drive, since even when Munin loses Internet access it remains connected to my network.  Of course, I had to try to get at Munin during the brief window in which I could go into Device Manager and disable the adapter without it freezing things up.

Naturally – and there’s no way you can convince me that this wasn’t the Universe just straight-up messing with me – the problem had gotten worse and the adapter would no longer connect to my network at all.  So I had to grab a flash drive, put the drivers on it – since I could no longer access the network drive from Munin – cut the power, boot into Safe Mode, disable the adapter, reboot, and then install the USB adapter, all of which took much longer than it should have.

As it stands now, I have the USB adapter in place and things appear to be working.  Still trying to figure out the Photoshop problem, though.

Anyway, if this post looks weird it’s because I’m trying the Windows Live Writer, which lets you write blog posts offline and then publish them directly rather than writing them in Word and pasting them into Blogger, or writing directly in Blogger, which has certain drawbacks.

Trust Me, We're Nowhere Near Thunderdome, So Don't Worry About Getting Beyond It

For a variety of reasons I never got around to watching any of the recordings of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report that piled up on my DVR during the week, so much of yesterday and today was devoted to that task.
I still have move stuff to watch, as there’s a free preview weekend of HBO and Cinemax this weekend, so there have been a couple of movies that I’ve recorded or set to record, such as Juno, which I never got around to putting in my Netflix queue before canceling my gift subscription.
I had been informed of the free preview weekend via the Verizon message center dealie on my DVR on Thursday, but had forgotten about it until yesterday when someone from Verizon called to offer me a free month of their movie package and a low(ish) price thereafter. I was tempted, but decided it wasn’t worth it, but it did remind me about the preview.
One thing I’ve noticed about free preview weekends over the years is that while they tend to air some of the bigger, more popular movies during the preview, they also tend to say “Ixnay on the oftsay-orecay ornpay.”
Even Skinemax tends to avoid airing some of its raunchier fare.
That hasn’t been the case this weekend, though, and with the multiple versions of Cinemax, that makes for a lot of soft-core porn. Ah, Herman Beeftink, how I’ve missed the melodious strains of your soft-core soundtracks…
I set a few things to record on the DVR and a few others to record on my computer. However, I found that the copy protection that’s only supposed to prevent me from viewing recorded protected content on other computers and from burning it to DVD/Blu-ray actually prevented me from watching it on the computer at all.
Sort of, anyway. I recorded Juno on the computer, and when I went into Media Center and navigated to the Recorded TV folder and tried to watch it I got a blank screen and some random noise. However, I recorded something else overnight, and this morning when I navigated to the Recorded TV folder in Windows and clicked on the file, it launched Media Center and began playing. Not sure what’s going on there.
(Note: after running into the problem with Juno, I set my DVR to record it when it aired on the West coast Cinemax channel later in the evening.)
Speaking of Windows and not being sure what’s going on, for a while now I’ve noticed something odd and mildly irritating that Windows does at random times.
I have two external hard drives, one is 250 GB, the other 750 GB, and for some reason – again, this happens randomly – when I do certain things, Windows will first poll the 750 GB drive, even though what I’m trying to do has no connection to any files on that drive, before actually performing the action.
For example, I click on the icon for my internal drive, nothing will happen, I’ll hear the 750 GB drive start to spin up, and I know that I won’t actually get an Explorer window until after Windows finishes whatever it’s doing with the external drive.
Or sometimes I’ll be surfing the Web and I’ll click on a link, there’s a pause while Windows polls the external drive, and then, after I hear the sound coming from my external drive that indicates that Windows is finished with whatever it’s doing, the page I was trying to navigate to will finally load.
The weirdest thing is when the drive polling interferes with running a filter in Photoshop. Click on the filter I want to run, wait for the drive to be polled, and then the filter preview window will pop up. Again, there’s no obvious connection between what I’m trying to do and the wackiness that Windows engages in. I’m not working on a file saved on that drive, and I don’t have Photoshop set up to use it as a scratch disk.
If I shut off or disconnect the drive, obviously, this doesn’t happen. But that begs the question of why Windows is doing it at all. After all, with the drive disconnected, the things I’m trying to do still work (and work better, as there’s no delay), so why the polling? It obviously isn’t necessary in any way for the requested action to be performed.
Anyone have any ideas as to what’s going on? As I said, it only happens at random times, and it only seems to happen with the 750 GB drive. Windows totally ignores the 250 GB one in this regard.
My Google-Fu has failed me in my quest to find an answer.
The only thing that I can think if of is that all of my music and most of my videos are stored on that drive and I have Media Center set to “watch” those folders, so maybe the timing is just coincidental. That is to say, it just happens that at that moment some Media Center process makes a scan of the folders to look for changes, and because the drive is so large and has so many files it takes a while, and there’s no connection to what I’m actually trying to do.
I suppose that makes about as much sense as anything.
In any case, I went out this morning to hit the comic shop, as that’s something else I didn’t get around to during the week, and then went grocery shopping.
I should have taken a picture, but I have to say that I was right in my prediction about how panic-stricken Northern Virginians would react to the rain and the possibility of snow/sleet – which never happened, by the way – the other night.
There was this massive gaping hole in the shelves where the bottled water should be, and the supply of milk was scant indeed. I didn’t check on the beer, but I’m sure Scott was right about that. Even the supply of Vitamin Water was almost entirely exhausted.
The funny thing is that if we get some rain, or even a prediction of rain or snow, within the next couple of days, the exact same thing will happen again. I just don’t get that. I mean, did you actually use up all of the “end of the world” supplies that quickly?
Maybe it’s something like, “Hooray! We’ve been spared from nature’s wrath! Let’s celebrate by dumping all this bottled water we bought down the drain!”
I’ve got a special message for all of my fellow Northern Virginians: It’s. Just. Fucking. Rain.
Even if it actually snows, civilization is not going to collapse. Mild wintry weather will not transform the area into some post-apocalyptic Road Warrior-style horrorscape. There will be no cannibals, or rape gangs, or a degeneration of the populace into warring tribes fighting over dog food and toilet paper.
The worst-case scenario is that you don’t go into work for one day.
Anyway, after doing my shopping I came home, watched some TV, ate lunch, took a nap, watched more TV, snacked on some stuff to the extent that I wasn’t hungry enough to make any sort of dinner, and now I’m writing this and thinking that I really should eat something more substantial.
Plus I have more TV to watch, so I guess I’ll bring this entry to a close.