Windows 7: Now Available at CompUSA

Published on January 19, 2009 in Misc Othr Stuf. 0 Comments

I have been playing around with Windows 7 on a couple of computers. I have it on a Dell Inspiron 1525 laptop built for Vista Home Premium and on a Dell OptiPlex 170L barely built for XP. It runs very well on both.

Today at CompUSA, I was looking at their systems on the clearance shelf and one of them caught my eye. Yep, it’s running Windows 7. Someone there has a quirky sense of humor.

I was also next door at Circuit City to see the beginning of the end. They must have had some good sales in there last week because the stuff I was looking at is way over priced now.  That Lumix DMC-T4Z I have been looking at went from $219 to $279 – %10 = $251 which keeps them under Ritz Camera and Best Buy, but nowhere near Beards and Hats or Abe’s.

They are probably going to be selling the carpet squares before it gets to the prices I am looking for.

OSM Forum (was) Down (but not anymore)

Published on January 10, 2009 in News. 0 Comments

UPDATE: Before reading the original post below, I have information about the site working again in a forum post: OSMinistry Forum Working Again. 

And Now for the old info:

——————————————————-

I have been having a terrible time with the OSMinistry forum lately.

Something went wrong in the server move, and I am trying to figure out if it is an error in the database or an incompatibility with the new server setup.

The Forum software is a 4 year old copy of Invision Power Board and updating is not an option. It may become necessary to just let it die and install a newer system.

I’ll keep people posted here.

Fixing Adobe Flash Internet Explorer 7 Permission Issue

Published on December 27, 2008 in Techie. 0 Comments

Every once in a while we hit an annoying issue with Adobe Flash. Some can be fixed with a quick reinstall of the Flash plugin, but others are much worse like this one with Flash 8 nearly 2 years ago.

In the past month we have had 2 computers come down with the same problem. Sites with Flash content don’t run, so you go to Adobe and try to update Flash. That doesn’t work, so you try a regular uninstall and a then a drastic attempt with Adobe’s uninstaller.

Just before doing a privilege escalation hack on XP pro to uninstall and fix permissions I discovered this succinctly titled page at the Adobe site: Download SubInACL from Microsoft to fix permission issues that prevent the Flash Player installation.

I downloaded and ran the SubInACL Windows Resource Kit tool (which I find to be very interesting), and the I extracted the reset script and ran with it. This time the install worked and life was closer to its standard level of happiness and contentment.

Now I leave this here so I can use this info again in the future.

Ten Signs You are Truly a Computer Geek

Published on December 21, 2008 in fun. 2 Comments

So, after a late night conversation I did some brainstorming to get myself back into posting, and here it is.

Ten Signs You are Truly a Computer Geek

1. You regularly, unselfconsciously, and without a hint of intentional irony refer to your available time for projects as “Bandwidth.”

2. Same goes for referring to availability for thinking about a problem as “Processor Cycles.”

3. When you have trouble remembering something you complain about fragmentation and bad sectors.

4. There is a deep and unspoken need to have someone “Talk Nerdy” to you.

5. Your favorite jokes are best expressed in ascii

6. You have been seriously late for something that meant a lot to you because you “just couldn’t get that one piece of code to work right”

7. The cumulative time spent researching, trying, and shopping for your current set of computer peripherals is greater than that spent on your last car or home purchase.

8. You regularly bore your loved ones with news about price drops in cutting edge technology and comparisons to the price and function of the first item of that category you bought.

9. There is ancient technology laying around not because you don’t want to waste it by throwing it out, but because deep down in side you are still emotionally attached to it.

10. It’s not a nap, it’s a soft reboot.

There are several more “Ten Lists” available for your enjoyment.

Note: Thanks to my White and Nerdy friend Jack, I have changed the title from “Ten Sings” to “Ten Signs.”

New Word of the Day: Goake

Published on October 27, 2008 in fun. 1 Comment

Seen at the bottom of an email from a Yahoo user:

“When your life is on the goake your life with you. Try Windows Mobile today”

In the context, what do you think the word means?

Google evidence of this typo in the wild: here. Interesting that I see this page when I search through the church network, but nothing when I search from my home network. Life is like that when you live it on the goake.

Tips: Pumpkin lights and Undelete Plus

Published on October 26, 2008 in Misc Othr Stuf and Techie. 0 Comments

jack-o-lantern.jpg

Some back-to-back tips:

1. Lighting a Jack-O-Lantern with Solar lighting.  Last night my daughter and I carved a pumpkin during an Adult Bible Fellowship (aka. Sunday School) class party. I did the cutting and scooping while she told me to use triangles for eyes. When we got home I was looking at the solar power lights along our entryway and decapitated one (mwahahaha!) to use as the pumpkin’s light. This works better in the Sunshine State than in darker places up north, but it is perfect for us.

2. Keep a copy of Undelete Plus portable on your thumb drive and memory cards. When editing the above picture with Windows Live Photo Gallery I forgot that it automatically saves the file when you close the gallery.  Since I knew the image was still on my SD card in spite of it being deleted, it only took a few seconds to recover it. You may not like Undelete Plus, but keeping one of these portable apps on all portable storage media is a great help. i have used it to recover files on hard drives since it gives a place to run it without writing to the drive andyou immediately have a place to start exporting the important recovered files.

I saw Google get gassed up

Published on October 23, 2008 in fun. 0 Comments

While visiting some friends in another part of town last night I filled up with gas that cost nearly $0.20 less than what it costs where I live. I did a quick search on local gas prices and I found a station that I had never noticed before and I decided to check it out on Google maps Street View. That was when I noticed that for one frame, the car was between the pumps.

Now, unless the driver was wearing shorts with white socks pulled up really high, he/she is not visible in the picture. It does, however look like Google is issuing ghost cars.

Google Maps Car Getting Gas

This American Life’s Mousetrap

Published on October 23, 2008 in Podcasting and Religion. 0 Comments

I listen to “This American Life” more often than I used to now that I can get it on line. Recently I was pointed to a recent episode discussing some about the current financial crisis.

Their episode on “The Giant Pool of Money” back in May had a good explanation of the global issues that lead to much of the crisis (too many people with too much money and too little to do with it). On October 3rd, they ran “Another Frightening Show About The Economy“with a follow-up the next week in a replay of an old episode “A Better Mousetrap 2008.” This one is a replay of an episode from 2006, but with a couple different stories mixed in.

I just finished listening to the one from 2006 “A Better Mousetrap” and found the portion about creating a new religion to be very interesting. Anyone in ministry can immediately recognize the eye-roll inducing sentiments.

You can download the most recent episode from the podcast or the link on its page for a period of one week starting the week after it airs. After that, the only links available are for listening online or purchasing through iTunes. If you wish to download it directly in spite of these restrictions, you can use the following formula:

Start with
http://audio.thisamericanlife.org/jomamashouse/ismymamashouse/365.mp3

Then enter the episode number in place of the “365″ above.
For example, the episode from 2006 is #311 so the link will be
http://audio.thisamericanlife.org/jomamashouse/ismymamashouse/311.mp3

RIP Good Times

Published on October 10, 2008 in News. 0 Comments

thislittlepiggywentbroke.jpg

This has been all over the tech news since yesterday and I found the powerpoint presentation interesting.

It is an interesting look at how venture capitalists are viewing the current crisis.

If you consider that venture capitalists are dealing with companies that desperately need growth to thrive and are living by credit rather than money bins then we match what they are looking at.

With consumers tightening up their wallets they are focused on maintaining the necessities. Unless we make sure we stay a priority to them with a good return in quality of life then we lose their investment.

This also tells me that we need to get some Christian Financial Planning people in to make sure that the finances of those supporting us don’t tank. People have been relying on home equity rather than savings for their fun times and as a buffer in the hard times, and that piggy bank is broken.

We have been severely cutting back our budgets at the church while still trying to maintain quality programming (although less of it) and not letting the missions that rely on us to go without our support. But we are not unaffected by the economic troubles, just ask the business office and watch their faces.

How is your church handling this? Especially for those of you in IT or security, 2 areas that have raidable budgets.

Baboon Vs. Chimpanzee

Published on October 6, 2008 in Misc Othr Stuf. 0 Comments

boboon.jpg

Q: Who is smarter, a Chimpanzee or a Baboon?
A: A Chimpanzee. That is why we have trained chimps that have gone into space (but they still have trouble with bulk mailing)

Q: Who is smarter, a group of Chimpanzees or a group of Baboons
A: The group of Baboons.
Chimps are under threat because chimp populations have trouble adapting to changes as humans encroach on them, but baboons are under threat because they have adapted too much and get threatened when they encroach on humans (note: Brief research relying heavily on the assertions of the scientist mentioned in this post).

I was listening to an interview of Howard Bloom talking about his book “The Global Brain” and a few things caught my attention. One is how much more effective you are when working as a well functioning team built on respect for one another’s gifts, and the other is how repeated failure causes mental apoptosis and destruction of an individual.

Lessons: Communicate, respect, and grow.