Posts Tagged nerd

Paypal Email Crashes Outlook

Posted by Christopher in Nerd Stuff, Work Stuff on October 15, 2011

A few days ago my Outlook 2007 would lockup once and a while. Thinking it was a PST issue, I rebuilt it, move to a backup computer but the issue continued.

After many hours of research and I was able to identify the issue and a solution. Google didnt have anything on the issue so I wanted to share it. —UPDATE- There is a bit of data on the Paypal forum now–

If Outlook, Incredimail or other email client crashes when you try to open or preview a Paypal email, (issue started 10-12-2011) the problem is the tracking pixel inserted into the HTML email. You can view these emails in text format or put a entry in your HOSTS file to avoid having Paypal track your email.

HOST File Fix for Paypal Crashing Outlook;

  • Run Notepad.exe as an administrator
  • Open the file HOSTS at this location – C:\Windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
  • Add the line below to the end of the file
  • 127.0.0.1 102.112.2o7.net (just copy and paste it as the one of the zeros is actually a “O”)
  • Save the file
  • Enjoy a crash free Outlook experience for now

Paypal has a history of rolling out half backed solutions and taking months to resolve the issues caused. I expect this to be a irritating issue for many people and that it takes months to resolve.

 

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iWater (if Apple made water)

Posted by Christopher in Nerd Stuff on February 20, 2011

Saw this great graphic about Apple and wanted to share it.

via http://johnburke.tumblr.com/post/3193501324

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Mozy is dead to me.

Posted by Christopher in Nerd Stuff on February 10, 2011

My consulting company (ChristopherHudson.com)  has seen a recent rash of clients having hard drive failures. About 70% of these drives are recoverable using some higher end software tools (Spinrite, ect) but my data recovery rates make this an expensive option.

This is why I have all my core clients on a offsite storage system. For personal offsite backup I used to recommend they use a service called MOZY. Mozy used to be $4.99 for unlimited offsite storage and made a big deal about their service being reliable. I have sent many friends and clients (company accounts don’t work with the MOZY personal and require a more expensive account) to MOZY.com

Over the past few years I have learned that Mozy’s;

  • Their recovery service is not reliable. Recovery is a pain and has a few critical flaws resulting in long delays. One recovery process took them 11 days to complete because of corruption on their side.
  • Their backup service is not reliable. I and others find that we have to force MOZY to backup at least once a month.

Now, Mozy has decided to increase their costs to the clients that put them on the map. Not a small increase but a fundamental change in the pricing scheme. Instead of unlimited….now it is 50GB and costs more.

A fellow consultant (Barak Tutterrow), has had great success with the BackBlaze backup service.

The link is below and I am upgrading to them this weekend because they have an unlimited plan, backup external drives and have a better reputation for reliability.

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