If anyone is wondering what to get me for my birthday...
Url: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&r...
While I can't recommending buying it through eBay because of my recent problems with them, this is somewhat irresistable. A real Enigma machine...
Way OT: You can fix Depth Perception with Contacts?
Url: http://www.braves.net/bravesjournal/?p=2266
In case you never noticed I am a huge Atlanta Braves fan. I was reading this Braves fan site recently after the Braves player's record tying ten straight hits (tied a National League record), I wanted to find out more about this Matt Diaz. When I noticed that during spring training, the Braves checked Matt Diaz eyes and found out he had almost no depth perception. A major league hitter without depth perception...wow.
Painful Experience with MozyPro
I finally decided to dive in with an online backup of my files. I have two systems that need backups so I decided to use MozyPro as their prices are good and if Hanselman uses them, they can't be that bad. My big pain point with online backup is my behemouth .pst files. I have two of them...my working .pst and an archive .pst. Totaling about 2 GB total, I need a solution that can back up these files without re-uploading the entire file everytime. Mozy promises this...after the first backup.
So I installed it locally and setup the directories and files I wanted backed-up. All seemed good until I started getting a "the C-Drive is out of space" errors. It seems that Mozy compesses everything locally and will do so without regard to remaining drive space. I had to stop the backup and reboot my machine as Vista was down to 5 Meg free. I didn't like how it was going about the backup, but I figured i'd live with it. So I opened the configuration to find out where to tell it to create temporary files...nothing...I wrote support and eventually found a listing where it showed me how to change the registry to make this happen. Huh? Shouldn't that be a setting in their long-winded configuration? Ok, not very professional but I'll do it. Restarted the services and went about backing up again...
Translucent Microsoft
Url: http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=953
I waffle back and forth between whether Mary Jo is helping the IT world with her insights or is just IT's version of the gossip column. I honestly don't know which. But in a blog entry today she said something that was spot on. The quote is:
What's going to happen to ThinkPads?
Url: http://news.com.com/IBM+talk+signals+shift+in+P...
Looks like the rumors are true. IBM is leaving the PC business it created 2 1/2 decades ago. I haven't looked at IBM PC's in quite a while, but ThinkPads are some of the best built laptops. I hope they don't go away (even though I haven't purchased one before). Just when they add touchpads to their ThinkPads, they get out of the business.
My new Tivo
Url: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?id=1093...
I've owned ReplayTV's for years now. For those of you out there without a PVR, get one *now*! Magenic (the company I work for) recently gave it's employees a Tivo for a holiday gift. I got the one with the DVD recorder in it and including some media features. So far I am very impressed.
MSN Desktop Search - Yet another blog about it!
Url: http://beta.toolbar.msn.com/
I downloaded MSN Toolbar which includes the Desktop Search this evening. I immediately turned off the MSN toolbar since I am not interested in having two toolbars with identical features (I love the google bar and won't give it up). So how is search?
I think CSI is confusing America...
Url: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2004-08-05-...
Ok, this is *way* off topic, but I enjoy watching CSI and shows of their ilk. But I have been getting further frustrated by the technology they purport to use. It all came to a head the other day when they took a convinience store video and used “video enhancement” to see the reflection in one of the customer's eyes. Instead of Spike, CSI belongs on SciFi.
TechEd Europe!
How I wish I were there. Evidently the Yukon Public Beta and the VS.NET 2005 Beta will be available. Get them while they're hot!
For all attendees, skip the Heiniken Museum...you're gonna want to remember this convention! TechEd will be very “lekker” this year.
Tivo v. ReplayTV...Take 2
After a relatively happy honeymoon, my marriage to the new Tivo is on the rocks. I've been spoiled. ReplayTV just does what I expect, with less of the intrusive advertising of Tivo. Here are my sticking points:
So this leaves me with two options, go back to my ReplayTV (luckily I still have it), or see what a Windows Media Center Edition box with the XBox MCE Extender will do for me. For now I am probably just going to get the ReplayTV going again, and look at the MCE for the future.
The Demo Gods are Angry at CES
Url: http://metahost.savvislive.com/microsoft/200501...
Here is video of Gate's MCE demo at CES. Not only a MCE crash, but also an XBox crash later on in the day. Very embarassing. But it isn't without a precedent:
Someone Invented Ctrl-Alt-Delete?
Url: http://news.uns.purdue.edu/UNS/html3month/03091...
This is a small announcement of a presentation at Purdue of the electrical engineer that invented Ctrl-Alt-Delete. I never gave it any thought. It should have occurred to me that some has all sorts of odd inventions on their resumes. I remember an article a year or so ago attributing the ':)' to someone on a BBS in the '70s. Go figure...
Finally a Case Mod I Understand...
Url: http://www.badgerpackaging.com/heavymetal/
I've always wanted to drive my server around the block. Here's my chance. This guy tooke a dual Xeon case and put it on a Go-Cart chassis with a radio controller. Voila, you can now drive your server around at blazing speeds...at 2.8 GHz! Pay special attention to the specially designed "Tachometer" that shows the CPU usage. They added 'bounce' when the CPU usage was 0% to look like a running engine. Very cool...
I Knew Someone Was Teaching Them...
Url: http://msnbc.com/news/978871.asp?0cv=CB20
I wasn't too surprised to read that tech executives were getting tutoring on technology. What really surprised me is that they wanted to keep it so quiet.
C Batteries make Land Speed Record for Electric Vehicle
Url: http://www.dwra.net/dwrastreamliner.htm
Pretty wierd, but this White Lightning 2 car is powered by 6040 C Batteries. And with those batteries it broke the land-speed record going 245 MPH!
An Interesting User Interface...
Url: http://research.microsoft.com/news/monthlyfeatu...
This Outlook Add-In from MS Research and Maryland U. is particularly interesting. It may be a little more of than another consuption of extra CPU cycles in an age over-zealous animations, but I think there is something useful here. There is an intuitiveness to what they have in mind that is very useful.
My Courses
