home links tools blog about
home

December 12, 2007

Office 2007 SP1

I've posted in the past about how I love Office 2007. It got rid of sooooo many of the things that I hated about Office XP and the auto-formatting "we're helping you" crap that I just couldn't stand.

Overall, my experience with it has been excellent so far.

Only I spend a lot of time creating PowerPoints - and each time I close PPT, it has been crashing (for the last 5-7 months) and trying to phone home. It hasn't been the most infuriating bug I've ever encountered, but dealing with it was starting to get old. (I even re-installed Office once in the hopes of fixing it after MS's 'repair your problem' functionality wasn't able to touch this problem).

But happily Office 2007 SP1 fix0red it. Must've been all those times I got cranky and decided to send a bug report to 'spam' someone at MS into fixing my problem.

UPDATE: Damnit, I spoke too soon and the problem is back. I wish the Universe would let me take this blog post back - and trade it in for getting rid of that nasty message each time I shut PPT down. *sigh*

Posted on December 12, 2007 | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

December 05, 2007

The 'perils' of working from home: #328

In a Past Life....
When I was young I spent a few years working for an insulation company - installing fiberglass batts and even working on a 'blow' truck - installing cellulose insulation.

Dirty Jobs
Recently an episode of Dirty Jobs featured Mike Rowe taking on cellulose - a truly dirty job. It was cool to sit down with my 6 year old son (Caleb) and tell him that I used to do things very similar to what was being shown on TV as a Dirty Job (one of our favorite shows around here).

Overheard
This morning my wife overheard Caleb talking to Nora (almost 3 years old) to the tune of: "Back when dad had a job, he did installation...."

Back when I HAD a job - as opposed to now. I think my kids assume that I like computers so much that I just lock myself into my office with them for the greater part of the day.

Posted on December 05, 2007 | | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

December 03, 2007

Great Post on Gaming vs Graphics

It's a bit of a long post (I suppose), but if you're a gamer you'll appreciate what's being said: Give us Gameplay over Graphics Please.

The article is about PC games, and is spot on. Had it been for video games in general, it would explain why I'm having a hard time getting my hands on a Nintendo Wii - because Nintendo decided that game play was more important than graphics. (Even though it does FINE in the graphics dept).

Posted on December 03, 2007 | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

October 09, 2007

Mikey's other new Rig

Gaming Rig Recap
A while back I posted about my new gaming rig.

Quite a few people have actually asked me how that turned out and I'm happy to say that it has been the single best computer purchase that I've ever made. I've never, ever, been happier with a box.

Other boxes/systems have been great - but nothing has been as fun as it was to research, buy, build, and then use my gaming rig. That, and the thing is an absolute beast. I used to spend a lot of time looking at task manager to see what was chewing up CPU and disk. With my new box I barely know how to use task manager anymore.

But the best thing is that it gives me much better flexibility in terms of upgrades and such than I ever could have swung from the likes of Dell or HP - at a fraction of the price.

Mikey needs a new box
Another box that I've been VERY happy with for the past year and a half (or so) has been my Dell PowerEdge SC1420. I got it as a refurb from Dell and got a killer deal on it. (A few weeks after I bought it I could have easily sold 2 GB of the RAM that came with it to cover the entire cost of the box - and still had 2 GB of RAM left.)

But I'm going to be doing a couple of projects with Microsoft's new Viridian Hypervisor shortly - and will need some serious power for virtualization. My PowerEdge could have handled the load pretty easily - with both of its hyper-threaded Xeon 3.0s. But those Xeon's didn't support Intel Virtualization Technology (or Intel VT), so I decided to swing for a new server.

Given my past success with NewEgg (I just can't describe how much I love them - they consistently have the cheapest prices and actually ship my stuff within a day or so every time), I decided that I'd build my own box again. (Though I'm cannibalizing the upgraded video-card from my PowerEdge.)

The new box
My new 'server' should be here on Friday (the case will be here Thursday), and will give me:
- An Intel Core 2 Quad. At 2.4 GHz it's literally 2 of the cores I have in my gaming rig glued together. But I'll get Intel VT, and the price is hardly much more than what I paid for my Core 2 Duo just a few months ago. (When the 1333Mhz bus processors come down in price in a while I can upgrade - and since both of my machines use the same 775 LGA socket I'll be able to share the love each time I buy nicer procs.)
- 8 GB of RAM. That's right baby: 8 GB. Which means that I'll need to spring for a 64-bit OS - though I'm just going to use Windows Server 2008 for now since it's _so_much better than Windows Server 2003.
- A slightly wimpier MoBo. Unpacking all of my EVGA stuff with my last box really did my inner geek some insane good. (2x vid cards, and a big honkin' mobo... I was in heaven.) But with this box I hardly need any video capability at all (I'll just be cannibalizing the 64MB PCI card that I slapped into my PowerEdge), but I did need a fast/dependable Mobo with some decent SATA and upgrade support. The 650i chipset fit that bill nicely.
- Disk. 1 TB spread over 4 spindles. Yippee.
- The same spiffy power-supply-unit (PSU) that I got with my last box. I really don't need as much power/wattage as this piglet supplies, but just LOVE how efficient it is, how clean the power is, and how insanely cool the modular cabling is. So I spent a bit more than I really needed.
- A fairly spiffy case. I really didn't want to spend too much on this piglet, but needed some decent fans and some *cough*  eye-candy and blue lights. I'll probably add some more blue LEDs as well as a Cold Cathode Black Light like I've *cough* done for my gaming rig. (And I'll likely skin the cables for both boxes with UV reflective goodness as I've purchased the skinning and molex tools - but just haven't had the time to do yet.)
A406-1069-maina

If you're interested, I've made the wishlist available over on newegg. As with my last system though, the contents of the wishlist don't represent a complete machine - as you'd need a video card with this box if you were interested in a similar configuration. It also doesn't have an OS, though you can usually swing Windows Server Standard for less than $700 if you do some shopping.

Love 'em and Leave 'em
That, and anyone know anybody that wants a well-loved PowerEdge that's in great condition? It's got 2x Intel Xeon 3.0 GHz (at 800 Mhz FSB), an IDE SATA RAID controller, 4 GB of RAM, and around .5 TB of disk. It's in awesome condition.

I'll likely put it up for sale on Ebay here in a while to help recoup some of my upgrade costs.

Posted on October 09, 2007 | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

August 10, 2007

Verizon Wireless - WOAH

So, the last three times I've called verizon wireless I've actually gotten intelligent people that seemed like they wanted to help.

More importantly, they've been able to help me completely with what I wanted to accomplish.

In fact, the hardest part of my last three interactions (over the space of a few months) has been to get OFF the phone with them as they're so busy trying to see if I've got any OTHER issues that I need resolved after they've addressed whatever it has been that I called about.

A phone company that actually GETS customer service? I'm dreaming right?

Posted on August 10, 2007 | | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

May 28, 2007

Memorial Day

Here's another grateful shout-out to the veterans past and present who keep me and my family free. The older I get and the more I come to learn of war, the greater I'm impressed and the magnitude of the sacrifices made in behalf of others.

And here's a special prayer for Roland Howard and the other members of his unit that were recently hit by an IED in Iraq. Please know that our thoughts and prayers are with you.

Posted on May 28, 2007 | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

April 25, 2007

The Visual Studio SDK

So, what's Mikeey doing to keep himself occupied of late? Well, other than the Longhorn Roadshow (which has been a hoot), I'm busily working on a bunch of stuff focused around Visual Studio Extensibility.

Keep tabs on my efforts here: www.vssdk.com.  

Posted on April 25, 2007 | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

March 16, 2007

Red Planet: Water

Here's your sweet science link of the quarter:

[Mars] has enough water ice at its south pole to blanket the entire planet in more than 30 feet of water if everything thawed out.

Go read the whole thing.

Posted on March 16, 2007 | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

February 15, 2007

ReverseDOS 3 - Vapor Ware?

It's time to be brutally honest. ReverseDOS 3 has moved from 'promise wear', right into 'neglect ware' and is now pretty much 'vapor wear'.

The big problem? Version 3.0 is 100% done. I'm actually running it in on angrypets.com and it is performing pefectly. It has even squelched some of my big spam problems, and made management tons easier. In fact, since I put it in place I haven't gotten a single piece of comment spam - where I was getting between 50 and 200 each day.

I just haven't had time to fully test every subtle, nuanced, possible use of it yet (and I got massively sidetracked building a suite of functionality tests.) That, and I still need to document some of the changes, and so on. 

So, I think I'll repent. In the next few weeks I'll spend a few cycles updating the docs, cover a few more test cases, and then release it with a few caveats. 

Posted on February 15, 2007 | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

5 Things you Don't know about me

Well, I got tired of waiting around for the cool kids to tap me. So yes boys and girls, I'm committing probably one of the biggest faux-pas that the blogging world has ever seen - by tapping myself. (The shame.)

1. Dropout. I'm a high school drop out. Yup, I couldn't stand High School (though I did get plenty of sleep during class). High school was just unbearably booring, lame, and got in the way of learning... so I ditched it. I then had to work my butt off to get accepted to a prestigious university where I actually managed to swing the Dean's Honor Roll one semester, and also was fortunate enough to swing partial scholarships for my Junior and Senior years due to my great grades. At one time I actually had the grades to make Yale, or the University of Chicago... but then I bailed to work with that series of tubes and dump-trucks known as "the internets".
2. Khoomei. I've got major issues with Mongolian Mouth music [sample 1, sample 2 - though those these are technically both examples of Tuvan, not Khoomei]. Well, the truth is that Mongolian and Mongolians just fascinate me beyond belief. And I think Khoomei is a perfect embodiment of that fascination. As crazy as it sounds, I frequently program to it - it's a great sound but doesn't demand enough of my attention to distract from what I'm doing. I, um, hate to say it... but I frequently find myself almost, um, 'rocking out' to it while working. (Maybe volunteering this info in a post was a bad idea... and maybe now I know why no one has nominated me...)
3. Tolkien. I've *cough* read the Lord of the Rings more than 25 times (mostly as a youth). I lost count of how many times I've read the Hobbit. As a matter of fact, my first actual forays into publication actually came from my wild passion for all things Middle Earth. (The stories were just great, and Tolkien's mastery of languages and philology just blow me away.) And yes, I was insufferable/snobby when the movies came out.
4. Languages. I love languages. I speak fluent French, used to be conversant in Arabic, grok lots of German and could be mildly conversant if necessity required, and have studied Russian, Hungarian, Turkish, and Swahili at great lengths. I've also spent probably thousands of hours pouring over the dictionary focused on etymology - and I just love Greek and Latin. One of my absolute all time favorite books in the world is Kenneth Katzner's Languages of the World. In high school (before I dropped out) I think I had it permanently checked out of the library. When I dropped out I bought my own copy.
5. Sports. I hated sports as a kid in school. Probably because nobody picked me to be on their team. Hmmm, kind of like this stupid meme.

Sharing the Love
Since I never got tapped, I'm not sure if it's kosher for me to tap others... but I might as well. I'm already knee-deep, and I'd love to know some things about some other people on the blogosphere:

My Best Bud Carson.
   Actually, screw him. He got tapped 2x already and _KNEW_ that I've had this post waiting for like a month now. Miserable cuss, no way I give him one of my 'self-appointed' taps. No link love for him.
Brian Hitney
    Brian and I are former veterans in the war on chaos that was Coldwater Creek.
Jon Sharp
    Once upon a time Jon and I made things sing at Altiris.
Adam Sills 
    He's always got great insights either as blog comments, or via newsgroups.
Ali Parvaresh
    I don't know anything about Ali other than that he's from Tehran and linked to me the other day - so back at you Ali.

Posted on February 15, 2007 | | Comments (8) | TrackBack (0)

Next »