Category: Technology

At work, I recently got an AMD 64 X2-based computer. It is a real screamer. I installed Windows XP Professional x64 because it has a few relevant benefits: it’s based on Windows 2003 x64, it runs IIS 6.0, and all my hardware has x64 drivers.

The biggest benefit of x64 is it can use more than 4GB of RAM. I am only using half that amount, so I am not taking advantage of this feature.

Overall, the x64 experience has been good. All my important 32-bit software runs fine except Windows Desktop Search. Microsoft has no x64 version. (There is an unsupported workaround to get it running on x64, but I am leery about it.) I am using Google Desktop as a workaround. I don’t like that product as well because it has problems dealing with email that is moved from one mailbox to another. The only fix is to switch out of cached mode. This is an inexcusable bug, but it has been around since the product was released.

Anyway, the point of this post is to detail an odd IIS 6.0 error. Any time I surfed any web site on my local machine’s IIS, I only got Service Unavailable. Nothing else.

Examining my local log, I found this error:

This is event ID 2274 on aspnet_filter.dll. The fix is in MSKB 894435. I first used the MSKB’s instructions to switch to ASP.NET 2.0 64-bit. In doing so, I had to disable IIS’s 32 bit mode.

Surprisingly, this cause my FrontPage Extensions to fail:

Another event 2274, but this time the failure is on fpexedll.dll. This surprised me because I installed FrontPage Extensions x64!

It turns out that even though this is supposedly the x64 version, it still runs in 32 bit mode per MSKB 891314.

After putting IIS back in 32-bit mode, everything seem to be working fine.

I am ditching ICQ. My ICQ number is 4957699, and my nickname is Nova SS. If you only had me on ICQ and want to continue contacting me, email me and I’ll give you my other IM information.

I am chomping at the bit to get off of POP3-based email clients. I am tired of being bound to specific machines to handle email.

Two days ago, I figured out how to get around the biggest shortcoming (for me) in Google Mail. I had over 20,000 email messages accumulated from when I created the account (explanation), but Google gives no easy way to mark all of these messages as read. I figured out a workaround: just download them via POP3 into Outlook Express, being sure to configure Google Mail to archive downloaded messages.

With that problem fixed, I committed to exclusively use Google Mail. It worked well. It’s very nice to have all your email available in a well-designed, efficient interface no matter where you are. Even the PDA interface was usable!

However, a major design flaw screwed up everything.

I send my emails as aren@cambre.biz. I want to hold on to that email address for life. Google can send emails using a non-gmail.com address with a caveat: Google adds a “sender” field to the email’s header data, and this “sender” field gives away your actual gmail.com address.

This stupid sender field totally screwed up Google Mail for me.

First, anyone using a sophisticated email client will see my gmail.com address immediately. This is how Outlook shows my email address to the recipient of my emails:

I don’t want my gmail.com address published because I don’t want to be attached to it.

That isn’t the worst.

I am subscribed to a few email lists. Less sophisticated mail list programs like majordomo don’t care about this sender field. However, better email list programs interpret the sender field as the actual sender of the email. Why is this a problem? Smartly-configured lists only accept emails that come from subscribed addresses. In my case, the sophisticated email list software sees that the email was sent by my gmail.com address. Since I am subscribed as aren@cambre.biz, the email list software rejects my emails.

In a stroke of genius, Google does not provide a way to disable this feature.

Gee, Google, thanks again for arrogantly making dumb design decisions that don’t work well.

Apparently, I’m not the only person with this problem, and this is not a new problem (link 1, link 2, link 3, link 4).

I want to switch to a web email program. It would be handy to have instant access to all my email no matter where I am. I wouldn’t be tied to a specific computer to get my “full” email experience.

I use Outlook 2003 for email. It’s great: fast email searches (with Google Desktop), uses Word as the email creator (so I get all of Word’s strengths), great sorting capabilities, messages can be grouped by conversation (great for seeing replies), built-in image handling (you can crop, resize, and resample images from within the email creation process), and so on. But when I download my email, it permanently stays on my home computer. I can’t get to the downloaded emails again until I am back on that machine.

The current web email programs aren’t up to the task yet.

Hotmail, like most of Microsoft’s online services, is a joke. It lags far behind Google and Yahoo, and it’s not worth any more column space. I don’t understand how a company capable of innovative products, like Windows Vista, Office, the .NET Framework and C#, and Visual Studio, can suck so badly at online services. What gives?

Google’s Gmail is a strong contender, and it has come a long way. It still has serious shortcomings, one of which is no way to mark all messages as read. This is a problem when your Google inbox has 12,157 unread messages piling up (here’s an explanation—note that it is about 10 months after that post). While innovative, Google has a history of arrogance when deciding on user features. Also, when you log into Gmail, you stay logged into Google when you do searches. Do I want Google tracking my searches like that?

Yahoo Mail may be my best bet. Yahoo’s current online mail program is far better than Hotmail (what isn’t?), but it still lags behind Gmail. Yahoo’s revolutionary, next generation online email client should be awesome—taking all of Gmail’s advantages and working them into a much better interface. Once this comes out, I may ditch Outlook and go full-time with an online mail reader.

UPDATE (11:10 AM): The technician thinks he fixed the problem by changing “pairs” at SBC’s neighborhood phone box. I think this means that my line was punched down to a defective location in the box. Anyway, the bandwidth problem should now be fixed.

UPDATE (10:03 AM): This morning, my full 1.5 Mb/s downstream bandwidth returned. The tech is getting bad readings even behind the house. He said the problem is so bad that he was surprised we are getting any DSL signal at all. He is checking further downstream to see what is going on. Fortunately, because the readings behind the house were bad, it’s very likely they won’t bill me for this.

Original article:

If I had blog software where you rate your current mental state, it would be “annoyed.” This afternoon, I noticed that my internet connection dramatically slowed down. SBC’s speed check site shows my download speeds are running between 5% and 10% of the normal 1.5 Mb/s, but upload speeds are 100% of the normal 384 Kb/s. Huh?

I checked several things but couldn’t fix it. I even swapped DSL modems with a neighbor’s. SBC tech support was no help. So tomorrow, an SBC line technician is coming to my house to check things out. This guy comes with the ominous provision that if they determine the problem is my fault, I get billed. What is the actual problem? How much does an SBC technician cost? Those unanswered questions are driving me up the wall.

I strongly feel that SBC is at fault. I don’t understand how I could do anything that could hose downloads but not affect upload speeds. If my equipment was faulty, it seems that both upload and download speeds would be affected.

Oh, well, I’ll find out more tomorrow!