Android/HTC Droid Incredible speech to text cutting off last word

I've noticed that that the speech to text feature for my HTC Droid Incredible 4G suddenly started acting up about a week ago.

Some symptoms :
- Saying a sentence will result in everything but the last word showing up in the text box, effectively cutting of the last word. Pressing "done" will make the last word will show up in the text box.
- When you pause and start to speak again, the sentence you just said gets overwritten.
- Trying to use(say) punctuation usually results in the sentence being deleted unless you say it right after the sentence quickly. The pause is probably the issue.


I've looked online and I can't find anyone complaining about this issue, maybe I wasn't using the right search terms.

Few search terms I tried:
speech to text cutting off last words
speech to text cut off last word
speech to text cutting off last word
speech to text missing last word

I thought it was just my phone so I did a factory reset to try to fix it, but that did nothing and but waste a lot of time putting everything back.

Finally, I gave up and called HTC. It seems it's a known issue that they are working on a fix. At this point I'm not sure if effects the only the Droid Incredible, all HTC, or all android phones.

Hopefully someone finds this blog post and avoids thinking they did something that screwed up their phone, or wastes time doing a factory reset to try to fix it.

If you do find a solution, please comment and let me know!

That Guy

Disabling Android 4.0 ICS Emergency Alerts

After being woken up a few times by Emergency Alerts on my new Droid Incredible 4g, I finally decided I had to disable these things. After looking online, most of the advice didn't lead me to where I need to go to disabled them.

Instructions:

• Open up your text message app.
• Go to "Menu" -> "Settings". You need to be at the home screen of your text messages. If you are in a particular text message conversation screen, the "Menu" button won't show you the "Settings". 
•  There should be an "Emergency Alerts" category/option, where you can check off the severity of alerts you want to receive. One alert, "Presidential Alert" can't be disabled.

I believe that my text message app is part of HTC Sense 4.0. I can't be certain that other Android phones don't have a slightly different setup. Either way, I'm fairly certain that, in Android Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0, the option to modify/enable/disable "Emergency Alerts" is going to be in your main text message settings.

Workhorse Cisco PIX 515, keeps going and going

I'm not even sure if this is a long time by everyday standards, but figured I would share:



















Total: 3 years and 51 days of uninterrupted uptime for this Cisco PIX 515e, and pushing traffic the whole time.

If it wasn't rebooted to update the OS, it would be easily 5+ years of uptime.


It's doubtful that the longest uptime is an encouraged achievement. There are probably multiple exploits that are going unpatched. 

Unfortunately, we will be retiring this firewall for a new ASA 5510. As much as it's dumb to fix what's not broken, we need to keep up with newer software/security. One of my worries about keeping the PIX is a situation where it's so old it's unsupported or unable to transition the config over to new firewall because so much has changed.

Cisco 2960s, HULC LED process and Fast Flashing LEDs

If you are reading this hoping for a solution, I don't have one at this time. Just documenting the things we've tried in case someone has some suggestions or is running into the same issues we are.

We are currently in the process of trying to resolve this issue with Cisco. They appear to have a Cisco TAC case (CSCtg86211) on the high CPU usage, but it doesn't mention the activity lights on the switches fast flashing on all connected ports.  We also tried upgrading the IOS with no success. 

Problem (listed together because I think they are related): 

High CPU usage on the switch by "Hulc LED Process"

Fast blinking lights on the ports, in unison, as though there are constant broadcasts

We have two stacks of four Cisco 2960S switches. One stack is running 12.2(58)SE2, the other 12.2(55)SE3. Both stacks sit at around 20% HULC LED CPU usage and exhibit the odd uniform LED flashing as though there is a constant stream of broadcasts. Packet captures don't show nearly the amount of broadcast activity that the lights make it appear to have.

Here is the short version of the tests we did further down in the post:

We booted up the stack with all switches disconnected from each other (each switch is independent), all servers are plugged in and all workstations are plugged in. The traffic looks normal until you either introduce the firewall connection (which starts the issue on the switch you connect it to) or if you uplink the switches then the issue presents itself. 

Unplugging uplinks (stacking cables, uplink ports, firewalls) does not affect the blink speed of the ports still connected. The issue remains until you reboot the switch. After reboot, it starts right after you re-introduce some sort of uplink to the switch.

I'm by no means a Cisco expert, but the fact that the lights behave normally until you introduce some form of uplink makes me think the issue is related to a spanning tree type function that goes into some sort of loop or is just buggy. It would makes sense that the reason the flashing light activity doesn't go back to normal when you remove the uplink is because once the issue gets triggered by the uplink, it just goes into a loop. 

Here is some testing we did on the odd flashing lights/LED issue (not looking at CPU usage):

Change: Updated one of the stacks from 12.2(55) to 12.2(58). (rebooted)

Result: We can't tell for sure, but we think the lights are blinking faster than the stack running the older IOS. Flashing is still uniform.

Change: Removed all stacking cables from switch stack while it was exhibiting behavior, no reboot.

Result: All connected port lights still flashing at the exact same speed/frequency/uniformity, even though now there was nothing linking the switches together. 

Change: Unplugged almost all devices from a single switch while it was exhibiting behavior, no reboot.

Result: All connected port lights still flashing at the same exact speed/frequency/uniformity.

Change 1a: Rebooted single switch, nothing plugged in but one computer.

Result: Normal LED/light behavior

Change 1b: Rebooted single switch, two computers plugged in.

Result: Normal LED/light behavior

Change 1c: Plugged in a firewall to the above switch with only two other computers connected

Result: Fast flashing LED/light behavior

Change 1d: Unplugged firewall from switch (so it's only the original two computers plugged in.

Result: Still fast flashing LED/light behavior

Change: Connected another 2960S switch through regular RJ45 uplink to a freshly booted 2960S switch with two computers plugged (and LEDs behaving normally).

Result: Fast flashing LED/light behavior. Like the above scenario, the problem doesn't go away when you unplug the connection that triggered the fast flashing.

Windows 7.5 Mango and Gmail, "Attention Required" error

I just ran into this while trying to add my dads Gmail account to his new Nokia 900 Windows 7.5 phone. Spent ten minutes thinking I was using the wrong password. It turns out that Gmail implements some sort of Captcha on their authentication (probably only happens when you add your Gmail account to new device/phone). You won't see this when logging in through a browser, and nothing really tells you why authentication failed. Either way you must disabled it when adding the Gmail account to your new phone.

To do this go to this link (in a browser) and sign in with your account :
https://www.google.com/accounts/DisplayUnlockCaptcha

I'm not 100% on this, but I believe it temporarily disabled the Captcha requirement and let's the device/phone authenticate. I'm assuming once the account is added to the device/phone the Captcha is no longer required.

I still haven't figured out why one of my dads Gmail accounts actually had this authentication protection, but the other didn't.

To give credit, I found this information on this guys blog:
http://jonathanmumm.com/tech-it/fix-windows-7-phone-gmail-attention-required-error/

Thanks Jonathan Mumm, you saved me a few gray hairs.

Experian FreeCreditReport.com/ConsumerInfo.com Fraudulent Credit Card Charge for unknown purpose

I posted this on RipOffReport.com until I realized I actually have a blog :)

Noticed a charge on my American Express (AMEX) for $19.95 on a Sunday (4/29/12). Looked at the info:

EXPERIAN *CREDITR 877-297-7790

Charge: $19.95

Doing Business As:
CONSUMERINFOCOM

Merchant Address:
535 ANTON BLVD #100
COSTA MESA, CA 92626

I thought that was odd, since I've never been to the website and don't do any business with Experian. Also, I'm one of those people that is fairly aware when there is a sneaky checkbox that will sign you up to an offer, or those "free" gifts that automatically roll over into a monthly charge later.

Reason I'm creating this report is because I've noticed a lot of people complaining about the same thing online, and a large uptick in complaints in the last few months (especially as of may 1st):

http://danbeahm.blogspot.com/2012/02/fraud-alert-experian-charging-peoples.html
http://complaintwire.org/complaint/EpUBAAAAAAA/mni-credit-report-monitoring
http://complaintwire.org/complaint/oCWHgTlFZAU/experian-credit-report

Not sure if my card was compromised, or Experian was compromised and already had my card from some other transaction. Regardless, something really screwed up is at hand, and I'm surprised it's still happening.

Update: Just got home and received a letter from American Express stating that my account was one of many account compromised due to a data breach from a payment service provider. I'm assuming this is related to the Global Payments data breach from last month and that's how they got my credit card number. From the information I've been reading, scammers are using these stolen credit card numbers to run credit reports on other people (to get more information for future identity theft).

Link to one of the articles about this

One thing that's kind of bugging me though is that it shows only 1.5 million cards compromised, and the letter from American Express only came today. Maybe there was another data breach since then that I haven't read about?

Windows Backup, fixing error code 0x81000037

Had this problem, figured I might as well make a quick post about it.

It appears the Microsoft Security Essentials (and probably any other realtime AV program) causes the backup to fail because it sees the backup access a file it considers a virus. The end result is that interruption causes the backup to fail with that error message (which isn't really that much information).

The simple fix is to do have MSE do full scan on your hard drives, which will pick up the file(s) that causes the interruption problem. Remove it and your backup should work fine.

The error code 0x81000037 is probably a generic access failure error, and if it's not antivirus it's probably something else interfering with the backup programs access to a file. If your problem isn't with anti virus programs getting in the way, and you still get the error, look for any other programs you have running that are always on and actively scanning your file system ( such as dropbox, other backup programs, sync tools).

Giving credit where it's due, this guys page explains it better and gives you screenshots:

http://www.pagestart.com/win7br0x8100003701.html