David Vielmetter

Adventures in stupid technology

  • Windows Update: 403 – Forbidden: Access is denied.

    While cleaning up an older Windows XP system got a 403 – Forbidden error after visiting Windows Update in IE7. Of course I checked the proxy settings and the hosts file to see if anything fishy was going on, but alas everything seemed fine except windows update. Even upgrading to IE8 didn’t help. Here’s how…

  • A weekend with jQTouch

    vCalc: A free mobile App to determine how much vacation time you have left.

  • Fix Netflix DRM Error N8156-6013

    Fix Netflix Digital Rights Management (DRM) Error Error Code: N8156-6013 We’re sorry, but there is a problem playing protected (DRM) content on your computer.

  • Dell Latitude with Unknown Device in XP

    The other day someone gave me their Dell Latitude to find a driver for an unknown piece piece of hardware in the device manager. After a bit of searching around I found the tricky bugger. The device was actually the built-in free fall sensor attached to the hard disk (you know to arrest the hard…

  • IOGEAR 2 Port KVM

    I have a couple of computers I use at my desk. Space is limited at my desk and I certainly don’t want to dick around with two sets of keyboards/mice, so I got a KVM. I bought the IOGEAR GCS632 because it works with USB peripherals (my USB wireless Microsoft Mouse and wired USB keyboard)…

  • Get your Exchange email in Thunderbird

    I found a small java application called DavMail. This tool is essentially an OWA -> IMAP translator. It runs locally on your system and will connect on demand to your OWA account, download messages and deliver them via IMAP to any mail client of your choice. It also proports to translate calendar to CalDav and…

  • Banish Live Messenger back to the Notification Area

    Yes I still use Windows Messenger…well now known as “Windows Live Messenger” and I’m not afraid to admit it. There are several benefits I find to using a tangible instant messaging program over browser based apps like Gtalk, Facebook IM, etc. They accurately indicate whether you are busy/away/available, they work with keyboard shortcuts and you…

  • Share Google Reader items on Google+

    I’ve been using Google Reader to keep up-to-date on my favorite blogs, news stories and more. To share, I’ve always used the customizable Send To button at the bottom of each item. Sharing Google Reader items on Google+ however works differently and it took me a minute to figure out how..

  • Google ac-hires SageTV

    As pointed out by Rakesh Agrawal on his blog, SageTV has been acquired by Google. The announcement makes me happy because I’m sure that the folks who’ve worked hard on SageTV over the years got a fat paycheck today and sad because I am still a hardcore SageTV MediaCenter user and am worried about the…

  • Find and replace with SQL

    I recently changed the document root on my webserver. Subsequently I found that some of my WordPress blogs store the document root in the database (i.e. tables for wp_options, wp_commentmeta, etc.). To fix this I had to run some SQL queries on my WP databases to change the document root from the old /home/dvielmet/ to…

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