Not everyone understands that a “computer guy” isn’t good at everything dealing with computers. I write code for a living; building websites, to be exact. I’m not good with software issues (like when Word decides to eat your document) or with hardware (like when your laptop can’t connect to your wireless router). I’m about 50/50 with providing phone support to my friends and family.

However, it is possible that I have some sort of gift when in the presence of someone else’s computer. Whatever issue they describe to me over the phone will go away when I’m standing in front of it, ready to work on it. This happens over 90% of the time. I should probably go work for Geek Squad. It would be the easiest job ever.

This gift reverses itself, becoming a curse, when I deal with my own equipment. My computers and devices begin to implode when exposed to me for too long. As my brother-in-law can attest to, I fall victim to problems that can’t be easily solved. Even asking the internet doesn’t help.

As part of my Unified Media Collection series of posts, I attempted to install Live Photo Gallery Beta to show how I will unify our photo collection. At the end of the install process, I got this error message:

So, it’s got enough permission to completely wipe out my C:\Program Files\Windows Live\Photo Gallery folder, but not enough to put anything back in. Awesome. Perhaps Vista thinks that I’m not the owner of that folder. Let’s take a look:

As far as Vista is concerned, I am not an administrator when it comes to this folder, and a secret user owns it. This issue also plagues my Apple Update Software app, so I can’t update that (and, in turn, cannot update iTunes). Additionally, I can’t run Windows Update anymore due to Error 80240016 (which I believe is related to this, as it seems that I do not have permission to install or to even check for updates).

I’ve tried all the tricks I can find, which total two: enable the super secret admin account to restore permission and to run takeown to take ownership. Neither one work. The William admin account isn’t really an admin. The administrator admin account is not an admin either.

This is the kind of crap I run into with my computers all the time. No one can ever help me. No one has ever run into any of the issues I find. I get angry and just want to break everything (how my PC is in one piece as I write this is nothing short of an amazing feat of restraint on my part).

My solution: format c:\

When that’s done, spend about $200 on Vista Ultimate. I’m not exactly pleased with that plan, but that’s all I’ve got.

Update: I got two bits of advice today about this problem! My brother-in-law told me to boot into safe mode (repeatedly hit F8 during boot up) and attempt to reset my permissions. Oddly enough, the Photo Gallery folder was no where to be found. I logged back in normally, tried to install it again, and it worked! However, that had no affect on the similar problem I was having with iTunes and Apple Software Update.

In comes commenter Eric, who provided two links for me to look through. The first one had my answer! It took a very long time for the program to run, but by the time it was done I was able to uninstall Apple Software Update, then repair and update iTunes. Thank you Eric!

That just leaves one problem: Windows Update. For about four months now, I have been unable to download any updates for my Vista desktop because of error 80070490. I logged a support request with MS to see if they can help.

I heard a song being played as Best Week Ever came back from commercial. It was a catchy tune, but I had no idea what the song’s name was or who the artist was. Technology to the rescue!

First, I rewound the episode a bit, since I was watching it on the DVR. I fired up the free Shazam application on my wifi-connected iPhone so that it could sample the music. A 30-second sample showed this result:

The artist’s name is actually misspelled there. There is no space between the two Honeys, and they are all lowercase. I grabbed my Zune and searched the Zune Marketplace (via my home’s wifi network) for honeyhoney. This is what it found:

I selected the Loose Boots album and played Little Toy Gun from there:

I was able to stream the track directly from the Zune Marketplace (ZMP) because I pay for their $14.99/month Zune Pass. This gives me access to most of the ZMP’s music (tracks that are marked as Album Only cannot be accessed using the Zune Pass). After verifying that I had the right song, I added it to the cart, which allowed me to download it to the Zune. Later on, when I sync to my PC, the song would transfer to the collection on my PC.

While I’m away from home, the Shazam app works just fine since I usually have at least an EDGE connection. However, the Zune is limited to wifi, so I couldn’t download anything from the ZMP until I returned home. This makes me hope that a Zune app will find its way to Windows Mobile.

On a related note, the Zune team is now giving 10 free downloads a month to Zune Pass subscribers. So if I really like Little Toy Gun, I can permanently add it to my collection. It should be available as a 320kbps MP3 or a 192kbps WMA (the latter is still DRMed, but I believe I can just burn it to a CD and then rip that CD to get it as an MP3).

Thanks to Jordan, I learned about imeem. Using their service, I can embed the tune that caught my attention and prompted me to write this post about how I use these two mortal enemies together.

Nadia and I have a lot of media around the house. Some of it is in disc format, and some of it is in digital format. Since we each have a computer, we both handle the storage of media differently.

Photos

Nadia’s 25GB collection of photos lives on an external 125GB Maxtor connected to her desktop. She uses Picasa 2 to manage her library.

My 9GB photo gallery lives on the hp MediaSmart Server, and I interact with it using Windows Live Photo Gallery Beta.

Music

Nadia’s 44GB DRM-free music library is stored on an external 150GB Western Digital hard drive connected to her desktop. She uses Windows Media Player 11 to manage her music collection, and syncs her library to a 30GB Creative Zen Vision:M.

My 20GB music library is stored on my desktop’s 320GB hard drive. I use Zune to manage it and to download new tracks. Since I subscribe to Zune Pass, the majority of my music is DRMed.

Video

Aside from the handful of ripped movies on our desktop hard drives, our movies are all in VHS, DVD and HD DVD format, scattered in boxes all over the living room.

Our television shows are in DVD boxed sets, purchased from Amazon Unbox or iTunes Store, trapped on our Motorola DVR provided by Baja Cable, or on our desktops (both have Media Center installed). Nadia’s PC can record two shows at once, while mine can only record one at a time.

The Goal

I want to find a way to bring all this media together in a way to make it easily accessible from any device we currently own, excluding obvious incompatibilities (like getting my Zune Pass music onto Nadia’s Zen). Regardless of the computer used, I want to see the same music library and playlists. I want to stream all of my movies to the 360 in the living room, and I want the same files to work on our portable media players. When Nadia imports new photos, I want to see them in my library.  When one of us wants to get to our media collection when we are out of the house, I want to be able to do so (assuming an internet connection is available, of course).

This is a pretty tall order. As I work my way toward a solution, I will document everything I learn here. Feel free to throw in your suggestions.