My first attempt at a home theatre system was  an XBMC on an original Xbox.  Once that outlived its usefulness (read: I got a girlfriend who didn’t want to use a controller as a remote), I transitioned to an AppleTV running XBMC.  When GoogleTV was announced, I thought it was the answer to my prayers, I was wrong.

The main problem is other companies. Do I fault Google?  Yes, a little. However, additional faults lie with Logitech, Motorola and the content distributers.

I figured with the recent price drop of the Logitech Revue to $99, how bad could it be?  Boy, was I wrong.

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With your papers in hand from Part II – Organization, you are finally ready to hit the streets!

First, admit to yourself that you may not know everything. If you just glanced over that last statement, start this paragraph over again.  Why am I making you re-read it? Because when you are viewing a house, you are not likely to take in every little detail which may make or break your purchase.

It’s Dangerous To Go Alone! Take This.

You will need the following items when you are ready to go visit houses:

• A Trusted Friend – Take along a friend whose taste you trust. This person will be your sounding board, and an extra set of eyes.
• A Camera – You will not remember everything, take a picture of things you like, and things you do not.
• MLS Paperwork – The sheets you printed out from the last article.
• Pen – You will want to take notes at each location and make a pros and cons list of each property.

You will know whether you want or do not want a house as soon as you enter it.  The rest of the tour just reinforces your initial opinion.  You will be looking at the proverbial “lipstick on a pig”; painted walls, cleaned carpets, and basic furniture layouts.  Do not let this happen.

Going to your first house will be an overwhelming experience.   On your first visit the the house, try to ignore the flashy elements and concentrate on the concrete line items the house brings to the table.  It may have 2 bathrooms, but is one out of the way?  Does the layout make sense with your furniture items or lifestyle?  You will be looking at the house from a “how can I live here” point of view.

Your friend has a very important role as well. He or she will be responsible for viewing the house from a “how can you live here” point of view.  He or she should know your strengths, your weaknesses, and be a normalizer.  You might be blinded by the hot tub or spa on the deck, your friend should remind you that the small kitchen cannot support a dishwasher.

Groundhog’s Day

On a good day, your realtor may take you to see somewhere between five (5) and eight (8) homes.  For each house you visit, you should take a picture of it from the streets, the front door, and develop a light pros and cons list. Wash, rinse, repeat.

After a while, they will all start to blend together. Use this to your advantage. If you can not remember a house, it may not have been right for you.  At the end of the day and at the end of each outing, keep a running binder of your top five (5) houses and throw the rest away.

Most of us have run into a hugely annoying bug with vSphere Client (a.k.a. VMware Virtual Infrastructure Client v4.0) running on Windows 7 RC. When you start the program, you’ll run into an error message:

Error Parsing the server 1.2.3.4 clients.xml file. Login will continue contact your system administrator

After clicking OK, you get the real message:

The type initializer for “VirtualInfrastructure.Utils.HttpWebRequestProxy” threw an exception

A workaround for the solution was posted by ftublo on the VMware Communities forums.

1. Create a folder (e.g. Lib) in the Windows 7 machine where the vSphere client is installed (%ProgramFiles%\VMware\Infrastructure\Virtual Infrastructure Client\Launcher\).
2. Obtain a copy of %SystemRoot%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\System.dll from a non-Windows 7 machine that has .NET 3.5 SP1 installed. Copy this file into the folder created in Step 1.
3. In the vSphere client launcher directory, open the VpxClient.exe.config file in a text editor and add a <runtime> element and a <developmentMode> element within the <configuration> element. Save the file.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration>
...
<runtime>
<developmentMode developerInstallation="true"/>
</runtime>
</configuration>

4. Create a batch file (e.g. VpxClient.cmd) in a suitable location (e.g. Desktop). In this file add a command to set the DEVPATH environment variable to the folder where you copied the System.dll assembly in step 2 and a second command to launch the vSphere client. Save the file.

SET DEVPATH=%ProgramFiles%\VMware\Infrastructure\Virtual Infrastructure Client\Launcher\Lib
"%ProgramFiles%\VMware\Infrastructure\Virtual Infrastructure Client\Launcher\VpxClient.exe"

NOTE: If you are running 64-bit Windows, replace all instances of Program Files with Program Files (x86).

You can now use the VpxClient.cmd (or the shortcut) to launch the vSphere client in Windows 7.

This workaround bypasses the normal .NET Framework loading mechanism. Assembly versions found in the DEVPATH folder are not checked. Handle with care.

After you’ve completed all the steps in Part I of the Buying Your First House series, it’s time to hit the streets!  At this point, you should have your credit reports and scores, your maximum monthly payment for a mortgage, and your pre-approval letter from a bank which outlines the maximum you are able to finance.

In most markets, realtor services for the buyer are free, so take advantage of it; their commission comes from the seller.  You are going to want to be honest with your realtor but definitely need someone you can trust.  Ask your family, friends, and co-workers for an agent they trust.

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Buying your first home is probably the most stressful thing you’ll ever have to do.  I am finding I am constantly going back and forth re-tweaking numbers; I wish someone made a list of things to do before even talking to a realtor!  Hopefully you can benefit from this series of articles on how to buy your first home.

Our goal at the end of Part I is to have three numbers:  your credit scores, the maximum monthly mortgage payment you are comfortable with, and a pre-approval letter that has your maximum that is allowed to be financed.

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To everyone baffled by the tons of commercials with singing pirates and catchy jingles, consider this post a public service announcement regarding your credit report.

You are entitled to a one (1) free copy of your Credit Report from each credit reporting agency ANNUALLY by law (1 credit report from each credit reporting agency = 3 reports). The ONLY website authorized to do this is  https://www.annualcreditreport.com.  Everything else is a scam!

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Yes, it’s true.  Finally a way to get your personal files on each machine you work with that gets backed up online without any worry of who is rummaging through your data when you aren’t looking!  It’s the secure online backup you were looking for!

Windows? Linux? Mac? No problem.  Installers are available for all three systems.

DropBox (a glorified subversion system for the rest of us) has finally worked its way out of beta and will become the backbone for our project.  Transmission of data to DropBox is via HTTPS, so we at least have half the problem resolved.

The second problem is DropBox’s STORAGE of my files.  If they defect to the goverment faster than AT&T did with the NSA, then you can be sure your private key and personal bookmarks to porn sites will be used against you.  I wanted the storage of my files encrypted. Since I couldn’t trust DropBox, I turned to my good old friend, TrueCrypt.

The solution here is to create a TrueCrypt volume inside of your DropBox folder.  Even though DropBox has a 2GB folder limit, you shouldn’t use all of it for your TrueCrypt drive.  Unfortunately, TrueCrypt creates the encrypted partition to it’s maximum capacity, which means if you create a 1GB encrypted volume, it actually takes up 1GB on the harddrive even with nothing in it.  And transferring a 1GB file many times for little to no content isn’t the best plan.

Since the volume is filled out to maximum filesize even with no data, it’s best to create a few smaller drives (in the 256MB range) as DropBox has to upload the entire file at least once and you have to download the synchronized file on every computer.  TrueCrypt can mount about 12 volumes automatically, so my recommendation is to keep the volumes small and increase the sizes for volumes you don’t modify often.

Don’t feel guilty about using encyption.  Don’t be guilted into the “If you have nothing to hide” mantra; privacy is your right as a human, exercise it.

The only good thing about Tom Brady tearing his ACL in the Week 1 opener is the crying of all those fantasy football players.  The screams of agony of thousands of “virtual coaches” as they watch their No. 1 draft pick get sidelined for the season.  Do not feel sympathy for them; these are the same bunch of jocks who thought playing Dungeons and Dragons was queer.  Now 30 years later, when their wives won’t give up the balloon knot, they have to sit in some guy’s living room in a circle around a table and fantasize they are something they are not.  Delicious irony.

I love my little Macbook.  It’s so cute.  And this coming from a guy who has Windows experience back to 3.1, and whose primary job responsibility is to support and manage a Windows domain and hundreds of clients.  So why is my Macbook so nice?

For one main reason: it’s polished. That critical “step-back” after everything is done to say “what can we improve now?”  This is something that Microsoft and companies who build Intel PCs are seriously lacking.

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One of my favorite songs of all time is the timeless hit “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” as recorded by Margaret Whiting and Johnny Mercer (although written by Frank Loesser). Despite it’s popularity during the winter holiday season, I have found it quite enjoyable all year round.

The duet is one of music’s best, second only to Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong’s version of Summertime.  While the characters in the song do not have names, the female voice is called “The Mouse” while the male is “The Wolf”.

The song is a back-and-forth duet of the male persuading the female to stay with him for the duration of the night after their date; her indecisive protests clarify while she is obligated to go home, she is tempted to stay.

Upon closer inspection of the lyrics (“You have to listen to the words, MAAAHHN”), the wolf employs classic teenage bargaining techniques in order to guilt his prey into staying “the night” and slowly persuades her through potentially-ruffied alcohol.  While the song ends before you know her decision, (in some versions) soft pillow-talk banter closes out the song and the wolf whispers a lingering “Ahh, do that again…”.

Thickly-veiled references to sex were very popular throughout music in the 50s and 60s, but this is the first reference to date rape I can find.  I just hope you think about this song and its true intended meaning when your mother and father get up to the karaoke machine, eggnog in hand, and share the mic with this holiday classic.