Incomplete Thoughts

Microsoft PSS Suffers

2006-09-01T08:15:00.000-07:00

I don't post much and I usually don't post about 'work stuff' but lately I've really been getting horrible service from Microsoft Premier Support and I've got to vent somewhere.

I have a pretty long history with Microsoft PSS, I've been using PSS since about 1995. Through the mid to late 90's PSS was pretty typical for a support organization of the day. Support was mediocre in most cases, rarely exceptional and if you had very complex issues you often had to wait a long time for the issue to be resolved, or even worse, for Microsoft to admit the bug existed! I'm a fairly technical implementer of Microsoft products and I would report many issues that were caused by bugs, it was frustrating, time consuming, and pretty typical for product support of all types.

From 2000 through 2004 Microsoft seemed to really refine their PSS model. Support got better every time I called. PSS got so good that when people would bash Microsoft vs OSS solutions around me I'd mention the stellar support we got from Microsoft and the quick resolution times as a huge reason for sticking with Microsoft in some spaces. From my perspective as a consumer of PSS it seemed to be reaching a zenith, providing awesome support in a timely fashion every time I called, no matter how complex the issue. It was great, you could almost look forward to calling PSS for help.

In 2005 I wasn't contacting PSS too often so I'm not sure when the change started but this year PSS has been abysmal! Now when I call I'm routed to India call centers and I get support techs who have a mere fraction of the knowledge that the previous US based ones had. The support is pathetic. I sit on the phone for hours with techs who repeatedly spell commands out each and every time. I had a high priority Exchange case where I needed some advice on the ideal eseutil steps to recover a database. I'm very familiar with eseutil and have used it many times, I told the tech that, I just wanted MS assistance to ensure I got the steps correct because a lot of user data was hanging in the balance. I told the tech exactly what I was doing, that I knew how to use eseutil and I just wanted him to help me step through the proper sequence. However the entire call went something like this:

PSS: Now we will need to run ese-util. Type e-s-e-

ME: OK I'm there, eseutil.exe, got it typed in, ready to go, just need the command syntax here...

PSS: u-t-i-l-

ME: Right I've got that just give me the command syntax.

PSS: DOT-e-x-e...

The entire call was like that, finally I just got off the phone and let one of my co-workers sit on the phone with the PSS guy. Each case since then has been like that. Since I have enterprise grade support I do have the option, at the four hour mark, to declare an emergency and get escalated to a higher level of support. This results in my call being routed to the US somewhere and I get the guys I used to get when I first called and they usually fix me right up. It's frustrating and terrible. What used to be a huge asset for Microsoft implementations is now a complete waste. These days the last thing I want to do is call PSS.

When I've mentioned this to Microsoft people they want the case numbers, they want to know what the level of suffering is. This is nice but it hasn't resulted in any changes yet. Manager types in my world just expect us to sit through a bunch of these to prove the point that support has gone downhill. Why should we have to prove anything? It's obvious it's not the same support you used to have when the phone rings in India and the people you're talking too know less about the product than you do!

Anyway for now I'm not going to be singing the praises of Microsoft PSS. It's obvious to me they've gutted their US based operation and moved it to India and the level of support has gone in the crapper. I'm sure in time the India call centers will get better but I doubt they will ever come close to the support professionals I was talking to previously. I'm definelty not going to be pushing Microsoft PSS as a benefit of using Microsoft software, that's for sure.

Another look at the Honda ST1300 & Yamaha FJR

2006-06-04T15:22:00.000-07:00

I went by our local mega-motorcycle store today and they had a couple fine examples of the current Honda ST1300 and they actually had a Yamaha FJR on the show room floor! With these two fine bikes present I figured it would be a good time to take another look at both and see how they compare now that I've had my RT for about seven months.

After seven months on the RT almost daily I'm alot more comfortable with the bigger bikes than I was when I was shopping for my last bike. Back then the ST, FJR, and RT all seemed pretty big to me and the GoldWing was just absurd. Today the GoldWing, well its still big but it didn't seem like I couldn't handle one if I tried and the ST and FJR seemed downright small! Now on to observations, about the ST mainly because when I was originally bike shopping the FJR never quite made it into the running for me. Also note the lack of riding experience with these bikes, the big box dealers don't do test rides so I can't give a complete opinion, best I can do is sit on them and toss them around as much as possible while standing in one place.

First off the ST seems small compared to my RT. The seat was alot lower (maybe it was lowered or in the low position?) and my knees while they fit in the pocket were kind of bumping around in there. The ST seems to have a little more forward lean for me than my RT as well, I'm not big fan of that either. Over all fit on the bike, for me personally, was wretched compared to my RT. I'm guessing there is probably some work that can be done, raise the seat, maybe lower pegs, but out of the crate, man I'm hating the ST's riding position while my RT fit me perfectly from day one and only seems to get better.

The dash of the ST doesn't impress after alot of quality time with the BMW. It just seems clunkly and poorly laid out, I also miss the single clean console the RT presents. The ST just doesn't do it for me in that regard, why have a nice big dash area like that but hang the various instruments around like you would on a lesser bike? Just looked icky to me. In retrospect I wonder if it was the latest ST? It must have been because it wasn't in the used section. The weight of the ST doesn't do it for me either. It seems so much heavier and seemed wider than my RT. I know it can't be wider, or if it is its not much, but it just felt big and sloppy. I'm sure its dreamy once it gets rolling but man I thought my RT felt a bit unweildy sitting still, this is worse.

The FJR was worth a look, there were a couple people looking at it so I didn't give it as much time as the ST. Overall I'm still not happy with the seat, it feels too wide to me, and the forward lean it just a bit too much for me. I rather enjoy my RT where I can lean forward if I want but I don't have to.

Overall I'm still quite happy with the R1200RT. The ST and FJR feel just a notch below the RT to me and I feel the ergos of the RT are more suited to a taller rider than the Japanese bikes are. I was hoping to be pleasently suprised by the ST and FJR but now I'm only more certain the RT is the right bike for me and I'm looking forward to many more miles on it.

New bike for my friend

2006-05-04T21:59:00.000-07:00

Patrick, a friend of mine from work, picked up his new BMW K1200S today and came by my house on the way home to show it. Wow what a bike and he's got it tricked out for touring already with BMW cases and a massive tank bag.

I was really impressed with the bike. It has a really low center of gravity that I'm sure will inspire confidence. With 160+ HP at the rear wheel there's more than enough power too!

I really like the black and yellow paint job too and the wheels look great.

Motorcycle Commuting

2006-04-22T13:11:00.000-07:00

With spring here and gas prices on the rise it looks like conditions are ripe for another potential increase in motorcycle commuting. Judging by the hits on this site (what few there are) it looks like my article on motorcycle commuting tips pulls in more than a few visitors.

There are some significant advantages to motorcycle commuting, at least in my area. The ones that apply directly to me personally are:

+ I ride in the HOV lane and get to work in 15-20 minutes, when I took the bus my commute was 40-50 minutes

+ I come and go when I need to, I'm not tied to a bus schedule

+ Motorcycles get a 30% parking discount where I work

+ I get 45 mpg on a consistent basis so its good on gas

What motorcycle commuting is not:

+ Its not cheaper than driving. Motorcycles require more maintenance than cars for the same miles and motorcycle tires wear much faster than car tires

+ Its not for a faint of heart or those who arn't serious about riding safely

+ It requires good gear to do regularly (a good helmet, weather proof jacket, riding pants, etc)

All in all its very positive for me personally. It saves me at least a half hour a day and makes my schedule much more flexible. And the people in the cars don't look very happy but everyday I'm having a blast, even in the rain ;)

Ending the tyranny of e-mail

2006-04-08T12:33:00.000-07:00

About a month ago with things really picking up at work I started to question, more than usual, how I was spending my time. In the evenings I spent some time reading up on productivity tweaks and after giving serious thought to how I was actually spending my days I decided to make some changes at work. There are few things I'm doing differently but the biggest one seems to be how I've changed how I handle e-mail.

In the past I'd been your typical email user at work. I'd have Outlook, or whatever mail client I happened to be using at the time, open all day. I was reading most everything as it came in, responding as necessary and keeping the past three months or so of email in my inbox. When looking at my personal productivity I realized I was wasting a bunch of time on email, maybe an hour a day. I'd also become very interrupt driven, I'd go off task to answer and email and then finding myself struggling to get back on task. So I've adopted an email management strategy that is saving me a ton of time. The rules of the new road go something like this:

The email client is opened and closed like any other application. It only gets fired up 3-4 times a day when its time to do email. Period. I only open it when its time to work on email and close it as soon as I'm done. Email is supposed to be asynchronous not real-time. Surprisingly no one has seemed to noticed that I'm not always responding immediately.

My inbox is empty. Yes you read that right, its empty!

All email is dealt with immediately, in one session, when I'm done the inbox is empty again. The goal is to spend 5 to 10 minutes tops and Outlook is closed again.

If its trash or something I just need to read once I read it and delete it immediately. If the email contains potentially useful information I will file it away into an archive folder. If I can respond to the message in just a couple seconds I respond immediately and file the email away. If the email can't be responded to immediately and/or contains action items for me I file it in an Action Items folder.

This strategy is saving me alot of time. I stay on-task more with my regular work and when I do work on email I fire through everything much quicker. Seperating out email like I would any other task is a great productivity enhanced, I really wish I'd taken this approach sooner.

The beginning of the end for me and my 'rauder

2006-02-12T07:50:00.000-08:00

I feel kind of sad. Tonight I took my Marauder out for a spin. I haven't really ridden it since I got my BMW in December. I wanted to make sure it was going to run OK after sitting for so long. My little buddy fired up on the second try and only took a minute to warm up to the point I could push the choke in despite the cool temperature outside.

I didn't plan on riding further than around the block, but I went much further. Full face helmet, my summer gloves on a winter night, a non-motorcycle leather jacket, jeans and my usual riding boots felt like nothing compared to my usual three quarter length BMW jacket with its kevlar skin, armor with back protector and my usual armored overpants. As I shifted up through the gears I felt a bit of that cruiser mystique kicking in. The wind pushing against my chest as I accelerated, the low center of gravity, that feeling of rushing forward on a bike with no windshield, no dash, no fairings, just you and the road. For a moment I began to wonder if I'd missed something in the year plus I rode the Marauder everyday. By putting on a windshield, saddlebags, a trunk, had I taken away the bike's true identity? Had I shortchanged myself and missed the true American riding experience?

Then I realized how cold I was.

The wind pushing against my body was a great ab workout but was becoming tiresome pretty quickly. I reversed direction. As I came back into my neighborhood I also realized how much I'd already forgotten about the bike. My turns, my lane positioning, my poise, once perfected on the bike was now sloppy at best. I fumbled with the turn signal, spoiled by the BMW's big turn signal paddles, accidentally hit the horn and tried to use the starter button to signal a right turn twice. I began to notice how huge that front tire is and how much you have to countersteer it and how much more work it was to corner than the RT. I kept trying to tuck my feet up under me onto the pegs same as on the RT but the Marauder pegs are way forward so I kept finding myself flailing my feet around looking for the peg, then stepping on the rear brake accidentally as I found it. Fortunately the rear drum isn't very powerful. As I pulled the bike into the garage I realized that there really isn't enough room in my head for mastery of two very different bikes. I sadly acknowleged that while the cruiser and me had had our moments I would never go back for real and if I kept the bike I'd just be kidding myself.

Looking back I understand riding the Marauder was an excellent learning experience for me. The cruiser ergos and huge front tire ensured that I mastered countersteering because there was no way the bike would turn without serious concious effort. The Marauder could give me that oh-no-I'm-going-too-fast-in-this-corner-I'm-going-to-hit-the-guardrail feeling that the RT makes go away with a tiny steering input. The bike demanded you understand what a delayed apex was if you wanted to take a corner quickly. The 800cc engine delivers power in a smooth and linear fashion, it never really got away from me even when I got stupid. The low cg and seat height gave me confidence in nearly every situation. For me it was the perfect learning bike. Powerful enough to commute with ease on the freeway everyday but not powerful enough to allow me to kill myself, despite my best efforts.

So now the time comes to part ways with my baby, my first bike. In some ways I wish I could keep it, but the reality is I can't imagine ever taking it out over the RT and with its retail value still hovering around $3000 its just too much money (and garage space) to have wasting away. Over the holidays I pulled the windshield and the trunk off it. I've cleaned it twice, even polished the chrome and it hasn't seen rain since I quit riding it to work. Tomorrow I'm going to take it to an empty parking lot and meet up with a buddy of mine from work who is thinking about getting into riding and is considering buying the Marauder. I'm going to give him a little mini MSF so he can see if riding in general, and this bike specifically, might be for him. Normally I wouldn't do this but this is someone I've worked with for five years and I trust.

I like to think that if I could go back to that night in October when I bought my Marauder that even knowing everything I know about motorcycles now (which is 1000x than I knew then) I would still buy the Marauder. After all, who can resist a Harley that is made in Japan, costs $10k less, doesn't make your ears bleed or you body parts vibrate off and is probably faster to boot!

Motorcycle Commuting Tips

2006-01-29T15:04:00.000-08:00

I put together an article of motorcycle commuting tips. It can be found here:

http://st0nkingbyte.whizy.com/commuting_tips.html

Funny Harley Stories

2006-01-16T14:02:00.000-08:00

Patching a server today that was taking forever, and working tickets, a recipe for boredom. While I'm waiting I decide to look at some Harley forums on the net and see the chit-chat behind the mystique. I wonder how typical a story like this one is:

I just brought home my new 2006 Road King, its been years since ive ridden a motorcycle, had the guy from the dealership ride it over while to park it until I take the riders class. in any event, parked it, and had to get my mower out so i rolled it (ignition off) out of the way towards the front of my garage...Friends came over last night to ogle, we started it, listened to the sweet sounds, turned it off. I go in, everyone follows.I go back out 3-4 hours later to start it up again, and one of the putzes had put it into gear, and me being an idiot didnt have the clutch in...after all i knew I left it in neutral...Well, my door and wall are gone, my brand new Harley is dented, scratched, and bent. further more, in my desperation, i squeezed the front brakes and now all 4 are locked up...Is there some new safety mechanism or are the brakes frozen? I cant get either of the wheels to turn.Any help/advice would be appreciated.

A couple mind boggling things here... A brand new HD doesn't have a starter and/or kickstand cutoff so you can't start it in gear with the kickstand down?!? My 97 Suzuki cruiser has that! Isn't that pretty basic stuff?

The other posts in the thread include other examples as well:

http://harleyzone.tenmagazines.com/forums/topic.ten-id-65094-s-wrecked_new_harley

Backdoor in Windows

2006-01-13T15:51:00.000-08:00

Steve Gibson describes how the recent Windows Metafile vulnerability behaves more like a backdoor in Windows than it does a programming error.

http://media.grc.com/sn/SN-022.mp3

What he says makes alot of sense actually!

Cell phone users are just like drunks

2005-12-20T13:01:00.000-08:00

Lately I've really started noticing all the cell phone using drivers around here. It amazing, why can't people just hang up and drive? This morning on I-405 my wife and me saw the neatest cell phone idiot incident I've seen in a while.

In moderate traffic a big panel truck is changing lanes to the left. He gets right over in front of a car that is moving much quicker. The driver of the car slams on his brakes and lays on the horn for a really long time as the seemingly oblivious truck driver keeps getting over into the far left lane. As we pull alongside the truck we notice that the truck driver is yakking on his cell phone. If he ever noticed the car he cut off I couldn't tell. I wondered aloud why the cut off car driver hadn't swerved instead of braking because he came extremely close to hitting the back of the truck. So close in fact that I hit my brakes and swerved over to the right to get away from what I was sure was going to be an accident.

As the angry cut off driver sped past the panel truck in the right lane my wife noticed why the car driver's accident avoidance skills were seemingly sub-par. The cause? Oh he was talking on a cell phone too of course.

New Motorcycle Time

2005-12-04T10:56:00.000-08:00

I did it. After just over a year of daily riding I decided I wanted to upgrade to a more sporty bike but I also was looking for a little more protection from the weather and some more sophistication from the bike. A desire for anti-lock brakes and preferably stock hardbags drove me to a mere handful of prospective choices.

In the end only three bikes seemed to fit my very specific requirements. They were the BMW R1200RT, Honda ST1300 ABS, and Yamaha FJR. As luck would have it I was able to scrounge up the money to make such a purchase around the same time as the motorcycle show came to Seattle this past week.

However one night at the motorcycle show left me more confused than convinced about my possible foray into sport touring. So the next day I made a trip to the local dealerships to get a more comprehensive look at the bikes and get the full sales pitch. A trip to a prominent local Honda/Yamaha/etc dealer yielded a good look at the Honda ST1300 but no FJR's in sight. The dealer said the FJR is in such demand they were always a special order. I wasn't too dissapointed because I had sat on the FJR at the show the night before and the seating position just wasn't for me. It just felt wrong. I did get a good look at the ST1300 however, the ABS variant is hard to come by so they couldn't show me the ABS bike as they didn't have one. I was impressed but the sheer weight of the ST1300 (650 pounds dry I believe) intimidated me. My current bike is 456 pounds dry weight and going up in weight that much indimidated me. However sitting on the ST1300 at the dealer felt good, it was definetly a contender. I left my name and number with the dealer and they said they would look into getting a ST1300ABS for me.

Next stop was the BMW dealer. I chose the one in Fife, just north of Tacoma, because I'd heard it was the largest BMW only dealership in the world and while there's a really good dealership in Seattle I hate shopping in Seattle. I know its crazy since I work there everyday but anyway Fife is only 35 minutes away from home so off I go.

At South Sound BMW in Fife they had a few 2005 R1200RT's on the showroom floor. I engaged the salesman for the full court press, I wanted to hear the whole spiel about the bike and I wanted to find out everything I couldn't get the night before at the motorcycle show. The motorcycle show is not a great place to decide which bike you're going to buy, oddly enough. Especially for a sport tourer which has an extensive dash display, hardbags and other gadgets, at the show they don't have the keys to the bikes. They can't even turn the ignition on and show you the pretty lights.

I got the full tour of a beautiful red R1200RT. A 2005 with a few options but not a ton of them. I was getting pretty convinced but I wasn't sure and the BMW carries a $2-4k price premium over the Honda bike. However the bike itself is an impressive piece of engineering. Weighing in at around 510lbs dry the bike is only about 50 pounds heavier than my current bike. My current bike wet should be around 470lbs while the R1200RT is 571lbs, gaining more weight because it has a 7.7 gallon tank and my current bike has a mere 3.6 gallon tank. The upshot is a 100 pound or less difference which seems more manageable compared to the 650lb dry ST1300.

The fit and finish that was very good on the Honda was absolutely perfect on the BMW. Steel braided brake lines everywhere make an impression and the sophistication of the on-board computer was key as well. Little touches on the BMW make the bike like the ignition key opens the stock hardbags. Unlike the large Honda/Yamaha/Suzuki/etc dealer the BMW salesman knew everything about the bike. However what really closed the deal was something he did that noone else at either the show or the other dealer would do for me, that was adjust the seat height.

Touring bikes all have adjustable seats, they go up and down an inch or two. Doesn't sound like a big deal right? Well to keep from scaring away the short people they always keep them in the lowest position on the sales floor and especially at the motorcycle show. I was liking the R1200RT but when the saleman put the seat in it's highest position and I sat on it, it was a perfect fit. Simply amazing, the ergonomics seem absolutely perfect to me. I was sold.

So I made a deal, such as it was, my wife said I didn't dicker enough but the BMW is a high-end item that is in pretty high demand so I don't think there was much dickering to be had there. The deal ended up being on the very red bike that the salesman had demonstrated to me. I put a $500 deposit down to hold the bike until Tuesday when I show up with my big check. The child in me is indeed pissed that the adult me didn't bother to transfer the funds ahead of time however I happen to have Tuesday off from work so I think this is going to work out very well. All in all I'm pretty excited and intimidated a little as well.

I feel just a little leery about taking on the responsibility of a new bike. Over the past year I've dropped my current bike a few times and had some close calls. The reality is most if not all of my mishaps would have been avoided with anti-lock brakes. Also all my misphaps really came in my first four months or so of riding. Since last February I haven't dropped the bike or had anything really bad happen to me at all. I think my riding skills are there and I can handle the new bike, but still there's some trepidation, especially at the prospect of picking up a new bike and having my first ride be a 40 minute interstate trip home.

The Movies!

2005-11-21T09:27:00.000-08:00

OK I got my self seriously side tracked this weekend. I was running errands with the wife and whilst in the car I began musing about the game 'The Movies' which I'd been reading about. Sucumbing to my curiousity I stopped by Fry's and picked it up. After that I lost pretty much the remainder of the weekend to it!

The game has basically two parts, a movie studio simulator, which is actually quite good, and a sandbox mode which allows you most of the freedom you need to just make movies. The game supplies the sets and a ton of stock scenes that the actors (which you can create The Sims 2 style) can act out for you. If you're really into it you can provide the voice acting for the characters and have the game lip sync your voices onto the computer generated actors. It's very cool and I sunk a ton of time into it making two movies.

My biggest problem is I really bit off more than I could chew for my first movies and ran up against scene and custom sound limitations in the game that I need to learn to work around (or hopefully they'll patch!). Still very very interested and very promising.

I'd post my best movie for you now but I made a mistake and my original movie file is screwed up and the only export I had made before I borked it was a highest quality 100mb+ version. Which by the way looked pretty good on the TV when I burned it to a DVD :)

Sick! Bleah!

2005-11-12T10:14:00.000-08:00

Alot of crazy stuff has been going on at work and now I'm sick, hence the lack of updates. Today I'm taking it easy and puttering around the house. My wife gave me her laptop to get her anti-virus straightened out. I had a licensed-through-work McAfee anti-virus Enterprise on there but it was all mixed up with the whacky McAfee 'Security Center' and some other consumer grade Anti-Virus from McAfee that came with the machine. What a piece of crap that 'Security Center' is, it doesn't so much secure you as it acts as a rabid virtual McAfee salesman on your system. Just nasty.

I think I've finally ripped all vestiges of McAfee software off the machine. This was made extra hard because when you go to uninstall the McAfee 'Security Center' it says make sure you uninstall all McAfee programs first, so I uninstall the Anti-virus then the security center uninstall fails because some McAfee DLL is missing, great! I ripped it all out manually, removing services from the registry, cleaning up the reg keys, add/remove programs and deleting the directories. Hopefully when I'm done I'll have just plain McAfee Anti-Virus with out all the useless bells and whistles that caused it to stop working in the first place.

Running a Car Tire on your Motorcycle?

2005-10-31T10:33:00.000-08:00

Here's an interesting page about running a car tire on your motorcycle.

http://lifeisaroad.com/stories/2004/10/27/theDarkSide.html

There are some strong opinions out there regarding this but I can see how it might just work out. Especially with larger cruisers that just don't lean over that far in the first place.

Lock On: Modern Air Combat

2005-10-25T07:19:00.000-07:00

This past weekend I picked up a copy of Lock On: Modern Air Combat. While this game is a couple years old I had never played it. I'd been keeping an eye out for a decent combat flight sim after having not so much luck with the latest Microsoft Combat Flight sim.

In my mis-spent youth I was big into flight sims and combat flight sims. However as I grew older and flight sims became more accurate in their simulation of air combat I just didn't have the time to learn how to operate the radar on a F-15. I'd love to be able to but I just don't have the headspace.

That said I've got 3-4 hours into Lock On and its pretty fun. I am learning a bit and my rusty flying skills are helping me a bit. I really like how damage is simulated in the game. It's really cool to get hit by an airburst from an enemy missle, hit the afterburner to escape and have the aircraft drift off to the right or left then realize one engine is blown and trailing smoke. Good game.

Kids Corrupt Video Games

2005-10-21T20:09:00.000-07:00

Here's my weird thought of the day. Kids Corrupt Video Games. Yeah you read that right. Kids Corrpt Video Games. Why? Because the violent games are what sells. The market chases what sells, not the other way around. Games that don't sell die off. If 'Happy Fun Care Bears the Game' was what sold in huge numbers instead of Quake we'd see Care Bears 4 and not Quake 4 on shelves everywhere.

More on Biodiesel

2005-10-18T12:46:00.000-07:00

It turns out the EPA did a study of biodiesel emissions. You can find the doc here: http://www.epa.gov/otaq/models/analysis/biodsl/p02001.pdf

I read/skimmed most of it and it seems like the findings are that biodiesel is basically a wash when it comes to emissions compared to regular US dino diesel. They specifically didn't study California diesel which I'm assuming is cleaner than most. Where biodiesel loses its advantage in overall emissions it is due to the fact that biodiesel produces less power per gallon than dino diesel. This means you burn more of it to get the same amount of power and thus its slight advantage in emissions is wasted.

Biodiesel's Dirty Little Secret?

2005-10-15T11:21:00.000-07:00

I ran across this funny and interesting post on Fark. Its just a minor rant by some random dude but you know I've never seen any discussion about the emmissions from a biodiesel driven vehicle. I think we all just assume since its not normal oil and its got 'bio' in it, it must be good...

Ahh, yes... someone mentioned biodiesel.

A little experiment happened last week.

You see, I live in the uber-green town of Santa Cruz, and we have a whole armada of these french-fry-oil diesel rustbuckets blasting out smoke under the pretext of clean 'biodiesel' by lazy self-centered hippies.

Well, a fairly modern Jetta TDI that had been 'converted' to run biodiesel came into a shop for some transmission work. The tranny was sorted in short order, and since there was free time, the tech assigned to the car stuck the TDI on the smog kit because he was honestly curious to see just how much cleaner this 'biodiesel' really was than the normal CA ultra low sulfur 15-PPM diesel fuel.

Over 85 PPM on the smog. Using this homebrew 'biodiesel'. That's barely under the legal limit for SMOG on a regular car, way WAY over what the TDI should be spitting out, and nowhere near what could be considered 'green'.

Keep fooling yourself with biodiesel... It's only worth doing if you're going to take the time to do it right, you lazy hippie bastards.

In the meantime my Ducati only displaces 900cc's with every crank revolution, gets about 45 MPG, takes up far less space on the roadway, and I get rock star parking everywhere I go. And you can bet it's kept in perfect mechanical tune.

It's the irony tag when the guy wearing all the leather is more green than the guy wearing all the hemp.

BullSh*t Bingo!

2005-10-12T10:52:00.000-07:00

A bunch of blogs and other sites are linking this semi-old but still post worthy site, BullSh*t bingo. Each participant prints out their own unique buzzword bingo sheet before a meeting and then they play as the silly buzzwords are used. Simply amazing :)

I'm thinking about printing a few and randomly leaving them in some conference rooms just to mess with people's heads.

TiddlyWiki

2005-10-10T17:19:00.000-07:00

The past few days I've been playing with a personal Wiki called TiddlyWiki. While there's a few personal Wiki services and code around TiddlyWiki is unique in that the entire Wiki resides in a single html file. That is the Wiki is done entirely in CSS and JavaScript. It's pretty incredible and absurdely useful.

For years I've been looking for the right organizer software, PDA, that would allow me to replicate my very effective task and work management system that I've been using on paper for the past eight years or so. I think TiddlyWiki is it. So far its been a pretty good fit.

BadgeMagic

2005-10-09T08:50:00.000-07:00

Anyone who has been in or has kids in Boy Scouts knows what a nightmare putting patches on uniforms can be. With all three of my boys starting/restarting Scouts this year we made a trip to the Scout shop for new uniforms and the required patches. To top it off after about four years of involvement in Cub Scouts I'd decided to break down and get the uniform shirt for myself.

That's alot of patches to put on. However the Scout shop now has BadgeMagic. This stuff is amazing, it makes putting on the patches just about as easy at it could possibly be. Anyone who needs to do patches for anything should take a look at BadgeMagic.

Watch the First Nine Minutes of Serenity

2005-10-07T18:11:00.000-07:00

Universal put the first nine minutes of Serenity online. If you select high quality the picture isn't too bad. It's certainly an interesting way to promote the movie.

BattleField 2 Stats

2005-09-30T09:55:00.000-07:00

I've been playing BattleField 2 quite a bit and I try to stick to the ranked servers in a vain effort to rank up in the game. Just yesterday I noticed this crazy BF2 stats site where they lay out all your stats in gory detail. Mine are linked above. Turns out I'm not really that great at the game and I'm still a long way away from the next rank and the next weapon unlock.

I honestly can't decide if knowing this much about my gameplay makes me want to play more or less. It is rather depressing that its taken me 39 hours of play to get to just over 3000 points and the next unlock isn't until 10,000 points. Yeesh. Either I've got to get much better or play alot more.

Cool Disco Dan

2005-09-29T19:30:00.000-07:00

Spouses often talk about strange things and tonight we were reminded of a graphitti phenomena from the early 90's in the DC area. When we were first married we lived in Silver Spring, MD and I worked at the Pentagon. For the first year or so I took the Metro to work and the Cool Disco Dan tag was everywhere. From the Metro especially you would see alot of Dan's mark. I don't mean you'd see it a few times, you would see it constantly. Often three or more on a single building!

It was just crazy how many Cool Disco Dan's there were all over the DC area. Of course these days we know there's really no story behind Cool Disco Dan. He was just a guy who wanted to see his name everywhere, and did. However at the time we always wondered who Disco Dan was and just how cool he really might be.

Switching Back

2005-09-26T16:23:00.000-07:00

Russell Beattie posted an interesting blog entry about possibly switching back to Windows from using the Mac exclusively. I've been doing alot of work lately with OS X and I had been contemplating a similiar list of complaints. His is interesting and worth a look.

Screwed at Sears

2005-09-12T14:58:00.000-07:00

For Father's Day my wife had kindly bought me a torque wrench as I had expressed an interested in doing all my own maintenance on my motorcycle. When working on the bike, at least according to the service manual, there are many things that require you properly torque them. The one she bought me was the basic cheap Craftsman model. A big, basic model that isn't precise enough to do the motorcycle work. I figured no worries I'll just take it to Sears and exchange it for credit for their $99 model that is accurate enough for what I need to do.

Of course I never do anything in a timely fashion so the torque wrench hung on my garage wall in its original package until today when I took it back to Sears. Naturally I didn't have my receipt but historically customer service at Sears has been excellent and it was new, in the original box, in pristine unused condition and all I was looking for was store credit so I could spend more money at Sears. So I mosey on into the hardware department at Sears and put the wrench on the counter. I tell the nice lady I had received it as a gift, true enough, and I didn't have the reciept however all I would like to do is exchange it for credit towards a much more expensive one. She says OK but you only get credit based on the lowest sale price, I say that's fine with me. I figure whats the most I can be out, maybe $5? Then she looks me up in her computer and looks up the wrench and tells me she can only give me $6.99 credit.

I'm confused, I say are you sure you mean six dollars and ninety nine cents? She says yes, they've changed their return policy, without a receipt you only get a portion of your money back. I said but I didn't want money I'd like to exchange it for a more expensive model and pay the difference, and she insists all she can credit me for is $6.99. Still confused I go find the $99 torque wrench I need. At the same time I see the same model I have is on sale for $26.99. When I go back up to the counter I ask again, are you sure it was $6.99 credit you can give and not $26.99? She insists she can only give $6.99. At this point I'm still confused and not bright enough to stop giving them my money so I purchase the $99 model and keep my other $26.99 (or is it $6.99) torque wrench.

All in all I found this really baffling. I've heard of restocking fees, I've heard of only allowing store credit but this is just weird. Offering only 26% of the current sale price for an exchange for store credit on an item that is still new in the box and perfectly saleable? Just bizarre. Now that I stop to write about it I think I should have pushed more and maybe spoke with a manager, the whole thing just seems weird but the lady specifically said they had changed their return policy to cut their losses due to a large number of bad returns. It really makes me wonder if I should go back, I wonder what other policies they have changed. I generally buy at Sears and buy Craftsman tools because I buy into their superior customer service mystique, now that belief is somewhat shaken.

Sean Penn to the Rescue

2005-09-12T13:18:00.000-07:00

A picture in today's New York Post shows Sean Penn wading around in New Orleans with a shotgun. In this picture he isn't wearing his bulletproof vest though.

How can this darling of the left carry shotgun? Oh my ;)

New Motorcycle Trunk Mounted

2005-09-05T13:24:00.000-07:00

This weeked I mounted a new trunk on my motorcycle. I removed the saddlebags I was using before. I think the trunk is going to work out much better for daily commuting which is what I mainly use my bike for. The saddlebags technically have more space between the two of them but one slightly larger container that is easier to use seems like it will be much better.

Goodbye Rio

2005-08-30T08:59:00.000-07:00

ArsTechnica (link above) has an article noting the passing of Rio from the MP3 player market. Rio was the first to market with a MP3 player in 1998 and I personally used a Rio Volt Mp3/CDPlayer from 2000 to 2004. Rio made a wide range of players and most were very good. In 2000 personally I felt that for someone who was carrying a backpack all the time like I was that the CD/Mp3 player with its 650mb capacity was the best bang for the buck and it worked great for me.

Of course in 2004, along with pretty much everyone else on the planet, I switched to an iPod and I haven't used the Rio since. Still its sad to see the Rio brand go, good times, good times.

I Buy Too Many Games

2005-08-23T10:26:00.000-07:00

Just ask my wife, I buy way too many games. PC, XBox, you name it. I buy too many games. The sad part is I don't have as much time as I'd like to think I do to play them. Sometimes I behave myself and go a few months without a new purchase and then sometimes the floodgates just open and I go nuts.

In the recent past I've picked up:

BattleField 2
Pirates!
Nexus: The Jupiter Incident
Guild Wars

BattleField 2 has basically replaced Natural Selection as my FPS of choice. I've been playing it along. Guild Wars is a recent acquisition and I'm finding it to be alot of fun. Its also an oddity in its space because its a MMO that doesn't have a monthly fee.

Beer for Kids!

2005-08-18T08:33:00.000-07:00

A company in Japan is marketing and shipping a non-alcoholic 'beer' for children. The 'beer' isn't really beer at all, its a guarana cola that has been tweaked to be less sweet and more frothy.

"Even kids cannot stand life unless they have a drink"

Be cool free-thinkin blogger, just not on AOL

2005-08-15T10:17:00.000-07:00

Apparently AOL censors their blogs. Probably just enforcing some part of their EULA. Still its creepy...

http://journals.aol.com/eugenio2paris/LookingattheTOTALPICTUREnotpiece/entries/507

Something better than Firefox!?

2005-08-14T16:43:00.000-07:00

Lately its the hip thing to proclaim Firefox as TheBestThingEver and bash IE. I use Firefox as my default browser on my home machine but lately I've been using IE 7 on Vista and aside from a few little bugs, well it is a beta after all, I've noticed one significant difference between IE 7 and Firefox. IE7 does a much better job of blocking popups. Oh sure Firefox is good and it squashes most of them but there's a few sites where they slip through, however I've noticed absolutely zero popups with IE7. Interesting.

Hating America

2005-08-12T12:59:00.000-07:00

Bruce Bawer has written an interesting article called 'Hating America' in which, among other things, he contrasts the cultures and attitudes of Europeans to those of Americans. There is a line in the article that I personally find very poignant:

Living in Europe, I gradually came to appreciate American virtues I’d
always taken for granted, or even disdained—among them a lack of
self-seriousness, a grasp of irony and self-deprecating humor, a friendly
informality with strangers, an unashamed curiosity, an openness to new
experience, an innate optimism, a willingness to think for oneself and speak one’s mind and question the accepted way of doing things.

Thoughts on Windows Vista

2005-08-11T06:29:00.000-07:00

After a week running Windows Vista Beta 1 as my primary work OS I'm finding it to be working out OK. I've gotten used to the few quirks and problems and I'm getting plenty of work done on it. Given that I'm still productive I'll probably stick with it for now.

A couple tips for using it.

If it feels really draggy and slow take a look at the Task Manager. I often find a dying iexplore.exe running in the background and consuming alot of CPU. I tend to open and close browser windows alot so I may bring this problem on myself.
If your graphics card struggles with the eye candy, specifically the semi-transparent windows, you can turn it off on the fly with CTRL+SHIFT+F9. Hitting this speeds things up considerably on my laptop which has a laptop grade video card.

Overall the experience is pretty good for a Beta 1. I ran the early betas of Windows XP and Windows 95 and they weren't as usuable as this one is.

Upgrading my ReplayTV 5000 series

2005-08-08T09:55:00.000-07:00

A while back I bought a ReplayTV 5000 series from a guy at work. For those without a PVR/Tivo/Replay I highly recommend it. I watch alot less TV that I used to and when I do its concentrated on the shows I really like. It also skips commercials with uncanny accuracy most of the time ;)

The only drawback to the Replay had been my addiction to recording at high quality. At 'normal' quality the picture quality was about what you'd expect from a VCR at LP speed. On the big screen this just doesn't cut it so I record at 'high' quality all the time. This means the Replay's stock 40gb drive only held about 10 hours of shows or so. 10 hours isn't so bad but when the kids want the Pokemon shows, the wife has a few favorite shows she likes to have it snag, and I've got to get my Battlestar Galactica you start getting into some contention which is no good.

Fortunately this past weekend I picked up a 200gb drive and swapped the hard drive out in the Replay. The process was surprisingly easy. I'd daresay if you are savvy enough to install a HD in a computer and you can follow simple instructions you can do it, no problem. To pull it off you just go to the ReplayTV Hacking Project site (http://rtvpatch.sourceforge.net/) get the utility from there and follow the instructions. For me it went like this:

Turn off the Replay. Take the lid off, remove the hard drive
Plug the Replay drive and my new drive into my PC
Boot the PC, use rtvpatch to copy the system and MPEG partitions to the new drive, run the final 'patch' with the utility on the new drive
Shutdown the PC, take both drives out, safely wrap up the original Replay drive and store it
Install the new drive in the Replay, plug it back in
Enjoy 5x the storage space ;)

It really was magical, by copying my MPEG partition, which took a while longer, I didn't even lose the shows that were already on there. Very slick.

Oops

2005-08-07T09:05:00.000-07:00

My wife pointed out to me that when I revived the dead server I forgot to config mod_speling for Apache. It's what lets my wife not have to care about the capilization of web page and image names on her website. It also corrects minor spelling problems in file names, like if you link to blah..jpg instead of blah.jpg it will find the right file show that one instead. Very handy.

Blew up my Gentoo server today

2005-08-04T22:16:00.000-07:00

A problem I had been brewing over a few months on my Gentoo server blew up today when the box rebooted for some uknown reason. I had dorked up the /etc file protection and partially trashed the config. Something else bad must have happened too because when I restored /etc form my backup and rebooted it just wouldn't boot any more.

I think I have it fixed now, or close to fixed. I downloaded the Gentoo Universal CD, mounted my drive and did a partial reinstall. Basically the base OS stuff then I booted on that and carefully restored just the /etc files I needed to get my core services going again. Good news is my backups work and all my data is still around. Hopefully I can wrap it up tonight and get everything working OK again.

I try to keep a clean config on this box, hence the Gentoo install, however it does run apache, samba, dns, popd, and postfix so I have a few more things to check.

PINKS!

2005-08-02T08:32:00.000-07:00

While not exactly new, but new to me, there's a show on the Speed channel called PINKS the motto of which is 'Lose the race, lose your ride'. The concept is two racers drag race a best two out of three or three out of five and the loser signs over the title of their vehicle to the winner. I've seen three episodes so far and its a great little show.

Longhorn working OK for me so far

2005-08-01T19:24:00.000-07:00

I've installed Longhorn Beta 1 and so far its not too bad. I did a clean install on my main work laptop and it didn't take nearly as long as I thought it would. So far its pretty smooth, I've only reported two bugs. I crash resuming from standby which is probably a driver issue. I might be able to resolve it by wedging the XP drivers for my laptop onto this OS. The other is I noticed that WMI WIN32_OperationSystem is reporting an OS 'caption' of Windows 2000.

I've got Office installed, I'm reading mail, surfing the net and have worked on a Word doc. Speed seems almost as fast as XP was, maybe just a little slower due to all the eye candy. My laptop is a P4 1.5ghz with 1gb of RAM. It'd be nice if I could resolve the standby issue though, I'm a total standby junkie.

Windows Longhorn/Vista Beta 1

2005-08-01T12:18:00.000-07:00

Back at work today and checking my MSDN subscription I see Longhorn Beta 1 truly is available to me. I've decided to take the plunge and load Longhorn/Vista on my main work machine. I have an extra Windows laptop and my Powerbook that I can use if things go horribly awry. Right now I'm copying everything off my laptop to make sure I don't lose any precious data. This is something I should have been doing all along, doh! I've got enough home directory quota here at work to do it. Bad sysadmin not doing what you tell the users to do.

Once I get Vista going you can bet I'll post some thoughts on it :)

Hello to all two of you

2005-07-31T16:08:00.000-07:00

At the suggestion of someone I know from the OldF forum I added a counter/tracker to this blog. So far I've had two whole visitors. I think at least one has returned, so here's a big hello to all two of you! :)

The Dinner Train

2005-07-30T09:44:00.000-07:00

Last night I took Tammy on the Spirit of Washington dinner train. It was slighty cliche but overall a pleasant evening. The train goes from downtown Renton to a winery in Woodinville. Salad, dinner and desert is served along the way. The entire trip was just a bit over three hours.

At the winery they had a tour of the facility and wine tasting, it was pretty neat and we did buy a bottle of wine and some souveniers.

I think its the kind of thing you'd want to do at least once but you probably wouldn't do again.

Back from Mt. Baker

2005-07-29T07:46:00.000-07:00

We've returned alive from our camping trip near Mt. Baker. The weather was great and it was a fun trip. Here's a pic of the mountain:

Vacation in full swing

2005-07-25T20:59:00.000-07:00

Well the local vacation is in full swing. Today we took the kids to Wild Waves and had a pretty good time. The only down side was child #2 begging for money. Like the admission, parking and locker rental wasn't enough, go ride a ride kid and get out of my face!

Also a special note to Western Washington: Enough with the tattoos. You've got way too many of them and you keep adding, its just wrong. Don't you know they're going to look all blurry and blue by the time you're 50? Lets not even contemplate the sagging/stretching. I'm sure you don't know what those Chinese characters mean either. Did you know the Japanase and Chinese share alot of characters but don't share a language? So that spiffy Chinese or Japanese character you have might not mean the same thing to everyone.

On Vacation Now

2005-07-23T18:59:00.000-07:00

I'm on vacation, my in-laws are in town and we've got camping plans with the kids, should be fun.

Had a near miss on the motorcycle this morning

2005-07-20T08:52:00.000-07:00

I had a near miss on the motorcycle this morning. I won't call it an almost accident because I really just maneuvered around it and I didn't really feel like I almost got clobbered but I guess technically I did almost get clobbered.

Riding on a city street, I'm in the left lane doing about 30-35mph. To my left is a left turn lane with cars stopped in it, the right hand lane is solid cars moving at maybe 15mph. I'm always paranoid about lines of cars on either side not moving or moving much slower so I'm keeping an eye on these cars when right in front of me on the right a guy in a 4 door sedan decides to cut over into the left lane, my lane. I was riding on the right side of the lane so as to be in people's mirrors just so they wouldn't do that but he did it anyway. I had some room so I keep the throttle steady and swerved to the left. As I swerved I looked down and to my right and kept an eye on his left front bumper so I could change direction back to the right/straight as soon as possible so I wouldn't swerve into the cars stopped on the left. He came half way into my lane before he realized I was there. When I was swerving I was literally looking down at his bumper, I think I missed him by 2 feet tops.

It happened so quickly I didn't have time to yell, get upset, hit my horn nothing. The dude came over so close I think the MSF just kicked in and I did the swerve straight out of the class. It was identical to the class excercise, push left, push right. Even the distances involved were about the same. When I took the class I always thought that swerve was a little tight and wouldn't resemble something you'd do on the road but this morning it was right on. The other interesting thing about this maneuver was I was in control the whole time, I didn't feel like I was going to lose it or like I was pressured I just did it.

More thoughts on Battlefield 2

2005-07-18T08:52:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend I gave some thought to Battelfield 2 trying to figure why its so good. I've been playing multiplayer online games since the days when I dialed up to the internet with Trumpet Winsock on Windows 3.1. Back in those days text MUDs were just about the only mutiplayer to be had, that is if the MUD allowed the dreaded PK (player killing). Over the subsequent years I've been heavily into various team oriented games. The biggest ones for me personally, just so you know where I'm coming from were, in roughly this order, text RPG MU*'s, Quake2 CTF, Tribes (1), CounterStrike, Day of Defeat, and then for the past few years tons of Natural Selection. Of course there have been many others mixed in there, in the recent past Joint Operations comes to mind, but those have been the big ones.

Ultimately I think what makes BF2 stand out is the focus on strengthening team play. First off lets think about the command heirarchy. Orders flow from the commander to the squad leaders. If the squad leaders accept them they are automatically passed on to the squad members. Same goes for voice chat, the command talks to the squad leaders and the squad leaders talk to the commander or their squad depending on what key they press. This is slick because if the command is a raving lunatic who is babbling on the voice chat and issuing a different order every five seconds only the squad leaders need know, the soldiers on the ground keep fighting and go after only the objectives their squad leader accepts. It works the other way as well, if one lunatic is raving at his squad only his squad hears it, not the entire team. In game with 64 player servers you can see the advantage here.

Another interesting feature is how the teams and squads carry over from one game to the next. For example if I'm playing on a full server in a squad with a particular squad leader and the map changes when I get back into the game I'm still on the same team, in the same squad with the same squad leader, if he hasn't left. When playing on a loosely organized public server this can be, and is at times, powerful stuff. If you're in a good squad with a good squad leader then naturally you want to keep playing with these people and the game makes that happen for you by default.

There are other aspects of the game that really serve to strengthen team play, some are subtle, some have been done in other games before, but in the interest of time I won't go into them now. For now its safe to say I'm still hooked on BF2 and the end isn't in sight.

A BattleField 2 Expansion in the works already?

2005-07-15T15:38:00.000-07:00

With a BF2 expansion coming out so soon some people are bashing EA for the obvious pursuit of more and more money, however I'm detaching myself from that by focusing solely on the pure gaming bliss that is BF2.

I have a habit of mindlessly giving money multiple times to games that I enjoy. For example over the years I have been known to spastically rescue additional copies of 'Sid Meier's Gettysburg' from the bargain bin just because its the only game from 1996 that I still play every once in a while and I just luv it. When Kali (http://www.kali.net) the continually foundering gaming service returned to its orginal owner I reregistered for another 'lifetime' subscription just becuase Kali continued to be useful to me even after almost ten years. Actually now that I think about it I think I registered as a Constellation member for Natural Selection twice. Yeah I think I paid for that free mod twice, why? Because I've gotten about a million hours of gaming time out of it, OK I'm exaggerating a bit but not that much, ask my wife. ;)

Expansion packs, while something I normally avoid, are a great way for me to throw money at the games I like while actually receiving some sort of content or benefit in return. Some semi-recent expansion pack purchases that have brought me increased joy are:

Joint Operations - Escalation
Warcraft 3 The Frozen Throne

I generally see expansion packs as a bad deal. For example all the RollerCoaster Tycoon expansions, the never ending original Sims expansions, they all provided dubious value to the casual consumer. They only seemed to feed more money into the belly of the beast. However in some cases I'll make exceptions, as described above, and sometimes if there's a lack of new content I may just buy the game again.

Yes I'm weird. As I said above, so far BF2 has its tentacles wrapped firmly around me dominating my precious few hours of gaming time completely. Of course like a rabid Linux guy frothing at the mouth over Microsoft its fashionable right now for many of the serious gamer types and dare I say, digital equivalents of tree-huggers, to bash EA as the vile mega-corp that it is.

However railing against the mega-corp is merely mental masturbation as nothing will change and we all see EA only getting larger and more powerful with time. As for me I'll take their bug ridden, flawed, yet entirely delectable gaming experiences for what they are, simply a gaming experience. I paid a mere $37 for BF2. I can't take my family to a 2 hour movie for less than $50 these days so $37 for hours on hours of entertainment, neh entertainment that is seemingly targeted at my very gaming soul, yes give me more of that.

How to Make Fried Oreo Cookies!

2005-07-15T09:41:00.000-07:00

Yes fried Oreos, now your culinary adventure in life can be complete!

They look yummy don't they?

EA & nVidia Conspire with Battlefield 2?

2005-07-14T13:23:00.000-07:00

OverAnalyzed has an over analysis of the possible deal between EA/DICE and nVidia to spur sales of newer nVidia cards by keeping Battlefield 2 from working on older GeForce 3/4 cards. I've never used a nVidia card in a computer I cared about (read gaming machine) so I'm not up on the various generations of NVidia cards but I seem to recall a GeForce 3 or 4 might have been in the running back when I bought my ATI Radeon 9700 Pro. Oddly enough BF2 seems to work just fine for me on the old 9700 Pro. Is NVidia really that desperate for sales that they'd convince and/or pay a developer to make products that arn't compatible with their older video cards?

Isn't the best way to get me to upgrade to have me fall in love with a game and then wish it ran faster or looked better? Seems like, unless the GeForce 4 cards would run BF2 just fine minus some eye candy the average joe might not even miss, if thats the case then true evil is at work.

Most of the time Microsoft gets it

2005-07-14T09:33:00.000-07:00

I've always thought the reason Microsoft dominated and continues to dominate the PC world is its focus on making developers lives easy. It always boggled my mind back-in-the-day when Microsoft sold their MSDN subscription for $1500 which gave a potential Windows developer absolutely everything you needed to build, test, deploy software. At the same time I recall places I worked at having to shell out 5 figure amounts for developer kits from other companies and these kits were just part of that companies offerings. Microsoft was giving you everything they had in one package!

Now Microsoft is releasing a Shareware Starter Kit. The idea is to make is super easy for Shareware developers to distribute and make money from their software. Again this is pure genius. And how much are they charging for it? Why absolutely nothing, you can download it here:

Download: (C# download, VB download).

You can talk about Mac and Linux all day long but with the Microsoft juggernaut continuing to do insanely smart things like this I just don't see them going away any time soon.

Comcast Going to 6 & 8mbps

2005-07-13T08:55:00.000-07:00

This is east coast news but I'm sure it will make its way out here. Comcast is going to 6 and 8mbps download speeds. I'm pretty happy with the 3mbps I have that recently became 4. Its good that Comcast continues to drive up the level of service, they should considering what they charge for it. At the same time I wish they'd increase the upload speed a little from the paltry 256 or 512mbs it is now. It'd be nice if this fat pipe was symetrical.

Of couse I'm sure Comcast is only interested in keeping the information consumers happy and not necessarily the information creators. Though increased uploads would be a boon for the work-from-home VPN using folks which are an ever increasing part of the market.

More obsessing about the 1150RT

2005-07-12T15:22:00.000-07:00

I didn't mention my local PD use the BMW 1150RT (Police model) for their motorcycle cops. Cool.

Turn on ClearType

2005-07-12T11:45:00.000-07:00

ClearType for Windows in its various forms has been around for a long time but oddly its not enabled by default on most Windows XP machines. Yesterday I turned it on using the XP ClearType Tuner PowerToy, it makes a huge difference.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx

NetFlix Player?

2005-07-12T09:39:00.000-07:00

HackingNetflix.com has a post about catching a glimpse of a NetFlix Player of some sort on the NetFlix site. Will NetFlix users soon be streaming movies over the Internet?

http://www.hackingnetflix.com/netflix/2005/07/glitch_exposes_.html

The BMW 1150RT...

2005-07-11T21:28:00.000-07:00

I think the 1150RT is my new fantasy bike. It's a $16k item so I don't think it's happening anytime soon, still its fun to dream.

Doomed

2005-07-11T21:17:00.000-07:00

This evening I ran across an article by Steve Bowler entitled 'Doomed: How Id Lost its Crown'. Bowler describes with clarity how Id software has lost the gaming crown. He puts in words what I knew instinctively when I played Doom3 at the Penny Arcade Expo last summer. Yeah, they've lost it...

http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=337&Itemid=2&limit=1&limitstart=0