indirect love letter

we've this seemingly simple video streaming we're trying to accomplish at work by Monday. it requires the use of Adobe's Flash Media Encoder. oddly enough, this software only exists for Windows. there's a private beta available for Mac (version 3.1), but you have to apply for inclusion in testing (which i did... still waiting to hear back).

[anywho]

so i pulled out my trusty copy of VMWare Fusion and fired up Windows XP. installed the FME; fine. connected camera (Canon GL2).

nothing. apparently there's something wonky when connecting FireWire 800 devices to Windows XP SP3, blah blah blah. i read through support documents for nearly an hour and never found a working solution. remember, i'm running in a virtualized environment, so things can get admittedly tricky. so i hunt around for a PC in the office with a standard 4-pin FireWire input. we have none. and since everyone is on laptops with docking stations, a cheapy FW upgrade card is out of the question.

well... crap.

so i call my dad and ask to borrow his ginormous 17" Dell laptop that has FW input. install FME on there, connect camera, BAM, everything's working... except for the network connection. the laptop found the wireless network, but it can't get an IP address. won't resolve. nothing.

call our IT guy. he's a great guy with a ton of know-how and is really, really nice. he's great to work with. but we start talking about how to resolve the connectivity issue and whoooooaaaaalolwhut? all sorts of of talk about getting a static IP address, resolving services, etc., etc. still, nothing works. i have a conference call with our video guys to walk me through the steps of setting up the live stream.

i panic a little, but remember i can create shared internet connection via my work MacPro. i connect the Dell to that, and i'm online... but at a pretty slow speed (meh).

its enough to get me through the video/phone conference call, but not enough to stream video, by a long shot.

so i decide to bite the bullet and purchase an upgrade to Windows 7. i've been using it for quite awhile now and was honestly surprised at how decent an OS it is. upgrade purchased, downloaded... multiple attempts at install FAIL. i go through the process of trying to use a USB drive as my install disc (per MS's instructions) and for some reason VMWare will only recognize an incredibly small portion for use, not nearly enough to install the upgrade disc on.

i phone a friend for a blank DVD to burn the upgrade on. disc burned, error message abound about everything. hour and a half later, i find the setting in VMWare to boot from an optical disc (slightly embarrassing, but there's nothing in the manual about it, nor was their online help any good to me). boot from disc, and...

Windows 7 upgrade can't find my hard drive. can't. find. the hard drive. this i blame on VMWare as their support documents only cover upgrading from within Windows XP and not directly from a bootable DVD. i've called Microsoft and cancelled/"returned" my Windows 7 upgrade order and now i'm back at square one.

for poops & giggles, i test out QuickTime streaming server with the camera. zero configuration, zero mess. also, from day one, my MacBook Pro has worked flawlessly on our office wireless network.

if you know me, you know i'm not the typical person you can shove into the "you only think Windows sucks because you're an idiot user" category. i was raised on Windows; its how i learned computers in the first place. i know what i'm doing and usually know how to worm my way around inside that environment. but this was just a flustercluck of epic proportions. blame goes to both Microsoft and VMWare for sucking (MS primarily for the incredulity regarding the wireless network and FW800 wonkiness, VMWare for lacking thorough support documentation).

dear Apple & MacBook Pro: i don't know what i would do without you. i still have to figure all this out and get it working by Monday, but i have never ever ever ever had problems of this scale with you.
Tagged apple fusion mac microsoft vmware windows xp
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