Sunday, November 28, 2010

An Easy Fix For the iPhone OS 4.2 Update Problem - Music Not Showing on iPod

I was an early adopter on IOS 4.2. The day it came out, I clicked "Check for update" in iTunes on the iPhone pane every five minutes.

After quickly snagging it, I quickly realized that it had caused a problem: When I opened the iPhone app, my music didn't show up! I was worried it had been deleted, but in fact it had not. I knew this because when I went to settings, general, and finally about, I showed 3302 songs.

Apple recommends a complete restore, but the problem with this is that it acquires you to go back and replace it a lot of settings on the phone.

A Simple Solution to the Problem
What I did to solve my problem as simply to go into my iTunes library and drag another song to my iPhone. This fixed the issue with little hassle and little time investment.

It's so simple that I'm surprised Apple doesn't recommend doing this first. If you try the solution, please let me know either way whether it works!

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Review: Great Night at the Venetian Watching Blue Man Group in Las Vegas

A friend of mine snagged some fantastic tickets to watch Blue Man Group tonight in Las Vegas. These tickets were given to us by the folks putting on Pubcon, specifically Brett Tabke.

The Blue Man Group is by no means a new phenomenon; the original group formed in New York City in 1987. My girlfriend is quite familiar with the group through friends who have seen the group even though she has never seen them herself. To me, the group was new. I enjoyed them tremendously.

I don't live in Las Vegas, and this is the first time that I have ever been to the city. It is nice to know that there is good clean entertainment available in what is known as Sin City. This might be the best show in Las Vegas if you're looking to go to something that you know is "safe", fun, and thought-provoking.

The show is safe very little of it is spoken. There is no crude language and there are no sexual overtones. If you are an intuitive type of person you will be thrilled with the subtlety of communication. The humor ranges from extremely simple to more elaborate but there are no dirty jokes.

The show is fun because all the abstract elements that pulls on. It has the weirdness of blue humanoid creatures who are not quite human but have the sense of wonder that every human values at some level. The show is fun because of the audience involvement. I myself had a camera stuck in my mouth and zoomed down my throat. I brought it on myself when I returned the gaze of one of the blue men as they were running a camera through the front row. A sweet lady was picked out of the audience is taken up on stage to "dine" with the Blue Man Group, and another man was abducted out of the audience and put in a jumpsuit. Over the next few minutes, he was slathered in blue (is closer safe because of the jumpsuit) and launched into a canvas where he became an abstract artist.

The show is thought-provoking because of the nuance that it plays on as well as the outright parodies it does of modern rock 'n roll, advertising, and a few select romantic time. I will send more in this area because I might ruin the show for you.

I definitely enjoyed my night and left entertained. If you have a chance to see The Blue Man Group in Las Vegas or anywhere else, I highly recommend you do so.

Many thanks to the folks at Pubcon for a great night of entertainment.

Friday, November 05, 2010

Frustrating Day with Networking

Today I spent a long time struggling with what turned out to be very basic networking issue. I'm trying to move from Window's built-in VPN software to the mobile VPN software that watch guard puts out which in turn works with my XTM 505 Firebox. I'm still trying to make that move because I had to spend most of the day correcting issues with my air card which I will need next week as I travel.

For whatever reason, my laptop decided all of a sudden that it did not want to recognize the USB connector lightning AT&T provided me or the Dell wireless 5530 air card (C6807R). I tried several options to fix this issue all of which proved to be superfluous. My normal fix, simply uninstalling and reinstalling the device drivers, did not work.

What ended up working was going into the Device Manager -> Modems -> Right Click -> Properties -> Advanced Tab -> Advanced Port Settings and then looking at the very bottom of the window by the COM port number drop-down. I simply selected a different port dollars order using hit okay and like magic everything was fixed.

FYI I am using Windows 7 Professional 64-bit.