Possible Lexar UDMA and Snow Leopard problems?

Note: I’m posting this in an attempt to solve a problem, NOT to slag off any of the companies involved here. I have friends in all of these places and all I want is to find a solution!

This is a shout-out to see if anyone else has noticed similar problems to what I’m seeing, and to try to narrow the source down. I think the problem is related to the Lexar Professional UDMA FireWire® 800 CF Card Reader and Snow Leopard. Here are the problems I’ve seen since upgrading to Snow Leopard. In order of connection to my Mac, I have two Lexar readers, a Drobo, and then two G-Drive 1TB drives. Removing the two G-Drives made no difference so I put them back on.

Every problem here is intermittent and no where near 100% reproducible. Naturally.

1. When copying files from a CF card to the Drobo, the Drobo has spontaneously dismounted and powered down (or powered down and dismounted? Don’t know, happens at the same time). I have since moved the Drobo to the front of the FW chain (it was in the middle) per Drobo support advice to see if that helps. The CF card readers are now behind the Drobo, and the G-Drives behind the CF card readers.
2. On ejecting CF cards (first dismount just fine; then physically eject), Finder pops up the “this disk is unreadable; do you want to format” message. There are other drive(s) mounted, but if you click the “format” button none of them require formatting.
3. I once had the Finder completely crash (that cascading grey screen of death) when I dismounted two CF cards simultaneously, by selecting both CF cards in the a Finder window in column view and right-click choosing ‘eject’

Please comment if you’ve seen anything like this, or if you have a similar setup, be on the lookout for problems like these and please report back!

Thanks. I’ll pass any findings I have on to Lexar, Data Robotics (Drobo) or Apple.

Welcome to the new Confessions of a Travel Junkie

Fellow travelers, photographers, family, friends, and random strangers who have stumbled in, welcome to the new Confessions of a Travel Junkie blog! I've been trying for months to get a better site up, first pushing google's blogger to the limits (which is great, by the way—I simply outgrew it), then sampling WordPress (powerful but waaaaaaaay too much work for me. I think you need a web team to use their advanced templates!), and eventually settling on TypePad.

This service has allowed me to merge a couple of blogs together; something I've been wanting to do for a long time. It allows me a lot more flexibility in how my site looks and feels, and I really like the clean, Mac-like interface of the TypePad management site. (I do wish this worked in Safari though… hint hint!). And it has an iPhone app for publishing, which is just cool.

While TypePad is a paid service, it's well worth it for the support alone. I've posted a few quesitons to the support system and had answers in less than a day; something I unfortunately couldn't get with blogger. But that's a free service, so you can't complain can you.

So now that all the old posts are moved, there's a lot of clean-up to do. If you find broken links (very likely as old posts that point to other old posts will need their URL's changed), please do let me know. Follow the "What is this site, anyway?" link in the sidebar for a direct email link to me. You could just leave a comment, but an email would be nicer to tell me something is broken.

One major thing I have to update for every single post is to change my "labels" into "categories". This is a manual process and will take time! If you look at an old post that has "labels" text at the bottom of the post, and no categories assigned to it, then I haven't gotten to it yet. Please don't tell me those are broken… I know. But if you're on one that looks like it's been cleaned up but still has flaws, I wanna hear about it.

You'll need to update your RSS feeds; see the link at the top left for that.

Twitter followers are all unaffected.

If you need to get to the old site, it's now listed as http://confessions-of-a-travel-junkie.blogspot.com/

I think that's it. Welcome to the party, and let me know what you think in the comments!

And my friend An'us wonders why I dislike SouthWest...

The headline reads Records: Southwest Airlines flew 'unsafe' planes

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/03/06/southwest.planes/index.html

MISSING PERSON… help find my friends sister!

I just found out that the younger sister of a friend and former colleague is missing. Her family is obviously doing everything they can to locate her, and so hopefully by spreading this website we can get the word out, and get her home.

Please tell everyone you know.

Marilyn Bergeron

http://www.findmarilyn.com

If you have seen Marilyn, please call 418-641-2447

m-Qube a scam?

Just a little Public Service Announcement… I noticed a recurring $19.99 charge on my cell phone bill from m-qube and got AT&T to reverse it, as they had no idea what it was for. A little sleuthing turned up this website:

http://www.classactionconnect.com/cell_phone_issues/2007/08/30/m-qube-complaints/

Check your phone bills folks!

Why this blog?

When starting a blog, the main question really to ask is, "why". And this should probably be followed up promptly by, "does anyone actually give a shit?".

My "why" is easy; I have two blogs already and am often wanting to write things that I don't feel are appropriate to either of those spaces (one is specifically family oriented, the other is about my photography). So this is to be my traveler blog. The one I write about where I'm going and where I've been, the restaurants I eat at, the people I meet along the way.

It's also a bit of a journal. I have vied to keep a journal for, oh, most of my life, and it never stuck. Blogging seems to be something I can do fairly regularly, and the ability to post from anywhere at anytime (my computer, iPhone, internet café), seems to help. That and it's harder to leave a blog on the train in Amsterdam than it is a paper journal. Yeah, you know who you are buddy ;-)

And then there's the whole "it's a new chapter in my life" saga. I'm recently separated and getting divorced, which is obviously not an easy thing to go through. My family has moved away and while I see them regularly, I now have a lot more time to fill than I had before. So finding things to do other than watching I Love Lucy reruns or drinking two bottles of wine a night is probably a Good Thing™. Of course if it's really good wine, that will still win every time.

I recently was awarded with American Airlines' Platinum status on their airline. Which I suppose means I travel. A lot. My travels are pretty much always for business or to visit family, but the clever thing about my time spent traveling is I can often sneak in a side-trip or extend through a long weekend and visit another city, other friends, another restaurant. Obviously that's where the more interesting writing for this blog will come from.

I do love to eat. Oh boy do I looooooove to eat. So I'll write about that sort of thing up here extensively. Usually with pictures; I'm not shy about photographing a plate before making love to it. I enjoy cooking too so it's fun to get ideas from amazing chefs around the globe and incorporate them at home.

Now for the second question; does anyone actually give a shit? Time will tell.

Let's get cookin'

IHF needs help!

I woke up this morning to find this email in my inbox from Carol Sasaki, founder of IHF.

Dear Volunteers and Sponsors, IHF is currently in an extremely vulnerable financial situation. I am being told by board members that there is simply not enough money this month to continue providing for all the children in my centres. I cannot let this happen. I cannot tell any child that they must leave because there is not enough money. I cannot tell them that they have not been picked when they have been told this so many times before. I am determined to prevent this from happening and I hope that by revealing to you all the true situation of IHF, you too will feel my determination. This letter, therefore, comes to you as an urgent appeal for help. I am pleading with you, with whatever dignity I have left, to come up with enough money for at least one class ($30) and donate it today. This month, IHF's children depend on it. For next month onwards, I am asking you to please make it your personal duty to find at least one sponsor. If everyone who received this email did this, IHF would survive and thrive. We need to just make it until February when we have regular funds guaranteed. It would be absurd to for IHF to fall apart now. Please, please, if you are in denial, let this email be a wake up call. Please help ensure the future of IHF, by going to http://ihfonline.org/donating/ Yours Faithfully, Carol

I already volunteer many hours to this organization, as well as the photo trip to Kenya I did on their behalf, and am additionally going to sponsor a child now because of this situation. Just to drive the point home, these are photos of children who are not under the care of IHF.

And these are children who are.

Yes, you can make a difference. Please, if you can, help.