The Nanny Diaries 2007 (PG-13)

The Nanny Diaries *** I actually read the first few chapters of this book but wasn’t interested enough to finish it.  This is the first time I’ve seen Scarlett Johansson.  This didn’t quite show off what all the hoopla over hottie Johansson is all about (for that see HJNTITY) but I did like her in the role and enjoyed the movie.

Defiance 2008 (PG-13)

Defiance ****  This is a story of a group of Jews hiding in a forest from the  Germans starting Daniel Craig (latest Bond actor).   It’s based on a true story.  By the end of the war 1200 had survived.  I was surprised how much action was in the movie.   It was so great to know of a group of Jews that actually resisted the Germans.  Recommended.

Losing everything on your iPhone

I should have protected my friend, Lee better.  He was eager to update his iPhone with the just released 3.0 software.  I don’t own an iPhone but am becoming somewhat familiar with the device and software due to Cassidy and David each buying for themselves an iPod touch (it’s not the device that breaks the bank, it’s the service plan -$70 minimum).

We downloaded the latest iTunes to Lee’s laptop since he has never used iTunes or hooked up his iPod to a computer!  We then started the update.  Once downloaded it began to install. We left it working to have dinner and when we returned we found that his laptop had turned itself off.  First lessson:  Never do a significant software install/update on a laptop that is not plugged in!   I recently upgraded Windows Vista on my laptop and it didn’t let me continue until I had plugged in the laptop.  Now that’s a nice touch!  Too bad Apple didn’t think to protect the user in the same way.

When we powered  the laptop back on we found the iPhone in a recovery state.  We had no choice but to select restore (to factory settings).  That looked really bad.  Lee had no known backups and he had over 300 names that he has collected over the past 10 years. His iPhone is only a few months old and he had originally synced his blackberry to it with a SIM card.  After the restore had completed and we confirmed that he did in fact have his contacts completely wiped, Lee was as low as I’ve ever seen  him.  We called Apple but the technician had no good news for him.  Although the iPhone appeared  to do a sync when we first plugged it in to his laptop after installing iTunes, there was no backup (right click the iPhone device in iTunes).  The technician said that iTunes performs a backup before each sync.  That seemed to be strike two against Apple in looking out for the customer.   We did realize that Lee should be able to download his contacts from an old SIM card as he had done originally.  The  Apple technician said we would have to go to AT&T to do this.

Well,  not wanting to give up yet, I did a google search and found others in the same predicament.  I found out that in the iPhone Settings….Mail page at the very bottom there is a button to Sync from SIM card.  That did it!  There were some numbers missing that Lee had added which apparently saved to the iPhone memory rather than the SIM but most of his lost numbers had been recovered.  Fortunately, Lee didn’t have any music or other data that was lost.  He actually uses the iPhone as a phone!  Go figure!

Google Desktop Search Outlook add-in removal problems

I uninstalled the Google Desktop Search Outlook add in, however,  it didn’t appear to have cleaned up completely.  Starting Outlook,  I kept getting “The add-in “Google Desktop Search Outlook Addin” …cannot be loaded and has been disabled by Outlook. Please contact the Add-in manufacturer for an update. If no update is available, please uninstall the Add-in.”

What worked was to locate and remove the following file:

C:\Users\YourName\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook\extend.dat

unresolved externals and function signatures

Build issues can be extremely aggravating and hard to track down.  I spent quite a bit of time  tracking down a link error where everything seemed in order.  Function declaration and implementation of a library function matched the call in my application.  After much trial and error I decided to get forensic on the compiler.  I looked at the mangled function signature of the  library file (dropped the .lib file into Visual Studio) and compared it with the mangled function signature in the output window where it was reporting an unresolved external.  I used the command line program undname to show me the user-friendly function signatures and the difference was one used __cdecl and the other used __stdcall.  I was then able to find that my application was using the C/C++…Advanced…Calling Convention…__stdcall (/Gz) whereas the library was using __cdecl (/Gd).  Comparing file signatures between what was actually compiled into the library and what is expected in the application can expose several inconsistant settings. Another one might be the General…Character Set settings.