Camera's at intersections around Pima County???

So I'm wondering what these are? They started appearing around the northwest side of town in Pima County about a year ago. There is only one at each intersection. I'm assuming they are cameras... but what for?

This is at Romero and Wetmore.



This is at Romero and Ruthrauff.



This is at Wetmore and Flowing Wells.



This is at La Canada (/Flowing Wells) and River (notice how the set of antennas are on a different poll as the "device").



These aren't to be confused with...

What I believe is the device that changes the light for emergency vehicles (and the obvious strobe light).



What I believe is a camera/device that senses when traffic is at the intersection so it can change the light accordingly (these are not at all intersections/directions, because some intersections have a loop in the pavement or the light has a predominate flow in one direction.

Any clues? Post here... Camera's at intersections around Pima County??? - These are not red light or speeding cameras as far as I know

Recoverying a TrueCrypt file inside a Vista EFS

Today I've been working on trying to recover a TrueCrypt file that was placed inside a Vista EFS folder (the Vista machine isn't accessible but all the data still is). So I'm now reading through http://www.beginningtoseethelight.org/efsrecovery/ to see if I can get the EFS working on a new system then I can open the TrueCrypt file. This should be interesting.

I am considering using Elcomsoft's Advanced EFS Data Recovery software.

If anyone has any more tips on doing this let me know! Of if you've had experience using that software.

Runtime Software's GetDataBack and RAID Reconstructor review

Last week I had a laptop failure. I'm not sure yet if it was software or hardware based but basically I couldn't get anywhere past the BIOS booting up. This laptop has a RAID 0 configuration. Hard drives didn't appear to be going out so my guess is the RAID controller failed (as I could never get it to work properly with two brand new hard drives). Still have yet to diagnose all that. At any rate the array was broken and I didn't have a backup that was recent enough for some of the files I needed so a data recovery was needed. Most companies will start out at about $500 - $2000 for this kind thing and could go up to $3000+. I did find a local company that would do it starting at $500. So shop around. This was a fare bit cheaper then other numbers I've heard tossed around in the industry.

At any rate I wasn't keen on spending that much to get the latest data back. I was able to pull an exact cloned image from the two hard drives. But putting them back together is quite complicated (something I haven't figured out how to do yet). I had downloaded and messed with GetDataBack and RAID Reconstructor but was running into a dead in on RAID Reconstructor finding the correct parameters for the array. That is until after I had time to really sit down and look through everything the software was feeding back to me. The key was increasing the number of sectors to probe (the default is set around 10,000 but increasing that to 500,000 seemed to get the results that was needed to give a match. Once you've rebuilt the array parameters you have to use GetDataBack to recover the data. This is a bit tedious as it does fine a bunch of files (most likely things deleted on empty sectors) that isn't important but you want to check for sure. Of course if you are looking for stuff deleted then that would be good!

Over all I'm happy I spent the $179 for the software (I got the RAID Recovery pack I think it was, included Captain Nemo, GetDataBack and RAID Reconstructor) to do the retrieval and was overall a lot less then having to pay a company to retrieve it or pay Runtime Software to analyzed the data to see if they could find the parameters. I just wish the sectors to probe was more clearly indicated or mentioned to increase as I'd have been able to do the recovery quite a bit sooner and use the data for an event last week.

Overall though it's better then a complete data loss and sometimes you wonder about companies that sell software to do this kind of thing. I did quite a bit of research on recovering RAID 0 arrays like this and Runtime Software's option was the only one I'd have come close to buying to see if it worked. There was nothing else I found that was even close. So if you have something like this where the hard drives themselves aren't failing and you have an image you can pull I'd say try it.

Feel free to comment if you have any other thoughts, comments or questions on this and I'll do what I can to help. :) Data recovery can be fun yet frustrating at times! I do enjoy learning about it quite a bit although I know so little.

Here's another "little things" story! I love Skittles (the chewy fruit candy)! Every year when us boys and dad would go hunting with grandpa he'd buy us our favorite candy. That was about the only time we'd get candy in a year, so it was a treat. Then one year dad decided that the health implications of candy just wasn't worth it and didn't want us to get any. So we headed up to our camping area about an hour from the nearest town for a few days. I can't say I gave it much thought about not getting the candy but I did enjoy it! One day dad and grandpa went down to a campsite about a mile below ours to see if some hunters were still there. When they got there they walked over to look at the campsite and on the picnic table was not one, but two bags of unopened Skittles! God is so mindful of even are smallest desires!

God bless you!
Your brother in Christ.

Electrified.com - incredible search and great prices

Went to make a purchase for a projector light bulb for client this morning. Looked around at a few sites. Ok, prices, poor searches took quite awhile to find the lamp on some sites (and some didn't even have it, or had 127 pages of results :/ ). Noticed that Electrified.com had a lot of reviews on this page http://www.projectorcentral.com/Sanyo-lamp-suppliers.htm so I clicked on their site and like I've been doing with each site, typed in the model number of the projector. Instantly returned the exact bulb, one listing (not dozens of results or no results) and on top of that the price is $150 lower then the nearest competitor that I could find. Seriously I'm stoked! Oh and get this... when the search was complete they had a comment box to rate how well the search was! I'm telling you I'm impressed! If I don't come back and add to this post consider myself a very happy camper!

I love it when companies got it right! This one appears to have it too! Going to look around to see what else they sell and see if I can't use them more often as a vendor. Oh, and the order process is quite simple and very efficient especially when I made a mistake and put the wrong zip code to ship to and went back to change it, everything that I had entered in for shipping information was saved!

LimeService and LimeSuvey

Setup an account with LimeService (which offers 20 MB of free bandwidth for hosting the LimeSurvey application). Seemed sort of ok. Seems to be still hanging on setting up the account (or so it says on the profile page but I was able to just go to the admin URL and start setting up a survey and lunched it. The killer was by the time I was doing creating my first survey it had already used 10 MB of bandwidth. So I'm not exactly happy about that. :/

LimeSurvey seems to be ok. Could do better on presenting the results (the thing I like least about it so far). Back end generally seems a bit goofy but is workable. As it stands if the survey I'm trying out gives me enough response I'll probably take the time to install LimeSurvey on my server (so far my host doesn't have a one click install for it). :/

Word 2007 - mouse not working text area - add ins conflicting

Synopsis: Mouse doesn't work in Word 2007 (text field areas and dialog boxes), appears to be add-in issue, can't get to the Add-in tab when running with administrator rights as mouse doesn't work in Options dialog box, so can't disable add-ins (working in Safe Mode or with the /a switch also doesn't work as you need administrative rights to disable the add-ins).

This eventually solved my problem (I'm a little skittish deleting things or messing with the registry but I guess it worked fine). Preferences weren't saved but that's not a big deal. http://www.microsoft.com/office/community/en-us/default.mspx?dg=microsoft.public.word.application.errors&tid=0ebdffce-af4a-4221-a238-7727dbd09d27&cat=en-us-office-word&lang=en&cr=US&sloc=en-us&m=1&p=1

=====
Sounds like you corrupted the DataKey. Run Regedit, navigate to the key and
press DELETE.

--
Word DataKey

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\version number\Word\Data

--
Terry Farrell - MSWord MVP
=====

When I boot up Word 2007 the mouse ceases to work in the text field/area (i.e. clicking on a word, right clicking, double clicking, moving your cursor to a different location, doesn't work; you have to use arrow keys, 'shift' key to highlight and the right menu button (if you have one) on your keyboard to move around).

So far if you start Word in safe mode (Start > Run > 'winword /a' - ok, according to this article the /a switch and safe mode are not the same thing, http://pubs.logicalexpressions.com/Pub0009/LPMArticle.asp?ID=759 ) it works fine but disables all your preferences which is bugging me to no end (I don't like auto format and auto correct turned on). From the research I've done on the internet it appears to be a conflict with one of the plugins. I can't remember updating anything that would have caused this (but I'm sure I did). I'm leaning toward the FlashPaper add in but don't know for sure yet.

The problem is when attempting to disable the add ins I get an error message ("connected state of office add-ins registered in hkey_local_machine cannot be changed") about a certain value in the registry that can't be edited (this is a Vista machine). Apparently Word needs to be running with Administrative rights. Which getting that to work hasn't worked either (the option doesn't appear on any right click menus). That's where I'm stuck at the moment. :/

This link pretty much describes the general problem: http://www.itwriting.com/blog/140-annoying-word-2007-problem-cant-select-text.html

Similar problem (maybe exact same one, haven't read through it all): http://www.tech-archive.net/Archive/Word/microsoft.public.word.application.errors/2007-02/msg00244.html

Similar problem it looks like, but not quite the same thing: http://www.vistax64.com/vista-general/114689-mouse-stopped-working-word-2007-a.html

Ok, got it to run in Administrator mode (browse to the actual location for the original winword.exe which on my system is C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12 ) but now it won't let me use the mouse in the Word Options box. Can't figure out how to move to the other tabs (well they aren't tabs, but side buttons) to get to the Add-ins section.

Toshiba Laptop problems

20080706 - AVG picked up virus from site mom was visiting to get song lryics
20080708 - Microsoft sent an update that conflicted with Zone Alarm (didn't update Zone Alarm with the fix until 20080710 or 11 (I think it was Thursday evening though). Maybe even Saturday.
20080712 - Installed TrueCrypt
20080712 or 13 - Chloe reported having problems getting into Gmail using both IE and FF. Confirmed both problems. Disabling all addons didn't seem to help.
20080713 and 14 - Many error messages (low memory, Runtime Errors, etc.)
20080715 - Ran full AVG virus scan, nothing found
20080715 - Ran a couple other scans (Ezula and another adaware program was found, havne't removed.
20080715 - Internet stopped working again for mom. Reboot apparently fixed it.
20080716 - No errors really so far this morning after a fresh restart. Things seem to be operating normal. Memory usage seems a bit high in the overall performance meter (but the math doesn't appear to add up in the Processes running column). 20080716 - Virtual Memory wasn't turned on. So turned on following these directions. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2089076,00.asp
20080716 - Firefox issuing an important update. 2.0.0.16 Updating.

Somethings up

Xanga and Comcast ~ Who's problem?

From this page on xanaga.com

4. ALL XANGA EMAIL HAS BEEN BLOCKED BY YOUR ISP

Because of the volume of subscription emails we send, the odds of a subscription email being erroneously reported as spam have gone up dramatically. Sometimes an ISP will take unwarranted action and block ALL xanga.com emails. If you suspect this is the case, let us know and we will contact your ISP.

Ummm... how do I contact them? I suspect the reasons I'm not receiving their subscription email is because of Comcast. But I switched the email address today to Gmail so we'll see.

HP is losing me as a customer - it's bigger then I have time to tell

I'm setting here waiting for a form to go through and I'm twitteling my thumbs so I thought I'd write something. And now it's gone through! :D Maybe I should stop and go back to my work. Anyway, don't buy an all in one HP printer (OfficeJet 6310xi to be exact). Junk! And oh, HP Passport log in takes forever to log you in!

HP is losing me as a customer - it's bigger then I have time to tell.

Need more reasons? Start here.

The language software engineers use...

As you start up larger more complex programs they usually go through a series of steps before you can use it. A couple of these messages while starting are rather comical.
-Almost done...
-Becoming ready...

:D

Microsoft, Adobe and Sony - How they are alienating their customers

I know, I know, this is more of a rant then anything worthwhile reading... but I have to get it off my chest.

I'm really starting to dislike all companies that say they aren't supporting Vista in their last non-Vista certified version.

Microsoft comes out with Vista. We are a pretty decent fan of Microsoft so we buy it with our new systems (instead of XP). But frankly there isn't too much at the small business level that they have improved for us. Actually I can't think of anything (if there is someone tell me)!

So then over the past two weeks as we migrate systems to Vista we slowly start to learn that some of our high dollar software from Adobe and Sony don't operate fully on Vista. Here is the killer though... on our Vista test systems they worked fine so we purchased new systems with the reasoning that they would work fine there too! Not so! What are we expected to do? Buy XP and continue to use that? We don't need to upgrade to Vista, Adobe's CS3 or Sony's Sound Forge 9. All the previous versions do exactly what we want them to do for us!

I've got ideas to fix this... and none of them make any of these companies earn money, more sales or make friendlier customers. I'm really starting to like open source more and more and our companies will really start supporting them in the future. This is just becoming to much nonsense!

There, I feel better... ;) but that doesn't mean I still ant' going to do something about this.

CrossLoop - The next generation of tech support

I am thrilled at a new service called CrossLoop. It allows me to access and view the computer screen and use mouse and keyboard on someone else' computer with their permission. Now this technology has already been around, but not in the simple form that I have found this to be in. This is great for quick tech support issues and calls that are just too complicated to explain to the user.

The steps are so simple it's not even funny. It seems to work through firewalls and everything. I have only had one time I didn't seem to work and now that I've tried it some more I'm thinking I just should have tried it again with that user and it would have worked.

Tell the person you want to do the tech support with to go to crossloop.com, click on the Free Download link on the left center side of the page about halfway down. It'll ask them to either Run or Save it (for most users tell them to run it, as they don't know everything about temporary files and where to save programs like this). The program will ask you what language, to approve the EULA, a few other simple things and then conveniently launch the program for the user (as long as they leave the check box checked to do so). Have them click the "Share" tab and give you their access code. You enter it in on your end and have them hit 'connect' while you hit connect too. It may raise a red flag on a firewall but just tell them to accept or unblock. You may to have them disconnect and then reconnect again (you doing the same) the first time to get through the firewall.

At that point their screen will come up on your screen and if they are like most users they'll have some very low resolution set and you'll be on some huge monitor with a high resolution. You'll be able then to walk them through what ever they are working on or take over the computer for them and let them see what you are doing. I had one user report when they were trying to view my huge screen that it took quite a while to update. But for me it isn't or hasn't been a problem!

So far this program has been worth so much to me!!! I'm loving it and it's free, quick and simple and gets through the tons of firewalls that we all have to have enabled. The only downside is, it is connecting to a server so potentially who ever runs CrossLoop could see what you are doing on your computer (which usually isn't an issue for me anyway). Otherwise great program!

Our nation is really in trouble

This is really crazy. Charge a girl with a felony because she brought a stack knife to school to eat her lunch with?

And more of it!

This article says that Ron Paul brought in $6.6 million while others say $6 million (the official site says that).

One commenter says that the largest fund raising day in history was $6.4 million. This is actually quite amazing... why is all this information so wrong (or shall we say different from each other)?

Confusing reports for biggest fund raising day

I don't get it.

I read something the other day that said that Hillier Clinton raised the most money in a single day at $6.2 million.

This article (as well as others) says it was $5.7 million by John Kerry right after he gave his nomination speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2004.

And this article says it was Governor Mitt Romney who raised $6.5 million in January.

So who is really right? Someone should get their facts straight!

Des Moines Register Debate Part 1

Here are some reactions and thoughts I have to the debate yesterday (watching it online).

On the first round of questions (30 seconds) Ron Paul was the first one to stay with in that limit. Maybe others did after him but I wasn't keeping track real well.

Someone that can't answer a question within the amount of time that the moderators ask isn't super great. But I understand or at least try to understand the pressure they are under. It would be very difficult for anyone to have it all together. That's why they better have it together.

I'm clueless on what that "Voters Voice" box is? What is the point it's trying to make and how do I even read it? Completely confusing and distracting.

I wish another thing they would do is show total time of all candidates that have spoken and the timer for the current question and how much time they have to go. I want to see all candidates have equal time. I was pleasantly surprised to see that Allen Keyes (even though most would consider he isn't a contender). He was a ambassador so it's not like he's a no name joke.

I liked what Giuliani said about health care early on. But his stance on abortion and marriage would make me never vote for him in the primaries.

I like the 30 second free time they they are giving everyone.

Ok, enough watched for now... might come back to watch the rest. I've got to get a computer ordered and make a phone call.

Ancient flood brought Gulf Stream to a halt - earth - 06 December 2007 - New Scientist Environment

Ancient flood brought Gulf Stream to a halt - earth - 06 December 2007 - New Scientist Environment

Well they are getting closer to realizing that the Flood did happen! :)

Peace like a river, love like a mountain. - Author?

I'm wondering who wrote the song...

Peace like a river, love like a mountain.
The wind of your spirit
Is blowing everywhere.
Joy like a fountain, Healing stream of life;
Come holy Spirit, let your fire fall.

Can't find any details on it. Just a few places where the words are mentioned.

Hmmmm... a bit more searching... and this is what I've found...

Author John Watson
Copyright 1987 Ampelos Music (CopyCare[Admin. by The Copyright Company])
Catalog Ampelos Music

Installing Zune software not going well

Earlier today I was flashing a friends Zune and the software stopped working. So I uninstalled it and downloaded the latest version. Now I get some error message every time I try to install it. The kicker is I've gotten about 5 different ones and none of the error codes Googled don't seem to turn up anything interesting. This is getting a bit frustrating... maybe I'll try installing the older version.

And I'd paste the error message here on the last one... but it doesn't let me copy the text. :( Here are all the error codes in just one message. 2203, 2147287035, 0x2, and another really long one that I don't even want to type in here.

IE 7 Add on manager needs some serious improvement

Where is the check-all boxes or uncheck all boxes at?

Blogger vs. Xanga

Blogger is so much nicer because the absence of ads and a lot of other stuff that is pretty much useless on Xanga (or shall we say more of a time waster?). I think the simplicity of Blogger is what will keep me posting here. But the question is... do I tell everyone about it or let people just end up finding it? I think I'm going to just let it happen naturally. In other news God has been doing so much for me and blessing me these last few days. Last week was quite a struggle for me. But things are really going well right now. Just remember to thank Him for it all!

Caught some graffiters

Earlier this afternoon Austin and I were out in front of my dad's shop and we saw a couple of guys walk by and graffiti a sign. So Austin called the police and I started following them on foot. After a bit they got rather far down the road so I called the police. At that point down a street I lost them. So I went down a parallel street to see if I could see them without being seeing. At that point Austin drove by in his truck and saw them in a yard. So after a bit they came back out and I was just getting ready to meet the road back where they were coming down and my plan was to intercept them and do a citizens' arrest. But as I rounded the corner the police car was setting there and the officer had the two of them on the ground. I'm not sure what happened to them but they did haul them off in handcuffs in another police car eventually. Poor guys... people need the Lord... I need the Lord... we all do...

Ron Paul Update

So I've discovered that not all his supporters are all that great... they do some rather dumb stuff. And he doesn't support Israel. But... I'll be watching him more closely over the next few months...

Ron Paul for President...

I don't totally agree with Dr. Ron Paul but I have to say I'm rather impressed at a lot of what he stands for. Almost to a point I may vote for him in the primaries. But we'll see. We have a ways to go before we get there. What do I not like about him? Well he does say that we were lied to about going to Iraq. I feel that President Bush made the best decision he could with the information he had and that most likely there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq or being developed. I never remember President Reagan in office (but if I was around then and paying attention to politics I'm sure I'd support him). The Bush's I've felt I could stand behind near to 100%. I really feel they are a great family and they have done a lot of America and leaders. I can't say I could stand behind any of the current candidates running for the president's office right now. The closest I've seen though is Dr. Ron Paul. But I still stand behind the decisions President Bush has made and is making (as far as I know up to this point).

Driverless cars, and the fulfillment of William Branham's 1933 prophecy

Click on any of the following links to read about and watch fully driverless cars racing (and obeying all traffic laws) in Victorville California on November 3, 2007. (alternatively, copy the URL below into your browser). The BBC site also has three good videos to watch on the right side of the page)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7078245.stm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSS0MZvoltw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrSppvJxCY4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SfaCkhhQT8 <--- You've got to see this one!!!



Read more about William Branham's 1933 prophecy.

Google Reader

Google Reader is a pretty nice tool to be able to keep in touch with a lot of news items at one time. I've never really been into RSS feeds but this looks like it might be more then a fad for me. We'll see. I'm using it to track some industry and company blogs, craigslist for some items I'm wanting to to get an idea of the cost, and other things.

New Scientist Full Access

New Scientist is doing it too! I love it... I only have to read the first 3 paragraphs of the article and then I move on! What a time saver! I wish all news outlets did this! :D

DARPA Urban Challenge continues

I'm watching the live webcast of the DARPA Urban Challenge. Rather exciting! Considering what we know about what Brother Branham said about vehicles driving on the road by themselves.

Unions are illigal in UAE

So I have to say I like that the UAE doesn't like the unions (or strikes either). I just don't like the idea that people don't have the get up and go to figure out their work situations themselves rather then protest 'en mass! Seems like a lazy way to do things.

Collaborative Problem Solving

I envision a website/portal where people that have access to the internet can interact to solve problems. This idea is similar to what InnoCentive is doing but maybe not for the most elite of minds. Wikipedia was built with a lot less but with the masses. I need ideas to proceed with this concept. I have created the start of this project here: CoLab site | wiki | forum

Anyone else have ideas?

Time savings when reading the news from the publishers themselves!

So the Wall Street Journal and others think they are smart in making you subscribe to the website by only letting you read the first couple paragraphs of an article. Well I love that feature because I don't want to spend lots of time reading an article so when I get to that I click the Rust X! :D

Seagate Hard drives (750 GB ones)

I'm becoming a Seagate fan. We've now got 2 of the 750 GB USB Free Agent Drives. 5 year warranty, for $229 to my door on Newegg... I love it! :) They do run kind of hot. I wonder if that is really bad for them... it is a lot of heat... :/

Alienware Laptop sound

One thing I dislike about my Alienware laptop is the fact that the volume control isn't a smooth fade on/fade off. It's a jumpy fade on fade off. The other problem is the sub woofer speaker mounted on the bottom of the laptop only is either on or off and that make it really hard to get the sound to sound right. I wish I could just shut it off independently if I couldn't make it operate on the volume control. It's like you start to slowly turn it on and all of a sudden the bass speaker pops on with all this bass vibrating sound. And it's mounting on the bottom of the laptop on the right so it sounds all unbalanced too. And then it makes all the other parts rattle on the laptop and really makes the sound sound awful. So all in all I wouldn't go for the small sub woofer.

Yahoo! Answers is so childish!

I wish things were more serious there. A lot of it is a joke. Ug!