vSphere 5.5 Client Integration Plug-In on Mac OSX Error

This took me quite a while to track this down so I decided to post a quick article on it.

Symptom:  Getting page cannot be displayed errors when attempting to access a virtual machine’s (VM) console while using Safari, Firefox, or Chrome on a mac.  This only applies for people using the VCSA (VMware vCenter Server Appliance) and running version 5.5.

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Enable Tap-Drag in OSX Mountain Lion

It took a few minutes to track down, but here’s a quick note on how to enable Tap-Drag in OSX Mountain Lion.  To use: tap once then tap again and drag without pulling your finger off the trackpad.

Go to System Preferences > Accessibility > select “Mouse & Trackpad” > “Trackpad Options” click the checkbox for “Enable dragging”.

“With Drag Lock” means that if you need to take your finger off the trackpad, your next touch will allow you to continue dragging if it is a drag move.  To end Drag Lock, simply tap the trackpad.

“Without Drag Lock”, when you remove your finger from the trackpad the dragging will cease.

Battery Life Sank on Macbook Pro (2012) After Upgrading Hardware (?)

I recently purchased a new 2012 Macbook Pro, not the retina model, and have been loving it.  After a month or so of use, I decided to upgrade both the RAM and the hard drive because I wanted to squeeze every ounce of performance out of the machine that I could without paying the premiums that Apple charges for it’s upgraded parts.

After doing some research, I ended up purchasing a Crucial 256 GB m4 2.5-Inch Solid State Drive SATA 6Gb/s CT256M4SSD2 and a Corsair Vengeance 16 GB (2x8GB) DDR3 1600MHz PC3 240 Pin DIMM Memory CMZ16GX3M2A1600C10 kit from Amazon.  I considered using OCZ for the SSD since performance on that drive was rated higher, but after seeing the power requirements of the OCZ, I changed my mind and went back with the Crucial.  I also read some user reviews that said that the OCZ had compatibility issues the MacBooks.

Apple Time Machine Backup on Synology NAS Fails

Specific Error: Time Machine could not not complete the backup, .sparsebundle is already in use

I began backing up my Macbook Pro to my Synology NAS since I didn’t want to lug around an external disk with my laptop.  It worked seamlessly for a week until one of a few things happened that caused the backup to fail in mid-backup.  I either powered off the system or the system went to sleep during the backup.

Upon restarting the computer, I received an error message when Time Machine once again started to do it’s thing.  The message read: Time Machine could not complete the backup, .sparsebundle is already in use.  When I searched the error, I found easy solutions for people using an external drive while connected to an Airport Extreme and backing up to a drive attached to that.  It involved simply killing the user sessions that were associated with the drive and in a few cases rebooting.