You might have been wondering why there have been no updated to my personal blog in a long time. To make a long story short, I’ve been working on the backend migrating the site from the now very much defunct Mambo content management system (CMS), to the latest stable Joomla 1.5 version. While not exactly the most difficult thing in the world, the migration was not exactly a straight forward process at times either. A lot of bells and whistles that I had beforehand are missing at the moment and I will get around to bringing them back over time, but the two most important things are up: All the blog entries from the last six years or so and of course the picture gallery that now contains several thousand images. As beforehand, to view the pictures you have to login, since I like to keep a little control over the pictures. On the blog side you might notices that I actually went back and finally added categories. So now, if you don’t feel like reading through all my musings on random topics on the home page, simply go to the Personal menu at the top of the page and select a particular blog category that suits your interest. If you don’t find the categories very useful, please let me know since I came up with them on the fly as I reviewed my blog entries.

Reviewing all the blog entries proved to be a project in itself. Maybe I have too much time on my hands but somehow over the last few years I have managed to scrap together close to 200 entries. It was actually quite interesting and entertaining at times to go back and re-read several of the entries, some of which date all the way back to 2004. Several of the things I wrote back then I would probably disagree with now, while some other things I predicted were spot on. One thing I learned for sure though is that I do a terrible job titling my entries, which was a major reason why the categorization took this long. I had to read most of the entries to simply figure out what they were all about. Anyhow, look for new features and improvements in the coming weeks. Also let me know about any bugs and issue you might encounter, and feedback on how you like or dislike the new look is also appreciated.

On occasion, simple tasks that should only take a few minutes end up taking hours. There are plenty of operating system (OS) evangelists and fan boys out there, but when it comes down to it, each one has its quirks and annoyances. Cases in point, a simple program uninstall issue on my laptop running Windows 7 the other day. Now, I’ve had my share of install and uninstall problems over the years. Many of them can be fixed in one of the following ways: Re-install the program into the same location, hoping it will fix any path issues or corrupt installer information. Or, re-install the windows installer hoping that it will fix any installer related issues. Then there are plenty of Knowledge Base (KB) article out there curtsy of Microsoft, that one cat utilize. Well, as it happened, none of the above solutions seemed to do the trick for me. Instead, I was continuously getting an “Error 1606: Could Not Access Network Location” message. Conveniently, the actual network location which could not be accessed was not shown. The interesting thing was that I could not re-install the program either, because Windows was giving me the exact same error. A quick search around the web brought up the following KB886549, which while describing the symptoms precisely, in terms of an effective solution did little to alleviate the problem. I double and tripled checked my registry entries, modified paths as suggested in the KB, but all of it was to no avail, and actually cause some strange OS behavior at times. Then, after several hours of reading through countless forum posts that often times were only remotely related to my problem, I puzzled together the following solution that did the trick. Progress at your own peril:

1. Backup your system and registry, and note the installation directory of the application you are trying to uninstall
2. Open the windows registry with your favorite registry editor
3. Locate: My Computer > HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT > Installer > Products
4. Locate the sub-folder for which the ProductName corresponds to the application name you are trying to uninstall
5. Delete that sub-folder and re-start your system
6. Re-install the application in the same location as before
7. You now should be able to uninstall the application normally

Hopefully, the instructions above will save some of you experiencing similar issues a significant amount of time. Good luck!