Gossamer's Lake Tahoe Web Design

We have upgraded a couple of useful WordPress Plugins, including:

Fast Secure Contact Form – Version 2.9.8.6
WPBook – Version 2.2.1

Enjoy.

For some time now my auto builds of libSM, libXmu, libXt, and libXaw have been failing. These failures seemed to start with libSM and revolve around definitions found, or not found, in the header file uuid.h.

Google foo only revealed that the FreeBSD project had logged this problem as a bug, but it has been some time since this bug was reported with no relief in sight.

I did find a useful nugget which suggested that e2fsprog-libuuid should be used. A quick build of this package revealed that it conflicts, in that it installs to the same place, as ossp-uuid.

After removing the package ossp-uuid and installing e2fsprog-libuuid the build of libSM completed successfully.

The latest version of PHP became available this morning and has been installed. This new version includes security fixes and some new features. According to the PHP project, the PHP 5.2 release is no longer supported.

Here at Gossamer we are committed to keeping all of our software current and up to date. Most high volume hosting services do not, for example, you will probably find that if you host at GoDaddy, you are using the extremely old and outdated PHP 4.3.

If keeping up with the latest security updates and features is important to you, then give us a call today!

Slow isn’t exactly the word, doggy might be. And it wasn’t always so. But my version of IE8 running under Windows 7 became so slow it was not useable. So it was time for the google.

Judging by the various posts I ran across, it seems that this is a common problem; all begging for a solution. And yes, there were a number of cautious solutions posted. But really, who can believe someone that claims that you must run IE8 as the administrator? Go ahead, try it.

One of the posts seemed to point in the right direction, it was quite possible that something I installed was causing the problem. Or perhaps, there was something wrong with a recent Microsoft update. Indeed, I had a good suspect as I had recently installed some old tools found in Office XP. I mean, who wants to shell out for a completely new office suite?

So I spent several hours trying to restore my computer to a point before that installation. Anyone having luck with Window’s system restore? I’m not. Each and every restore point that gets so diligently installed failed. It seems, that a number of tools remove files when they upgrade, for example, FireFox which produced repeated failures because restore could not find one file or another. Sometimes the missing file was suppose to be in, of all places, the temp folder. Once a missing file was suppose to be in my trash bin. I guess it is asking too much for everyone to put installation files in a place that doesn’t get cleaned out once in a while.

So rather than de-install my favorite old XP tools, I had a hunch. My suspect, IE8’s protected mode. I was already having trouble browsing sites that used cookies, regardless of the security settings I chose. What about that check box to turn this feature off?

Voila! IE8 is fast again!

You have to wonder if this so called protected mode is a bit of a typical republican overreach. I mean, why use a browser if most of the websites I surf fail to display properly? In addition, I assume that all my browsing is being recorded by Microsoft.

The truth is, it is not a browser’s place in life to continually check and record where I am surfing. The checking rightfully belongs attached to my Internet or Network connection, either in my hardware router or as software installed on my system.

Is protected mode worth waiting around 30 or more seconds for a page to load? I doubt it.

A few days ago I installed an optional hardware update from ATI via the Windows 7 update utility and then upon every restart of my machine an annoying popup was displayed asking me to register my ATI product.

OK, ok, I’ll register my product although I am surely not interested in receiving more annoying SPAM in my multitude of inboxes. Of course, the act of registering your product does not allow for the option of opting out of any or all emails from ATI.

What made matters worse was that even after registering and checking the do not display this message again option on the popup, time after time, the popup kept coming up every time I restarted.

Failing to find a solution to this problem on the google I ventured into the various startup options available under Windows 7 and found nothing. Finally I resorted to looking at the configuration options under msconfig.

Sure enough, under the Startup tab there is an item called ‘ATI Customer Care’. Apparently this startup task’s only job is to constantly annoy me about registering my product. Disabling this task finally removed the annoying popup from my computer.

Hopefully one day, ATI’s software will be as good as their hardware. I’ve been waiting for over a decade.