Scott's Thoughts

Bell 9242 External Hard Drive Freeze

2009-11-22T07:41:00.000-08:00

I have an HD Satellite Receiver from Bell TV - specifically it is model number 9242. Recently the receiver would freeze when trying to access the recordings stored on the external hard drive. When trying to access those recordings, the screen would go black for a few moments and then the receiver would reboot - needing to acquire the satellite signal again.

The problem turned out to be that the external drive had recently been filled to capacity the last time a recording had been transferred over.

The fix is to use a Linux computer to delete some of the recordings and free up space. I used the latest release of Ubuntu (9.10)...

Connect the external hard drive to the computer
Access the drive with root privileges
You'll see a list of folders with numerical (hexadecimal actually) file names
Delete about 6 folders (deleting just one folder didn't work for me)
Empty the trash - don't forget this step
"Safely remove" the drive from the computer and reconnect it to the satellite receiver (right-click the drive in the file manager window to safely remove it).
I had to wait a few minutes to be able to remove the drive because the empty-trash command was still running. If you get an error message trying to remove the drive, just wait and try again 5 minutes later.

You should now be able to access the data on the drive through the PVR menu on the television again.

This whole process took me about an hour and that included downloading and setting up a Linux environment (see below).

More details...

Don't have Linux?

Neither did I. I used VMWare Fusion (on my mac) to build a virtual machine to run Ubuntu. I think you can use VMWare Workstation if you have a Windows machine.

I have the full version of VMWare Fusion, but you can download a trial also. (Or, see if this works for Windows.)
Download a Ubuntu iso file from here.
Start VMWareFusion and choose New from the File menu.
Walk through the wizard and when prompted, pick the option to use a disk image or file to create your virtual machine. Choose the Ubuntu iso file that you downloaded. Follow all the rest of the VMWare steps.
Launch Ubuntu
Connect your external drive - make sure Ubuntu is the active application before you connect the usb drive to the computer.

Need to access the files on the external drive with the root account?

Launch the terminal application and type: gksudo dbus-launch nautilus
The new window that opens will have root access to the all the files and the trash
You need to do this so you can empty the trash folder for the root account

Don't know which folders to delete?

There is a "cat" file inside each folder which you can open in a text editor which will give you the description of the recording in that folder.
I just took the first 5 folders in the list and canned them without bothering to figure out what I was deleting... I'm sure I can record those movies again...

Think you can use this method to copy the recordings to you computer?

Think again. The files are encrypted and can only be played back on the same receiver they were recorded on.
You cannot use this method to copy the recordings to you computer.

Final thoughts...

Considering that Bell advertises that you can get unlimited recoding with the 9242 (by adding more external drives), it's disappointing that you can get into this situation. I would hope to see a warning message that my drive is about to fill up and I should run off to the store and buy another hard drive before it's too late. That, and make sure the user cannot actually copy too much data on to the drive to cause this crash. Otherwise, this is a great receiver and an excellent, easy to use PVR.

Jeep TJ with Water on the Passenger Side

2009-06-29T10:12:00.001-07:00

I recently got into my Jeep TJ (Wranger) after a rainstorm and found that I had about 3 inches of water on the floor on the passenger's side of the car!

I Googled and found that this is a common problem, but couldn't find anyone with a detailed description of the fix. There are a lot of generic suggestions that explain where the problem comes from, but that's about it. Simply put, the problem happens because water doesn't drain from under the hood properly. Actually, the water doesn't drain from under the cowl. The cowl is the cover that houses the wiper motor between the windshield and the hood.

I think the lack of online information for the fix is due to the fact that anyone faced with this problem who goes looking to fix it on their own, probably knows enough about DIY Jeep repair to figure this out for themselves. Not me though!

I know nothing about fixing cars - at all. But, I figured something like a water leak wouldn't be a mechanical problem. I'm otherwise pretty handy and decided it was about time to take something apart on my Jeep other than the hardtop.

This fix is dead easy. I had no idea what I was doing and it took me about an hour to figure out what to do, how to fix it and put it all back together (without losing any screws nonetheless)!

Here we go... Here's how to fix a water leak on the passenger side of a Jeep Wrangler. I did this on a 2001 model.

Step 1 - Remove the windshield wipers

Lift the wipers up and then the pin below them will pull down and you can pull the wiper off.

Step 2 - Unscrew the Cowl

There are 5 screws to remove on the top

Then, lift the hood. Lift it right up - rest it against the windshield.

There are two more screws on the cowl to remove... you'll find them near the hood hinges hidden behind the rubber seal.

Step 3 - Remove the cowl.

So, now you can actually remove the cowl. It lifts up with relative ease. Don't force it - you may have missed a screw if it won't lift right up.

In the photo below you can see, I still have a puddle of water in there. Below the grill that is on the cowl you'll find a drain. The problem is that that drain gets plugged with gunk. Then, the water level rises above the intake for the air system (you can see the back plastic part on the left). In my case, I could actually see a water line where the water had risen to from the recent rain.

Step 4 - Remove the drain

The photo below shows the black plastic part that you have to remove.

If you reach in, grab it and pull it, it should release. You might have to push it down from above first. However, before this part will release entirely, there is one nut to remove...

The photo below is pointing to the one nut you have to remove to release the drain. Removing this nut is the most difficult part of this whole process because it's hard to access. Once you have this nut removed, stick your hand back down there and wiggle the drain off the bolt.

You can then go around to the other side of the car, grab the drain and pull it out.

Step 5 - Clean the drain

The drain will probably be stuffed with crap. Empty it, clean it and then put everything back together. Putting this back together just involves reversing these steps. Below is the collection of gunk that was stuffed in my drain.

The Story of Stuff

2008-08-28T12:29:00.001-07:00

The Story of Stuff... by Anne Leonard

A very worthy discussion of how the process of consumption works. Where does our trash go? How much do we consume? How did we end up this way?
Get the answer from someone who has been dedicated to tracking down these answers.

This video includes a pretty thought provoking quote from Victor Lebow:

"Our enormously productive economy... demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption... we need things consumed, burned up, replaced and discarded at an ever-accelerating rate."

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True North Power Systems - Wind and Solar Energy

2008-06-06T09:25:00.001-07:00

I was at a PowerHouse workshop last night, saw this and thought it was cool...

True North Power Systems - Wind and Solar Energy

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Top Soil Delivery - with precision

2008-05-27T10:33:00.001-07:00

Just because I thought it was cool...

Embedded Video

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Ecoholic - Dreaming Green

2008-04-14T06:33:00.001-07:00

It turns out I'm a green dreamer.
I've taken a few positive steps in the green direction, but I haven't thrown away my plastic Nalgene bottles...

Have a look at Now magazine's edgier footprint calculator:

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Live Earth at the Millennials Conference

2008-03-14T11:09:00.001-07:00

Last week I attended the Millennials Conference at the beginning of Canadian Music Week.

One of the most interesting people that spoke was Nina Guralnick, President of Live Earth.

The conference was focussed on understanding the generation of people born leading up to and around the year 2000. Nina's comments were quite insightful. If you want to reach out and engage this generation you have to:

Understand globalism.
Millennials are very aware of the world around them and have a big sense of ownership of the world we live in.
Let users program their own content.
Advertisers and marketers are going to be forced to play close attention to this generation. Broadcasting the loudest message is not going to get through.
Continue the relationship.
It isn't enough to have an event that engages youth. If you're serious about leveraging online communities, you have to be sincere, consistent and committed to maintaining that relationship.

More of my conference notes on how to reach youth online can be found here.

On the environmental front, Nina didn't get into too many specifics about the environmental solutions employed by Live Earth when organizing their concerts. However, she did mention they have a resource guide on how to run a large, green event. So I went googling after the conference...

I couldn't find the specific event guide, but that's mainly because I got distracted when I found the Live Earth Climate Crisis Solutions page.

This is good stuff.

Given the theme of the environmental causes I commit too, I was particularly happy to see the "Community" section at the bottom of this page.

During the open questions, I did get to ask if Nina thought that the general public understood the concept of a "carbon footprint". Not to any surprise, her answer was that she generally didn't think the concept was understood. Nina seems to think that in Canada and Australia there is at least an awareness and general acknowledgment of the concept, but that by-and-large it is a foreign concept in the USA.

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Welcome to Scott's Thoughts

2008-03-08T13:27:00.001-08:00

I blog at work on topics related to IT, business strategy, communicating and technical challenges that I've come across. I wanted a place to blog about a few other interests I have such as the environment. It may turn out to be more than that, but that's were we'll start.

I'll take the opportunity to point out a couple of other endeavors I'm involved with:

Our Power - www.ourpower.ca
This initiative was started to help facilitate community groups who wanted to organize the installation of renewable energy systems for home owners.
Toronto Renewable Energy Co-op (TREC) - www.trec.on.ca
TREC is responsible for organizing several renewable energy projects in and around Toronto. This includes WindShare and educational workshops.

One project I'm watching closely:

Toronto Solar Neighbourhood Initiative
"The Toronto Solar Neighbourhood Initiative will be launching in South Riverdale in May 2008. The program will offer financial incentives for solar hot water installations on homes in Ward 30 - Toronto-Danforth. Residents will also get assistance with identifying other opportunities to save energy and reduce their home energy bills."

Stay tunes for more related posts!

Cheers,
- Scott

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