My view of the world

Knowing nothing about Windows Vista Home Premium, I went out an bought a Linksys wireless card with the “certified to run Vista” label.
The card is your basic wmp54g.
The label on the cd says to run it first. —–Do Not run the cd.
The included paperwork said not to run the cd, but to go to Linksys and download the drivers.

Hmmmmm. You’re installing a network adapter that needs drivers to work, and all you have to do is download the drivers from the internet, but the card won’t connect to the internet without the drivers, that you need to download from the internet……..
It may not be physically impossible for most people, but it seems to me to be just plain wrong.

In my case I installed the card and then used a long cat5 cable between the new machine and my router.
Windows not only discovered the new hardware, it downloaded the drivers from the Windows update site and installed them automatically.

I also installed Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 without a hitch.
I highly recommend this program. It’s only $99 and does most of what I need from Photoshop, which was priced at $649 over at Office Depot.

I installed Photoshop CS2 with a minor amount of stress.
It turns out that in order to enter the authorization code, I needed to right click on the executable and select run as administrator.

Lightroom 1.31 was also easy to install but it has a directory in a place I don’t want it. Someday I’ll find out how to fix it.
Version 1.4 was released and immediately pulled. Their blog says they are probably going back to Beta releases so other people can test and suggest.

Explorer is working and so is Firefox.

Well I’ve just had confirmation the M$ is as brilliant as ever. My new machine informed me that there was a problem. It generated one of those click here balloons.

It seems that it needs to download drivers for my Netgear 311 wireless card. That’s nice… I put the card in a couple of days ago and Winblows said it couldn’t find any drivers. Now that I’ve removed it from the system and replaced it with a card that does have drivers, Vista wants to download and install the drivers. Confirming what I already knew. Vista saves every piece of data. Probably so it can fink to M$.

Dave Johnson’s Digital Focus has a photo contest every month that appears in PC World.

This month my favorite had this in the photographer’s comments:
“I added the water afterwards in Photoshop using the Flaming Pear Flood filter.”

I know that a certain amount of manipulation is normal, be it in the darkroom or on the computer, but when you add entirely new feature such as water, where there was none, it changes the “reality” of the so-called photograph entirely. Shouldn’t it then fall into a category other than the one used by photographers using unaltered photos? And where do you draw the line?

Here’s a small version of what I’m discussing.

For the full picture go here.

I love Rollei and if I ever go back to film I’ll find another 2.8f. Shooting 2 1/4 x 2 1/4 through a good lens made for an image that you could work with comfortably.
Now, they bring us this.

In 2006, Rolleiflex introduced the original MiniDigi, which looked like the original but, due to popular demand it quickly sold out. The new MiniDigi AF (auto focus) 5.0 has been given some significant performance upgrades, including a 5MP image file from a 3MP CMOS sensor; auto focus (between 10CM and infinity); and a clear 1.1 inch TFT, which allows you to preview and review images on a very clear 1.1 inch monitor, which is located at the top of the camera as it is on the full-sized Rolleiflex TLR.

It is available through specialty retailers. Pricing is expected to be $399 MSRP.

The picture looks nice, and it also comes in black on black, but the camera is only 3 1/2 inches tall. That’s a long ways from the Rollei Twin Lens.

Ok now. The press and other bloggers are trying to pass off this digital miniature of the classic tlr as some kind of uber-cool.

I guess it’s ok, but why would they want to make a miniature that looks and feels cheap. –Like it should be sold in a souvenir shop and be hung off your keychain. When they could have made it the size of the original. –Now that would have been uber-cool.

As it is it’s just a dorky little gimmick using out of date technology, that’s a pain in the butt to operate.
This is one of those things you buy because it looks kinda cool and then you wind up tossing it in a drawer.
—Cute, but not impressive.

OK, Over my objections Old Dude talked me into writing a blog for his site. —So I wrote a blog about him. —Now his wife is threatening to send me a picture of him, passed out and drooling, to post.
Que Tim the Enchanter: I warned you, but did you listen to me? Oh, no, you knew it all, didn’t you?…..

The woman who claims to be my better half wants me to do the same about myself…… She usually gets her way.

I’m single, 56 years old, bald with goatee, What little hair I have left is short and gray.
I’m 6′4″, 285lbs (down from 330), my knees are shot, I’ve got one bad ankle, and a hip that goes wonky every so often.
I have diabetes and high blood pressure.
I’m a computer geek who makes less than $50k and is jones’n for another bike in spite of Vegas traffic.
My house is paid off.
I cook, I do my own laundry, I can sew and I’m capable of cleaning the bathroom, but that part would be difficult to prove.

As you can see, aside from not needing a surrogate mother to take care of me, I’m not exactly a great catch.
But a woman who is somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 and can pass for somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 says she finds me attractive, intelligent and charming.
—Don’t ask me….. I haven’t got a clue.

I went to Bestbuy to pick up a power supply and wound up with a Dell XPS 420. Which meant I had to buy a new video card and a new power supply in addition to the psu I was buying to fix my old box.

The basic stats on the 420 were an Intel Q6600 Quad core running at 2.4 with an ATI 2400 video card, 3gig of ddr2 ram, a cd/dvd burner, and a 320gig HD.

Now it has an Nvidia Geforce 9600 gt video card, an additional hd in the form of a WD 10krpm 150gig Raptor and a 650 watt psu.

It also came with Vista home Premium, which meant I had to buy a copy of XP pro for the day when I can’t stand Vista anymore and want to upgrade to XP.

I wanted the new video card because the other is ungodly slow by my standards and I wanted the 10k drive for Photoshop so it could use the slower drive as a scratch drive. I haven’t tested Photoshop yet, but the machine came with Photoshop Elements and I bought a copy of Corel Paint Shop Photo X2 as an upgrade to my X1 for $59.99 and it looks like it will be almost as good as Photoshop for my purposes.

The machine was a display model, since they no longer stock the 420 so it cost me $773 instead of $899 or some such.
It came with no disk, paperwork, or anything other than a dead keyboard, a mouse and a power cord.

It also took an hour or so before I could pick it up because they had to take the Bestbuy software off the drive.
It seems that the software they install resets everything every 30 minutes and prevents the modification of any profiles and so on.

On the whole it seems to be a nice machine, but by the time I was done with parts and software it cost me a little over $1900 to walk out the door.

If I could just learn to buy only what I needed, instead of deciding I wanted something more, I’d have a lot more money. But I’d have a lot fewer toys. –And we all know that whoever dies with………

I have 4 or five computers that run and enough parts to build a couple more, but they’re not as up to date as I’d like.
My power supply died on my game machine. I turned it off, a few weeks later I turned it on and…. Nothing. –Dead silence.

My mind ran the gambit of what-ifs while I checked connections. I finally broke down and pulled a smaller psu out of one of my unused machines just to see if that’s what was wrong. It was. Now my problem is that because of my video card and the possibility of adding another one I need at least a 750 watt.

This means I need to either order from Newegg or drive out to Fry’s. Both are dangerous. I have been jones’n for a new machine for some time now. (You will notice that it had been a few weeks since I had even turned on my game machine.)

For some reason I have been considering a machine like Apple’s G5 complete with dual quad core processors, only better.
When last I checked, by the time I was done maxing out the G5 configuration it was around $10k. –Trust me, I can build better, cheaper.

The only problem is, I have no idea what I would use it for. –It’d be nothing more than very expensive bragging rights.

None of my software will run on Apple and the two monitors in front of me have specs every bit as good as any Apple monitor. So of course I’m thinking about an iMac for photo editing…. I already paid for a copy of Photoshop CS2. If I go apple I either dual boot to Winblows, which kind of defeats the purpose of owning a Mac, or I invest in a new copy of Photoshop.

Logic tells me that I should order a psu online rather than go someplace where I can get my hands on all the parts or the machine I want. —It’s really hard for some of us to tell ourselves not to buy a new toy when we can actually reach out and touch it.

We’ll see.

I work with a self described Genius, who is the only person who does anything. –Every shop has at least one.

It wouldn’t be bad except he makes it a point to tell anybody dumb enough to listen, how much work he does and how nothing would ever get done if he didn’t do it.

If you work with one of these you are aware of their little tricks. If not. Pay attention….

Yesterday he handed me a small firewall that needed to be reconfigured. —So far so good.

He had it reset to the factory defaults, so all that was necessary was to install 2 ips. –Yeppers two IPS, 10 minutes total. One for access from our main server and one for the security video.
OKaaay. What’s wrong so far?

Well, if all it needed was a couple of IPs, why did he bring it all the way down from the other office?
Why did he hand it to me?
Why didn’t he tell me he planned on installing it today. —-Control Freak.

According to him, he is important. —The rest of us are peasants.

He also changes things in the network at will and doesn’t bother telling anyone. Much less discuss it. Not that it would do any good. —He’s right and the rest of us are idiots.

He tells everybody on the outside that he’s the system administrator and that I work for him.—- I dare this fool to give me a direct order.

Although, in a way he’s right. He has everything either configured in a way that nobody else could possibly make sense of, or he hides stuff. This applies to both hardware and software.

The configuration of some of our software is convoluted to begin with, and then he comes along and changes the install point and whatever else he feels like f***ing with.

He is also a button pusher. He will keep pushing buttons, until even he doesn’t know how he got it to work.

And the list goes on.
He is always right, and if he’s wrong, it’s somebody else’s fault or that’s not what he said.
He acts like he owns this company and gives orders about things that do not concern him.
He treats people as if they’re stupid and says so behind their backs.
His version of any incident depends entirely oh how he feels about that person.
He never documents anything.
He tells everyone to call him and only him.
Then he expects you to jump whenever he comes up with a useless job that allows him to feel like the boss…. And on and on.

With someone like this all you can do is develop a thick skin and simply consider the source.

These people find a way to make themselves indispensable to the company. —Replacing them would be expensive because of the time required for their replacement to figure out WTF they did and where they hid things.
They also make considerably less money than someone who really is as good as they delude themselves into believing they are.

Never trust these people, they are loyal only to themselves and they’ll throw you to the wolves in a heartbeat.

So laugh at their jokes, tell them thank you a lot, tell them how smart they are, and try to say nice things about them to your co-workers. (anything you say will get back to them) —Then maybe they’ll turn on someone else… Loyalty is not their strong suit.

A recent study revealed that nearly half of the Japanese population has at least once taken their mobile devices with them to the bathtub.

Whether the device was a mobile phone, a portable music player, an email device, or a game console, 41.2 percent of Japanese have admitted to using them while enjoying a relaxing bath.

According to the AFP, the poll conducted by video game maker Sega, and answered by 16,250 people, revealed that the statistics for such a habit were similar and applicable to all sexes and all ages. However, teenagers were the most likely to take their mobile devices to the bath. –Mostly for email, followed by music.

Here’s a link to an article on the BenQ-Siemens EF51

Here’s another article from the same site.

Sure looks better than the clunker offered by Verizon.

I’ve read this several places.
By making “super-standards” mode the IE 8 default, Microsoft officials claimed that going the full-fledged standards route would “break the Web.”

It looks to me like they’ve got that backwards.
If their so called Standards based browser doesn’t display pages correctly then the problem is a broken browser not a broken website.
Microsoft has always had a problem with playing nice with others. They came up with their own standards a few years back and then claimed that they were standards compliant.
So now they seem to say that if a website doesn’t comply with their standards then it’s the website that’s broken.

Here’s a recent statement in which they appear to be backpedaling a bit, but still insisting that they are the leaders in their game of catch-up:
“We started from a simple statement of ‘enable (and encourage) interoperable web development, but don’t force IE to break pages that work properly in IE today.’ I think we all want to converge to a world where a web developer doesn’t have to spend much time at all testing and recoding their site for different browsers. At the same time, we can’t break the web experience on current sites for users like my mom, even for as good a reason as improving standards compliance. With all the great styling and layout changes we’re working on in our new engine for IE8 to be much more standards compliant, that’s a lot of potential breakage.”

Yet another reason to use Firefox.

According to Pravda.ru:
Russia’s Federal Service supervising the field of mass communications and the nation’s cultural inheritance issued a formal notice to 2×2 TV channel in connection with the broadcast of cartoon series propagandizing brutality and violence. —One more warning and their license will not be renewed.

The above-mentioned TV channel does not recommend the viewing of Happy Tree Friends for children, mentally unbalanced and sensitive individuals, and those who defend “snotty childish cartoons.” “Each of these sweet little animals dies odd violent deaths in each episode,” the TV channel warns on its official website.

While the violence of these deaths is comparable to that of The Itchy & Scratchy Show (the short cartoon featured on The Simpsons), the portrayal of death in Happy Tree Friends is more graphic and articulate.

You can find them on the net at this address.
You need to watch them to the very end.