Solved: iTunes Home Sharing Problem

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away I was wrestling with an issue where iTunes home sharing between my two Vista computers would not work properly. All the computers were signed in using the same account and they appeared in the other computer’s “Shared” list in iTunes. However, when clicking on the computer in the list the computer would briefly disappear with its home share icon and then reappear with a regular sharing icon. If I clicked on it again it would disappear altogether until the next time I rebooted iTunes.

I wasn’t the only person having this problem and I had gone through a few steps to try to diagnose the issue. I could get home sharing to work with another PC in the house running XP, and I could get it running with the server in the basement running Windows Server 2003. Vista machines seemed to be able to home share with other machines as long as they weren’t running Vista.

And then a (not-so) funny thing happened. The wireless connection on my laptop stopped working... at least it stopped working properly. It would connect with the router and get an IP address and report that everything was happy, but it couldn’t connect to anything else (the entire internet, for instance). After diagnosing that for a while I found out that it was the NCP Universal IPSec Client I am using (the reason I’m using it documented here). After uninstalling it the network connection started working again. I reinstalled the client and the network connection continued to work, so I thought nothing of it.

Until it did it again a few weeks later. I uninstalled the client from my laptop and left it uninstalled as I was away from the house and didn’t have time to go download it and reinstall. Some time later I was using iTunes on the laptop at home and for ha-ha’s clicked on the name of my desktop PC. Voila, it worked and I started copying songs and playlists from the desktop PC iTunes to my laptop. On a hunch I reinstalled the NCP IPSec client and home sharing stopped working again.

I have a few other scenarios to try, but for the time being, for the 3 or 4 people on the internet who may run into this issue, try uninstalling your IPSec client (be it Cisco’s, NPC’s or somebody else’s) if your iTunes home sharing doesn’t work.

Non Sequitor

Herein lies the definition of the phrase “non-sequitor” summed up in an online advertisement.

How About Being Personally Responsible?

Healthbolt on sex addiction:

Sex Addiction. It's considered an actual problem, enough that there are sex addiction “clinics” and sex addiction treatments. I have an idea. How about we take responsibility for our actions and leave the word “addiction” to serious and real issues, like drug addiction.

Someone who wants a lot of sex is just that. Someone who wants a lot of sex. There's no physical problem that occurs if they don't have sex. There's no mental breakdown if they don't have sex. They just don't have it. They may feel sorry for themselves that they're not getting it, but it's not like their body is going to fall apart because they have to be celibate for a few hours.

But, in our society, which these days doesn't seem to want people to accept responsibility for their actions, has deemed that this is something we can't control either. We now have sex addicts.

Let the beatings continue!

Happy New Year

New year, new attitude at the Vickers residence.

It's... Magic

Behold, the PrintBrush. A hand-sized printer that prints by manually “brushing” the printer back and forth on a surface.

Here’s to hoping this device is real and becomes available in the not-too-distant future.

The Bay Bridge Crack

For the nerdophiles, an article explaining the issue with the San Francisco bay bridge, the kludge put in place to fix it, and the resulting failure.