Category Archives: Software Tips

Troubleshooting a Ruby production application

Monday, 2016.05.02 J.D. H. Leave a comment

I am by no means a Ruby expert, but I have been tasked with troubleshooting an existing Ruby application. Specifically some end user DB tasks were failing to save records and the application was throwing a generic error message to the user. By enabling debug logging and viewing the Ruby log file, I was able to see that the application was failing when attempting to send an email confirmation, then it would roll back all the DB changes since the overall

Deleting system/protected/recovery partitions from SSD [SOLVED]

Tuesday, 2016.04.26 J.D. H. Leave a comment

The various system vendors (Dell, Lenovo, HP, etc.) generally use a large number of partitions on their SSDs and HDD. Here is an example from a recent Windows 10 laptop with a 256GB m.2 SSD boot drive: Partition 1 Recovery Partition 2 System Partition 3 OEM Partition 4 Reserved Partition 5 Primary Partition 6 Recovery Wow, that is a ton of partitions! Normally that many partitions is not a big deal, but if you want to quickly re-purpose an old

ScanSnap internal error occurred 0x1001 (s300, ix500, etc.) [SOLVED]

Sunday, 2016.04.24 J.D. H. 14 comments

Are you getting a ScanSnap internal error occurred 0x1001 error message? After months of trouble free usage when saving to folder, I had that error pop-up 🙁 Thankfully, I did the following steps and everything is back to normal: How to fix the error #1 Try to save to Google Drive or one of the other options and verify that you can complete the save (I was able to save to Google Drive) and this means the scanner is working properly #2

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Q. Quicken register two lines [HOWTO] [SOLVED]

Wednesday, 2016.03.30 J.D. H. 32 comments

Q. I know you use Quicken from some of your other “tip” posts, can you help me with something? Specifically, I added a new checking account to Quicken Deluxe 2015 and the register seems to be stuck at one line-height for the new account 🙁 How do I get it back to the old two lines?! Thx! -Tony M. A. Hi Tony, I think I can help! There are a couple of ways to do it: Click the “gear” icon

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MS Windows 10 Pro Upgrade refund [SOLVED]

Sunday, 2016.03.20 J.D. H. 3 comments

Recently I purchased an Acer Aspire R14 from Best Buy. It shipped with Windows 10 Home and I purchased the Windows 10 Pro upgrade via the Microsoft/Windows Store for $99. Unfortunately, the laptop failed and I had to return it. That meant that I was out the $99 I spent for the Win 10 Pro upgrade 🙁 Thankfully, MS’s tech chat support was able to resolve the issue. The complete transcript, with details redacted, is posted below. Here are three

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Update Genius greyed out in iTunes [SOLVED]

Tuesday, 2016.01.12 J.D. H. Leave a comment

Genius is one of the few reasons why I like iTunes. Unfortunately, this evening my iTunes installation would not up update Genius. I tried a few suggestions from the web but none of them worked. 🙁 For me, what did work was updating my iTunes installation to the latest version. After the iTunes update, all menu options were available again 🙂 Top Search Terms:genius greyed out (2)genius playlist greyed out (2)why is guinness suggestions greyed out (1)how to update genius itunes (1)genius suggestions on

BIOS/UEFI boot menu for Yoga? [SOLVED]

Friday, 2016.01.01 J.D. H. Leave a comment

Lenovo doesn’t make it very clear which key to press for the boot device selection menu 🙁 Thankfully, holding Fn+F12 during boot will show you the boot menu! 🙂 Applies to: Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro and many other Lenovo Yoga, IdeaPad & Thinkpad devices 🙂 Top Search Terms:access bios lenovo yoga 2 (3)yoga 730 boot menu (3)lenovo yoga 2 boot menu (2)lenovo yoga boot menu key (2)yoga 2 bios key (2)nu vot (2)yogs 2 pro enter bios (1)enter bios on

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