UGH… I hate it when companies sell. I loved Steadcom. They were so awesome. I was with them for three years. They hosted my VPS and their support was amazingly fast. And they were really affordable, too. I was hoping I could have my VPS with them forever…

Alas, companies sell. I don’t know why the sold, but they did. And the new company is called eTecc. Well, I wasn’t too pleased when I realized that eTecc expected it’s VPS customers to set up their VPSs from scratch. Of course I realized this AFTER they shut the server down that had my entire VPS on it. Needless to say, I kinda panicked. I’m not the most savvy server admin in the world.. and when I’m working on my server and I get those messages that say “Please Contact Your System Administrator” I just cringe because that probably means hours of googling and reading message boards to find out the solution of my problem. I want my VPS to just be set up, and just to work, and not to have any problems.

I have a VPS instead of a shared host because I have quite a few blogs that I run on my VPS. Plus I have Utah Dogs, and although it’s not all that popular, I want to keep it going in the hopes that someday it will be popular. Shared hosts just don’t seem beefy enough for my needs. But then VPSs are more complicated and sometimes beyond my skill level. Alas, I like the VPS it seems to work pretty well.

So anyway, yes eTecc did send out an email, and far down in the email (which I didn’t really analyze closely) it said we’d need to set up our VPS entirely from scratch. Well I didn’t really examine that part, and so the old server just shut down one day and I was mightly upset. Like I said, it would take me a week, or more, to set everything back up again!

Fortunately eTecc helped me out. If they had access to the servers, then the probably have mirroring software too. It’d be a zillion times faster and easier to mirror the software onto the new servers (I guess they didn’t just keep the old servers?). And they did it… they came through, I’m so relieved. I don’t want to change hosts, though I still might need more memory eventually. We’ll see. But eTecc was able to rebuild my VPS and it’s up and running again. What a relief! They provided some good support, even though their first reply took a while.

So here I am, back online… and hopefully I’ll stay that way. Thanks eTecc, for providing customer service to a self schooled system admin who kinda limps by with her VPS. I do greatly appreciate it.

I got my MacBook back! And it wasn’t gone for long at all. I dropped it off Wednesday, and picked it up on Friday. Not too bad. And they didn’t mention anything about spill damage. So they didn’t find any, which is good, because I haven’t spilled anything on it at all.

I hope they do some good employment screening for their employers at the Mac Store. I went to Simply Mac, that’s where I bought it. They replaced the Logic Board and the DC connector. So it seems something was amiss with the power and charger.

Anyway, I’m so glad it’s back!

So since my MacBook is in the shop, I’ve been using my old Windows Vista laptop that makes a horrid noise, and the battery no longer keeps a charge. It’s under warranty (extended) until July, so once my MacBook comes back, this old (old, as in almost 3 years, lol) laptop will go to the shop.

My husband has been using it for school, and he put a Ubuntu (Linux) partition on it. Oh my gosh, Ubuntu is nice! It boots so fast! And I tried to run some mov videos, and avi videos, and it said well, “the codecs it needed are not installed… should I install them?” So out it goes, finds the packages, installs them, and slicker than stuff, the videos play.

Pigdin, the IM client I use, comes with Ubuntu. So that just works. Had to install some Java and Flash plugins to get Facebook games to work.. that was easy. My husband said installing Ubuntu was so easy it made his jaw drop.

Why do people use Windows? Hrm… I dunno. I like my Mac, and I really miss the trackpad on it especially. I HATE the trackpad on my old Windows/Ubuntu laptop. But oh well. It gives me a laptop to play around on when I’m watching the LCD HDTV in the basement. I’ve been watching Life… wow, the picture is amazing on my HDTV.

I do hope my MacBook comes back soon, and they don’t find any liquid damage. I didn’t spill anything on it at all. My husband wonders if maybe one of our dogs (Lucy) threw up on it without or knowledge, then licked it up, which she does. But I think there’d be more residue on it than there is. So I really don’t think MacHQ will find anything. But they’ll let us know. Hopefully as soon as tomorrow.

So I dropped the MacBook off at the shop today. I was able to download a free application that allowed my old Windows laptop to read the Mac files. I copied them off, and put them on my external hard drive I have for my backups. So my pictures and movies are safe.

When my husband took it in last week, they wanted to say that we had spilled something on it. Well I didn’t spill coverage on the warranty. And I had that thing with me all weekend at flyball, and it was either in the hotel with me or in it’s bag at the tournament site. And if something got spilled on it, I didn’t know about it. Though I don’t think that really counts. :p

So we’ll see. They are supposed to send it off and email me the status. I hope I get it back by the end of the week. I hope Lucy didn’t throw up on it and then licked it up without me knowing about it. I guess that could happen… I just want my Mac back!

Earlier this year I bought an RCA EZ300HD CamCorder and I really like it! It’s small, has a pretty good quality video, and it’s easy to use. The settings are pretty limited but good enough for such a small toy. And it’s HD! I love HD. Sure it’s not the highest quality HD in the world. It’s only 720p, but still it’s better than my Sony Handy Cam which records to a mini DVD.

So if you are looking for a fun little camcorder for Chrismtas, this is the one I recommend. It has a rechargeable battery, 2GB of internal memory, and an SD Card slot that will take up to a 16GB SD card. It fits right in your pocket or purse, too.

Anyway, I like it a lot! I have vidoes on YouTube if you want to see the quality.

Bleh… I’m trying to get to a sub-directory on my VPS and for some reason I’m not able to. Hrm… I wonder why not. The problem with having such a rotten memory is.. I probably did something, changed a setting, a while ago so as to disable this, and forgot what I did.

I mean, I can get there from my admin panel, but I cannot from the web itself based on my IP address.  So I’m trying point a domain name there, and I’m not sure if that is working because it hasn’t propagated though the internet yet… the changes I made from my registrar.

So I have to wait. Oh well… I’ll wait, though I hate waiting! And see what happens when the domain name propagates!

I do love my MacBook and I’ll never go back to a windows machine if I can help it. I am wondering one thing, though. I want to back up my photos to my external hard drive and I’m having a hard time figuring out how with just Finder.

I guess I can use the Time Machine software that comes with, but from what I’ve read, it must backup to a disk that has been formatted for the Mac OS. Which is okay.. except that I don’t want to overwrite all the files that are already on my external backup disk in order to start backing up with Time Machine. Hrm…

So maybe instead of wondering what is adhd, I should just resign myself to the fact that I am somewhat ADD and OCD in my backups and my computer organization… and live with how things are. Hrm.. but no, I want to know how it’s done. And so I will keep looking!

Okay so I have been scouring the web looking for ways to convert the AVI files that my EZShare RCA Camera records movies in, into a format that iMovie on my Mac can use.

Dang, it’s been a tough fight. But I’ve learned that AVI is merely a container, it’s not the actual codec. The codec is what’s inside the AVI. And my EZShare camera actually records in HD, the codec it is in is H264 (x264 or h.264 I’m not sure what is the correct sytax).

So I am poor, and I’m really trying to save money, so I have been looking for something free. I read that Quicktime Pro 7 would be able to convert the AVIs to MOV, and I was almost going to buy the darn thing for $30, when finally I found Handbrake.

It works like a dream. It doesn’t convert to MOV, it convers to MP4 which is an MPEG-4 Format/container something. The settings I’ve been using are the Classic ones in the popout menu. Video Codec MPEG-4 FFmpeg (I looked at stand alone FFmpeg and I didn’t want something I had to run command line).

So with time, sweat, but fortunately no tears, and almost putting myself on a stress weight loss diet, finally I am able to convert my AVIs to MP4s and import them into iMovie. Yay! Sound and all. I’m happy about it!

Okay, I’m sold. I’ll never buy another windows machine again. I love my MacBook. It runs fast and clean. Installing and removing applications easily and completely. It doesn’t come with a bunch of junk applications that I have to remove, like windows does. The applications just feel lighter… cleaner. They are not so heavy that they take a zillion system resources and bog everything down. The graphics are clean and amazing on my Mac. And again, they are clean and light and don’t take a ton of resources.

I’m just figuring out iPhoto and iMovie. I’ll post again about converting AVIs to MP4s that can be used in iMovie. But I’m getting there. I need to actually play with iMovie now so that I can learn how it works.

The only thing, so far, that I’m disappointed in is the financial management software. Nothing I have looked at is anything I want to use. And the ones that I might consider cost $40 or more. And I just can’t afford that right now. I miss Ace Money, the one I ran on Windows. I’ve tried some online bank account managers like Quicken online or Mint, but I don’t really like them much either. So I might resort to running Wine on my MacBook an then Ace Money on it. We’ll have to see if I can get that to work. I’ve compiled Wine but I haven’t tried to actually run it using MacPorts, but I’m leaning in that direction.

I love the screen, and I could sit on the couch all day playing with my MacBook… then I’d need the best way to lose belly fat because I’ll get more if I sit around all day! Bleh.

So now I need to blog more, keep up on my poor blogs that are being neglected. And so I’ll try. I’m still having anxiety about updating them. Which is silly, I know, but maybe I’ll get over it soon.

So here is a picture from the hike we went on a week or so ago. Up to Dog Lake up Millcreek Canyon. It was a nice hike, and it didn’t even take me days and days to recover from! I am so pleased about that.

We saw some pretty flowers, and I had to stop and take a picture of this little bee having himself some pollen.

I’m glad I’m feeling better. Though I worry that we have mold in our house that we should really get rid of. And we should have our furnace checked, like my sister did, to see if we have any leaks. All these things take money, and we just don’t really have much… okay okay I know, my husband bought me a MacBook instead, but hey that’s pretty necessary! LOL yeah we should spend more money on serious things and less on play things. But my husband needs a laptop for school. And instead of him buying yet another PC, he bought me a Mac and took my old HP laptop. He’s going to take Vista off and put XP on it so it’ll be faster.

This backlit keyboard in my MacBook is just the coolest!