Rubenerd

This is an epic tale of tragedy and frustration, starring Ruben Schade as Ruben Schade and a newly student licenced copy of Windows 7 Professional as The Windows That Wouldn't Install. There will be no intermission, despite its length warranting one.

After further problems running some university software on my Windows 2000 Professional virtual machine on my Mac, I finally decided to give Windows 7 a shot. Fortunately the student pricing for Windows 7 Upgrade was still AU$49 until the end of the month. Now if only it would accept my serial number.

Here’s an ISO… wait, it’s not that easy!

To Microsoft's credit, the initial purchase of the Windows 7 licence went through without a hitch; I used my university email account to verify that I was a student, then paid with a credit card. Within a few minutes I was presented with a screen that gave me the choice to download an ISO, or an executable. Being on my Mac, I elected to download the ISO.

Of course, things weren't that simple. Instead of downloading an ISO as the button stated, my browser downloaded a tiny 300kb Windows exe file. It turns out this exe is a stub which needs to be run on a Windows machine to download the ISO.

I had already rzipped [sic] and archived my Windows 2000 VM, so I had to extract it out, then free up some space, then re-login from Firefox in the VM, then download the stub, then download the file which I then dragged back onto my Mac desktop.

What optical drive?

Next I created a new virtual machine and used the ISO I downloaded to boot it. The Windows 7 installer booted fine, then started asking questions about CD-ROM drivers. Of course this has never happened to me on Mac OS X, and on FreeBSD I would simply fire up an emergency shell and manually mount the drive, but on Windows 7 I was stumped. Fortunately all I had to do was restart the virtual machine and it booted just fine. I was The Confuse.

[Insert terrible product key pun here]

Here's where I got stuck, and where I currently remain. After booting Windows 7 a second time and inserting my Windows 2000 retail CD-ROM to verify my eligibility for the upgrade, Windows 7 went ahead and installed without a hitch.

Upon rebooting, I was prompted for the product key I registered for. I entered it verbatim, and after what seemed like an age, the installer tersely informed me my serial number was invalid. I rewrote it and clicked Next again, but this time it didn't do anything. Rewriting it another half dozen times and pressing Next didn't do anything, other than showing that spinning cursor for a few minutes.

Spin spin spin…

It's after 5pm which I'm assuming means the Microsoft technical support lines are closed, so first thing tomorrow morning I'll give them a call and ask them what's going on. I've got plenty of other work to do by tomorrow anyway.

I remember reading late last year that people had been having troubles with their student downloads of Windows 7, but I naturally assumed these problems would have been ironed out by now. For the sake of others, I hope I'm an anomaly.

So close and yet so far…

Update

I think figured out why my student licence for Windows 7 was rejecting my product key. Talking to Nick Hodge I found out I could continue the install without entering a product key, so I finished then went to the Product Activation screen when Windows 7 booted. When I entered the product key, I got the above error.

The dialog is correct, I did a clean install, but I was under the impression I was allowed to.

Next step is to try installing Windows 2000, then doing an advanced install and deleting it. Windows installs are fun.

I know we're all bored to tears with American healthcare reform analysis, but someone against the bill tweeted me this afternoon with a message I think summaries the debate pretty damn well.

@Rubenerd: Question is do you think that people should have a right to that which they do not earn?

Do you think people "earned" cancer and subsequent medical-related bankruptcies? Do you think human dignity, love and compassion are financially negotiable?

Phrasing healthcare as something that has to be "earned" sure doesn't sound like freedom to me. What about the freedom to be with your loved ones? The freedom to live without pain and suffering? The freedom to not live in fear?

Then again I suppose I'm one of those "super evil socialists" the likes of Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck warn you all about with blackboards and books they didn't write.

Pardon the French…

My family was damned fucking lucky to have excellent medical insurance to pay for my mum's 12 years of cancer treatment. If we couldn't afford it and we lived in the US, she would have died half of my lifetime ago, and I probably wouldn't remember her. That'd be okay though, because that means taxes are a bit lower.

If you'll excuse me, I've got a lump in my throat for some reason.

Here's another Rubenerd Fun Fact for all you rabid Official Rubénerd Fun Fact fans. I know you're out there, I can hear you furrowing your brows and sighing.

SSDD stands for Solid State Drive with a stutter.

Thank you.

While I've been able to unsubscribe from most email newsletters because they either offer an RSS/Atom equivalent or because they're pointless, some contain personal information which can't obviously be syndicated in the clear. I submit that of these remaining newsletters, Qantas is guilty of sending the most useless ones!

Aside from removing the URIs and whitespace, this is verbatim:

Hello Ruben

Welcome to the March edition of the Qantas Frequent Flyer eNewsletter.

Win four seats to South Africa with the Qantas Socceroos

Articles include:

- Did you know?
– Latest news
– Member specials and exclusives
– Use your points at the Store
– Do this and more at qantas.com
– Your Account details

To view the articles and latest offers in full, view the online version. To view a full list of the e-mail types you’re currently subscribed to, or to unsubscribe, log in to Your Profile at qantas.com. [URI REDACTED] To unsubscribe from “Points Balance and e-Newsletter” only, click here to update your preferences. [URI REDACTED] Otherwise, please do not reply to this email.

Privacy Statement [URI REDACTED]
FAQs [URI REDACTED]
Contacts [URI REDACTED]
Qantas [URI REDACTED]

Qantas Airways Limited ABN 16 009 661 901

Aside from the parts I highlighted in bold, it's the same text, every single month! Despite the subject line being "March points balance and program news" they don't mention how many frequent flier points I've received nor do they give me any news.

As with their service in general, Singapore Airlines newsletters are far more useful. Perhaps Qantas is just steamed that they're never been my first choice… as reflected in my frequent flyer points :P.

There are few people I have more respect and time for than James Randi. Nobody else has done more to expose conspiracy theories, fraud science, the paranormal, astrology and the supernatural with rationality, common sense, critical thinking, reason and perhaps most importantly, humour and civility.

Well, here goes. I really resent the term, but I use it because it’s recognized and accepted.

I’m gay.

Less than a week ago it wasn't common knowledge, but unless you haven't read the hundreds of news reports by now, Mr Randi recently escaped the closed on his James Randi Educational Foundation website. One can only imagine how long he was staring at that blinking cursor on his computer screen, or the blank sheet of paper, and all the hundreds of other times throughout his life when he came close to but couldn't.

He explained his decision relative to perceived attitudes which I find heartening.

Gradually, the general attitude that I’d perceived around me began to change, and presently I find that there has emerged a distinctly healthy acceptance of different social styles of living — except, of course, in cultures that live in constant and abject fear of divine retribution for infractions found in the various Holy Books…

In another two decades, I’m confident that young people will find themselves in a vastly improved atmosphere of acceptance.

We can only hope sir. In the meantime, my warmest congratulations. I wish I could say I respect you even more now than I did before, but you already set the bar pretty damn high. Plus — and I don't quite know how to put it — I don't care. Your sexuality has never been a factor in my thoughts about you and your work, and I view you no differently today as I did last week. In no small cliché way, you were one of my heroes before and you still are, no more, no less.

Peace, health and happiness :)
~ Ruben

If you're a Windows user, it's safe to start using Firefox again. Firefox has been updated to 3.6.2 which fixes that nasty exploit CERN discussed and recommended people switch browsers for on the Windows platform.

Oh no, he’s going to say it… wait for it..

As if we all needed another reason for using NoScript.

Aaaaah he said it! Ugh, I need a lie down

It's no silver bullet magic potion solution that shields your computer with 1337 ninja oompa loompas, but for zero day exploits of this nature it at least gives you some protection before a security hole is fixed — or even discovered. Every application has bugs, and we can never assume other people aren't taking advantage of them without our vendor's knowledge.

You're all bored to tears hearing me say this, but I'm still baffled by the relative lack of dynamic content whitelisting in browsers. If this security hole had been found in another browser, or Firefox without a plugin akin to NoScript, it could have potentially caused even more damage.

Kudos to Google for including JavaScript and cookie whitelisting as a build in feature in the latest build of Chrome.

This is social media and Web 2.0 at its best: working to help a good cause!

Rush Limbaugh, an "opinionated" radio talk show host in the US, claimed he would move to Costa Rica if healthcare reforms were implemented. To help him out, a website has been set up by two guys in Brookyln, New York to pay for his trip out of the US now that health-care reform has passed and the end of American society is imminent, just as Massachusetts has gone to Hell since allowing same sex marriage.

Recently, a number of interesting things happened. First, Rush Limbaugh said on his radio show that if the Healthcare Reform Bill passed, he would go to Costa Rica. Second, the Healthcare Reform Bill passed. As you can imagine, this has made a number of people very excited. We are among that number. We want to make sure that Rush is able to make good on his promise, and so we’ve made this website.

But is it just a joke, or are they sincere?

Are we really going to contact Rush? Absolutely. We’ll video-tape and post the results here. We promise.

And it gets better. The owners of the site promise that if he gets cold feet, they'll donate the funds to a planned parenthood organisation. He doesn't want to be seen supporting them… surely?

Personally I'll be supporting Electronic Frontiers Australia instead, but good for a laugh anyway! I can't wait to hear how he spins what he said to justify not moving. I'm sure plenty of his fans will volunteer some advice. For one thing, Costa Rica has universal healthcare and no standing army. Does he really want to go to a place like that?

Sarah Palin will probably be happy she'll has one less competitor for the top job, by golly, you betcha!

This is a fantastic idea, Apple is now letting people buy iPhone apps and give them to other people as gifts!

I can absolutely see myself doing this for other people. My dad is buying an iPod Touch next month so I could buy him one of his motorbike magazines as an iPhone app as a present :). The potential marketing value this represents is huge. I mean, the marketing value of the concept, not the fact I'd be buying my dad a motorbike magazine iPhone app.

I just bought a copy of the Büno Destruct Designer for my sister because I'm obsessing over it right now and I'm such a nice brother :). Her response was "what the hell is this in my inbox?"

Anyone want to buy me the $50 Wolfram Alpha app?

Update

Good grief, you do a Google Search for Büno Destruct Designer on Google and my blog is the first result! No doubt because I didn't spell it properly, it's actually the Büru Destruct Designer. Whoops!

Doing my bit. Will be donating as soon as I get paid for my latest work.

I've been blogging for long enough to have suffered a couple of disastrous data losses, but only once have I irreversibly lost stuff. Consequently I backup my blogs daily, but on a hunch early this morning I decided to test my backups on a local installation of WordPress. I choked!

Every evening my server is configured with a couple of cron jobs to do these backups which then get the bzip2 treatment:

• An SQL query
• A WordPress RSS/WXR file
• A grilled cheese sandwich with avocado and gherkins

The SQL backup is fairly vanilla stuff, and always works, as one would expect. WordPress's automatically generated RSS/WXR files are much easier to work with, but from repeated painful experience over many years they're unreliable as heck. Perhaps I should phrase that to say "easier to work with… when they work"!

You’re telling us this… why?

I belabor all this because when I tested the WXR files my server has been exporting lately, they don't include categories when you reimport them into vanilla WordPress installs. None. Nada. Zippo. This despite setting the PHP memory ceiling higher as I talked about before and splitting up the WXR files as recommended by various folks.

Despite being introduced years ago, WXR is still horribly broken. As far as I can tell from trudging through the source WordPress doesn't even use a XML parser when importing them. I suppose that's another reason why I don't use sites like WordPress.com, when things like this mess up I can always access the database directly, and why on smaller projects I use SQLite3 databases which you can cheat on and backup by just copying over one file! Ah and I'm nostalgic for sqlplus already ;).

What do you guys do for data backups for your online stuff?