Its the start of week three at work. So far, I have gone home with a headache due to the amount of stuff I’m trying to cram into my brain about half the time. The other half the time I am driving home for that nice hour between Milwaukee and Racine(due to snow) thinking about the stupid things I had done during the day and how I could rectify the situation the next day/make sure that didn’t happen again.

Nothing brings your confidence up more than feeling like a total noob at your job. Its going to take me a while to learn all the ins and outs of all the systems and what goes where and to who and in what format with what information and with this and or that depending on client a,b,c,d,e,of f. I guess I should pause and say that tech wise(the actual knowldege of technology) is not that bad. Its actually pretty easy. Its the application of that tech knowledge with the way things are done at VCPI that somtimes confuses the heck out of me.

But im up to the challenge

You know you live in a cubile land when you see the following

1. A whole thread in the email about people who love Micahel Jackson and Bubbles and the various variations on each one….and this all started because someone forgot to lock their computer and walked away for a second
2. A giant paper airplane made out of the month of January from someone’s wall calendar laying in your cubile
3. Paper footballs that magically appear on your desk when returning from lunch. Either my cube neighbors are having fun or I can make paper footballs with my mind while at lunch and not even thinking about paper footballs.
4. A four way conference/conversation with each person in their own cubicle and able to see each and every person they are talkign to(thanks to two panels in the cubicle being taken out of the cubile wall to create a “window”–somtimes the only pretty things you get to see are other human faces…)

While I was on break yesterday(something which I don't do becuase I (for lack of better phrase) have a heck of a lot to do) I looked at the soda vending machine(the one our floor was out of water and my water bottle had a funny smell to it). There was a sticker on there. It was about trying to steal from the machine, it was esentially a warning. You know, like the warning that you see on a tazar that says "Warning, will shock people" or on a pot of coffee that says "may contain hot material". This one said "Stealing is an arrestable offense" and what was funnier was that it was brought to us by the Soft Drink Association. Now since when did Pepse and Coke get along and produce the soft drink association. You can't tell me that Caprison and Coke made it--of course Caprison is probably owned by one of the two. Give it time. Eventually you'll be telling your significant other to pick you up a case of Coca-Peps. I cringe at that thought.

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I officially started work on Monday. Its such an odd feeling being the new one, learning the ropes, all the systems and procedures. The one thing that I do have to say that I am impressed about is the training program which they have.(I have been warned that some of the documents are still in the early draft phase, oh well). This week will be solid training. There is a lot of information, but im sure that I’ll be able to pick up on it. So far it hasn’t been too bad, but there is a lot of info to absorb. The thing is(as per my instructor’s statment over and over again) its less about the technical side of things at times and more about the procedure. After listening to a few phone calls, im begining to believe him. I got some new things to learn, like Citrix servers and how VCPI has different “phases” that their clients use and thus different server farms as a result, but again, that just comes in time.

One thing that I’ve always kinda laughed at people about on the inside is when they had to use those dorky security cards that they wave in front of a card reader to get it to open. Well my time has come, has it not, and I now have two of them. One for the parking structure, and one for the doors to the office. Serves me right I guess.

Nothing too crazy is going on with my job yet, becuase im in the training portion of it. For the time being, until I am past a good portion of my training where they feel that I can go it on my own, they have my cubical in between two level three technicians cubicles. They are there to monitor and encourage me along on my progress. Again, like I said, I like their training program they have in place. It will just be intersting to have someone listening in all the time. Most cubicles have walls on three sides which are complete, I have little open air windows to my neighbors(actually I think almost eveyone does–mine just feels more intersting) and while I am at my computer, I can stare at my screen and see one neighor out of the corner of my eye, and I know the other guy can ready my screen and see the back of my head. Interesting just doesn’t begin to cut it, but im sure there is a reason for this, which I’m sure I’ll soon see. There is no way that my first week on phone support is going to be that good, I’m sure there will be some interesting times where I will look like an idiot on the phone and that I must appear to be a noob right out of highschool. Ah can’t wait for that time!

Well like a fine wine that you have with a handful of pretzles, all good things must come to an end.

Categories: Cube Dweller
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I’m officially moved back to Racine. I start my new job next Monday, and I’m looking forward to this new challenge and phase of my life. Gotta run, still finishing my room up, so much crap to get in here.

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Temporarily back home. Not for happy circumstances that is. I’m not gonna go into detail here, but please be in prayer for my family. We all need it at this time. If you want to know what happened, feel free to contact me and I’ll let you know what happened. My family appreciates it. I’ll catch you later.

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Who remembers this ad from the past about the mac?

Categories: Front Page Videos, General, Technology
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If imitation is a form of flattery, and Apple has decided to imitate Microsoft Pre Xp era, does that say at what level Apple has taken the Mac software with its latest release?

One of my coworkers said that journalist, when they report, should not show their bias.  Well.  Guess what.  I’m not a journalist.  I show my bias, right at the start.

For the past week or so, I have been following the release of Leopard into the wild(so to speak) and have taken it with great interest.  For a company that trumpets many cards claiming how stable and secure their operating system is, Apple has had a lot of bad press these past few weeks.  It makes those PC versus Mac ads seem pointless as the Mac is now the new PC, and in some cases, even worse off.

When Microsoft released Vista for the masses to consume, there were a bunch of people claiming that it was still incomplete, that it needed work done on it.  There were others that, after using it for a while, downgraded to Windows XP.  And now, the same thing is happening to Apple.  Problems have been consistently rising for their new crown jem.  The first problem reported was a Blue Screen of Death for Leopard that is eerily familiar with those that windows users sometimes face when there is a hardware problem on their system.  But with Leopard(the most sacred and secure and stable operating system ever(sick)) it is piece of software that is taking the system down.  When they(bloggers) dug into the problem more, it appeared that the windows manager crashes and is unable to launch.  Upon calling Apple support(which the writer of itsallmac.com blog noted was very incompetent—I would rather speak to someone in India than someone who is incompetent) they were unable to get the problem resolved, even from a senior level techsupport person.  The solution?  Format your hard drive and start over.  While initial reports placed the blame on Unsanity’s APE software, Cnet’s New.com reports that the problem exists even for those users who have not installed the software.  And it has come to light recently that Apple has acknowledge the problem with the method of install and have been marketing work arounds.  I have not found a source yet for this last claim, but am looking for it. 

Nice Apple, nice.How sad for those Mac users.(O.T.: one writer suggests renaming the Blue Screen of Death to Blue Screen of Knowledge.  I agree with the argument as most blue screens now a days come as a result of hardware problems.  For the article, read here: Apple’s BSOD Joke is Slightly Amusing)

The second item to plague Apple and Steve Job’s precious child is something that Microsoft has gotten right(since XP sp2) and Apple, for whatever reason, decided to do just plain wrong.  So what is happening to Leopard?  Well according to researchers, there is a lot wrong with its firewall. eWeek has an article on the firewall incident(as do many other places)  which tells a pretty chilling tale for Mac users.  Of note are the following items related to the firewall

1. The firewall shuts itself off by default, even if the user had the firewall on before upgrading to the new version of the OS
2. Allows incoming connections under "deny all" setting—which means that even under the deny all setting, connections are still able to be made to the computer.
3. Only three choices: Allow All, Deny All, Pick By Program(no ports here or network services–by by ssh, web server, file sharing(at least easily)—come on Apple—windows does it!)
4. There is an open source firewall included, but it needs to be done via the command line.  I though Macs were for those who like to do things with a nice pretty interface and have it done simply and easily for them?
5. Unlike Vista which changes the rules of the firewall based on location(public, home, work, etc…) all networks in Leopard are treated the same.  There is no difference in the rules that the firewall attempts to follow(as seen by the Deny All still letting in traffic)
6. The versions of NTPD and Samba that are included in Leopard do not run in sandboxed mode, run as root, and the firewall doesn’t block access to these services even with "Deny All" as the option

This opens the door wide open(number 2 and 6) for a virus/worm to easily and maliciously spread across the Mac world.  Someone just needs to write some code to take advantage of the flaws and we will start to see the number of crying Mac users roll in, most of whom would have no idea what to do with a virus since they have been cradled and pampered for so long(can’t wait till the average Mac user has to come to the real world and deal with real life issues like spyware and viruses—its just a matter of time Mac!)

The third item that seems to be coming around and biting Mac users is a problem with their cd-rom drive.  There have been reports of cds being ejected 10-20 seconds after they are inserted into the system.  Odd.  They report that the internal drive, for whatever reason, just ejects the disk.  But(and here is the kicker) if you reboot your computer and hold down the "t" key you can then connect to another mac via FireWire to mount the cd-rom drive on the other mac on your mac and then use the cd that way.  Or you can use an external drive.  I thought mac was the easiest operating system in the world.  Its sounding pretty archaic to me…and there is still more that troubles the new OS.

Wireless.  Wireless is something that has been around for a long time now and is pretty standard.  You would think that being a company that has very limited hardware choices and options for wireless that there would be very little wrong with it.  Well reports that surfaced from Gregg Keizer on Computer World reveals a completely different story.  It would be best to just quote the site, as there is no way to paraphrase this better than this.  So to quote Gregg Keizer: "When you connect to your wireless network, your transmit rate will be 54 (if you’re using the 54g standard)," said someone identified as nunofgs. "If you start up a download or something that occupies your bandwidth (even LAN traffic), you will notice that the transmit rate drops to 11, then to 3, then to 1 until finally your downloads will drop, your iChat connections will fail and your browser will not load pages."  It has not just been this one person that has reported this, other people have reported the problem as well. 

Graphics have taken a hit as well.  Macnn.com reports some graphics issues.  There have been problems with AMD’s ATI Radeon HD video cards which were included in the new iMacs, and these problems were not resolved with the new operating system, but Apple is promising a fix soon.  That’s cool and I can understand tweaking drivers for a new piece of hardware.  But why they didn’t test it before they shipped the new Macs, that is another question.  Maybe they just decided to rush their product out and they knew that Apple fanboys would stick with their product no matter what?  But beyond this piece of hardware snafu, there is just some general graphic problems with Leopard.  Reports include brief instances of pixel artifacts around Dock icons and an instance of what can best be described as "streaks" flying across the screen which, according to the site, previously only appeared in the boot camp installs of windows. 

Another video problem that has been seen in Leopard is a shutdown of the video system altogether.  Mann.com reports that under certain conditions the video system completely shuts down, especially when switching to a full screen program.  The video goes completely black and there is nothing on the screen, although there is still audio which shows that the system has not shut down and there is something processing in the background.

Apple keeps taking a bashing, but that’s ok because apple fanboys will continue to love their precious apple.  There are unconfirmed reports(so they can be bunk) of people having problems when upgrading.  Their accounts which were administrator on the Mac before are then downgraded to normal user level.  There are other reports of errors with such things as active directory integration, Finder, Time Machine, and file locker(which in one persons case, with file locker enabled from 10.4, he was no longer able to boot his 10.5 machine once it was upgraded.  He manually deleted it(he didn’t say how) and then his machine worked again…..)

So yes, it seems that Apple has been experiencing some problems with their newest child, and it is causing a PR problem for them.  Looking through their forums, there are many people who are experiencing problems, so its not just one or two loud voices in the desert causing the ruckus.  One neat thing has come out of this Leopard fun, a new phrase that I don’t think Windows will ever be able to duplicate.  What is this fun phrase?  Why.  Its the beach ball of death.  Yes…I have been a little harsh to the Apple company, but I know that it has been long time coming for them.  Poor apple fan boys, welcome to reality.  You need a good slap once in a while. 

On a side note, here is the average level of technical skill needed of a computer user.

1. Mac OSX
2. Commodore 64
3. Windows XP
4. Windows Vista
5. Windows 9x

I remember when Vista came out and how Mac fanboys pointed and laughed at the early adopters of Vista and the issues associated with it.  Well now its our turn to turn, point, laugh, and mock the apple fanboys.  Their god named Steve Jobs has fallen and produced an inferior product on the lines of Microsoft’s Windows 9x series.   Ah Apple.  The software/hardware company you love to hate and hate to love.  Don’t cry yourself to sleep fanboys, just take it and role with the punches.

Categories: General, Technology, Thoughts
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No, its not a child, but yes, it is mine.  What is it?  Its a new Gateway computer that landed straight in my lap and is now in my rack of computers.  My old vaio has now been relinquished to be a network file server–granted a pretty powerful file server, but none the less, a file server.  The new computer(whom I am calling homer) is now humming along quietly on my shelf.  Well I should get back to removing all the crapware on the new member of the clan….can’t wait to put the quadcore under heavy stress!

In case your interested, these are the specs:

Specifications:

Operating System

• Genuine Windows Vista^® Home Premium

 

Processor

Intel^® Core^™2 Quad Q6600 Quad Core Processor with VT

Each core operates at 2.40GHz | 2 x 4MB L2 Cache | 1066MHz FSB

Chipset

Intel^® G33 Chipset (Viiv^™)

Memory

3072MB DDR2 Memory, Dual Channel

(2 x 1024MB + 2 x 512MB), 667MHz (PC2-5300)

Expandable to 8GB

4 DDR2 Slots (Total) | 0 DDR2 Slots (Available)

Video

NVIDIA® GeForce^® 8500GT (with 256MB on board memory)

DirectX^® 10, BluRay/HD-DVD Capable

Ports: VGA, DVI-I w/ HDCP, S-Video

Audio

8-Channel (7.1) High Definition Audio

Amplified Stereo Speakers (USB Powered)

Hard Drive

500GB SATA II (7200RPM, 8MB Cache)

Optical Drive

18x DVD±R/RW Multi-Format Dual Layer Optical Drive featuring Labelflash^™ technology ¹

Up to 8.5GB with Dual Layer Media

Write max: 18x DVD±R, 6x DVD-RW, 8x DVD+RW, 8x DVD±R DL, 12x DVD-RAM, 48x CD-R, 32x CD-RW

Read max: 16x DVD-ROM, 48x CD-ROM

Digital Media Manager

High-Performance 15-in-1 Digital Media Card Reader

Up to 40x faster

xD-Picture Card^™, CompactFlash I (CF), CompactFlash II, Secure Digital^™(SD), Mini Secure Digital^™ (Mini SD^™)², Multi Media Card^™ (MMC), Reduced Size MMC (RS-MMC)², MMC Mobile², MMC Plus, Memory Stick^™ (MS), Memory Stick Duo³, Memory Stick Pro, Memory Stick Pro Duo³, SmartMedia, IBM Microdrive^™

Communications

56k ITU v.92 ready Fax/Modem (RJ-11 port)

Intel^® 10/100 Mbps Ethernet LAN (RJ-45 port)

Interfaces

8 - USB 2.0 Ports (2 Front, 6 Rear)

2 - IEEE 1394 Ports (1 Front, 1 Rear)

1 - VGA

2 - PS/2 Ports (Keyboard and Mouse)

5 - Audio (Rear): Center/Sub, Rear (Stereo), Line-in/Side (Stereo), Front/Headphones (Stereo), Microphone, plus S/PDIF Optical

2 - Audio (Front): Microphone, Front/Headphone (Stereo)

1 - RJ-45 Ethernet Port

1 - RJ-11 Modem Port

Expansion Slot

Total
Available

1 - PCI-E x16
0 - PCI-E x16

2 - PCI-E x1
2 - PCI-E x1

1 - PCI
0 - PCI

Expansion Bays

Total
Available

  3 - 3 1/2"
1 - 3 1/2"

2 - 5 1/4"
1 - 5 1/4"

Gateway Portable Media Drive Bay

 

Input Devices

Elite Multimedia Keyboard

USB Optical 2-Button Wheel Mouse

Case Design

Premium System Design

Dimensions

15.60" (H) x 7.20" (W) x 16.10" (D)

Weights

23.4 lbs. | 10.6 kg (system unit only)

Approximately 35.8 lbs. | 16.2 kg. (box)

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This is something that should have happened many many years ago.  Read here for something that Comcast deserves: Grandmother Giving Comcast The Hammer

Comcast for a long time has, for all purposes, been very smug about their services.  Since they basically have a monopoly in multiple states, they believe that they can do whatever they want.  It is because of Comcast that AT&T(the great company that it is) might have a chance to spread its DSL to corners that the cable has been run out of town from.  While I normally don’t condone violence, in this instance, its almost justifiable.

Categories: General, Thoughts
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I recently undertook the Power90 challenge.  I need to take control of my life and get in better health.(of course there is another reason why Power90 was chosen—but that is for another time—but 250 bucks is a good thing ) for myself and for(whenever this happens) I get married and have a family.  I tried before to do an exercise routine, but got bored with it after a few weeks—this though—I don’t know if it can get boring–there is enough variation–and even if I memorize the routines at the lower levels—when I am eventually able to go to the higher levels its all different—so its all good.  Six days a week is gonna be hard to do, but I think it will be worth it, so I’m committed to doing it.  Plus, as part of the Power90 thing, there is a forum of people helping people with tips and supporting each other—community supporting each other to help spur each other on towards a common goal—isn’t that a perfect image!

Ok.  So other than that, if you haven’t tried Windows Live Writer, may I recommend that you take a look at this excellent program?  It makes it pretty easy to post to multiple types of blogs(of course, there is no direct WPG2 integration—but oh well for most of the posts)

Well im out, gotta take care of a few things before I get to bed….now if I can remember where I placed that stupid knife…..

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I finally took the plunge this weekend and hacked my Apple TV.  And boy, was it worth it.  There are a few things that I wish I could solve, but im sure with enough time and a little more research, I can find the tools necessary to solve the final problems that I have(the biggest of the final problems being able to sync DIVX files automatically instead of having to upload files each time)  But outside of those small little annoyances, it works like a charm.  The Divx skips randomly at one point here and there, but I noticed the same problem when watching it on my own computer—so I think its just the way in which the file was captured.  Lets see if the new update from apple(supposidly due soon) breaks my apple tv or not—oh the joy of apple—and people think microsoft is bad!

Categories: General, Thoughts
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I’ve seen a disturbing trend in the tech world recently which is kind of disturbing.  Hate Microsoft(Vista) and love Mac.  I don’t mind the fact that people love Mac(even though after the recent bricking of the IPhones, Apple keeps loosing more and more ground for various reasons) and can even see the merit of them when used in the context which the Macs are good for.  But this recent trend in the tech industry to completely shun Vista shows not only the lack of knowledge of the population as a whole, but when they advocate others to do the same and switch back to XP or Mac, they tend to do so on misinformation and personal bias.  Now, that is not to say that this is not written out of a personal bias either, but I am far from a Microsoft fanboy.  True I enjoy Microsoft products, but I am not a die hard evangelist for Microsoft in any sense of the word.  I have my criticisms of Microsoft(Windows Genuine Advantage anyone?) but realize good products and good software when I see one.  Like all software, there are pros and cons to everything.  So for those of you not sure if Vista is the right one for you, consider the information below.  And make your own judgment, don’t let others make it for you!(a.k.a.  use your brain that God gave you)

The Pros of Vista

1. UAC(user account control):  Hate it or love it, this is one of the best features of Vista.  At first, UAC seems to be one of the most annoying features installed in the new operating system.  The constant asking of questions tends to get old at first, but after the first time UAC prevents something from installing on your system that you never asked for, you learn that no matter the number of questions, its always worth it to ensure the integrity of your system.  Due to this setting, it is extremely hard for spyware/viruses to install itself using drive by attacks from web pages as well as unintentionally clicking on a link or ad that contains the malicious code.  Between UAC and a new feature in IE7 for Vista, IE has come a long way in becoming more secure(not to the level of Firefox for sure…but a lot better for the average home user who doesn’t know about firefox).
2. IE7 protected mode:  This is one of those cursed blessings.  Like UAC, IE7 protected mode tries to protect your computer from drive by malicious installs as well as from any software which might try to directly access your hard drive(outside of downloading a file and cookies).  In essence, this feature prevents IE7 from accessing your hard drive unless you are downloading a file.  This is nice in that spyware can not(if it somehow is able to bypass UAC or you have it disabled) copy itself to anywhere other than your cookies directory or temporary internet files directory which in turn helps keep spyware from installing itself on your system(it loves to attach itself to c:\windows\system32 or c:\windows)
3. Start Search:  One of those useful features that you look at and wonder how such a simple thing could be so awesome.  Basically a replacement for the run box, Start Search makes it easy to find and/or run a program or to quickly and easily run a "dos" command  or open a command prompt.  In the same way, typing in the Start Search also searches all your documents and emails(outlook) for the phrase you typed and displays all your results inline as you type more and/or less.  Pretty handy feature when you are trying to find a paper that you wrote long ago that had an obscure phrase like "eatering of odors" in it….of course…if you had a paper with that phrase in it……..
4. Sticky Alt+Delete: Anyone whose used windows is used to the Alt+Delete shortcut and is used to changing windows that way.  Well Vista takes it a step further.  If you add a CTRL key to the combination you get the traditional Alt+Delete dialog, but it stays active until you click a mouse button or choose a window.  This trick is nice if you want to switch to a window, but are not exactly sure which one at this time.  This also works for Windows Key + Tab.  Not as useful there, but still nice.
5. Virtualization of Processes:  Vista has a handy little ability to virtualize any process which is running.  This is handy on all processes, but even more so when running IE7, the office suit, or any product which tends to crash often(due to compatibility issues) then this feature is right for you.  You sick of having a program crash unexpectedly and then have that take down the entire windows system with it.  Your entire system slows down to a snails pace, and your unable to open the task manager?  Well if the process is virtualized and it does happen to crash, guess what goes down?  Just that process.  The rest of your system is up and running fine(of course, this doesn’t always work as intended, but most of the time it does)
6. Drivers run in usermode:  Remember the good old days of windows xp and below?  Remember that lovely thing called the blue screen of death?  Well most of the blue screen of deaths were caused by drivers that for one reason or another bombed out and caused the kernel of windows to take a nose dive.  Yeah!  What fun that was for the user. The reason the entire system took a nose dive was that the drivers were hooking directrly into the kernel itself(much like antivirus software will do with Vista SP1(which is a bad idea(sorry for the nested parens))) and caused the system to be unstable at times.  (or is if your still running XP SP1 or lower—SP2 has done a lot better in this—but not as well as Vista)  Well now in Vista all drivers try to run in user mode, unhooked from the kernel and not running as admin(again, as user level).  So lets say your video driver decides to stop and crash.  Well, instead of a nice blue screen and you loosing your work, you background turns to black and you get a warning message from your system tray indicating that the video drivers failed and have been restarted.  No crash, just a nice message to tell you the driver restarted itself after it failed. How refreshing.
7. Windows Mail:  Ah windows mail.  A glorified Outlook Express.  And glorified it is.  In fact, its a lot more handy and useful than outlook express ever was.  For starters, Windows Mail can now connect to IMAP making it a whole lot more useful.  Its not as good as thunderbird or full blown outlook, but is better.
8. Shadow Copy:  Shadow copy is another one of those blessed curse things.  It makes a backup of your file every once in a while so you can restore a previous version of it in case something happens to the file.  Its nice in that you can get to the older versions, its bad in that it takes up more disk space for system restore.  Think of it as the mother that never forgets the older stuff…..no matter how hard you want it not to.
9. System Restore:  Its so nice to have a system restore that actually works.  System restore has been around since the days of Windows ME(which I did have—that was before my days of enlightenment).  It stuck around in Windows XP, but really didn’t work.  Well in Vista, it finally works.  And works well it does. System restore in Vista is able to take a system that barely functions and bring it back to life.  For example, my Vista install took a nose drive and when I clicked on anything, it said that it couldn’t find the C:\ drive.  Did a system restore and it fixed the problem.  In XP, the system would be hosed the entire time, even after the restore, or the restore wouldn’t even work. Looks like Microsoft finally got this function right!
10. Compatibility:  Windows XP introduced the concept of running a program in compatibility mode to allow a program from an older operating system to run under XP.  This worked(for the most part) but has been greatly improved in Vista.  Microsoft was even kind enough on certain editions of Vista to include the Unix Subsystem allowing for the running of Unix programs in Vista natively.  This has no value to the average home user, but to an enterprise customer or a power user, this is a valuable little add-on.  This used to be only available if you were running the previous server edition operating systems.

And with all pros, you need to know the cons…..

1. Resources:  Vista needs more resources than XP.  A lot more.  Hard drive space, ram, graphics card.  But the tradeoff of increased security and usability in Vista more than pays off for it.  Just make sure that Vista is put on a system that is more than capable of running it, and you should be fine.  Once SP1 hits the street though, expect the system that seems just a little on the sluggish side to feel snappier and more responsive.
2. Laptops: Eye candy costs money…and power.  Aero with its nice transparent graphics abilities takes a little more juice to keep it running.  This is fine if the computer is plugged in or has multiple batteries, but one battery and no ac adapters allows for a system running aero to loose about a half hour or so of usable time to the nice fancy transparency.  This usually isn’t too bad of a problem, but if your a road warrior and need to get as much life out of your computer as possible, you might want to consider turning this feature off. 
3. Sidebar:  The Vista sidebar.  One of the most wanted and then unwanted features of Vista.  The sidebar loads gadgets into the sidebar of the system.  This is nice, due to the fact that you can have tools that you frequently use on their, and have the ability to access them quickly.  The downside is that they are always running.  If one of them goes amuck, you could have your CPU being used more by a program you don’t want.  It also takes a considerable amount of ram to run this feature, and as a result of increased cpu usage and ram, the battery drains faster.  This is also a security nightmare waiting to happen as most of the gadgets are just a scripting language with html added to them. Security hole anyone?
4. Windows Genuine Advantage:  This annoying little program is now fully integrated within Vista.  You get so many days to activate your copy, and if you don’t then you get what is called reduced functionality mode.  This is a web browser and nothing really more(though you can load programs from the web browser —up to three processes!) and lasts only an hour before it goes completely black and useless unless you reboot. When the WGA servers went down earlier this year, this caused havoc for quite a few people.  If Microsoft could find a more balanced approach with WGA (like they did in XP) then I think that it wouldn’t be as bad as it could be.

There really isn’t anything other than that that is wrong with Vista.  I know that some people argue that the system seems slower and that it takes more computing power.  That is true with any operating system in its first iteration.  Each new operating system requires more powerful hardware.  You could make the argument that Vista was released a little too early, and because of that it seems to be a little slower than people would like.  I couldn’t argue with that as there are times I am a little frustrated with hitting Windows Key + R and get the run dialog a few seconds later.  But with the release of SP1 soon, this should be, hopefully, a thing of the past.  With the new SP1,however, security companies got their way and made the system less secure…….you read that right.  Security companies protested and cried because they couldn’t hook into the kernel.  They said that this prevented them from fully scanning the system.  So there are some things that you need to program around.  Big deal.  With each new operating system, there are always new things to program around.  By placing API’s that allow a program to hook into the system, it will not take long for spyware and viruses that a user accidentally downloads to hook into the kernel as well.  Symantec has just made the situation worse for everyone who wants to be secure, and it should be these companies that have to comply with the framework of Microsoft, and not Microsoft that has to comply with the framework of other companies because they do not want to spend the time and/or money to figure out how to make their system work in a different fashion from how it currently is working.  Another thing I can’t argue against is the DRM in the system.  I know that some people hate it, and I do too, just not to the extent that others do.  I don’t agree with the philosophy of DRM, but since it is law(stated in EULA) that some things are DRM’d, then I will deal with it as long as the screwing over isn’t too much.  While the DRM in Vista is supposed to be extremely awful, I can honestly say I haven’t seen anything with it yet which would causes a system slowdown or cause any other rare and/or weird conditions…but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist………

Well I know that I just disagreed with a lot of tech people, many of whom I respect and read their advice on a daily basis.  That though, is what is so great about being in the tech field.  All of us have our opinions, and we can each(for the most part) respect each others opinions—–of course since im still a nobody in the techfield no one will take my ideas with any force behind them—just grains of salt…..if even that.  Thats ok though, im not giving up on it, or my dreams. 

Categories: General, Technology, Thoughts, Work
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So on a previous post, I mentioned how I have been able to use my card with the void part visible. To test out how easy it is to commit credit card fraud(if it wan’t my card) was I started handing it to people with the void facing up. And…so far no one has said anything….and ive spent well over a five hundred in the stores and nothing……how depressing….shouldnt the credit card companies or the companies accepting the card like this be held responsible in some way? I would think and hope so. I think that things like this need to be changed. I am going to continue to use the card until i get told no….wonder how many days that will be…..

Categories: Thoughts
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You just have to wonder what some people think when they call 911. Then again, with this audio sample, there is no need to wonder as tose thoughts are right here for you to listen to.

Categories: Front Page Videos
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I remember that quote(or something really close to it) from a Demotivator I once came across. It showed a large group of people skydiving, but there was supposedly something different. Since I have been so many times……..yeah. I couldn’t tell you if they were doing something right, wrong, or what. I don’t know. All I do know is that it has a point. Never underestimate the stupidity of a group of people together. This is true for both everyday human interaction and online interaction between people that probably really don’t know one another. Now don’t get me wrong, this has led to some of the funnest times in the past, and I have enjoyed every single time that a group of us get together and acted just stupid. There is a difference between acting stupid and having fun and acting stupid and trying to seem cool. There is nothign inherintly wrong with that, in fact, I say embrace this. Its just a way and a time to have fun. But what is funny is when this same group/crowd mentality floats into the digital word and all of a sudden something is “cool”. In fact, the #1 viral video of the summer(and #2 of the year 2007 so far apparently) has been a little song called “Chocolate Rain”. Haven’t heard of it? Let me give you a sample of some of the lyrics and let your own brain be the judge of it.
Chocolate Rain:
Chocolate Rain
Some stay dry and others feel the pain
Chocolate