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.

I’ve been using Firefox 3 (RC2) all week, and I’m very impressed.  Several of my add-ons did not work with the new version, but a couple of them were automatically upgraded to their Firefox 3 counterparts.

The new user interface looks quite different, but it still has that familiar Firefox charm.  The best thing I’ve noticed so far is that complex pages like those from Zoho and Google Docs render so much faster.  Honestly, it’s surprising how much difference there actually is.  I was never displeased before with those services, but now I almost can’t stand to use a computer with IE or Firefox 2 because that “Loading” bar appears all the time.

Sign up for Firefox 3 Download Day.  They’re trying to set a a Guinness World Record for the most software downloaded in 24 hours.

I posted a month ago about an easier way to install Wordpress. Well, David Szpunar was kind enough to drop me a comment about installing with Subversion. I don’t have the desire or energy to explore Subversion in much detail, but it is very cool. Anyhow, I followed David’s instructions yesterday and got a WP blog up in running in less time than ever before. I’m including his comment here:

Hey, that’s still the old-fashioned way! If you’ve got SSH and a decent host (i.e. one that has the svn Subversion client installed), just run:

svn checkout http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/tags/2.5.1/ .

(for example, or use /branches/2.5/) inside the (empty) directory you want to be your WordPress root. Run through the web install and enter your database and blog information and you’re done. Best of all, you can switch to a new version with the svn switch command at any time, also a one-liner!

There are a few more tricks than that but the whole deal’s on the WordPress Codex. After your 2nd, 3rd, or 10th WordPress install (or upgrade!) you’ll be, well…really happy you’re using Subversion!

Next time you need to install Wordpress, try using Subversion.

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?

I’ve been having a lot of “fun” in the past few weeks with cloning a hard drive on a server. Let me tell you up front that I am a major penny pincher. You might remember my series on simple ways for the church to save money on operational expenditures. Some say that I’m cheap, but I prefer to be considered committed to missions and wise spending. That’s who I am. So, I end up using a lot of open source software.

I love Clonezilla. It’s an open source title comparable to Norton Ghost. Clonezilla has done some excellent things for me on a number of machines. It can really save a ton of time deploying new machines or replacing failing hard drives. Well, for some reason, it wouldn’t clone one of the partitions on Caleb’s hard drive. I did everything I knew how to do to make it work. I fixed the bad sectors, I ran tons of maintenance utilities, and I even got into the inner workings of Clonezilla and changed some of the script settings (scary, yes!).

Tonight, I bit the bullet and bought Paragon’s Drive Copy 8.5 Professional. It’s actually running right now, so I don’t have the final results, but it’s past the point that Clonezilla always crapped out. I’ve got to tell you that it looks like it’s going to be worth every penny of it’s $129 price tag. I have been pulling my hair out for weeks with this problem, and this thing looks like it’s going to do the trick. (I’ll know for sure in half an hour.)

What got me writing early on this, other than having nothing else to do but watch a progress bar, is that the rescue CD is very user friendly. It doesn’t look thrown together like so many other Linux-type rescue CD’s. It properly recognized the RAID, named the drives in easy human readable format (making it real hard to mess up the source and destination), and even lets me use the mouse. If this works, I don’t know if I’ll even install the Windows software that came with it.

So, hopefully my adventure with the Attack of the Clones is coming to an end. I’ll let you know how this thing pans out.

* UPDATE *

Drive Copy 8.5 worked like a champ!  The single drive has been successfully cloned to the RAID.  Now I’m a definite fan of Paragon Software!