*Words of Wisdom From The Elder

It is May and that means Crawfish are in season down South.  It is one of these things we just do down here and if you’ve never had crawfish before I hope you’ll get a chance to experience it one day. 

This past weekend I cooked a sack of crawfish along with an assortment of vegetables in the mix and they turned out fantastic.  Well, I thought they were fantastic but some of my friends thought they were on the tad spicy side.  Oh well, you can’t please everyone right?

Too me the vegetables are just as important part of a crawfish boil as the crawfish and they make for a great filler and believe it or not they absorb a lot of the spices. 

In this batch I had potatoes, corn, mushrooms, broccoli, asparagus, and onion.  It turns into a beautiful arrangement of reds, green and yellow in the pot. Of course you can’t forget the sausage.  I typically use Conechuh Sausage in mine but I also had some green onion sausage I picked up as a filler (Conechuh is expensive).  All in all it was a good time even though it is a lot of work.

Updated: 5/13/2009

It seems my choice of vegetables in my crawfish has some puzzled some so let me clarify how I cook it.  Let’s start with the mushrooms.  I use a whole pack of mushrooms per pot, sometimes two (i usually get them from Sam’s Club).  The trick is to not overcook them and the only way to do that is to put them in after the heat is turned off.  The mushrooms are always a favorite.  They are juicy, a little spicy and carry a lot of flavor.  After the crawfish come to a boil for 5 minutes, the heat is turned off and then I add in the mushrooms, stirring them in while the crawfish soak. 

For the asparagus and broccoli I wait about 5 minutes before putting them in.   I’ve also used cauliflower.  I’ll warn you again, the broccoli will be hot (as in pepper hot, so will cauliflower).

There are very few pieces of software that I hate to install.  QuickTime from Apple is at the top of the list.  I can’t honestly think of a single good thing to say about QuickTime.  But no matter how much I dislike having yet another tray icon and getting annoyed by software updates I had to install QuickTime.  At least until Windows 7! 

The camera I purchased back last year only made movies in .MOV format and for me it was a major drawback of the camera.  So much so I rarely found myself using it and instead using my Canon camera which takes native .AVI movies. 

This morning I discovered my QuickTime worries were officially over since Windows 7 supports QuickTime movies natively with Windows Media Player.  The announcement to support .MOV files was buried deep within the Windows 7 blog entry back in February (I looked this up because I missed it myself). 

Improved playback support for video content from digital camcorders and cameras

Customers loved the increased range of formats natively supported by the Windows 7 Beta, but noticed areas where they wanted broader support.  For example, one was unable to seek to a specific spot in the video in Windows Media Player or Windows Media Center for AVCHD content that was imported from a digital camcorder. We’ve addressed this.  Also, while the support for video from some digital cameras worked great, we also got feedback about supporting a broader set of devices out of the box.  We’ve since added support for Windows Media Player to natively support the .MOV files used to capture video for many common digital cameras.

This morning my trophy wife came into the office asking me to look at the movies she recorded at school yesterday.  I put the drive into my computer and copied the nearly 2GB’s of files to the computer.  After the first one finished copying I double clicked the file and even though the icon showed Windows Media Player I didn’t notice.  Then Windows Media Player started and too my surprise started playing a QuickTime file. 

As soon as I realized what was happening I paused the video and had a moment of silence.  It’s little gems of features like this that make you realize why so many people are going to love Windows 7. 

The best part?  Media Player plays QuickTime movies BETTER than QuickTime.  Movies start instantly and use less CPU than QuickTime.  Plus you get a native supported Windows application that takes advantage of other Windows 7 features (previews).    Here’s a sample video playing in Media Player that I took right before Hurricane Gustav hit this past year. 

YARTIW7
Yet Another Reason to Install Windows 7

Now that we have .MOV support native in Windows 7, my only other request is for Windows Live Movie Maker to support .MOV files. 

I thought I had everything tested after my recently Windows 7 RC upgrade this weekend and was ready for work this morning.  One thing I didn’t actually test was getting my work development VM on the Internet or VPN.  Turns out I had a problem with the network drivers in VMWare.

Here’s the lovely error I got when I tried to enable the network card on the VM.

“The virtual network drivers on the host are incompatible with the installed VMWare application. Expected version 5. Please reinstall the product. Virtual device Ethernet0 will start disconnected.”

This error was confusing since I didn’t have version 5 installed.  I’ll spare you the war story I went through to fix this and the countless reboots.  Here’s the end to the means.  I downloaded VMware and told it to “Repair” the installation and then rebooted. 

Someone else had the same problem after a Vista to Windows 7 upgrade.  I tried the fixes listed in the thread below but they didn’t work for me.

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/197009

Looking at the Network settings in Windows before and after the repair of VMware these two adapters were missing after the upgrade and then added back in during the repair.

All is well and good now. 

Glad you asked.  I finally got around to installing Windows 7 RC this morning.  The only hardware related problem I had during my upgrade was my Microsoft VX-6000 LifeCam.  When I ran the compatibility check during the upgrade Window 7 told me to uninstall the software for the LifeCam.  I stopped the upgrade and uninstalled the LifeCam software and then restarted the upgrade.  After the upgrade I was wondering how much of a pain it was going to be to get the camera working again. 

The first thing I did was open Devices and Printers.  Notice the new icons?  Fancy huh?

The LifeCam VX-600 is listed as having a problem.  I right clicked the icon and pressed troubleshoot.

The system then runs through a series of checks to detect the problem.

Then it came back with a solution.  Brilliant!

I of course clicked on “Apply this fix” and waited.

Whoops, my problem is NOT fixed.  Now what?

The reason it couldn’t be fixed is the camera requires software + a driver.  Turns out to fix this was simple.  There are updated versions of the LifeCam software that work with Windows 7.  Downloads for this and other Windows 7 related software can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/windows7/support.mspx. 

After a quick download and update of the new software everything is working. 

I’ve been running Windows 7 in virtual machines for awhile and on an older notebook.  This is the first time I’ve had it on the metal on my main workstation.  I have to say I’m pleased with being able to A) run x64 with no issues and B) open the device manager after the upgrade and see no known hardware problems.

I can say I didn’t have the same experience with Vista.  As more things unfold I’ll try to keep blogging if I run into issues or other things.  So far, so good.

I recently built a new machine and when I built it I installed Windows Vista x64.  Windows 7 RC came out this past week and I wanted to install the RC release on my new machine but like everyone else I didn’t want to take the risk installing it only to have a hardware configuration problem.  Not only that but I’d have to reload the whole machine when Windows 7 RTM (release to manufacturer) came out.  But there is hope! 

For starters a new tool was released called the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor that checks to see if a system is ready for Windows 7.  And then for those of us that have Home Server, upgrading and playing with the Windows 7 RC becomes a no brainer.  Here’s how.

Upgrade Advisor

Install the 6MB MSI file after you download it and press the start check button.

A few minutes will go by (depending on speed of your machine) presenting you with the ever popular green bar streaming from left to right.

The elapsed time on my machine was about 20 seconds or maybe a little longer, maybe 30.  Here’s my results:

Apparently I can upgrade but will have to download some newer versions of Live tools.  Not a big deal.  Upgrade instructions can be found here by the way.

I was curious about the “Passed 4 other system requirements”so here is what the “See all system requirements” looks like.

The good news is I can upgrade with confidence.  Now, how do I upgrade and then upgrade again when the real version comes out?  Answer: Home Server.

Using Home Server For Windows 7 Upgrade, Restore and then Upgrade

If you are like me and have Windows Home Server and want to upgrade your machine I say go for it!  Don’t even hesitate.  Why?  Because Home Server has your back.  Here’s what I did this morning to prepare for my Windows 7 RC upgrade this afternoon.

The first thing I did was go into the home server console and rename the last backup Home Server took of my machine.  After renaming it I told Home Server to “Keep this backup”.

Now I’m ready to install Windows 7 RC because I have a full backup of my current Vista x64 install.

What Happens when Windows 7 RTMs?

Simple.  I grab the restore CD for Home Server and restore the machine back to the “Pre-Windows 7 RC Backup” listed above.  After that is done, I’ll take the Windows 7 RTM disk and do another upgrade of the machine running Vista x64 again to Windows 7 (which is fully supported and has been fully tested). 

It may seem a little weird but trust me I don’t want to spend 2 days reloading all the software on my computer and I REALLY want to play with Windows 7 RC on the metal instead of a VM.  The way I figure it, I should be able to have Windows 7 RTM installed and working in about an 2 hours after it comes out.  And the best thing is I won’t miss a beat in productivity.

Don’t have Windows Home Server?  No?  Then I officially deduct 100 geek points from you if you are a reader of this blog.  There are tons of uses for Home Server.  Don’t walk, but run to the store and buy one.  Especially if you are a developer. 

I’ll see you on the other side running Windows 7 RC.