I don't like gin

I don't like gin! My father-in-law is a big gin & tonic person. I've always preferred a vodka tonic personally, usually with a bit of lime. Especially in the summer. I was traveling recently with an older guy in our company. It was a week long trip to Reno, so we a) spent a good bit of time together and b) spent a good bit of time drinking. He's a martini guy. Figuring it's too cold for vodka tonic but wanting something different, I started ordering vodka martinis. These are good. Even green olives (which I normally can't stand) are kind of a little punishment for me to get over the guilt. Ha! Soaked in vodka, they're not that bad.

Long story longer, when I got home I got the fixings for vodka martinis - which really just meant picking up green olives and Martini & Rossi Extra Dry Vermouth. In my mixer, it's a hand full of ice (5 cubes), 2 shots of vodka, 1 shot of vermouth and then shaken until my hand is cold. Strained into a glass, then stab 4 olives and drown them. Not bad. One or two after dinner occasionally is quite nice.

Don't worry, I'm getting to the gin.

This month's Maxim magazine had a section on booze. I didn't learn anything from the vodka, whiskey, rum and tequila sections, but was a little surprised to see a bit on gin. I just don't really count that in the top 5 boozes I guess. I've also seen shows on Discovery channel and such about the distillation process for various spirits, learning a lot about gin there. I've always thought it was a little flowery for my taste. Not like a flowery wine, but a bitey flower that's pretty pissed off. Anyway, I read up some online then about 'real' martinis. Apparently a true extra dry martini is a touch of vermouth then a glass of gin and ice. Knowing I didn't want to jump in like that, but curious if my tastes have changed, I made a regular stirred martini. 5 parts gin (in the cabinet already from the afore mentioned father-in-law) and 1 part vermouth over ice in the shaker, swirled around so as not to 'bruise' the gin, then strained. Stirred, not shaken. Drowned olives as before.

But here's the thing: it sucks.

It smells like potpourri and tastes like my lawn. Holding my breath to block out the smell helps it get down, but what kind of after dinner drink is that? Plus I've read that people drink this stuff to cleanse their palette before a meal. I guess it's better than cleaning off your tongue with sandpaper -- but I'd rather give that a try before I have another gin drink.

I really like scotch and have appreciation for how different brands bring a different smokey aroma and peaty taste. And each has its own aftertaste too. Maybe I've got a bum brand of gin here, but scotch differences are sometimes quite subtle. It's all still scotch using the widest brush. So you can keep your variations on the theme of turpentine filtered through decaying flower petals.

I don't like gin.

Dance, Monkeys, Dance

Dance, Monkeys, Dance

No comment necessary. This is pure awesome.

Wait, that was a comment. So, maybe one little opinion was necessary.

Well, it's not really necessary, but I wanted to give it anyway.

Some monkeys write down their thoughts hoping other monkeys care what they have to say. But each monkey is so wrapped up in their own little monkey worlds, they pretend to interact with other monkeys, but really only care about themselves. Didn't we evolve with the conception that cooperation was mutually beneficial? Give me a little monkey meat treat when you've got plenty and I have none gives you the promise of my debt and we can all come out on top. It works great until one monkey realizes he can get meat from everyone else and not give anything back. So the question becomes: does that selfish monkey live long enough to reproduce more effectively than all the other helpful monkeys in his tribe, and will his descendants take up his selfish ways? Walking through a mall today or driving down the highway, I'd say his genes have been pretty damn successful.

What kind of monkey are you?

update
Here's another version that sounds like it may have the original audio track by Ernest Cline.

New Phone!

Yes, I got my new phone. AT&T Tilt running Windows Mobile 6 and Goodlink 5.0. It's much faster than my old Treo 650 and the Windows OS is a bit more friendly and accessible than Palm OS ever was. There also seems to be a ton of software available, but I haven't dented this yet.


Size

The size and shape of this thing would be one complaint for many people looking at this phone. Of course any phone with a full qwerty keyboard will be of substantial size, there are many layout options out there now. What I did like about the Treo was its vertical layout which provides a relatively narrow keyboard. I could hold the device in my right hand and type with my thumb -- all with one hand. While I can't recommend emailing/texting while driving, it was possible to do with the Treo because of this property. A slider phone like the Tilt has a much wider keyboard. Even with my long skinny fingers, I just can't reach both sides of the keyboard with my thumb now. This layout seems to be better used sitting on a surface and poking one-handed with fingers, though I haven't really tried that.

Weight

It's heavy at 6.7 oz. It's a bit heavier than my old Treo 650 (6.3 oz) which puts it much more massive than the Treo 750 (5.4 oz). Carrying this or a Treo in the pocket of shorts with an elastic waistband often lands you in an uncomfortable position where the thing is banging around in there trying to pull your pants down. Much different than anyone used to light-weight phones like the Razor (3.4 oz) or even the Motorola Q9m (4.8 oz). It will be best suited to a belt holder, though I never used one of these for my Treo because I'm more likely to bang it into things. When traveling, it's either in my bag, on a table, or in the seat back of an airplane - no weight or size worries there, or need for a case.

Goodlink

We use Goodlink to connect to the work exchange server for email. However, the 8925 isn't currently officially a supported device. I have read though that people got Goodlink version 5 running on it. Determined, I set out to get this going which proved more challenging than I thought. First, it was not easy to navigate the Good website, and I ended up have to Google the right keywords to uncover the hidden download link. The main page is the Tech Support Download Page. There's lots of stuff there, and what you want is at the bottom, so install from an SD card, sdcard_5_0_0.exe. DO NOT DOWNLOAD THIS ON YOUR PHONE. This is a 26MB zip file with several supported platforms including PalmOS, SmartPhone (SM) and Pocket PC (PPC) and several different languages. To install this, I just copied the GetGoodLinkPPC2005.cab from the 'en' folder to my device using ActiveSync. Running this, you need a valid Goodlink account with an email address and pin. If you're replacing an existing device, you'll need your IT guy to reset the account. So you'll have an email from them in hand with a pin and work email address. Plug those in and the install goes smoothly, resetting the device once or twice. I haven't seen much difference between 4.9 (on my Palm Treo) and 5.0 (on Windows Mobile 6). Many of my settings were remembered which impressed me a bit. In short, while not officially supported and the device doesn't come with a "GetGood" app, it's pretty easy to set up and use on this device. After getting Good set up, make sure you configure ActiveSync not to sync Outlook email, calendar, etc. or else you'll end up with double copies of everything. Re-sync and it'll automatically delete all that if you synced it up before (which I did to get my contacts in there quickly).

Summary

It might sound like this is a big, heavy phone that is annoying to set up, but I've only highlighted some of the common things. Surfing the web using this phone is fast and amazing. There's support for WiFi, which means at home you can use your wireless router and land connection to surf even faster. It's got GPS, though I haven't played with this yet. It's supports 3G (though we only have Edge here) and BlueTooth. It really is an amazing device given some of the installed applications. I'm a happy camper!

Anyone want to buy a slightly used Treo 650?

My new phone ????

I'm waiting. And waiting. After much research, I'm pretty settled on getting what was initially called the AT&T 8925. This is the HTC Kaiser or TyTN II. Now it's being called the AT&T Tilt.

While I was leaning towards a Treo 750 running Windows Mobile, that phone is showing its age already, even if it is a huge upgrade from my Treo 650. I want current generation technology, and that includes WM6. It's not clear the Treo 750 has a migration plan to WM6 or not. Plus, there's no GPS and some other missing features (3G, WiFi) compared to the current generation. So the question then is to wait for the Treo 800 or not. But that could be easily next Spring before it appears. Then you're rolling the dice on which carrier gets it first. Maybe Verizon, maybe AT&T, who knows. Verizon is likely because they're stuck at the 700 now. I'm not opposed to switching, but the devil you know....

Anyway, once I kind of decided on the 8925, I've been asking around and watching the internets with mounting frustration. Sure, you can't call its release 'delayed' because they've never acknowledged the product even exists. Until now. Tilt Your World. I'm not sure they meant for this to be an external site or not, but I could see them punishing some poor IT guy getting the rack for this. There's even a calendar of events on the site. I'm getting my hopes up for a 10/5 launch, but it might not be for a couple more weeks either.

I'm a little annoyed with the AT&T guy at the Galleria Mall who claimed to know nothing about a replacement for the 8525 -- but yet knew just about everything else I asked about. I know there's a need to push the current devices off the shelf, but c'mon. There's a point at which you realize you're dealing with an informed consumer and at least come clean that you can't talk about it. You don't call to another store guy and say "have you heard about an 8525 replacement?" to back up your ignorance. So I'll be going to the AT&T shop in the other mall probably. And a note: always work with official factory stores, not licensed resellers. The resellers only get paid if you activate a new line. Upgrades don't buy them anything, so you'll get talked into stuff you don't want or need.

One tooth down!

My boy lost his first baby tooth today! Exciting times! Of course, today is school picture day, and I thought for sure it would have come out yesterday so his first grade picture would have a gap right in front.
He was just watching some after school TV before dinner and suddenly yells, "it's out!" He's a bit upset by the experience with wonderful quotes like "I don't feel like me anymore" and "I want it back in". He didn't like the blood at all, but he's got a nice big gap for the big-boy tooth to come in.

Classic prank

Too bad the kid got suspended. Schools should really be encouraging this kind of effort in its students rather than punishing them. Here is the article and (of course) the YouTube.

Perception

We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. The martyrs go hand in hand into the arena; they are crucified alone. Embraced, the lovers desperately try to fuse their insulated ecstasies into a single self-transcendence; in vain. By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. Sensations, feelings, insights, fancies—all these are private and, except through symbols and at second hand, incommunicable. We can pool information about experiences, but never the experiences themselves. From family to nation, every human group is a society of island universes.

I read the paragraph above recently in the early pages of The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley. Huxley is probably best known for Brave New World (which I highly recommend if you've never read it). I was looking forward to reading this essay, but this paragraph caught me a little off guard. It reads not as if written by an enlightened intelligent person, but like a depressed and lonely sole. If that was any indication for the rest of the story, I wasn't going to be impressed.

Luckily, things turned around and this marked paragraph now seems a little out of place, though there is some follow up explanation in the book to bring it back down since we "are sufficiently like one another" so that we can understand and care about each other. But then I went back again after I finished the book and re-read this section that stood out so strongly. There is a very powerful imagery contained there and I can't really agree with but I do appreciate. No matter how well you know another person or how well connected you are to your community in your corner of the planet, in the end your "soul" - what makes you you - exists entirely within your own head, isolated from everyone and everything except through your senses, your perception. Maybe that's obvious, but I had never thought about it like that before.

I'm looking forward to reading more of his works.

PS - I linked the full text of The Doors of Perception, but this is one that is better read on a comfortable couch or lawn chair, so get the printed version.

Toughest Mario Level EVER

OK, I've just spent the last 5 minutes laughing my butt of at this video

It walks through a level that severely frustrated me many years ago. Somebody found the original movie and added a commentary like he was playing. The guy's commentary is very entertaining. Of course, the player is obviously very capable and familiar with the level because once he uncovers a new trick, he just works around it. But the running commentary is priceless. Strong language, so NSFW. If you watch the whole 23 minutes, your frustration level will be high -- but nowhere close to what it is when actually trying to play insane levels like this.

For completeness, here's a video of somebody actually finishing this. Of course, he kind of cheats using some issues with the ROM emulator (passing through walls) and exploits the breakable ceiling, but at least you get to see the whole world in like 4 minutes.

Harry Potter

I just finished the 7th and final book in the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. It was good. A very good ending for the series. And as a whole, the series was actually very good. Not many books can follow an eleven year old through school and teenage years as well as J. K. Rowling has done here. Many criticize the later books for being darker and less humorous, but in reality it was the first couple movies that brought out the humor initially rather than the early books. I think for an eleven year old to pick up the first book and read them as they were released, the maturity level increases appropriately. The final book isn't one I would recommend to many pre-teens.

I resisted reading the series until the third or fourth book was on its way and everyone was raving about getting it. So I picked them up to key in on this cultural phenomenon that I had let pass by without much regard. I was so engrossed, I read through the series non-stop and became one to eagerly anticipate the next story. Since then, once another book was announced, I would re-read the previous one to get back up to speed and then read the next installment. A strategy much required for the later books that follow previous events closely and draw upon your growing store of knowledge of past characters and events.

While they can be classified as children's books, I really whole-heartedly recommend them to everyone. They're good stories and a nice escape from the real world. The movies are good too, but no match for the books -- think of them as Cliff's Notes that cover the high points of the stories. It's sad to see the series end, but I am confident any number of side projects and parallel universe books will crop up in the future. Think about the Star Wars and Star Trek series of novels. Most of us just know the movies, but there are entire legions of books that fill in every void and cover all the important historical events left out of the core set. I look forward to seeing the Harry Potter universe expand in this way as well. The various characters are just too rich to let die: Luna Lovegood, Hagrid, the Longbottoms, etc. With the first couple books, some of the text books students were to buy were published along side the novels, so it would be nice to see The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore in print too. I think. That has the potential to be done very poorly, however.

Anyway, read the whole series. It's worth the time.

Dodge Magnum

I'm thinking I should start doing little reviews of the cars I rent. Or maybe not. But I wanted to comment on the Dodge Magnum that I drove around Houston last week. When these were first released, I really liked the idea. Rear wheel drive, lots of power, unique look. They got some bad reviews on rear visibility, which is to be expected. And in the end, no matter how cool you think it might be, it's still a Dodge.

Anyway, I had a few comments on the garden-variety rental version I had. This was a standard automatic 6 cylinder (no Hemi for me).

PROs:

• A good amount of power. Stomping on the pedal got you moving fairly quickly.
• Roomy interior - lots of leg and head room in the front, the rear looked good size, and the trunk seemed to be accessible. Not huge, but better than either a sedan trunk or a hatch back.

CONs:

• Poor driver's seat. No lateral support. Taking a normal turn at highway speeds means you start to roll out of the seat. You shouldn't have to grasp the steering wheel tighter to stay seated. My old TBird had nice side bolsters that kept you in place and that was 10 years ago!
• Lame handling. Good power, but the back end is where all the power is and the weight isn't. Hit the gas on a turn and you feel it get awfully squirrelly awfully quickly. That's a bad combination - especially with a little wetness on the roads. It didn't inspire confidence as a go-fast car, that's for sure.
• Rear window sucks. First, it's is horribly small, with all these pillars all over the back cargo area. Visibility is bad. But what's really laughable is this little tiny windshield wiper they stuck on the back. The window there is somewhat vertical, so a wiper may be required in low-speed, heavy-precipitation driving. But the glass is very wide and very short. With this limiting aspect ratio, they stuck a very tiny wiper there in the middle. The edges don't get cleared at all -- you just get this little peephole in the middle of the window. Either do it right or don't do it at all. I wouldn't have missed it during the rain if it wasn't there; I would just turn on the rear defroster and deal. Otherwise, if you have to stick a wiper back there, put two. Or one big one mounted on the side. Something, anything, better than what ended up there. It was just silly embarrassing to turn this thing on in traffic.
• Ignition location. What's wrong with the steering column anymore? If you're doing something fancy with fobs, okay, move it around and be stylish. But this one was flat against the dash behind the steering wheel. A good place for the various fog light or other switches, but it housed just the ignition all alone. Along the steering column this rather ugly but necessary area is hidden away most of the time. It's just ugly there. Negative style points and no added convenience.
• Cruise control stick location was poor. The wipers and turn signals were located on one stick on the left side of the steering wheel (no on-wheel controls). And the cruise control was on a smaller stick, slightly further back and slightly up. More than once my first day in the car I hit this little tiny twig with the typical force of a turn signal and I thought it would break. Just a poor design choice. What's wrong with the other side of the steering wheel? I hope this car has an option to put all this on the steering wheel, then it's not an issue. But it just harked back to old cars with 3 or 4 different wands poking out of the steering column.

I could nit-pick some more. The wiper controls were counter intuitive. You push the headlight switch to toggle the fog lights, but it wasn't clear at first how to turn on all the interior lights. The arm rest along the door was in the wrong position. The gas tank lid was kind of flippy floppy and not clear how to open. Do you push it to pop? There's no dent to indicate you just pull it, but that's how you got it open. Cheap.

If the high-end SRT version also comes with a major suspension upgrade, it might be worth considering. But it's still kind of hard to justify that much $$ just for the Hemi name. After all, it is still a Dodge.

Application.EnableVisualStyles()

Alrighty, I just found a solution to something that's been bugging me for quite a while. When you create a standard .NET 1.1 Windows desktop application with Visual Studio .NET 2003, the user interface elements (controls) look like those on the left of the picture. They're very much Windows-like, but basically very plain - kind of old-school Windows 2000 era looking. However, when you create a standard desktop app with Visual Studio 2005 based on .NET 2.0, the controls have a much more modern look that we're all used to by now (as seen on the right picture). A little snazzier and much for Windows XP looking with the shaded button, colored slider, etc.

This is all find and dandy. But now say you have a VS 2003 (7.1) project that gets converted to VS 2005 (8.0). With all the version 2.0 assemblies linked in, I expected the converted, re-built application to look just like a standard .NET 2.0 app. It didn't. It still looked old-school. Everything looked to convert without issues, and many of the ancillary XML files were similar. I was missing any differences until I finally looked at the source code of an application written in VS 2005. By default, the main method looks like:

static void Main()
{
Application.EnableVisualStyles();
Application.SetCompatibleTextRenderingDefault(false);
Application.Run(new Form1());
}

See? Trickiness here. A normal VS 2003 application only has the single Run() method call. The key addition that changes the user interface look is the first one - EnableVisualStyles(). There's some good background information on this blog. Turns out you can add this to a .NET 1.1 application as well. Not all the elements are updated, but at least the method call is backwards compatible so you can add it to your code and still build in either .NET 1.1 or 2.0. But the key point is that in their infinite wisdom, MS decided that they'd add something to the default template for desktop applications to make your .NET apps look better on newer versions of Windows. I can't hold that against them, but it seems like a strange way to do this - adding extra lines to the Main() method. But then again, if they had done something sneakier, everyone would complain about that too.

They've also added the SetCompatibleTextRenderingDefault method call also. This is another line to basically make up for changed internal things - they fixed the text rendering engine, but if you relied on the old one for spacing, things could get messy. More info here. Instead of sneaking this in the back door and moving everyone to the new model, they added this explicit call to the template. Again, kind of messy but the best way I guess. I can just see the Main() method for Forms applications when .NET 6.0 comes out -- 28 different method calls to make sure things still work OK for .NET 1.1. I wonder why Java doesn't suffer from such problems?

There you have it. For newbs that are just seeing Windows.Forms since VS Express stuff came out, none of this matters. Unless you want to uglify your desktop apps and make them look old by removing these new method calls. But for .NET 1.1 app writers, you can beautify your apps a bit by using the OS visual styles. And for those of us that are always moving between platform versions, it's a good feeling to find out why things change sometimes. I'll admit that I should have noticed this sooner, but .NET 2.0 and VS 2005 now does the partial class thing, so the Main() method is in a source file called Program.cs instead of with all the design stuff as it is in 1.1 and 2003. Oh well, eventually I dug it out myself because searching the internet was useless here. All the search terms you would use just lead you in circles because they're too common or too many are needed. Searching for "user interface change visual studio 2005" is a good example -- lots of stuff, but nothing even close to the issue I'm trying to solve.

I hate garage sales

I really do.

This topic comes up today as I sit in my home office facing the neighborhood street. Both neighbors that I can see are participating in the weekend community garage sale that runs Friday and Saturday.

First, I hate the general concept of a garage sale. If you have old junk to get rid of, get rid of it. Give it to Goodwill or the Salvation Army. If it has any value, sell it on Craig's List or eBay. What is the point of selling a beat up 10 year old soft cover book for 10 cents? And your turntable from the early 80s is garbage to 99% of the populace and valuable only to those looking for old turntables -- who will be watching eBay or Craig's List. Then you'll get $10 for it instead of $1.

Just about the only exception I can think of are used kids toys. I'm not talking a beat up spiderman action figure, but those large plastic buildings and things every modern 2 year old ends up with somehow. These things will last forever, and they're too big to ship anywhere, and Goodwill probably doesn't have the space either. So these should be recycled within the current community of parents of young children. But still, why a garage sale? Know what I do? On Sunday evening before Monday morning trash pickup, I set it at the end of my driveway slightly away from the rest of the garbage (or wait until the next morning to put out the real trash). In a dozen times of doing this with big plastic kids toys or old furniture, the stuff has been there the next morning exactly once. And in that case the piece was crap. And the large-item pick up of our trash service got it Monday morning anyway. Easy. And I didn't have to put up with hundreds of strangers wandering through my garage all day long.

I'll admit some of this feeling is left over from my childhood of being dragged to various garage sales. Back then though, there was a little more innocence to everything. There was a slight chance of hitting a nice antique somewhere. My brother and I were also keenly aware of baseball cards and possible hidden gems. But in today's age, anyone with valuable antiques or baseball cards know it. And if they're for sale, they're on eBay or for auction at the local auction house. The owners are going to get every last dime their personal treasures may be worth. You're not going to score a $5000 antique shaker desk at a garage sale for $20.

Working a garage sale also stinks. A majority of these are held on days that end up being just too hot. Why do I want to stand in my garage all day on a Saturday? To make maybe $100 haggling for every last dime? Here's a task for all the garage seller people: take the amount of money you made and divide by the sum of hours you spent running the sale, advertising the sale, and setting up for the sale. What's that come out to? $2/hour maybe? If you're lucky. I can think of a million other things I'd rather do with my weekend than earn $2/hour standing in a garage talking to morons.

Which brings me to the next topic of the attendees of garage sales. It's been interesting this Friday morning watching this cross section of York county park in front of my house. The first thing is that this is a Friday -- so I'm really only seeing a) retired people or b) unemployed peopled. Now both these groups could certainly be in a position where every last dime helps. Here's one way I can help you folks out -- stop going to garage sales and buying crap you don't need. Really. Sure, 50 cents is a great price for that 5 year old $50 remote control car. But I could have saved you another 50 cents. And how much are you paying for gas driving from sale to sale in that '86 Cutlass? 50 miles * $3 per gallon / 17 miles per gallon = $8.82. There's another $8 I could have saved you. Or at least you could have driven to Walmart with that job application in hand.

Even on a Saturday where whole families are drug out of the house bargain hunting for used bicycles and decades old video games. Nobody that visits a garage sale is ever in a very good mood. Mothers yelling at kids, kids running around wildly, fathers wishing they were home either a) watching TV or b) taking care of something that needs done and this is his only 'free' day of the whole weekend where he can finally get one of the nagging tasks off the list, but no, here he is digging through stuff that will be in the trash Monday morning unless his spoiled kids just have to have it.

But here we are anyway with half the people trying to get a couple bucks for their old crap and other people with money burning holes in their pockets that can't wait to buy old crap. Capitalism at its best. Or worst?

Leonard Cohen

I've been a fan of some Leonard Cohen stuff for years. Honestly, it first started with the soundtrack to Natural Born Killers where a couple of his songs appear. Definitely one of the top 10 movie soundtracks ever and includes Waiting for the Miracle and The Future from Cohen, but also a great cover of You Belong to Me by Bob Dylan. So I've been somewhat familiar with his stuff, but just recently got a lot more familiar as my little lady was choosing songs to sing at performances this summer and fall. Turns out she kept picking songs that he wrote. These include Halleluha (you'll know this from the Shrek soundtrack as covered by John Cale) and Suzanne, which again lots of people covered, but the Judy Collins version is the one she was into.

While familiar with him, I didn't actually have any albums. His stuff is pretty popular to cover, so I've got many songs he wrote, but nothing of his. I just grabbed a couple and am even more impressed. Awesome lyrics in just about every song. His voice is one of those that is give or take (think Bob Dylan or Tom Waits), but it's good music to play while working.

So go pick up The Essential Leonard Cohen two CD set. Now. Go. Great stuff.

First MINI modification

In what may be a long series of upgrades for the MINI, I made my first modification. I replaced the standard antenna with a little stubby one. The stock on is about 18" long and skinny given the car that RC look. So I ordered a replacements that's just 4" tall. It tapers a bit as it goes up, but the bottom bit is the same size as the stock one.

I order from MiniCarParts.net where we've order a few other things (hat, clothes, etc.). The tiny envelope was delivered by DHL and I was caught off guard. I don't know why, but I expected something larger than an envelope you might get a CD shipped in. Timidly I opened it up to find the packing slip and the tiny little antenna. But no installation instructions, which worried me for a minute until I saw the threads at the bottom.

Installation was trivial. I just reached over and unscrewed the stock one, screwed this one on, then stuck in they key and turned on the radio. Reception was fine. And it looks cool.

A search after the fact reveals that this antenna will fit a lot of late model cars besides the MINI:

• MINI Cooper
• Volkswagen Jetta,Golf and Rabbit
• Mitsubishi EVO
• Scion tC and Scion xA
• Nissan 350Z
• Audi A4 or S4
• Honda S2000

So why did they put that goofy looking thing on the MINI to start with? Surely the 350Z doesn't have an 18" remote control car looking thing on it! Even though I do see that the Scion tC comes with the same stock one as the MINI does.

Corrupt Registry!!!!

Oh my, two blog posts in one day. But this one had me sweating quite a bit (not that Forza 2 doesn't )

After playing around installing and testing some old games for my son to play (he's into StarCraft now, but I was always more of a Command & Conquer fan). So I installed the second in the series - Tiberium Sun which had a good story line and much better graphics than the original. But for some reason it wouldn't run correctly, so I uninstalled it this morning (not long after my blog post). I also uninstalled a few other things I don't use while the control panel was open. A dialog wanted me to reboot, but I always decline because I'll do it when I want to. But then my system started acting a little odd, so I obliged and closed everything up and rebooted. And I see the following:

Windows XP could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM

along with a suggestion to boot from a Windows XP CD and select 'r' to repair. In my experience, this never works, but I tried it anyway. It didn't work. After some poking around and lots of other things, I found an MS Knowledge Base article that gave me the right clues. Luckily I have a clue with these things and knew not everything was kosher here, so let me outline my fix for anybody else with this issue and also for myself when this happens next time!

The article suggests that you back up your current registry files, which I did and I recommend doing yourself too. Boot with an XP CD and choose 'r' and let it complain about the registry - but it then drops you to a command line. Now just copy the 5 key files: DEFAULT, SAM, SECURITY, SOFTWARE and SYSTEM from c:\windows\system32\config to somewhere like c:\windows\tmp. We can always return to this broken configuration if we need to.

But the next step says to restore backup versions of these files from c:\windows\repair. The problem here is that all these files are dated on my system from when Windows XP Service Pack 2 was released - May 2005. Which means overwriting my corrupt files with these basically blank registry files will reset my system to largely a fresh installation. All the user files will be gone and you'll need to re-install everything. This is not what you want to do unless everything else has failed.

Instead, you want to find more recent versions (un-corrupted hopefully) of your registry files to repair. This is outlined in Part Two of the article. Dig into c:\System Volume Information from the command prompt in the recovery console. Change into a recent _restor{} directory and you'll see a bunch of subdirectories with names like RP815, RP816, etc. Be careful and check times because if you grab the absolute latest, it may be corrupt too -- or if you tried the first suggestion from MS will have the old 2005 registry with new dates. Look into the highest RP### directory under the 'snapshot' directory. Hopefully you'll see a bunch of files with names like _REGISTRY_MACHINE_SYSTEM. If not, move to the next newer restore point -- not every restore point will have a backup of the registry. I had to go back two or three versions to find them. Now, do as the article suggests and copy the 5 files again to c:\windows\tmp so you have another place to restore to. From there, copy these guys to c:\windows\sytem32\config and rename them to their proper names.

Now cross your fingers and type 'exit' to reboot the machine. Hopefully your standard startup screen will show up. Unless you were just doing a major overhaul when the registry was corrupted, you shouldn't notice anything different. Success!

Next step is to load up your backup programs and back up everything you care about. Everything. Go buy an external firewire drive if you need to. Back up everything now because you never know if the next crash will be worse or not!!!

Forza 2

I've been playing Forza Motorsport 2 for the last week or two. Unlike other racing games like PGR3 which are largely arcade-style racing, Forza is really more of a racing simulation. The idea is that it keeps track of lots of various aspects of physics and tries to model tire friction, weight balance, etc. Overall, it does a pretty good job. Running around in a Lotus Exige, if you lift the throttle slightly mid-turn, you feel the car start to oversteer, which is what you'd expect in real-world cars of this caliber. It also has various things like ABS brakes, traction control and stability management to keep the car planted; but you can turn these off and the difference is quite accurate to real life. This is much different than the arcade racers where you keep the gas pedal floored and bounce off the walls or other cars.

So if you're into racing sims, FM2 for the XBox 360 is a good one. But what prompted me to write today isn't my addiction to this type of game where I must win every event as quickly as possible before I go insane.

It's some of the artwork I've seen posted online of how people are painting their cars. At first, I thought, "pretty cool" and wondered of various themes I could possibly create (limited though they may be being my artistically-limited self). But then I read a tutorial, and my thoughts changed lines. First off, because the tutorial will easily draw out a TLDNR for those not interested, the primary point is that you cannot upload pictures to the game. That means all of this artwork you see of fancy cars was done by hand.

Now, there are some very talented people out there doing this stuff. And I certainly respect their talent. However, I'm just not on their page. Given my limited XBox time, I would rather play the game rather than draw pictures using primitive shapes and basic effects. Having said that, my kids will spend an hour or more in front of Microsoft Paint making random things, but I for one cannot. Sure, I'll pick an appropriate color for a car I've purchased -- dark blue for the Audi RS 6, please. And yellow for the Lotus of course. But beyond that, I'm just not going to spend the time.

I'll admit that if they let you upload graphics from the network or a thumb drive that I would be slightly more tempted to create something original (well, kind of, because I wouldn't have drawn the original source). But I refuse to use my gaming time to draw rather than race!

"These are the real heroes"

3 Hurt in Vegas Casino Shooting

Some local Vegas idiot starts shooting randomly down onto a casino floor. He managed to hit a few people, but luckily none of them were hurt critically. But the coolest part is that some bystanders saw this going on -- and they tackled the psycho and pinned him down. They were off duty police officers from out of town and two military personnel. Bravo.

"These are the real heroes. They saw him shooting and tackled him and held him," police Lt. Randy Sutton said. He identified those who stepped in as three off-duty out-of-town police officers and two military personnel, but he did not know their names.

I agree totally. I would like to have been one of these guys, but in reality if I was there I'd probably be one of the people knocking over chairs running for cover. I can't say I'd pull the George Costanza move of rushing past children and elderly women, but my mindset is not one to throw myself on top of a gun-wielding nutbar.

Roswell in the news. Again.

Here's a fox news story that came out today: Dead Airman's Affidavit: Roswell Aliens Were Real. It discusses a death-bed confession of a person apparently involved in the original story 60 years ago.

I admit and agree that these stories sometimes make one second guess what really happened out in the desert at the start of the cold war. But really, why would aliens who have mastered space travel be coming out her to monitor Earth? Why? Surely close to 100% of what they'd need to know could be gleamed from remote sensing, so why buzz us? If we found primitive life on a planet we would either get down in there and get involved or just put a satellite in orbit to observe. Whatever, the arguments are numerous.

But people will always be fascinated by the possibilities. I don't really doubt there's life out there somewhere. It's almost a statistical certainty. There's a recent article in Scientific American about the odds for life on Mars (slim) and Titan (better) - and those are just in our solar system. But being capable of space travel and actually coming to visit Earth to observe/abduct humans borders on absurd.

Google Maps' Street View

I read a blurb on Google's Street View not that long ago. I then went to New York to stay at a hotel that I knew where it was, but had never stayed there before. So I needed parking information and was doing my regular old "search parking" around the area. But then I noticed the little "Street View" box and started playing with it. Within seconds, I found the scene pictured above -- a parking garage right around the corner (basically under the hotel). Not only did I find what I wanted, but I could also see it so I'll recognize it driving down the street. Pretty freakin' cool. To be sure this was tied to the Sheraton, I called their desk and asked about parking, to which I was told about a garage on 52nd street -- exactly the one I found. Even cooler.

Since then, the thing has gotten very popular. But not so much for finding directions, but for picking apart all the random daily life scenes caught by the camera car driving through major cities. Here is the top 15 sightings.

Summer

Summer called. He said "Everybody get the fuck ready, I'm coming," and hung up.

Something Works!

I'm always amazed when something works as advertised. Especially in the PC/tech gadget world. I've been around the block long enough to know I end up having to do everything at least twice, and then many free/great ideas just don't pan out.

I wandered across a Free Themes site that has a bunch of mp3 and mid songs for download. I was specifically looking for the Robot Chicken theme and found a couple variations. Awesome. Of course, they're mp3 files and my Treo 650 doesn't play mp3s as ring tones out of the box. Sucks. Reading around, it looks like I need a $30 program called Ringo to let me do this. Yeah, right. Um, no. Using mp3 ring tones sounds cool, but not worth $30 for a phone I'm growing to hate to fill a void that's standard on anything new. At the bottom of some random page I found a like to some freeware that's supposed to do this for me. And to the theme here, I fully expected many things. Any of the following, really: bogus software, corrupted downloads, uninstallable files, huge application that won't fit, and then it wouldn't do as it promised.

Surprise! It actually works. The program is called MiniTones and you download a prc file that installs easily through the Palm Desktop app. Then the program shows up and does as promised -- lets you crop mp3 files it finds and add them to the ringt one list. Simply amazing.

Religion leads to war. Spirituality leads to peace.

Religion leads to war. Spirituality leads to peace.


It's an interesting statement. Granted, on some levels it is just another bumper sticker that can say a lot or say nothing at all depending on the reader. But take a minute and think about it. On your way, do a Google Images search for "religion war" and then do one for "spirituality war". Interesting, no? Almost 4 million violent images versus a hundred thousand images, many of which are artful.

I listened to a couple people speak this weekend on the difference between religion and spirituality. While I of course learned something about them, after the fact you start to learn something about yourself as well. I have said before that I like UU because one can receive a spiritual connection to the community without being religious, and this is a key point for me. My issues with organized religion are many but easily illustrated by a few uniquely Catholic issues like the Nicene Creed and the recent discussion of what happens to unbaptized babies. The specific challenges are that you've got a belief system literally configured and shaped my plain old men in fancy hats. Men of power surely, but no closer to God than the guy mopping their floors. Why is it up to them to tell me that an unbaptized baby spends eternity in limbo or they really can go to heaven? Instead of providing structure for one to realize their own personal spirituality, religious institutions dictate a belief system to their flocks. Free thinking is not allowed. The cynic in me says this should be OK for the average American given their typical intellectual capacity - but maybe people are narrow-minded and dim because they've never been forced to think for themselves in the first place? Cause rather than effect.

Forgive the rant. Think about the title.

New York, New York

I'll be heading up to New York tomorrow. I think it's been almost 6 months since my last visit there (maybe September?), so it's definitely been a while. I got out of a mid-February conference I usually attend (and I'm still happy about that since they got snowed in that week!). I'll be staying at one of my favorites - the W Hotel on Lexington. The conference I'm at is down at the Grand Hyatt, but that's an easy walk. Now that the weather has cleared up, I'm looking forward to the drive up mid-day tomorrow with the top down . The drive back on Thursday night might be less pleasant with some rain in the forecast, but it's always easier driving home.

And going home Thursday is really the sad part. For the first time in 6 years, I'll miss my son's birthday. To make things worse, his mom has to work late that day too, which means the whole thing will be a big confusing shuffle. I missed the morning of his birthday last year as I was coming home from this conference via a meeting in Jersey City, but was home by dinner time. I'll be leaving NY after dinner this trip, so might not see him at all. Next year I'll have to send a proxy to this conference. I had a chance to go to Seattle instead to spend Tuesday at Redmond and that would have probably gotten me home in time for his big day, but I really didn't want to fly across the country and back for a single day of meetings. Of course, I'll be calling into a couple of those meetings from my hotel room Tuesday evening anyway. Sometimes there's just no escape - but it sucks worse when you let down the people around you.

Half Pills

Every night I've been taking a half of a pill. They come in a typical little Nature Made bottle. My brain being as it is, each and every night I wonder if I'll tap out an already split pill or if I'll have to break another one in half. So I started thinking about the odds.

Clearly the first day by odds are 0% to pull out a half pill. I break one in half and return the other half to the bottle. On day #2, there is now 1 half pill and 49 whole pills, so my odds are exactly 2% in pulling a half pill. From here the numbers get non-deterministic because it depends on if I pulled the half pill or not. If I did on day #2, my odds drop back to 0% for day #3 since there are no more halves. If I had to split another one on day #2, then on day #3 there are 2 halves and 48 whole pills giving the odds of 4%. While running some simulations might be interesting to get some typical behaviors, the question that kept popping in my head is what do the odds really look like over time?

This is easily computed in a spreadsheet because the odds on the next day depend on the day before. While this isn't applicable to any particular day (since your particular observations depend on your current count of whole and half pills), it might make a pretty picture. Looking at the math, on day #1, there are 0 half pills and 50 whole pills. Given. On day #2 there is 1 half pill and 49 whole pills. Given. On day #3 you have a 2% chance of grabbing that half pill, and if you don't you add to the number of half pills by 1 (a 98% chance). Mathematically then the theoretical number of half pills on day #3 is the number on day #2 (1), plus a 98% chance of adding 1, minus a 2% chance of removing one. Or if p2 = percentage chance of pulling a half on day 2 and h2 = number of halves on day 2, then the number of half pills on day 3 is:

h3 = h2 + (1-p2) - p2

The number of whole pills on day 3 is the number on day 2 minus a 98% chance of pulling another whole one. Using 'w' to denote whole pills we have:

w3 = w2 - (1-p2)

Since we're interested at the percentage on day 3, we compute the quotient of the number of halves divided by the total of these two values, or:

p3 = h3/(h3 + w3)

Since this is too ugly to do in HTML, I'll leave it at that instead of building the whole equation. If you plug in the numbers for day #3, in general you have a 3.92% chance of getting a half pill since there are 1.96 half pills and 48.02 whole pills in the bottle. It's not obvious maybe, but there's a check you can do on the math. Consider that there are 100 total "doses" in the original bottle. After each day, the number of doses drops by 1, whether or not you had to break a pill. Therefor at any given day, mathematically the sum of 2*hN + wN = 101-N where N is the day#. Checking then, on day #3, 2*1.96 + 48.02 = 98 doses. The 101 is there instead of 100 because of where I started counting days (day #1 sees h1=0, w1=50, d=100)

You can write the equations recursively where you replace the '3's above with a subscripted "n" and replace the '2's with a subscripted "n-1". This lends itself nicely to a long column in a spreadsheet, computing the odds from day #1 through day #100. Because of the nature, we don't end up with exactly 1 half pill on day #100 and a 100% chance of getting it. But if we round to integers and step through the values, that is exactly what you will end up with of course.

Now have a look at the graphic for today's blog. This is a chart tracking various values from Day #1 through #100 on the x-axis. Counts of the number of half pills (red line, left y-axis) and the number of whole pills (green line, left y-axis) flow smoothly and as you might expect. The number of whole pills steadily decrease over time, flattening out a bit as the number of halves and wholes get closer past day #50 or so. The number of half pills increases quickly at first, then slows as they become numerous before the odds catch up and they also decrease at an ever increasing rate. The odds of pulling out a half pill (blue line, right y-axis) starts very low but increases continuously. Again, it should be 100% for all real-world cases on day #100, but here it ends at about 87%.

There are some assumptions in this graph:

• The bottle is perfectly well mixed (half pills don't settle at the bottom)
  
• You tap out only a single pill each time
• If you do pull out multiples you randomly pick (which is impossible, so see previous)
  
• You take the pill that you tapped out instead of looking for a half because you're too tired and lazy to break one that night

But I think to illustrate the point, these assumptions are all OK. I'm not trying to simulate human behavior here, but just figure out what my probable odds are of pulling out a half pill. I've verified for myself that after day #45 I'm more likely to pull a half pill while before then I should be prepared to always have to break one.

Violent Games and TV

Article: Study: Violent Video Games Only Affect Unstable Youth

Interesting, but not surprising. It's good to see that someone is actually looking into this. I'm pretty tired of reading how evil violent games are whenever some idiot goes off half-cocked and hurts himself or someone else. Reminds me of all the heavy metal things back in the 80s with Ozzy and Judas Priest. And probably similar to the whole "rock 'n' roll" thing in the 50s. It will always be something with these people.

This reminds me of something a colleague said when I was in Colorado recently. He was discussing his kids (about 8 and 12 I believe) and their parental controls in what TV and movies they are allowed to watch. He commented at one point that anything rated 'R' for nudity or language they are very careful about. Then almost as an aside he says, "but I guess they can watch all the violence they want." This is pretty consistent with most parents I think. There may be levels of violence (e.g., staying away from horror and gore), but the general premise is that we're desensitized to violence but won't let our kids see boobs or heavy petting.

That brings up a pretty cool experiment. (Well, a thought experiment anyway since you don't really want to warp innocent kids just to prove a point). But what if you take two sets of kids and control what they're watching on TV and movies at a level consistent with normal parenting. So they will be exposed at some level to everything (commercials, friends, etc.) but you strongly guide their regular and repeated exposure. For one group, you avoid all sexually explicit materials and movies but let violence slide. For the other group, you avoid all violent shows but let the nudity and sexuality go. You should also have 2 more groups -- one that can see anything (sex and violence) and one that doesn't see anything. I'll let bad language go here because I think that's really just a side note and not related to potential future behavioral problems.

Here's the thought: raise these kids like this throughout their childhood, then release them into the wild at 18. Who will be the better adjusted? Is there any correlation to their exposure and future behavior? Specifically, do kids who have seen R rated violence grow up to be violent people? Or do they abhor violence? Do kids who have group up with sexually explicit scenes and nudity grow up treating women as objects and become introverted perverts? Of the last two groups, who is more ready for modern Western society? The ones who have seen it all before or the ones who believe life is all Charlotte's Web and Judy Blume novels?

I have my own gut feelings here, but to tweak the question more: Do you want your kids exposed to sex and violence through their friends on the 'playground' or would you like to be present while they're being exposed to this on TV (or in real life) so that you can help explain the nuances and how these things fit into real life. In the end, I won't argue for either side but will argue that parental involvement is the key to a healthy childhood.

Americans

When I travel, I spend a lot of time in airports and restaurants (or worse airport restaurants). Recently we ended up at the local mall on a Saturday. I like to observe people in these places - a general cross section of the American public.*

What I have seen the last couple weeks is interesting. Primarily I'll review some observed eating habits. Looking across the mall tables in the food court is very revealing. The ages represented vary from high-school kids to elderly but one thing was consistent. If you were thinly built you were eating sveltely - often Subway, but possibly Chinese or some other small meal. On the other hand, if you were of a 'robust' build you were eating much differently: super-sized McDonalds, two huge slices of stacked Sbarro pizzas, huge steak sandwiches. At restaurants, it's similar. Those who least 'need' a dessert are the most likely to order one (along with appetizers!) while those on the thinner side will have a salad and entree and still leave feeling stuffed because the portions are so large.

I don't have enough evidence to draw the logical conclusion. Are people fat because they eat like this? Are people thin because they don't? What if all the chubby people of America started eating salads and a single meal for dinner? What if all the skinny people had a fried appetizer, a salad with fatty dressing, a full entree of red meat and then some obscene dessert?

Spending three days in a row eating hotel breakfast, deli sandwich lunches and typical restaurant meals (no desserts) and I really felt like crap. A bloated pig. I would have been embarrassed to take my shirt off at the beach after the trip. And really, nobody but me would probably have noticed the difference. How can people rationally walk around with 30 pounds of fat hanging off their gut? Or 80 pounds?

Obesity is a real problem. Except for the 1% of the population with a real health condition, the rest of these people are just lazy. Too lazy to exercise. Too lazy to eat right. Too lazy to care. Then again, I've never seen an obese 65 year old....


* I know it's not a perfect cross section because you're narrowing the field to people who travel by plane, eat out at restaurants or visit malls. This excludes certainly the poor and to a lesser extent the very wealthy. But I'll submit that it is a 'decent' cross section of middle-of-the-road Americans.

Lose weight by drinking Scotch

Losing weight, of course, is a matter of burning up more calories than you take in. A calorie, as everyone knows, is defined as 'the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of one gram of water one degree centigrade.'

Let us take a good glass of Scotch and soda. Since a gram of water is pretty close to 1 cc (to make it simple), put in plenty of ice and fill it up to about six or seven ounces, making it, say, 200 cc. Since it contains melting ice, its temperature must be 0° Centigrade (neglecting the temperature-lowering effect of the alcohol, Scotch, and gas).

Sooner or later the body must furnish 7400 calories (200 cc x 37° C) to bring it up to body temperature. Since the calorie-counter books show Scotch as 100 calories per shot, and club soda as 0 calories, we should be able to sit around all day, drinking Scotch and soda, and losing weight like mad.

The above is a direct quote from an old book I have. Sounds awesome, doesn't it?

Clearly, since this isn't the case there's a problem with the problem. Can you figure it out? Hint: it's not in the assumptions or approximations.

Take a minute and see if you can figure this out. You can find the answer here in about the third paragraph down.

As for me, I don't care if it's right or not -- I'm going to give this one a good run for the money

Peace?

I heard something interesting today. Being a sensible sounding explanation and going along with my experiences of our culture historically modifying whatever it can for odd reasons I was inclined to believe it. But it was something I had never heard before, so I spent a little time just now researching it. Here are the results.

Presumption: the traditional peace sign from the 60s is actually upside down. It stems from the 'original' version of the tree of lift - picture a man with his arms stretched out and up slightly. Turn it upside down, and you've got this 'wrong' peace sign and using the symbol of a sword.

First: My initial gut reaction was amazement and wonder - really? We've gotten it wrong for almost 40 years? My second reaction was a little bit of confusion. Clearly our culture recognizes the traditional version as meaning 'peace'. If you turn it upside down and head off to a peace rally, aren't you just going to cause confusion. Even if you were correct in the history and desired accuracy, you'd spend the whole time explaining why your 'peace' sign is upside down rather than joining the community in protest.

Research: The origins of this sign is not the tree of life, inverted to become a sword. The most obvious and consistent origin I've found so far is that it is a combination of the letters N and D from the Naval semaphore system, the initials standing for 'nuclear disarmament'. In the upside down form, there's the concept of an inverted "broken cross", stemming from a 5th century drawing. This broken cross has several different meanings, but one is the Teutonic rune of death or an inverted 'man rune'. A Christian website positions this as anti-Christian, though I haven't found this to be a general belief. The symbol is currently very familiar in the UK as tied with the CND, but in the US it really just means 'peace' or 'non-violence'.

Conclusion: The 'inverted man of life to become a sword' concept that got me thinking about this is not an accurate history. A majority of web sites (source, source, source) are very consistent with regards to the N.D. origin, though the link to runes and broken crosses is usually mentioned. Given this, in its currently known form of an inverted-Y shape, this is a symbol of peace and non-violence.

Please, please, do not go writing the symbol upside down on protest papers or notebooks or jackets claiming you've got the right story. You don't. And anyone with 10 minutes to spare can prove it to you. If you further want to claim it's a Satanic symbol that is anti-Christian, dig around for news reports from last Christmas (early December 2006) for a peace-wreath that a public figure objected to along these lines. See how far he got before issuing an apology and letting the wreath stay.

We'll discuss the "V" hand symbol for peace another day (a pretty cool history to that one!)

Darwin's God

Interesting article from the NYTimes. Kind of goes along the lines of the latest book I've been reading The Moral Animal. Some thought-provoking concepts.

I wish I had more time to read....

No Dancing! ???

According to recent news, there's a ban on "Social Dancing" in New York City. It's a prohibition-era law apparently now being enforced by the "Cabaret Division" of the city's consumer affairs office. Remind you of an old Simpson's episode, or what? It's hard to gather from the AP reports exactly what is going on here, but it seems that under the guise of protecting neighborhoods from too much noise the city wants to close some doors. So their way in is to require licenses for dance clubs, which allows them to limit where they are and when they operate.

But what problem are they really trying to solve? Here's a quote from Mayor Giuliani from the CNN article:

It's a quality-of-life issue, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani says.

"It's a good thing," he adds. "And if we were to move away from it because there's some pressure, because a couple of high-profile places are putting the squeeze on, you're going to see real difficulties in the neighborhoods in the city."

It's already being tested in court by a place called the Gotham West Coast Swing Club. My mind in the gutter as usual suspected they were the ones the city was targeting due to some ethical issues (read "swingers" here). But this is a real dance group with an interest in something close to the Lindy Hop you've seen in lots of old movies. So this is just an interested party working to keep doing what they're doing without going to the city for a license.

I have to assume now that there are some very specific neighborhood spots that the city is upset with, but have no other means other than enforcing an odd 80 year old law that disrupts enjoyment for a much wider group of the community. I'm interested to see this enforced.

Tyson (Mike, not the chicken)

I'm not a boxing expert. I wouldn't even really call myself a fan. But I do enjoy occasionally staying up for a decent, hyped HBO fight once in a while. I know a few of the names, especially the heavyweights, and enjoy watching a good fight. With that said:

I turned on HBO tonight to see "Boxing: 2006: Corey Sanders vs. Mike Tyson" (in high def). First, I had no idea this wasn't a very recent thing, but it was from Oct 20, 2006. It was just an exhibition fight against a 300lb punching bag wearing headgear. Basically a huge waste of 20 minutes.

I can't say I was ever a Mike Tyson fan. He was so hugely popular, you had to love to hate him. Rooting against him was kind of silly for a while though -- those punches were among the hardest ever in the sport. Plus, he was the youngest champ ever. So credit where credit is due, the guy is tough. But he's also a rapist. And to boot, he was found with like 30 pounds of pot and coke. That's 30 pounds. These are drugs people buy by the gram. If you're a hardcore smoker, maybe you buy a "qp" = quarter pound (4 ounces) to sell to your friends. He was busted with 30 pounds. I know he's a big guy, but c'mon. Some of my fraternity brothers were big guys too. And a quarter ounce could get a good number of your friends baked. Anyway, where was I? Oh, he's also an ear biter. That goes beyond dumb. He didn't get into a bar fight with Holyfield -- it was a scheduled, real boxing match. They were professional fighters, doing what they do professionally. And he bit the guy's ear. Took a chunk right out. There's a chemical imbalance going on there. Did I mention he's also a rapist?

So WTF is this guy doing on my TV at 10 pm at 40 years old fighting a lardass in what should have been a gym fight, not a pay-per-view event. Of course, I never heard about this to start with, so clearly it wasn't that huge of a deal. It went the scheduled 5 rounds, with Iron Mike landing a few good ones. But a waste of 20 minutes. And I justed wasted 10 more writing this. Hopefully you read faster than I write :>

But a little more: my fondest memory of Mike Tyson is really Mike Tyson's Punch Out for the original Nintendo (NES). I spent a lot of time kick Glass Joe's ass, but between my brother and I playing on a 13" TV at the end of our dining room table, we did eventually get to Mike himself. Like most video games, it's really just learning enough of the secrets so you can get to the next level. No. Wait. That's Scientology. Video games too, though. With the right amount of patience, anybody can fight their way through and the finally kick Mike's ass too. Then there was the way that most 30+ year old guys could rattle off like their first girlfriend's phone number: 007 373 5963. I doubt the NES would ever have been as popular as it was without cheat codes. I'm kind of glad I don't know anything like this for my XBox 360 games.

Windows Home Server

I just ran across the Windows Home Server Blog today (also see Paul Thurrott's preview). It's an interesting concept.

Here is some of their data on the target market:

• On average, these households have 3 "active" PCs with the majority running a mix of Windows XP Home and Windows XP Professional
• Over 90% of these households own a digital camera
• Over 95% own a color printer
• 70% own a game console
• Less than 20% feel they have a good backup solution

That's a pretty good fit as far as I can tell. If you exclude households with a resident computer geek (either father or older teenager), this is an excellent mark. If you can let a typical house like this share printers, share pictures, backup their stuff independently and such easily it will be a good solution. Of course, you'll need to do it cheaply and with their existing hardware -- most of the groups that fall into this category aren't going to spend another $800+ on another computer to stick somewhere.

There's another point in another post that most home users are happy with their email solutions, so they'll keep Exchange out of this product. Makes sense on a cost and complexity issue, but some of us would really like to have an affordable Exchange solution too.

If it can do all these things and also provide remote access so I can take care of their house computers when I'm on the road, I might even buy this!

BTW, I have noticed lots of posts recently are Microsoft-based from VBA to XBox. I swear I'm not chugging their kool-aide, but there's just not a lot of Sony or Linux news I care about

Vista SP1

Seems that Microsoft is starting to understand their customers. We have learned from Windows XP and even Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003 that it's generally best to hold off on upgrading to a new Windows operating system until the kinks have been worked out. This mark is generally the first Service Pack release. Of course, Microsoft wants to drive adoption of its new OS. But except for brand new Dell-type systems and ye scurvy pirates with 10 home computers, upgrading your OS is a very conscious choice that must be carefully considered. The result is that Vista was just released for public sale a couple weeks ago and Microsoft is already talking about SP1. There were mentions of this dating quite a while back, but more recent news from eWeek (Spencer Katt's Rumor Central column) and other places like TrustedReviews and apc indicate we're looking at a December release. This might line up with the server version of Vista (Longhorn) too.

I personally don't know when I'll upgrade. My main desktop will stay XP (dual boot Windows Server 2003 64-bit) until it needs to be replaced. I'm getting a new laptop for work, and I'm not sure what that will have but I expect XP -- we're looking to get a Vista machine in-house for testing at work, but it might be a while before we see new laptops coming through with it. Then again, I don't know if I want to wait until December to replace my desktop and move to Vista SP1 either. The main problem for me will be drivers for my Canon MP730. There were no XP64 drivers for it, otherwise I'd be running that full time. When I tested that out, Canon denied there were problems, but XP64 won't let you install 32-bit drivers, so no go for me. But this thread links to Vista drivers; I'll need to test that somehow before fully committing.

XBox Flash update

I usually edit my blogs to add updates, but that one was already too long.

To start, my blog on flashing should point out that I have the Toshiba-Samsung TS-H943 (25s) DVD drive inside -- this is the original and easiest to flash. The 28s requires some extra steps, and the Hitachi-LG drives also need some extra work. Being an early XBox adopter helps in this case, so if you have questions for this easy case, feel free to ask me -- but if you have those other drives, be sure to read the guides carefully because some are drive-specific.

On this note, a recent Microsoft announcement indicates they're replacing all the existing models with a new BenQ VAD6038 model. The topic of the announcement concerns the loudness of the original drives. This is of course bypassed with the updated low-speed firmware . But of course this new drive is supposed to be quiet and fast. If you get one of these new ones, you'll need to keep an eye out on the modding scene to determine if 1) these are flashable and 2) to get updated guides and firmware. But for me, I'm still a happy camper with my slower drive that will read DVD+R discs.

And finally, there's a lot of hub-bub around concerning brands of media for XBox 360 backups. Almost everyone swears by the Verbatim DVD+R DL 8x burned at 2.4x. No doubt this is excellent media, but it can be hard to find and kind of pricey unless you buy a spindle. Taking this to heart, but having no local stores that carry it, I opted instead for Memorex DVD+R DL 2.4x burned at 2.4x. A 3-pack cost me $15 at the local Staples. I'm happy to report this media works just fine. I figure any high-quality name-brand DVD+R DL will be OK. Be sure to burn with CloneCD too.

XBox 360 Flahsy Flashy!

I just couldn't resist any longer. I had to break open my XBox 360. Yes, it voids my warranty (but I want a Wii anyway ). On the longer range agenda, I'll be replacing the bright white case with something black, maybe with a cool blue LED to match the Onkyo. In the shorter term, I've been reading a lot about flashing the firmware for the DVD drive. Basically, you can't play back-up copies of your games because the DVD reader checks what type of content is on the disc, and then what type of media the disc is. IF (game && !pressed) THEN no play for you! The idea of flashing the firmware is that the check always returns a condition that allows the game to be played.

There are various guides and YouTube movies out there, so Google for yourself (I'm not going to try to keep links updated). The short of it is that you crack open the case, plug the DVD drive into a PC (SATA support required), run a program that re-writes the DVD drive's firmware with a modified version, then put it all back together. The latest version of the most popular firmware is 5.2 and is pretty mature. It comes in 4 flavors that has to do with the drive speed. I want options, but I also want to preserve the life of my drive, so I selected the "d" option that defaults to a slow read speed, but you can use the faster speed if needed.

All in all, it was an exciting afternoon to break open what's basically a small computer and play with its guts. The flash part hiccuped at first because I couldn't identify which drive was which. So I disconnected couple to help narrow things down. Note that the maturity of the software really shows here because I was successfully reading firmware, but it wasn't the size expected, so I got lots of warnings. Finally I got a good backup copy of the original firmware for my drive, then I flashed it with the 5.2d version. I closed everything back up and went to test.

"Open Tray"

Every disc I had -- original game, backup game, original DVD, backup DVD, audio CD -- EVERYTHING -- gave me this "Open Tray" error. So I started reading some more. Turns out, flashing the firmware can make the drive's laser lose it's sense of positioning and will read areas where there's no data. There's a fix: tie a little piece of rubber band around a rail inside the drive to create a bumper. Which means opening the DVD drive itself -- more that what I had bargained for. And the thing is, version 5.2 was supposed to fix these errors. Did I have a bum drive? Right now, the drive was useless, so I had to try. Later in the evening, I broke the case open again with the intents of doing the rubber band fix. And what did I see?

The Xbox's SATA drive cable just dangling loose. I plugged it back in, and before putting it all back together again, tried out all the various media. EVERYTHING WORKS! Closed it up, and all has been well.

Game load times are a little slower with this version of the firmware, but the console doesn't sound like a jet airplane getting ready for take-off anymore. So that's a win too. Will post more when I upgrade my case.