Guide to enabling FileVault.

I recently had to help write up a procedure document for work, where we’re starting to implement laptop encryption. Since the best practices for enabling FileVault isn’t something that’s well-documented, I’ve put together a guide and posted it on my .Mac account, with a PDF at http://homepage.mac.com/flounder/Enabling_FileVault.pdf and a Word doc at http://homepage.mac.com/flounder/Enabling_FileVault.doc. Use it in good health, and hopefully this’ll save someone from having to reinvent the wheel.

Update 4-21-2014: Since .Mac is no longer around, I’ve re-posted these documents to another location. You can access them from the links below:

Enabling_FileVault.doc

Enabling_FileVault.pdf

A year with Verizon’s FIOS internet service.

I’ve noticed a number of people getting excited recently about getting Verizon’s FIOS fiber optic internet service in their areas, especially since it means that they’d get cable internet speeds without cable internet prices. I’ve now had FIOS installed at my house for over a year, and can honestly say that (with the possible exception of the year I had Speakeasy DSL in the late 90s) this is the best internet connection I’ve had at my home. It’s fast, reliable and was professionally installed by Verizon. I had one complaint about it, which was that my connection seemed to drag along at times and be very speedy at others. Sometimes, it just would quit working for a few minutes (that was usually traceable back to my Linksys router that I had in place “behind” Verizion’s supplied D-Link FIOS router needing to be rebooted.) It drove me crazy when it happened, especially when speed tests, even during the slowness, showed that my connection was as fast as Verizon promised. When I finally found the cause, it really did surprise me, but I was able to fix it on my own. The cause of my “slowness” was Verizon’s DNS. In other words, while my connection was fast, my computer’s ability to resolve the name “www.yahoo.com” to the actual IP address for Yahoo’s web server was dragging.

Fortunately, thanks to OpenDNS, I was able to get this fixed by changing my network settings to point to OpenDNS’s DNS servers rather than Verizon’s. At that point, my computer’s ability to open websites and connect to servers was suddenly much faster and it really started to feel like I was on a fast connection.

As always your mileage may vary, but if you’re on Verizon’s internet service and you’ve got symptoms like I had, give OpenDNS a try and see if it fixes you as well.