Author: JT

Categories
Tech Tip

AirPort Express and AT&T U-Verse Pace 5268AC

Very interesting bug I thought I’d document somewhere.  My current home ISP service is AT&T UVerse and I recently Pac 5268AChad it serviced because of some issues.  I ended getting a whole new router – the Pace 5268AC. This was very exciting because all of my other equipment is no faster the N speed — this router gives me wireless AC.  Woot!  Although the router is so much better than what I had, still had some issues with my AirPort Express.

I had setup two v1 AirPort Express devices to some powered speakers. One that I kept outside.  They stop working well over a year ago and I thought it was because of a bad connection to the older router.  Still had the bad connection issue after the new router. So it must be the AirPort Express.  So I figure time for another upgrade.  I jumped on eBay and picked up a used late model AirPort Expess.

It arrived in the mail today and I of course couldn’t wait to set it up.  This is where things get interesting.

If you use the Airport Utility application to configure the Airport Express, you will not be given the option to configure the AirPort Expressdevice as a wireless client on the existing wireless network.  You must first set it up in a new network.  Obviously it is much easier to configure the device if you plug in an Ethernet cable to the Airport Express.  Once the device is back up, you can then configure it to be a wireless client on the existing network.  So I basically named the device, entered my wireless name, etc.

Once the AirPort Express restarted – my computer and most of my network couldn’t not access the Internet.  Somehow, some way, the AirPort was seriously screwing up the routing on the network.  I could access anything that was on the LAN side by using IP addresses.  As I use an external DNS server for DNS, I couldn’t access anything by name.  I also couldn’t access the router’s LAN port to see what issue the router would be reporting.  

In order to get everything back online, I had to unplug theater net cable from the AirPort Express and break the connection between my router and the down stream switch the AirPort was plugged into.  Once I reconnected the switch, we were back online.  

Fortunately, the AirPort Express was still connected. I moved it outside and hooked it up to my speakers and it works like a champ!  It’s going to be a nice relaxing weekend with poolside music.

-JT

Categories
General

New Site Theme

I’ve been playing around with a lot of different themes for this blog lately. The problem with themes is that they still require customization. You can spend hours tweaking someone’s theme and decide that it’s not for your site. I’ve gone through so many of those!

I think I’m finally settling on this theme called Freelancer by GeneratePress. It’s clean, responsive, and free! Also, it’s pretty simple and simple is all I really need for a blog site. Trying not to over engineer everything in my life.

In any event, I hadn’t updated this blog in over a year and I do have a number of articles I was thinking about writing. Now that I’m ‘happy’ with the design/layout of the site, I may actually do some writing!

Categories
Development General Tech

PowerShell Logging Module

(Edited 11/30/15 – Completely forgot SqlChow’s contributions! Sorry!)

Wow – two blog posts in two days!  A record for me.  So today’s post I wanted to try something new.  I wanted to start sharing some of my code via a download over this WordPress CMS. Well, that’s not the only reason, I do like to share stuff so if this helps someone out, leave a comment, etc.

So the very first download I want to do was a very useful module that I hobbled together that I used in some of my automated PowerShell scripts — a logging module!

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Categories
General Mac Tech

Corrupted BIOS on my Hackintosh

The scariest thing happen to me last night after a very long gaming session.  If you read this blog you know my daily driver is a Hackintosh.  I try not to upgrade or tweak it too much considering it’s my daily work machine.  Here’s what happened:

Earlier in the night, I had bounce the machine to reboot it into Windows 7 so that I could play some serious Battlefield 4. After about 6 hours or so (okay, maybe 8), I finally shut down for the night.  I always reboot back into the Mac side so that I don’t have to worry about rebooting in the morning, etc.  This time, when I rebooted, I heard my machine “clunk” twice.   Yes – “clunk” – not a simple click or beep.  Once the machine powered up the display, I got this error (image stolen from internet):

CorruptBios

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Categories
Development

PowerShell, SharePoint, & MS Access – Oh My!

I’ve been getting into PowerShell scripting a lot at one my clients and I encountered a pretty unique situation that I spent days trying to find the answer to.  I figure I would post a quick note about it and see if I could save someone else some time.

PS-SP-Access

The setup:

One of the tasks I have at this client is to put together a weekly Status Report MS Word document for management.  Although I try to keep the information brief, we are running about 7-8 pages in length (we have a lot of  plates spinning at the same time.)  I have to follow up with a dozen people to get their updates.  Although I’ve tried to get them to submit their information in a standardize format, etc, the information comes in wildly different formats, completeness, or lacks context, etc.  The entire process can take a few hours to pull together – depending on the editing required.  I thought that a better use of time was to come up with a SharePoint solution that would allow everyone to contribute their portion of the status report and have an automated weekly report generated automatically for management.

The Issue:

After setting up my SharePoint site/list, creating the MS Access database, and connecting it to said list, automating MS Access from PowerShell as a scheduled task on a server proved to be quite challenging.  There were a number of error messages and access issues that needed to be addressed before everything worked.

Continue reading “PowerShell, SharePoint, & MS Access – Oh My!”