Tag Archives: troubleshooting

When Computers Reduce Your Productivity

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How many times has something like this happened to you?

By now, most of us who participate in social networking — Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, etc. — know firsthand how social networking can absolutely destroy productivity. The rest of us with Internet connections can see how having an email client or Web browser open at our desks can seriously reduce productivity. But have you ever stopped to consider how the computer applications we actually use to get our work done hurt our productivity?

For an example of this, I can draw upon something that happened to me last week.

WordPress LogoI manage a number of WordPress-based Web sites, including one for N&W Associates, which sells helicopter ground handling solutions. N&W is owned and operated by Walter, who is an older gentleman who builds wheels and tow bars from scratch in his workshop. He’s a very nice man but not exactly computer literate, so I manage every aspect of the site for him. Every once in a while, he sends me some new material for the site and I put it online.

About a month ago, I completed my move of all sites I manage from GoDaddy hosting (good riddance!) to Bluehost. N&W was one of the last sites I moved. After moving it, I tested it and it worked fine.

Last week, Walter sent me an email message asking if I’d add mention of R66 helicopters, since their skid configuration is the same as R44 helicopters, thus making his equipment compatible. No problem, I said. It was an easy fix. His site only has about 6 pages so adding references to the R66 should take about 10 minutes tops. I told him I’d do it right away.

And I did. Or at least I tried to.

Trouble is, when I went to log into WordPress on his site, I couldn’t log in. No error message — instead, the login screen kept reappearing, as if I hadn’t even tried to log in.

For about 10 minutes, I tried multiple password combinations. No luck.

For about 5 minutes, I used FTP software to examine the settings files for a password and tried that password. No luck.

For about 20 minutes, I researched the password problem on WordPress’s Support site.

For another 20 minutes, I tried three different techniques to reset the password. No luck.

For about 20 minutes, I researched the login problem on forums on WordPress’s Support site.

For another 15 minutes, I tried both of the solutions people in the forums claimed would work for them. No luck.

For 10 minutes, I went back to the WordPress support forums using a variety of different search phrases. In one forum post, someone mentioned, in passing, the .htaccess file. A lightbulb went off in my head.

For 5 minutes, I used a text editor to open the .htaccess file I’d created for N&W. There was some code I’d included that would automatically rewrite the site’s URL to www.helicopterwheels.com (in the address bar and site logs) no matter how the domain was reached. I pulled out those four lines of code, saved the file, and tried logging in.

It worked.

For those of you who care about the problem, here are the details. The N&W site can be reached through two domain names: helicopterwheels.com and r22bigwheels.com. When I moved the site, to ensure continuity during the move, I moved it using the r22bigwheels.com domain. That’s the domain that was set up in WordPress’s General settings for the moved site. I used DNS on Bluehost to point both domains to the same folder containing the site files and it worked fine. Trouble is, when I tried to log in as an administrator, WordPress wanted to give me administrative access on R22bigwheels.com but the .htaccess file kept directing it to helicopterwheels.com. I’d created a loop. Once I logged in, I changed General settings to www.helicopterwheels.com, saved them, and restored the lines of code I’d temporarily removed from .htaccess. It worked the way it was supposed to do.

That little fix took another 5 minutes.

So if you add up all the time I spent on this “10-minute” edit, you’ll see that I lost an hour and 40 minutes of my day.

I can’t blame the computer, of course. And I can’t blame WordPress. It was my configuration error that had caused the problem. But placing blame isn’t the point of this post. The point is, we rely on computers to make us more productive and get tasks done quickly and efficiently. But all too often, it’s computer problems that slow us down.

The problem could be something technical like this. Or it could be a computer malfunction, such as a bad hard disk or software bug. Or it could be the simple fact that we don’t know exactly how to perform a task and have to learn how to do it before we can get it done.

I’m not suggesting here that we work without computers. But I am suggesting that we keep in mind that the more we rely on computers, the more we’re setting ourselves up for the possibility of getting less work done.

And I’m also suggesting that we try hard to keep things simple. If I didn’t put that fancy code in N&W’s .htaccess file, I wouldn’t have lost an hour and 40 minutes of my day to troubleshooting.

Got examples of how your computer cost you time? Share them in the comments!

Interlacing Woes

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One part of my current troubleshooting effort.

I’m trying very hard to create an SD DVD based on original 1080i HD footage. I have the latest version of Final Cut Studio, which should have all the tools I need to get the job done. But when I build a DVD, it looks like crap on my HD TV. Other standard DVDs look fine — actually, great — on that TV. For the past two days, I’ve been banging my head against the wall, trying to figure out the problem. Not having a standard TV handy for testing purposes, I have no idea what it looks like on one of those.

I hate learning by trial and error. I watched Lynda.com video courses about Final Cut Pro and DVD Studio Pro and they helped me build my movie and DVD. But they failed to explain how to get my kind of video (1920x1080i60 AVCHD) into standard DVD format. Do I convert video before bringing into FCP? If so what do I convert it to? How about interlacing? Downsizing? What compression schemes? What settings? And what about the anamorphic setting? Does that still apply with current technology?

To make matters worse, answers in forums tend to be vague. They’ll recommend a compression scheme, but when you go to the menu of options, what they mentioned doesn’t appear exactly as they referred to it. Instead, there are four or ten or twelve options it could be. Other times, when you make changes they recommend, the appearance of the video changes drastically; for example, turning on the anamorphic check box in FCP sequence settings squishes the picture, making everyone look short and fat. Do I need to change the shape of the pixels, too?

And what about the contradictions? One guys says do A while another guy says do B, which is completely different.

What I need is a recipe, a starting point, a list of steps that should work. Then, like a chef, I can fine-tune the recipe to see if I can make it any better.

Right now, the challenge is focusing around interlacing. Interlacing is one method of scanning video; progressive is the other. My camera shoots interlaced video. There’s no progressive option. TVs supposedly can de-interlace on the fly; I don’t know if modern HD TVs can, though. Computers can’t. The result is a kind of flicker anywhere there’s motion. Like in a video clip of a cherry orchard filled with trees that have leaves that flutter in the wind. Ugh.

One source says I must de-interlace before the video is downsized to SD for DVD. Another source, supposedly an “expert,” says de-interlacing “doesn’t work.” (WTF does that mean?) How do I know what’s right?

I decided to give it a try. FCP has a de-interlace filter. It took a while to figure out how to use it. FCP’s documentation doesn’t discuss all of its settings, making it just a little bit more challenging to figure out. I wound up running the filter once on the sequence and then again on the same sequence to see if there was any improvement. Here’s a series of three screenshots of a full-sized clip on my iMac monitor:

This is the “before” shot. You can clearly see the interlacing in the picker’s hat:
Interlaced

This is the first “after” shot. In this example, I’ve run the de-interlace filter on the video to remove interlacing. There’s an immediate improvement.
Deinterlaced

This is the second “after” shot. In this example, I ran the de-interlace filter twice. The first time was to remove interlacing (as above) and the second was for “max” flicker removal.
Deinterlaced and Deflickered

I don’t see a difference between the second and third screenshots — do you? I’m assuming the difference would be in motion. But I can’t view both videos at the same time; my computer chokes on the task. (Remember, they’re both 1920×1080 pixels.

And, stepping back to look at the big picture, I’m not even sure I’m supposed to de-interlace this video as part of my workflow. This could be a big waste of time!

If you have experience with this and can advise me, please do. Use the comments link. Also let me know if you know of any good, recent online resources to help me understand HD to SD conversion, interlacing, and anamorphic settings. Reading “how-to” information written 5+ years ago doesn’t help much, given the changes in technology and software capabilities since then.

On Truck Problems and Unbelievably Good Luck

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They say we make our own luck, but how could I in this case?

I’m up in Central Washington State on a number of cherry drying contracts. My only means of transportation — unless you want to count my bicycle — is my husband’s 2001 Chevy Duramax Diesel pickup. It’s a great truck, well cared for and very reliable.

The other day, I started noticing that it was having trouble starting. It would start, but it needed more cranking than usual. I attributed that to my bad habit of listening to the stereo with the engine off while working on the helicopter. I figured that if I stopped doing that, the problem would go away after my next long, battery-charging drive to Wenatchee or Ephrata to fill the transfer tank with 100LL.

Yesterday was my big errands day. The weather was supposed to be good. I planned to do my laundry at 7:30 AM, then head up to Wenatchee to get some fuel, a new mattress for the RV, and some groceries. And maybe some sushi for lunch.

These grand plans came to a grinding halt when I turned the key in the truck. I waited, like a good girl, until the glow plug indicator (a diesel thing) had gone out, turned the key, and got the sound of an almost dead battery trying in vain to crank a diesel truck engine. Not enough juice.

Of course, I tried it a few more times. It just got worse.

I dialed my husband in Arizona. I figured I’d ask him if he’d ever experienced this kind of problem before and whether he had any tips on how I should start troubleshooting. But he wasn’t answering his phone.

And that’s when my next door neighbor here at the campground appeared, standing at the front of his travel trailer, wiping the sleep from his eyes. “Having trouble?”

He’d heard the dismal cranking sound and had come out to see if he could help. I produced a pair of jumper cables — the Girl Scout motto is “Be Prepared,” after all — and opened the hood. But instead of him pulling his pickup over to mine, he walked over with what looked like a brand new car battery. He put it on the ground beside the truck. Then he went back to his truck and came back with a battery tester. He tested both batteries in my truck. (Yes, it has two.) “They’re both a little low, but they should be okay. Sometimes it’s the connections. A loose wire or a gunked up terminal. Then the battery doesn’t charge right. You have terminals on the sides, but the ones on the top are better because they’re easier to keep clean.” He went on in the same vein, telling me more about car batteries than I ever wanted to know.

It was then that I remembered what this man did for a living: he traveled around the northwest, collecting and recycling car and truck batteries. In other words, he was a car battery expert.

How could I be so lucky?

We jump-started the truck from the battery he’d brought over and let it run for a while. That confirmed that the problem was not the starter. He pointed out where the connections could be a problem. I shut off the truck, then turned the key and restarted it. I asked him where I should go to get it fixed. He told me that if I took it to a car place, they’d probably try to sell me another battery, which I didn’t need. He was pretty sure I just needed my terminals cleaned. He said he could do it.

A Bad BoltTen minutes later, he was pulling off the terminal connectors and cleaning them with his wire brush. (For the record, I also had a wire brush in my toolbox.) One connector had quite a bit of corrosion — it might have been the culprit all along — and needed to be replaced; he pulled a new one out of his truck and did the job. (Do you know anyone who keeps new terminal bolts for side battery connections handy? Can you say Maria is lucky?)

We chatted while he worked. We talked about the geology of the area. He collected petrified wood and knew all about the Missoula Floods that had carved coulees through the volcanic rock of the area. “You should see them from the air,” I said.

“Yeah, that must be great.”

“When you’re done, I’ll take you and your wife.”

Ancient LakeSo when he was finished and I had everything put away, he followed me to the ag strip where the helicopter is parked. I had to do some interior reconfiguration — remove my helmet and the oil bottles under the front seat that I’m using for ballast, add headsets — and then we all climbed in. I took him and his wife for a 20-minute flight around the area that included downtown Quincy, Crescent Bar on the Columbia River, Quincy Lakes, the Gorge Amphitheater, and Frenchman’s Coulee. Along the way, I learned that he and I had the same birthday (different years) and that he’d won a helicopter ride when he was a kid in the late 1950s. He took pictures and said he’ll send me copies.

I really appreciated the way he stepped up and offered to help me with my truck problems. It’s nice to see that there are still people who are willing to come to a stranger’s assistance when they can. Most people couldn’t be bothered. Or they’d worry about liability.

He really appreciated the helicopter ride. He wouldn’t take any money for the parts or his hour or so of time in making the repair. This morning, before he and his wife headed out to their next campground, he stopped by to thank me yet again.

But it was me who needed to thank him again. Not only had he fixed my truck for free, but he’d given me a good excuse to go flying on a nice day — for a change.