Work/Sound – DavidPierron.Com

iMessage solved and Jim finds joy with his Hackintosh

So there were a couple things tried to get iMessage working. This post on tonymacx86.com is where I started. I will admit, I didn’t follow the instructions completely. I wanted to fill in the gaps that I didn’t have cause I have a working installation and just installed days worth of software so didn’t want to bork it all up for something I’ve been living without for years now.

But it was this post on reddit that clued me into an essential piece I was apparently missing. “Board Serial Number” … I got that in there and iMessage now works a treat. The original post covers this. I just think the simplicity of the reddit post cleared things up for me. It also has you delete all your old Messages – maybe they contain something that causes iMessage to regress?

That’s the thing about a Hackintosh. If you buy the suggested hardware, it should “just work.” When it doesn’t, there’s something you’re missing and you just don’t know what it is. I mean if you’re not a systems engineer on Cupertino’s payroll that has all the answers. And it can be very frustrating.

This brings us to Jim’s solution. Seems the motherboard series he purchased required the installation of a particular Clover thingamahbob. Once that was installed, “BOOM” as he said, everything started working. After that solution, he moved on to his individual problems and fixed them one by one.

Again, if you’ve got the time and patience to work these things out. Sometimes wait for answers. It most definitely pays off in the end.

Not waiting for Mac OSX Mountain Lion 10.8

I just upgraded to Mac OSX Lion 3 months ago after waiting for whatever reason to upgrade. I decided this time that I was gonna be one of those people that upgraded as soon as the new version was released.

I didn’t camp out in line or anything to get the new OSX Operating System, I simply downloaded it and ran it.

The only weird thing about the upgrade was that when the machine rebooted into doing the installation, the brightness on my 17″ MacBook Pro was turned what seemed to be all the way up. The brightness keys didn’t turn it down, so the whole time the screen was really really bright. Other than that, everything smooth as the Lion upgrade. Only thing required was the waiting. Waiting for the download of the 4+ gigabyte installer and then the time it took to install.

The install itself got to one point and said 5 minutes left and then jumped back up to 20 minutes left. I thought it hit a snag and was re-installing Lion or something as I have an Early 2008 MacBook Pro which is supposed to be compatible with Mountain Lion but FUD said otherwise.

My other concern was running Avid Pro Tools 10.2 under Mountain Lion and I’ve fired it up and ran some sessions through it and all seems to be fine.

I did this on my secondary system which I hardly boot into, but will have to see how it works out and then install on my main HD. To be honest, the only thing I’ve noticed is the Notifications in the top menu bar (of which I’ve had none) and the addition of Reminders and Notes in the dock.

Upgraded to Mac OS X Lion finally …

Finally upgraded to Mac OS X Lion 10.7.3 from the App Store. Conflicting reviews and horror stories. My main concern was that Pro Tools 10.1.2 would work with it and that’s sort of the reasons for the Pro Tools updates was Lion compatibility …

I found that I really wanted the ability to share iCal with my wife, computer and iPhone so I needed Lion’s iCloud integration for that to keep it simple … Right off the bat I found this to work flawlessly and I also haven’t had any problems with Lion to speak of until … now …

This is why I decided to update my bLog here since there hasn’t been an update in a while and that I am having this problem right now with Lion. Things do seem to have slowed down. It’s not completely clear as to why and there could be several theories … A plugin I used with Pro Tools called muteTone decided to hang Pro Tools when trying to remove the plugin … I only need it for tracking and then I can remove it … This is used for 3rd party interfaces and Pro Tools inability to control input monitoring via their software (which every other DAW has and always had).

To attempt to fix the muteTone issue, it’s possible that I messed with some MIDI settings that had been moved out to the “Incompatible Software” folder when Lion installed. I followed Avid’s advice to install the Pro Tools 9 drivers for all hardware … I have since removed it, but I also used the MIDI driver update from Avid, and I think that may not have been necessary … Regardless, all MIDI stuff works, just not muteTone … (I had been working with the author of the plugin to try to fix) … The current state is that muteTone can be removed if it’s deactivated first … He suggested I live with that until the AAX release. “AAX” is Avid’s new plugin format. muteTone is free …

Also, NeoOffice needs to be upgraded for Lion … The only upgrade for Lion requires that I pay … I don’t want to pay for NeoOffice … I have Pages … I use NeoOffice to open files sent to me by those that are not keen to Mac … I have been Microsoft Windows free since 2008 and have NEVER looked back … Simply the worst form of software ever ruined by many individuals … That poor guy that stopped when Bill Gates handed him $50K should have continued to develop his own system … Anyway, NeoOffice informs me that if I continue to use the current version that I should save often in anticipation of the program crashing … Since I don’t care if it crashes, I’m good … But, maybe loading it adversely affects my pleasantly running system? Only time can tell …

So in conclusion, it’s just like any other computer issue … The person running it has a lot to do with how well it runs … Decisions by the operator affect how system stability is maintained … I do think I need to get a beefier system … I’m typing this entry via the first Mac I bought … Running the latest software and chugging along just fine, but I think maybe I deserve a little zippier Pro Tools and graphics stuffs …

Current Events: Playing catch up …

Okay, I haven’t posted in a very very long time. (My English teacher said never to use “very very”, choose extremely or some other word). Not that I haven’t wanted to, but I don’t always have the time and I am easily distracted. I get a topic in my head and decide that’s what I’m going to post, but I forget about it when I get home or whatever, it just never gets done. So! Here are the current events and hopefully I don’t forget anything.

Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (GTMO): I went to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba to do a New Year’s Eve show with Fosterchild. This was to perform for the troops at GTMO, the world’s oldest Naval base … It’s beautiful down there. It was more like a vacation than a job. What I bring back the most was snorkeling … I enjoyed that very much as I’d never done it before. The water was so salty that it was effortless to float, but nearly impossible to dive. Coral was very sharp, but I saw fishies! We played two shows, one New Year’s Eve and another two days later … We toured the entire facility – yes, the entire facility and they were clear that they wanted the things we saw be shared with everyone when we came back. They showed us “Camp X-ray” (which was only open for 70-90 days) where the detainees were held in 2003 and all the media photographs depict when referring to GTMO. This camp is grown over with grass and weeds and hasn’t been used since. They showed us Camps 4, 5, and 6 which become more restrictive as you go. We saw what the detainees were provided in the way of clothing and things to pass their time. How theirs customs are respected and attended to. It was certainly an experience all in itself.

Bo Bice: On a lighter note (whew!) … American Idol’s fourth season runner up to Carrie Underwood was also performing at Guantanamo Bay as well. We even shared the 30 seat plane ride with him to the island. There was a problem with his sound guy’s passport, so he was left at the airport in Florida. Because of this fact, I performed double duty on New Year’s Eve day by sound checking Bo Bice at their venue and then going to the venue where Fosterchild was playing and complete that sound check. Bo Bice played that night with Tony, the electrician who is assigned to setup and break down PA systems at GTMO and his crew. I also had a monitor guy who worked with Tony’s department. It was a Venue system, and the next day, New Year’s Day they moved that entire show to another part of the base that is their outdoor movie theater and I was able to sound check and come back and mix that show. So, on New Year’s Day 2011 (1/1/11), I mixed Bo Bice in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba – and I got his autograph.

I better get this posted now, more later …

Going Mac, one person at a time …

So my brother Tom calls me one night frustrated as heck because he can’t make a copy of a DVD. A simple thing, pop a DVD into the computer and click “Copy”. It’s of his performance at a show, and he wants to make copies for himself and the rest of the members of the band. He’s been trying Windows machines and utilizing Nero. I think he had purchased a copy of Nero, but it wasn’t cooperating. He then tried using a trial version from their web site that would be fully functional, just slow (write @ 1X or something). It may be that he purchased Nero, and that was on his old PC which was in storage and he thought he might go get that to get the job done. Regardless, no matter how far he got, the copy was not happening.

I told him to stop over, and I would make the copy no problem. I have a Macbook Pro and a Windows PC where I was, so no matter what, we’d make a copy. I ended up using a trial version of Toast I got with Cubase 5. But even so, I would have tried the FREE Mac software Burn if Toast hadn’t stepped up. It was a click, “Copy” and it asked how many copies you wanted.

While we waited for the process to complete, Tom reiterated his DVD copying experience and frustrations. He was to the point where he was going to go out and buy a new computer to make this work! He thought maybe his PC was too old for such a task as copying a DVD. I said, “If you’re going to buy a new computer, you should buy a Mac.” I think that was Monday, August 17th. I saw Tom a week later, Monday, August 24th and he told me he bought an iMac. He was going back to the store to have a one on one session with someone who knows Logic. I told him Cubase 5 or Digital Performer 6 were good choices as well … and you can always play with GarageBand.

I hardly ever touch a Microsoft Windows machine anymore unless I have to. All my servers are FreeBSD and the Mac software (OS X) is FreeBSD based. The interface is so much more intuitive and I venture to say “cleaner” … It’s much more of a pleasure to develop web sites and programs on and mix music as well … Come on Windows people, once you go Mac, you never go back! Or so they say … but who are “they” actually? Probably a bunch of satisfied Mac users! =)

Web 2.0 and oh, nice to see you …

Web 2.0: Gaetan sent an invite to my email address to follow him on twitter, so I signed up finally. Honestly, I had actually been meaning to sign up with twitter and facebook … My older brother is terrified of facebook, he thinks Rupert Murdoch is after him … I’m particular in the information I share but let’s be honest, if someone like Rupert Murdoch wanted the goods on you, guess what? He’s going to get you …

There are so many times that I think of something to blog, but I never get around to it. I think of the situation, the story and everything, but then I don’t get to it. Or, maybe the paranoia of what I would be posting and the opinion that may come of it, or too much information shared … Blah, tough living in this day and age, isn’t it? The age of immediate consequences from something you may post online. The Internet is everywhere and immediate. Anyway, here are the current events:

Hosting: There have been several instances in the hosting area that have devastated me. One, I had a disk crash on a machine that I never thought the disk would crash. Like, I had it in my mind that that was a pristine machine and I didn’t have to worry about it. It’s where all my stuff was and where I could just ssh in or sit at its console and update code on the fly … No backups. Gone. Now I have everything important on RAID5 and my personal machines have Time Machine running.

Verizon is a huge thorn in my side. My last mile is Verizon. Verizon is copper. Verizon wants to run FIOS (fiber) in Philadelphia. Comcast rules the video market in Philadelphia. Seems contacting politicians is the only way Verizon FIOS will come to Philadelphia. There is nothing more than I want right now is FIOS to be in Philadelphia because my connection speed would greatly increase immediately. How this affects me now is that Verizon doesn’t want to run any new copper, they only want to run FIOS. I have had a terrible time as of late with my connection and this is the problem. It happened the first time in May and was dormant until Christmas Eve, from then on it was daily bouncing until the last copper pair change. Verizon has been on site over 3 times. It’s too late, the customers that this affected the worst have already found other solutions. Not cool Verizon, not cool at all.

Octane: Sound for Octane continues, but with almost every venue having house sound installed, I can’t rememer the last time I needed my PA. For that matter, the last time I had the PA in the trailer, the trailer was burglarized for one bass bin and one monitor. They took nothing else although much was in there as well as all the band’s gear that was strewn to just the outside of the trailer. Makes absolutely no sense. I still haven’t been able to sell the truck since replacing it with the van and trailer. I should try that on eBay again. While Octane remains booked fairly steady for a band in their position, there are weekend nights that I am sitting home.

Fosterchild: I have mixed Fosterchild a couple times since the lineup change and circumstances warranted it. It was a welcome change from the norm. Apparently we’re going on tour soon!

Out On the Town: I have started working with the paper again. This time I am doing the layout on the computer. Another reason for my Mac purchase. (Still steamed about that one [previous entry], but I will survive. I have rationalized some things away.) Hopefully this will help with the ultimate goal of sitting on my ass the rest of my life.

Windows: I found out that MS Access doesn’t scale, or self sustain. Don’t know how to put it, but left to its devices, a web site utilizing an MS Access database will cause ASP to hang on a Windows Server. The database needs to be regularly reorganized. I can tell you for a fact that this will not happen on any other platform. Thanks again Windows! Way to mess up everyone’s life on your server cause you can’t handle something and don’t report on it either.

Health: My health is getting better. I had my last cigarette September 27th, 2008 at 10:45pm. This was right before Octane’s first set (acoustic) outside at The Whiskey Tango. During the set, pressure mounted in the center of me chest and by the end of the set I was getting sharp pains. I didn’t go out for a smoke after the set, I took it easy but sharp pains came and went and I generally didn’t feel right. I was getting scared and I decided that I thought I should go to the hospital. I spent the weekend in the hospital while they did all sorts of fun tests. All tests were okay. I then went back to have a camera shoved down my throat and that turned up acid damage in my esophagus, stomach and duodenum. I was told to take 4 Prilosec daily. The anesthetic for the tube test was wild, like snapping your fingers, test done and two and a half hours went by. I haven’t smoked since and have started dieting and exercising. I may get a Brazilian and wear a bikini or thong to the beach this summer? … and everyone knows how I love the beach.

The Whiskey Tango: I went back to work at The Whiskey Tango May 20th 2008 to fill in the open nights with Octane and to do the off nights. Ronnie quit to go work for Spellcaster down the shore for the summer with more nights. Since then The Whiskey Tango changed ownership and management and those off nights aren’t happening anymore. Status there is up in the air right now.

Coding: I recently updated some old ASP pages I did way back in the day for the Bigg Romeo site. That was fun. I am progressing on new web development projects and I am very excited about that. Also thinking of ways to further promote the hosting through a better interface. The new trickles in slowly anymore and Verizon isn’t helping with the departed. Here’s hoping FIOS comes through. They are sure to support that endeavor more than they’ve helped me now, right?

OH! and the biggest thing about all of this is that anything new will be in a new location! All the servers, routers, switches, computers, etc. will be moved to a brand new location. We will be moving but still don’t know when yet. I am hoping for A.S.A.P., but that’s me.

That’s all I can think of right now. Any questions?

It’s my Birthday!

Forty one today, forty one today. I’m the same age as the Superbowl.

I’m surprised that I haven’t updated my site, my bLog since September … I guess I have poured much of my offline time into my online vLogs on the OctaneCrew site … I’ve found talking into a camera much easier than doing this typing thing, but once all the video is recorded, editing can become a lengthy process …

So what’s new since my last post in September? Happy New Year!

Web Hosting: Nothing much new in the hosting world. I’ve been trying to get hold of Savvis to renew my contract. Three years has finally come and gone in December, but getting hold of my account representative has been more than difficult. I finally got him on the phone about a week ago and haven’t heard back yet. This has been the worst response from Savvis to date. I think their sales force is not as professional anymore, or I got the one guy who doesn’t keep up on things … I got a quote from them about a year ago for $250 less per month, but I was told I couldn’t renew my contract until it was up. When talking to my rep last week, he tells me the price has gone up. If this is the case, I will be switching companies, no matter how much the hassle.

The main Windows server crashed beginning of October. The machine went on its merry way into Lalaland … I was able to put the drive into an external enclosure and suck off the data onto a new installation which made the switch fairly transparent to those who just use web services … The mail handled by FreeBSD kept flowing, and the registry infomation that the Windows products keep there was able to be saved so no renewing of passwords, etc was necessary … What a relief that was …

Octane: Much the same as they continue to play every weekend on the Philadelphia club circuit. They did have a highlight November 30, 2006 when they appeared on the Opie & Anthony satelite XM Radio show where they played on the “walkover” … a deluge of CD orders poured in that I dutifully got out in the post … They were just on again yesterday morning, and again, the CD orders are coming in from across the country …

The crew is starting fresh in that the crew that I inherited when I started with the band are all but gone. The last remaining guy has given notice and will be done as soon as he can be replaced or he gets sick of waiting for us to find someone. My son started coming out to shows and he has fell into duties that he’s never done before … Of course this means I have to do much more work than before … It’s not been fun the last couple weeks … Hopefully we’ll find some new crew that can get the job done as before …

Father-in-Law: My father-in-law Edward Walter Andrews passed away January 2, 2007. He was born in December 29, 1925 … He had a building of fluid in his chest a week or so before Thanksgiving and was taken to the hospital in an ambulance. He never came back out of the hospital. I thought for sure that he would have come home. For my children and I, that was the last that we’d ever seen him … My wife went daily to visit him in the hospital … Again, I thought for sure he would get past this … He was a big burly cement finisher … Never thought that it would get the best of him …

Since I’d known him, he didn’t work … Already retired … He did keep himself busy though … You couldn’t keep him away from tinkering with something … When I was dating my wife, he’d help with the car if there was a problem, or I should say the “report” of a problem … Like my wife would mention that I was having a problem with my brakes … While sitting there waiting for her to come out of the house, out he would come, “Problem with the brakes?” … and you would want to blow it off and say yeah, but I know about it and I am taking steps to rectify the brake trouble. “Pop the hood.” … oh no, well, I will humor him … He checks the brake fluid level and stuff … “Need to bleed the brakes” and then we spend the next 30-45 minutes bleeding brakes and it’s fixed … He wouldn’t take no for an answer when it came to fixing things … While the brake bleeding went well, sometimes everything didn’t go as planned …

Once we moved into our house, there were things around the house that were broken and I would sometimes come home to find my father-in-law working on things … I would ask my wife why he was here, and she would say that she told her mother of the problem and he came over to fix it … So, sometimes the fix would be quick, other times he would explain to me what the problem was and make frequent trips to the hardware store getting what was needed and trying the next steps on to fix the problem … While we may not be able to use whatever he was fixing at the time, eventually he’d get the right thing from the hardware store and off we’d go …

I guess I should have mentioned that he was hard of hearing, so in these processes, you would say something to him, and his reaction wasn’t always such that you’d know if he heard you or not … It could have been lack of hearing or determination, not sure which so that added to part of the mystery … He would sit at family gatherings and be in his own little world … While everyone is discussing something at some length, he’d blurt, “Th’say it’s gonna rain tomorrow.” or he’d comment on a sports player playing on the team that was playing on TV … He was a Philadelphia fan …

Although very silent while in the family gatherings, you could catch him beaming at his grandchildren … Not knowing what was going on in his semi-silent world of his head, but he was entertained by his grandchildren … From across the room, he would make gestures to catch the children as they would fall … Ah, he was a character … My wife would laugh when telling me of things that her father would do … He was a price watcher, often going to 3 different supermarkets to catch the sale at each one … Often times, haggling on prices when prices aren’t for haggling … Being concerned with parking spots on a street etc … Having conversations with people and when they’d gone lean down and ask, “Who was that?”

My kids have lost their Pop and we took the kids to the viewing, mass, interment and luncheon … While the 8 year old broke down at the end of the viewing, the 5 year old was just about at comprehension … There was debate on whether the children should have attended and I was adamant about them going … They hadn’t seen their Pop since before Thanksgiving and never visited him in the hospital with all the tubes in him … They needed to see him sleeping in his casket and laid to rest … They did want to visit him in the hospital, but my wife also expected him to come back home as well … I still can’t believe that congestive heart failure won him over as well … I fully expected him to live forever …

Well, that sums up my major life since my last post. If anything else comes up, I will update.

D.I.Y.

So our home phone no longer had a dialtone … We called for service and they came out … I was asleep at the time … Wish I wasn’t cause the guy royally screwed it up … He told my wife that things were screwed up outside … That he hooked it up properly and didn’t know why it wasn’t working … He traced some of my internal lines and couldn’t get to where some of them went and marked where the line came in and was working … That I would have to take it from there … What this guy did was rewire it at the pole so it came in on my defunct DSL connection … WRONG! … Being that that’s where it was, I figured out how to mount those wire in the demarc and get the line working internal to the house … I’m not happy about the connection now coming in that way as it’s now accessible on the back of my house whereas the other 7 or 8 lines come in on this big black cable … I’m not using all those lines anymore, they were for the now defunct BBS I had running when I moved in … The Internet took care of that …

This past Wednesday, February 1st 2006 Octane opened up at the TLA for Pray for the Soul of Betty which is Constantine from American Idol‘s band … Considering all of the concern prior to the show, it went fine for me … I made Octane sound good and everybody was happy … I didn’t meet the guy, but I was in his presence and that was interesting enough for me … I didn’t attempt to meet him either as I wouldn’t have had anything to say to him except that I saw him on TV … Still the highlight of my Octane career has been meeting Gene Simmons whereas I did have a conversation at length with him and he signed a copy of his book for me …

ICUHost.Net Billing went out and I also sent out a newsletter … After reading the letter and rereading it, I emailed it out and I missed a blatant misspelling … Damn! … I have started developing a replacement billing application that will replace the ASP one I wrote years ago … I am writing the new one in PHP … I am also using a different authorization system than I normally use for other sites I’ve secured up … This one does hash checking as well as email address verification through links and stuff … Pretty cool … Needed something like this for keeping tabs on customers and verifying new ones … I can’t tell you how many people I just didn’t set up because they were from out of state … Even though they signed up and everything, when I didn’t get back to them, they didn’t get back to me, so I guess I was pretty good in sniffing out the fakers … So hard to trust anyone on the Internet these days … Anyway, along with the new authorization methods, the new billing application will be able to verify domains via different databases and I’ll have a way better handle on billing and domain management … There have been domains that I’ve set up but never assigned to a user and they got a free site for months … When I started verifying DNS against accounts, this won’t happen … I’ll be able to check balances and anything past due I can update the DNS records and inactivate the site … Writing it in PHP allows me to utilize the command line and schedule the billing to run as I see fit … I think I will end up running something weekly if not daily … It will check many things for me that I have not been able to check on a regular basis … Right now, I have someone who moved their site, name servers and everything, but I see that they’re using my mail server and other stuff that I haven’t inactivated … I don’t think that’s right, and with automation, these things won’t happen …

Anyway … no time … need more time … We didn’t win PowerBall … We will this Saturday though …

Fired Again

The Whiskey Tango decided Sunday nights weren’t doing what they wanted, so they decided to simply close on Sunday nights … So, I had the job for a week … WooHoo!

UPDATE 06/15/2005: Actually, the Whiskey Tango is closing 3 of their 7 nights … Sunday, Monday and Thursday tanked …

UPDATE 08/29/2005: and shortly after, they tanked Wednesdays … They’re only open Tue, Fri and Sat … Sports Bar is open every night though …

Back at The Tango

I’m back at The Whiskey Tango on Sunday nights … Brian Bortnick stopped playing Kenny’s a couple weeks back and didn’t go right into another location … The Whiskey Tango wasn’t successful with their Sunday night replacement either, so they’re trying something new with having another original band night hosted by Spin … I am now the house guy for these Sundays at The Whiskey Tango … Last night was the first one … it went okay … It will certainly need to build if they want it to continue … this coming week ought to be good with Juliet … they’re not hosting Wednesday nights anymore …