I read Nick’s post, “When Fruit Spoils” a couple of days ago, and I laughed, then I cried.  I felt bad for his experience but good knowing that the almighty Apple is not exempt from problems.

Unfortunately my fruit spoiled today.

Here’s my story, up to now, with updating my iPhone to the 2.0 software.

1. Plug in iPhone for Sync
2. Click “Check for Updates.”  iTunes tells me that an update is available for the iPhone but I must first update iTunes to version 7.7.
3. I run Apple Update to get the current iTunes.  All seems to go well, and Apple Update tells me to reboot.
4. I reboot.  Uh-oh, iTunes wasn’t updated.  So, I did it again.  Apple Update tells me to reboot.
5. I reboot again.  This time iTunes shows that it’s updated.  Hooray!
6. I go to sync my iPhone again, and now all of my data (music, etc) is listed as “Other Data.” and cannot be accessed through the iPhone or iTunes.  Also, when I click “Check for Updates” now, there is no longer an update available for the 2.0 software, 1.1.4 is the current release.
7. I forget about it for a while, because I need to work on Photoshop.  Oh, guess what - the iTunes update broke Photoshop too.  It hangs on “TWAIN Device - Apple iPhone.”  Grrr.
8. So, I do the only thing I know to do, an iPhone restore.  Everything seems normal, but…
9. When I go back into iTunes to finish the restore, it times out (every time) when trying to access the iTunes Store - even though I can get to the normal music store just fine.
10. So, now my iPhone can only make emergency calls.

Thanks Apple, for my revolutionary communication device!

UPDATE: After a bunch of tinkering (1.5 hours), it’s not a brick anymore.  Still no 2.0.  Still having problems with Photoshop, but the phone works.

Friends, I’m crazy about new toys. I like playing with them; I like learning them; and I like the status of having them. Some of you are with me, and some of you think I’m a little obsessive in that. Today, I watched a webinar from Profit Stars on their Remit Plus software. Our bank has been pushing us to perform a remote deposit capture, which basically means that instead of taking a group of paper checks to the bank for deposit, we would upload check images to the bank digitally. If only they’d accept scans of cash, we’d do it today.

Their software, in conjunction with a good check scanner, does some cool stuff. One thing that I really like is that you can scan the check and the software will use OCR to decipher the CAR/LAR information on it. Basically, the software reads what you wrote (in your own handwriting) in the CAR field (ie: $100.00) and the LAR field (ie: One hundred and XX/100 dollars). Then it compares those numbers. If it is certain that they match, you don’t have to process that check. If not, you have to 10-key the amount in.

This is all done in conjunction with a check scanner, possibly a Canon CR 180 (pictured at right). This particular scanner, which I would love to see in our building, scans checks and performs the analysis of them at a rate of 180 checks per minute. WOAH! So, it reads the MICR data (bank routing number, account number, and check number), scans the front and back of the check, and prints an endorsement on the back of each one at a rate of 180 per minute. Again, WOAH! Check out this video, if for no other reason, you’ve got to hear the soundtrack.

We’re currently using a Magtek MICR Image to scan checks. The beauty of that is not having to use a different piece of software. The Magtek links right in to ACS, and the check image is saved in our ACS software. We think that saving the images is important so that when disputes come in, we can show the donor their check. It has made a lot of situations smoother for us. So, we scan the check, it reads the MICR data, pulls up the associated donor, and we 10-key the amount from the check and associate it with the fund they’re donating to. The downsides of this setup, compared to the other, fancier scanner are that this model does not have a hopper, so each check must be fed individually. Also, it only scans one side, so it cannot be electronically transmitted to the bank. The physical checks still have to be deposited. Finally, we have to 10-key the amounts where the other system has OCR do everything it can.

Is the personnel time valuable enough to make the investment? I sure don’t know. We’ll see what the bank is willing to pay for to get us hooked into this. I want the toy, but it needs to be a wise investment before I’m willing to jump in. Any of you using a similar setup?

Caleb is one of our servers (and just for added clarification - server in this instance means a computer, not a waiter).  Sometimes I love Caleb.  He works hard and fast.  He typically does everything that I ask of him.  He’s a super-server in so many situations.  But, like any toddler, sometimes he throws temper tantrums.  This week he started routing users’ e-mails into never never land, and if you put your ear up to his hard drive, you could almost hear him laughing.

I have to choose my punishments wisely for Caleb, since punishing him also punishes all my users.  I typically don’t put him in time-out, though I’d like to.  I do, however, verbally threaten him.  I’ll say things to him like, “You better act right mister, or I’m installing Linux on you,” or “I’m going to block your favorite sites.”  These threats usually don’t work too well for him.

In this last string of issues with Caleb, namely the development of bad sectors on his drive, I’ve found the need to clone his disk and move on.  Apparently he’s rather attached to this drive and doesn’t want a new one because every time I try to clone it, the process fails.  So, I’ve used every tool that I know of to fix the bad sectors to let the cloning commence, and I’m at a dead end right now.  I’ve used chkdsk, Seagate tools, and today I even purchased Spin Rite for the job.  All to no avail.

So, if anyone has good punishment ideas for Caleb, please let me know.  Or, if you know how to get drives with bad sectors cloned, that’d be good to know too.

My mom used to say, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.”  So, for my post about ACS yesterday, I feel the need to say that I flippin’ love ACS.

And now to the post…

A couple of weeks ago, I replaced the hard drive in one of our servers.  Well, we’ve had the joy this week of finding that the new hard drive has bad sectors.  Hooray.  So, tomorrow I’m taking the opportunity to switch over to a RAID 1 on that server with two new drives.  Still using 7200 drives though, not moving up to 10,000’s yet.  I’ll make sure to keep you updated.

Over the weekend, I did some maintenance on one of our servers. There were a few discoveries, and I have to admit that I am disappointed in myself for not discovering these things until now.

Over the past few weeks, I was hearing the tell-tale signs of a failing hard drive with the funny clicks and such. Running check disk confirmed there was a problem. I wasn’t too worried about the immediacy of the problem because I had been told by our previous contractor that the drives were mirrored and that the backup solution would work. Also, I had a replacement drive ready to be deployed.

I set up my schedule to be on site last Saturday (the 12th) to work on the server. It wasn’t long before I figured out that the drives weren’t mirrored at all, and in fact the supposed mirrored drive wasn’t even connected to power. I booted from that drive and discovered that it hadn’t been in use since 9/2006.

The backup system we are using is a $2,200 solution provided by our previous contractor that is a linear array of 4 500GB HDDs. (Ironically, also purchased in 9/2006) Each night, the server sends an image of it’s hard drives to the array located on the other side of a fire wall way on the other side of our building. Recovery is done by booting the server from a Linux restore disk. The disk failed to connect to the backup server using all methods I tried, but I verified that communication existed between the two. I found no helpful information about the specific error message on the 241 page manual, on Intel’s FAQs, or on Google. I will be contacting our previous contractor about this and also pursuing the Intel support department as to why we were unable to restore a backup.

In the end I used a tool to clone the existing drive to the new hard drive. It was done within 20 minutes. I then had to wrestle to get the drive letters back to the original assignments (and this took a lot of work for me). In the end, it was as simple as booting from a Windows 98 boot disk and running FDISK /MBR.

The moral of the story is to check and recheck your backup strategy to make sure you’re not left stranded.  If the disk had actually failed, I would have been in a world of hurt and the church would have been forced to fork out a lot of money to fix the problem.  So, I’m a dope, but I learned an invaluable lesson from this adventure.