The Major

Category: Technology

  • Dating in Azeroth

    Alyssa and I go on dates in World of Warcraft now that she is in LA. Here’s a nice portrait that we had done in game:

    World of Warcraft

  • Western Digital 1TB

    After working in a data center for six months and seeing with my own eyes the failure rate of different brands of hard drives, I will never again buy anything but Western Digital. They’re always among the most inexpensive and fastest of all the brands, too. They usually lag behind by a few months in the size category, though.

    Well, thankfully, they finally reached one terabyte. I’ll probably pick up one of these in the next few months, especially considering I can put one more hard drive in my computer before I have to start just upgrading the ones that are already in there.

    One more cool thing – the new drives are “green”. Go Western Digital.

  • Dial-A-Fix

    Through some Google searching, I have discovered the strangely-named Dial-a-fix. It fixed some Windows Update problems I was having, and can evidently fix other problems as well. I am happy that I got it fixed, but if that program can fix it, why can’t Microsoft? Nothing on the MS knowledgebase helped me at all.

    Also, never again will I reinstall Windows XP due to borked hardware. Borked software? – then yes, maybe an OS reinstall. But if your hardware is borked and you have to replace some or all of the components, give the following a try:
    1) Make a Ghost image of the machine.
    2) Transfer Ghost image to new machine. The first two steps here are only if you’re also using a different hard drive, obviously.
    3) Insert WinXP install disc and boot from it.
    4) Run the repair utility (not the recovery console). You’ll be asked if you want to run this rather than installing from scratch. This will take about the same amount of time as a fresh install takes you, and the machine will reboot a couple of times.
    5) Talking about borked, all of your drivers will be borked. That’s OK. Just download and install all drivers that you need.
    6) Your Windows Update may also be borked. Use the Dial-a-fix as suggested above. You will have to run Windows Update, by the way, because during the repair process it overwrites all of your Windows files and hence any updates you have done that aren’t on the install disc.

    Voila! All of your programs, files, and settings are now intact on your new hardware. Isn’t exactly fast, but it sure is a lot faster than getting all of your programs and settings, etc., back how you wanted them.

  • Trusty Little Webserver

    I love my trusty little web server that could. It lives in my closet and is a Pentium M (the same type you find in some laptops – low power, can run under high heat)…

    root@pub0|log 12:15pm uptime
    12:15:38 up 107 days, 16:21, 4 users, load average: 0.33, 0.10, 0.02

  • 2.33 Terabytes

    My personal computer storage is now up to 2.33 Terabytes. Sweet…

    But I could totally use about another 3 drives.

  • WordPress Upgrade Party

    As if you hadn’t guessed from the last post, I am a nerd. And hence…this event on Wednesday is something that I would really like to go to:

    WordPress 2.3 is coming out on Monday, so come out Wednesday evening and upgrade your blog with the pros. How badly can you screw it up when the developers are right there? If you upgrade your blog before Wednesday come and help out others and make feature requests.

    Super-chill event, just bring your laptop, yourself, and your WordPress blog. I’ll provide booze, soft drinks, and wifi.

    Topics of discussion will include Trackback Etiquette: Ping on the First Date?, Join the Conspiracy to Relabel All Websites Blogs, and Putting the Friend in XFN.

    Unfortunately, there is another event that I would rather go to that night. Naomi Klein is coming to San Francisco to talk about her book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.

  • Minesweeper

    I’m mildly addicted to Minesweeper. I found a good site with a brief tutorial: Minesweepers.org

  • Windows Vista

    So Alyssa and I picked out a new Dell laptop for her. It’s arrived and I have some time tonight to play with it (and install WoW and MS Office).

    I have to admit I was a little frustrated with it for the first 15-30 minutes. But it is starting to grow on me. It isn’t slow or anything. But I guess I am glad we got her 2GB of RAM. Because, for instance, Minesweeper is taking up 67MB. Wow. I am just glad it has over 1GB left over. But as a comparison, my Windows XP machine right now is using 1.2GB of RAM (out of 2GB). I have a remarkable amount of applications open, as I usually do. The biggest thing the Dell laptop has going is World of Warcraft installer. So yeah, I guess it is a little bloated. Seems nice, though, as long as you have the system to handle it.

    And it took a little hunting for me to find this one…to do the neat flippy thing you’ve seen/heard about, hit Windows+Tab instead of Alt+Tab.

  • Classic WTF

    A classic WTF: Employee shuts off A/C to computer room saying “I’m sure you can deal.” “…for two full days, employees of The State were unable to logon [sic] to their computers or access email, and that this caused business within The State to grind to a halt.”

  • VMWare Fusion

    Copy/paste from an email I sent out at work. In short, VMWare Fusion rocks:

    Two really cool things about VMWare Fusion for Mac OS X. First of all, it has an automated Windows installer. You punch in your preferred username, password, and product key, and VMWare Fusion takes care of the whole Windows install for you. It even updates all of your drivers for you. None of this “click, wait 10 minutes, rinse, repeat” stuff. VMWare has done the Windows installer better than Microsoft.

    Secondly, the “Unity” feature is really cool. It allows you to detach the individual windows from Windows and interact with them in OS X. For example, check out this screenshot.