Mike's Web Site

Friday, April 17, 2015

In The Community

Bowie Memorial Day

Belair Drive, Sussex Lane and Stonybrook Drive

Options: small band on trailer; traditional marching band; walking with banner;

Bowie Memorial Day Ceremony

Bowie Veterans Park

BowieFest

Allen Pond Park

Bowie International Festival

Allen Pond Park

Thursday, February 5, 2015

Resolution to "Windows did not find suitable print driver" problem

Found this solution on the Internet:

I had the same problem and this worked for me. Even though my client is XP and the "printer-computer" is Vista it still worked like a charm. Just swap "XP" for "Vista" if that's the case.

"1. Make sure the XP drivers are up to date and make sure the XP machine is set up to share the printer. In other words it should have a share name like Canon4000.
2. On the Vista machine add a new printer. Tell Vista it's a local printer and use an existing port such as lpt1. Make sure you add the type of printer that is hooked up to the XP machine. i.e. Canon Pixma IP 4000 for example. Click next. Don't print a test page because it wouldn't print on anything at this moment. So click finish.
3. After Vista successfully adds the new printer highlight it and right mouse click and select properties.
4. Click on the ports panel.
5. Click on add a port
6. click on "new port" .... not to be confused with "new port type"
7. It will then ask you to enter a port name. You must enter the name of the xp computer followed by the shared printer name on that computer. So if my wife's computer is called Ann and her Canon printer is shared as Annscannon then your port name will look like this:
\\ann\annscannon
8. If possible turn on bi-directional printing."

After installing printer on client machine (Step 2) I disconnected it and plugged it back into the "printer-computer."
Also, around Step 5, when you add a new port, I added a "Local Port."

Hope this helps you too!

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Maintaining Multiple Java Versions on Red Hat Linux

I had the need to maintain more than one Java version on a Red Hat Linux machine. I was able to install a new version of Java, and then configure the machine to use the new version by default. It's also very easy to switch back to using the previous version of Java.

The first step is to download the Java version that you want from the Oracle/Java web site. In my case, I downloaded the following file.

jre-6u27-linux-x64-rpm.bin

Executing this file as root will perform the installation. You'll, of course, have to make the file executable after download. By default, the installation "wanted" to install Java in the following directory.

/usr/java/jre1.6.0_27

I still wanted to make the new installation the default Java used by the machine. Linux has a nice utility called alternatives to do this, and more specifically, the update-alternatives command. With this command, I was able to first register the newly installed Java as a version of Java that would be recognized by the utility, and I was then able to use the utility to make the new version of Java the default version. When I used the utility to make the newly installed Java the default, the /usr/bin/java on the machine was modified to point to the new version.

Here is the script that I used to have the new version of Java recognized by the alternatives utility.

JAVA_HOME=/usr/java/jre1.6.0_27

# The following command added the new java installation as a java alternative.
# The slave commands bring the related commands with it.
update-alternatives \
--install /usr/bin/java java $JAVA_HOME/bin/java 1 \
--slave /usr/bin/javac javac $JAVA_HOME/bin/javac \
--slave /usr/bin/javadoc javadoc $JAVA_HOME/bin/javadoc \
--slave /usr/bin/jar jar $JAVA_HOME/bin/jar \
--slave /usr/bin/keytool keytool $JAVA_HOME/bin/keytool \
--slave /usr/local/java java_home $JAVA_HOME

# A web site suggested that these steps would also be required, but they were not
#ln -s /etc/alternatives/java /usr/bin/java
#ln -s /etc/alternatives/javac /usr/bin/javac
#ln -s /etc/alternatives/javadoc /usr/bin/javadoc
#ln -s /etc/alternatives/jar /usr/bin/jar
#ln -s /etc/alternatives/keytool /usr/bin/keytool
#ln -s /etc/alternatives/java_home /usr/local/java

It's important to make sure that JAVA_HOME is set to point to the new installation directory. The update-alternatives command links multiple Java utility programs together so that when you switch from one Java version to the next, the proper versions of the related tools come with it (note the slave option in the script above). One web site I visited indicated that I would have to update symbolic links, but the links were made automatically when I tried this on Red Hat 5 and 6.

Running the script above does not make the new version of Java the default. It simply registers that version of Java as a known version of java. Run the following command to change the default.

update-alternatives --config java

You should see the following after entering the above command.

There are 3 programs which provide 'java'.

Selection    Command

-----------------------------------------------

   1           /usr/lib/jvm/jre-1.5.0-gcj/bin/java

*+ 2           /usr/lib/jvm/jre-1.6.0-openjdk.x86_64/bin/java

   3           /usr/java/jre1.6.0_27/bin/java

Enter to keep the current selection[+], or type selection number:

I entered 3, and pressed the enter key, and the newly installed version of Java became the default. You can run the update-alternatives command again to change the version back.

I assume that this works on other flavors of Linux as well, but I've never tried. I have done this on both Red Hat Linux 5 and 6.

wizard.inf Error During Software Installation

I received the following error when trying to install Sybase ASE 15.0.3 on Red Hat 6.

InstallShield Wizard

Initializing InstallShield Wizard...

Searching for Java(tm) Virtual Machine...
....................
Running InstallShield Wizard...
The wizard cannot continue because of the following error: could not load wizard specified in /wizard.inf (104)

While researching the problem, I found that the problem was not specific to installing Sybase. Many people had the same problem installing other software products as well. The common link was that all of the products used the InstallShield Wizard for the installation.

I came across a few solutions on the web that didn't work for me. What worked for me was a new version of Java - a version downloaded directly from Oracle.

I was working on a new Red Hat 6 installation that had two versions of Java: 1.5 and 1.6, and the default version was 1.6. I tried both versions for the installation. Neither worked, and I received different error messages for each. Based on a comment that someone had posted on-line, I downloaded and installed the latest Oracle version of Java 1.6.x. Red Hat Linux allows for multiple versions of Java to be installed, and I made the Oracle 1.6.x version the default. I was then able to install Sybase.

If you're not familiar with maintaining multiple versions of Java on a Red Hat Linux machine, see my related post.

Sunday, February 5, 2012

Blue and Gold Banquet, 2012

Pictures from the Blue and Gold Banquet from Saturday, February 4th, 2012. There's a video of the boys doing their knock-knock jokes at the bottom of the page.

Click on any of the pictures to see the pics in a slideshow, but the captions unfortunately don't show up in the slide show.

My little thug studying his knock-knock jokes lines.

Tim's Cake

Ben's Cake

Johnathan's Cake

Ethan's S'mores

Mark's Cake

Delivering the knock-knock jokes. "Gladys Who? Aren't you Gladys the last knock-knock joke?"

Thanks, Andy.

Knock-Knock Jokes Video. I missed the beginning with Ben and Johnathan.

Saturday, February 4, 2012

Pinewood Derby, 2012

Pinewood Derby, Tuesday, January 24, 2012

I hope Johnathan's father Dave doesn't mind me sharing a story he told me the night of the derby. Dave planned to leave work at 4:30 that evening so that he had time to pick-up Johnathan and make it to the school in time for the pack meeting. Just as Dave was about to leave work, the CEO of his company called an impromptu meeting. The following conversation then took place.

Dave: I really need to get home a little early tonight.

CEO: Why? Is it your anniversary?

Dave's Co-worker: No. It's something more important. It's the Pinewood Derby.

Thanks for sharing, Dave.

Below are pictures of all of the cars for the pack. The cars are lined up by category. Our cars are labeled "T" for "Tigers," and they're lined up in the order that they were weighed in.

All cars got to race three times - each time on a different track.

Click on any of the pictures to see the pics in a slideshow, but the captions unfortunately don't show up in the slide show.

I also have videos of all of the Tiger races. See below. The video quality isn't the best - my fault and the camera's fault. Sometimes the camera's auto-focus was off. I missed the beginning of one race, and I didn't catch a good view of the finish line on others. And some of the video quality was lost when I uploaded the videos to this site.