automaticable

If you usually read automaticable through an RSS reader and have wondered why we’ve been so quiet lately…well, we haven’t really! Wordpress recently upgraded their software which broke our RSS feed. To be specific, the Wordpress 2.5.1 update broke all of the links pointing to our RSS feed don’t work, except /feed. Unfortunately, we’d been forwarding this to FeedBurner and Pheedo for all sorts of RSS magic. For now we’ve just disabled the FeedSmith plugin, which seems to fix it.

In layman’s terms– we’re back! If you are wondering what you missed, the list is below.

• Kyle wrote an article listing the Top 12 SOE Firefox Extensions. Check it out, it’s not just for SEO.
• He followed that up with a post regarding letters written to a journalist posing as a little boy from convicted serial killers.
• Kyle also joined Twitter. Let us know if you are on Twitter too!
• Following that was a review of the Iron Man movie that just came out.
• Brian opened the blinds right before finals began.
• Kyle announced his new SEO project revolving around Gibson guitars.
• Scott finished finals and is happier than a clam.
• And finally, Kyle reviewed the new Death Cab for Cutie album, Narrow Stairs.

So spend some time catching up. You know we missed you as much as you missed us!

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About a month ago, I received a notice in the mail from my ISP, Insight, with news that they had been bought-out by Comcast.  They promised that there would be no changes in my service and the transition would be seemless.  Everything would work as it had, except they would charge a little bit more.  Great.

They’re in the midst of transferring services to Comcast, set to be complete sometime in April.  Everything was fine on our end until our internet went out a few days ago.  After a few hours of toying with it, I decided it had to be Comcast’s issue.  I tried rebooting the router, renewing the IP, and even connecting my computer directly to the modem– nothing worked.

Finally, I called Comcast and talked to one of their “specialists” from Indiana (better than India, right?).  He dialed into the modem, and was able to get a computer hooked up through the modem, but still not through the router.  We made an appointment to have somebody come out.

Two days later, somebody from Comcast came out and tinkered with things for about an hour.  With all of the toys in his magic bag, he still couldn’t get the router working.  Moreover, we were able to hook up a different router, and that one worked.  We chalked it up as a faulty router, and he was on his way.  But something was still fishy.

We bought the router about 5 months ago, and everything had been working on it perfectly.  I installed the DD-WRT firmwire for even more control.  Everything looked good on it, except we couldn’t get an IP from the modem.  After doing a little research, it seems that Comcast has some trouble with DD-WRT routers.  The solution was to change the router’s MAC address from the default DD-WRT address to something else.  Many users clone their laptop’s MAC, but I used one from an older router.  A quick reboot afterwards, and we’re back up.

It’s hard to say whether it’s an incompatibility issue, or Comcast is actively blocking this alternative firmware.  I’ve generally had bad experiences with Comcast, so I choose to believe the latter.  Anyway, I’m glad we got things worked out, because I wasn’t too excited about going through the warranty process with Linksys either.

Have you noticed consistent spikes in your CPU usage, even when you have no programs running? Moreover, are the spikes all in one CPU core (as shown in the Task Manager), rather than distributed between cores? It could be the case that you have a rogue background process eating up precious CPU cycles. To see if its the case, follow these simple steps:

1. Open up the task manager by right clicking on the taskbar and selecting “Task Manager.”
2. Then, click on the “Perforance” tab, to confirm you’re having this issue. (It should look similar to the above screenshot.)
3. Next, select the “Processes” tab. Sort by CPU by clicking on the CPU column. The entries should have CPU entries in descending order.
4. The process at the top of the list is your culprit. You can do a Google search on the process name to find out what it is, and if it safe and easy to disable it.

In my particular experience, the rogue process was “bigfix.exe”. According to AuditMyPC.com,

BigFix.exe is a tool used to download support information from hardware manufacturers and software vendors. It will also perform checks over your system and try to locate configuration errors and security vulnerabilities. If you find that this process causes problems for your system, it should be terminated.

bigfix.exe is an application that does NOT appear to be a security risk

The Process Server database currently registers bigfix.exe to Bigfix.

So, it came down to a program that was installed with Windows, and running at startup. It was non-essential, so a simple uninstall of BigFix solved the problem.

Here’s a little indispensable wisdom next time things go awry– whenever you’re having trouble with technology, the easiest first shot is to restart fresh. If you think it’s a hardware problem– such as routers, modems, cellphones– unplug it or take out the battery for about 30 seconds, and try again. If you think it’s software– VPN, fonts, or general application problems– just restart your computer and give it another go. This fixes 90% of problems, and saves you a 45-minute call to tech-support.