bamed.org

Well I’ve already run into my first problem getting Asterisk working seemlessly with our old Samsung DCS, and I’ve managed to get the problem resolved as well. The problem was when making or receiving calls between the two phone systems if the caller on the Samsung side hungup first, Asterisk did not detect a disconnect signal and left that line off the hook. After playing with different configuration options in Asterisk, trying to get it to “hear” the disconnect signal I decided I’d do a bit of digging into the Samsung’s programming to see if that might be the problem. So I found a programming guide for the Samsung DCS and found my answer. Apparently the Samsung DCS doesn’t send a proper disconnect signal, unless that extension’s Ring-Type is set to DATA RING. So if anyone out there is going through a similar configuration problem, here’s a quick HOWTO. On your Samsung phone dial TRSF800, then your admin password, press the down arrow, then SPK. Dial 208, then dial the extension connected to Asterisk. Press the Up/Down arrows until the display says DATA RING. Press one of the buttons under the display, then go on to the next extension. When done press TRSF to exit programming mode. This will allow the Samsung DCS to send a proper disconnect signal that Asterisk can pick up on. Problem solved! Well, mostly solved anyway. For some reason, now the extension rings 20 seconds, then disconnects and starts ringing again. I’m sure it’s a timer somewhere, and when I find it I’ll let you know.

~UPDATE~
Nevermind about the timer problem. It had to do with some of the settings I was playing around with in Asterisk while trying to fix the first problem. I commented all those out and everything works fine.

We finally reached a point in the remodelling of the new offices that I was able to run network cable. I also got the wireless bridge setup, and then I was able to plug in a phone and make a call through the Asterisk server.
So all the hardware is in place, now it’s just a matter of programming everything to work together properly. I’ll try to take plenty of notes and maybe put together a guide of some kind on getting Asterisk to work with a Samsung Prostar DCS. So far I’ve been able to make a call from a Samsung system to a VOIP phone and from a VOIP phone to a Samsung phone, then I made a call to an outside line from a VOIP phone. That part was easy, the complicated part will come when I tried to get the voicemail to work seemlessly.
Stay posted for more details.

BTW, have I mentioned how much I love this vimpress plugin?

I was chatting in the SMUUG (Southwest Missouri Unix Users Group) IRC channel from my favorite IRC client irssi, and someone posted a link to vimpress. That’s right, I can now post my WordPress blog entries directly from vim, my favorite editor and yours.
Now if that ain’t geeky enough for you, I don’t know what is!

I think I mentioned earlier that I’ve gone back to school at Colorado Technical University (CTU).  So that means I’m going to have to write lots of papers, and at CTU those papers have to follow APA guidelines (http://www.apastyle.org/).  At this point 75% of the time I’ve spent writing my first paper was trying to make sure I adhered to APA guidelines.  As I was researching APA, I found a link from CTU’s Virtual Library to a tutorial on setting up Microsoft Word in APA Style (http://www.cameron.edu/library/apa_word_tutorial.html).  The problem was the school sent everybody a copy of Office 2007, and the tutorial looks like it was written for Word 2000.  I managed to figure it out but I thought I’d throw together my own updated version of their tutorial to help those using APA Style in Word 2007 (i.e. my classmates).  Note that this is just a slightly modified version of the tutorial I found.

Layout:

Click Page Layout:

Open the Page Setup Dialog Box:

Check that margins are one inch on the top, bottom, left, and right sides. Click OK.

Go to the Layout tab and make sure the header and footer are 0.5 inches.

Click Home.  Now Open the Paragraph Dialog Box:

Change your Line Spacing to Double.  Click OK.

Go back to the Paragraph Dialog Box.

Click the Tabs button and set Default Tab Stops to 0.5 inches.  Click OK.

Change your font to Times New Roman and your font size to 12 point.

Now you can save these setting by pressing Ctrl-Alt-Shift-S to open the Styles Dialog Box.

Click New Style.  Verify your settings are they way you want them.  Change the name to APA-Style.  Check New Documents based on this style.  Click OK.

Click Insert then click Header then Blank.

Go back to Home, then Align Right.

Type the first 2 or 3 words of your title.  Insert five spaces then go to Design.  Click on Page Numbers, go down to Current Position, Plain Number.

Now click on Close Header and Footer.

You will still need to add the Header for each new document, but from this point forward when you start a new document just click APA Style in the Styles section.

The rest of the tutorial I found is the same no matter which version of Office you use, so I won’t go into that, just check go read the original at http://www.cameron.edu/library/apa_word_tutorial.html.

The only thing to note is in the References section at the end.  To setup a Hanging Indent highlight the entire reference section, align left, then go to the Page Layout tab, open the Paragraph Dialog Box.  Under the Indentation section change Special from None to Hanging.

Warning: I’m not an expert on APA, so this isn’t a definitive guide by any means.  It’s only an update to the guide I found that shows you where to find the menus and dialog boxes that aren’t in the same places in Word 2007 that they were in Word 2000.

I’m sure this is all boring and not worth reading for most of you, but I’ll probably refer back to it myself regularly.

Last week I sent a hard drive in to Gillware (http://www.gillware.com) for a friend of mine to get his data recovered and I’m happy to say that they were able to recover the hard drive 100%.  I was able to load the restored data on to a new hard drive and the system booted back up working exactly like it was the day before it crashed.  They kept me informed through the whole process letting me know when the drive arrived and when they were able to take a look at it they quickly forwarded me a list of files.  They also gave me a call and we were able to go over some of the core data to make sure it was intact all BEFORE we had to pay a dime.  Once I gave them the go ahead they wrapped things up and overnighted me the data.  Overall they were quick and professional and one of the best prices I found while researching data recovery companies.

I hope EVERYONE out there makes regular backups, but in case you ever forget and end up losing important data I would recommend Gillware to help you get your data back.

After running dd for about 24 hours I only managed to copy about 900KB.  Then the drive started making a clicking sound, so I’ve concluded that recovering data from this hard drive is beyond my skills.  I may be able to do it if I had the necessary hardware and a clean room, but I don’t.  I’m sending the drive to Gillware to see what they can get off it.  I hate that my friend’s shop has to do all their transaction by hand, but they’re the ones who didn’t bother with the backups, a mistake I doubt will happen again.  It will be more than a week from when he first called me before they’ll be back up and running, but he said rebuilding the database from scratch would take much longer, so it’s worth it.

I’ve never used Gillware before, but I’ve read some good reviews about them and they seem to have some of the best prices I’ve found plus they’ll examine the drive to see if the data can be recovered before they charge anything.  I’m sending the drive overnight today so they should have it tomorrow.  I should know by the first of next week what can be done.

Many people are surprised to find out that I don’t have a degree.  Since I’m so brilliant they just assume…

Anyway, I had some health problems my freshman year of college, also got married and had our first child, and life just got busier.  So here I am ten year into my IT career with no degree.  I’ve been pondering going back to school someday, but kept putting it off.  I finally decided that if this was going to work I was going to have to go for a degree through an online university, not my first choice, but I’ve got a family and a career, and I can’t always work my schedule around school.  So I’ve enrolled at Colorado Technical University Online and classes start next week.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

A friend of mine, and former boss, who owns a local retail shop called me yesterday and told me he thought the hard drive in his server was dead, and they havne’t been doing backups.  I paused for a moment and considered referring him to someone else, but decided to go ahead and see what I can do.  So I grabbed my copy of SpinRite and headed over to his shop.  I started Spin-Rite up and left, then returned about 8 hours later, it was at 0.0010%.  Apparently there are problems with the hard drive.  I opted to take the system with me and brought it back to my workshop.  I tried starting Spin-Rite at different areas of the hard drive and it worked well, without finding any errors, and managed to get through those sections much quicker, so I’m assuming its just the first few sectors of the hard drive, the most impartant part, that are damaged.  I stayed up til about 1AM trying different things, looking for a quick way to get the data he needed (data=entire point of sale database: vendors, inventory, customers), but unfortunately there won’t be a quick way.

So right now I’m making an image of the drive with dd, having it skip errors, hoping I can glean the data we need.  Once the image is done, I’ll start Spin-Rite back up and let it run for a few days.  I’ll be sure to let you know how it turns out.

The moral of this all too familiar story:  BACKUP!! BACKUP!! BACKUP!!

If you recall, I bouth an Asus Eee around Christmas time, and I ended up installing Ubuntu on it instead of the custom Xandros it came with.  I’ve been pretty happy with it.  When Hardy Heron came out, I upgraded, and then I started having trouble.  I think I already blogged about it, but basically my Eee was unplugged during the upgrade, which I didn’t know, and it powered off in the middle of the upgrade.  I managed to get everything working, finished the upgrade, went through all the tweaks to get the drivers working, etc., but it just didn’t perform the same anymore.  So I decided to reinstall Ubuntu when I found out about a special version of Ubuntu called Ubuntu Eee.  That’s right, a special version created just for Ultra Mobile PC’s like the Eee.  So I downloaded it today, copied it to a flash drive and installed it.

The install went smoothly, was really simple and quick and when it was done, I’m left with a fully working Asus Eee.  It’s performing very well, even Compiz is working well.  I’ve got wobbly windows and my desktop cube back.  I’ve got my /home partition mounted on an SD card, so after I installed it all my settings and personal data were right where I left them, I love the linux file structure.  So now it’s just a few apt-get install commands to get all my software installed and I’ve got my Eee working better than ever.  It was a bit too easy, almost disappointing.