digital pity

At A Loss

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The Levi’s Phone. YouTube on mobile devices. YouTube on AppleTV.

I don’t get any of this. A jeans company making a cell phone is just as useless as being able to view some random, grainy, came-from-a-VHS-tape 1982 Knight Rider episode on a 50″ TV or a 2.5″ phone. If YouTube had some regular content that wasn’t under constant threat of being pulled by copyright lawyers, it’d be a step in the right direction, but… I don’t know. I don’t get it.

Maybe people want to watch the Star Wars kid redux thrice over on the go and I’m missing it?


Rant

Her Is Lando

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This was a real subject line from a piece of SPAM that I noticed while cleaning out my Junk Mail folder. What a hoot.

In other news, Trixie tells me that if I persist in wearing on wearing denim shorts to work, that she would, well, um, lets just say that there was certain threats made that had nothing to do with kicking in a FIFA match or with the jewels in Bejeweled. Anyway, I now know that I’ll have to wonder what she’s looking at when I’m lomping around the cafe in a food coma. Wonder if I can get workman’s comp if I get jacked while waiting in the espresso line… huh.

Guess I should start wearing a cup to work. *g*

Rant

Was Her Price Right?

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YouTube: The Price is Right – Wardrobe Malfunction

This is something out of the late 70’s if I had to guess, considering the clothing, the hairstyles and that Bob Barker’s hair is naturally dark. And since Bob left the show this Friday – and the show came out the year I was born and all of my grandparents used to watch it everyday, meaning that I grew up with it – I thought I’d share this clip.

If anything, it shows the difference in our country between the mid-1970’s and the mid-2000’s… sad that we’re not as laid back in our attitudes as we were then!

Rant

Happy Medium

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Ken Levine: If THE SOPRANOS were on a major network The finale would be at least two hours. There would be a one hour clip show hosted by Bob Costas preceding it. There would be live coverage of the cast party on the network’s local 11:00 news. It would be the lead story even if Hurricane Katrina hit that day…

True, true, totally valid point… and a much better approach than the “high brow” response that I’ve been hearing of “wow, that was brilliant!”. Brilliantly filmed, yes. Cop out of an ending with a back door kick for a movie deal? Yes. My point is that there’s got to be some happy medium between that version and a version that makes you think your DVR shit the bed.

While I’m not as pissed over the ending as I was Sunday night, I still feel… unsatisfied.

Although now I’m half prepared for Harry Potter’s new book to have the last three chapters missing – if it’s “brilliant” for Chase it should be “brilliant” for Rowling, no?

Windows

Vista Tip: Getting Access to C$

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Ever since Windows… erg. I think NT, but certainly 2000, Windows has always created a few shares administrative purposes, the most useful one being \\machinename\c$ because it’s an easy way to get access to an entire drive, if you have permissions to be there. As a default, only Administrators have access to it – the fact that there’s a trailing $ means that it won’t show up in the Network browser.

Vista has it as well, but for some reason my work machines allowed access to this share – my home machine didn’t. It would give me a log in prompt, I’d log in, it’d say “invalid account” and I’d look at the screw going ‘Lies!’. Some digging on the interwebs gave me a registry tweak to get around it… I could have just set up a new share for \\machinename\c but what’s the fun in that?
Continue reading Vista Tip: Getting Access to C$ →

Rant

Rudy On The Move

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Rudy: Rudy’s 12 Commitments To America

Ambitious, I’ll say that. What I like about it more is that here’s an itemized list of “what I plan to do, if you elect me” which is something that I don’t remember seeing from the last three mamone’s that ran for the office.

Very easy to hold someone accountable to their ideals if they’re written out in a to-do list – hopefully we’ll be checking to see how the guy does come 2012.

Rant

The Sopranos: 1999 – 2007

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During high school, did you ever date a chick for a while and never get her into the sack? Come close, have some good times, but ya never get her into bed? And then one night, she hops out of the car, leaving you with a raging hard and says, “Hey it was fun and all, but I’m leaving tonight for another country, so you’ll never see me again – KTHXBYE!” leaving you in the driver’s seat with a pitched tent, a particular body part that’s so blue it almost looks like a Smurf mooning you, and a general feeling of un-satisfaction?

Yeah, well, the analogy holds for the series finale… in fact, after 8 years of watching, I’m so underwhelmed that I expect a new episode next week. And believe me – the finale of Cheers, where Sam closes the bar for the night at the end of a regular day, implying that he’ll be back at work tomorrow, is one of my more favorite endings. There doesn’t always have to be a spectacle, but there does have to be some form of closure. Looks like Six Feet Under stays in the #1 position for series finales.

No, no, I’m not over reacting, honest! I watched the east coast feed and when I was done, I called my sister to see if my DVR ate the ending.

It didn’t.

digital pity

To IDE Or AHCI My SATA Drive?

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Dear LazyWeb: should I be running my 500GB SATA-II drive in IDE or AHCI mode?

FWIW, I installed with IDE. Found a registry setting that allows you to switch to AHCI mode after installing (HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\msachi\Start needs to be 0 for AHCI to be active, it seems) and I already tried that out… I still have my SATA DVD drive showing up there (some people lost theirs when they tried this) so that’s a non-issue.

My reason for asking is that I’ve read that AHCI mode is supposed to be better yet I think IDE mode was faster – or at least I’m seeing AHCI take longer on boot and then hiccup a little bit while booting…

Just curious…

GeekStuff

Bounty

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In what was supposed to be a “small” upgrade, I decided to bump up my home machine.

It has been almost five years since my last upgrade. Been jones’n for some more oomph. Finally said “why not?” Steve said get a Mac. I said “when they have a relatively cheap PC with some power and no monitor, I’d consider it.” Right now, you can’t turn off the monitor of an iMac and still use it remotely: that’s a deal breaker. Also, I don’t know that I want to drop $1500 on a machine that isn’t meant to run the OS I plan to run. The Power Mac would be good, but that’s way over priced at $2500.

I wanted Core 2 Duo, 2GB, decent video card, under $500 – the image over there is the “before” picture.
Continue reading Bounty →

Rant

AHAHAHAHA Faith!

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CNN.com: In a rare public discussion of her husband’s infidelity, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday that she probably could not have gotten through her marital troubles without relying on her faith in God.

Translation: “I want to seem more balanced for any Republicans that are religious but not like what their party has done, so let me throw this out there and see if I can’t get more votes”.

I mean honestly: you’re talking your husband’s 10-year old marital affair now??? Besides, lemme call you on it Mz. Clinton: it wasn’t faith that got you through your husbands infidelity – it was the fact that your political party had way too much bad press with Bill at the time and needed damage control, you wanted and still needed their support for your Senate run , and you were afraid what people would think of you – politically – if you enabled the first US President to be divorced in office… which makes me wonder if that’s why we’ve seen your last name changes, depending on the audience you’re speaking to. Do you think Americans are so dumb that we won’t notice how the Rodham appears when speaking to or about women issues and disappears for other male focused interests? Not all of us are that dumb and gullible. And truth be told, I’m fine with all of that stuff. It shows that you are a very smart business person. I mean, it’s not because you’re a woman – you’ve already proven that you can be just a savvy and sneaky as a male. And that’s what I’m not fine with: that fact that you’re going to wrap this issue up in biblical wrapping paper and play the “woe is me, my faith my faith!” woman for press…

That’s a bit too much for me to swallow – too much like my other favorite Media Whore.

Rant

Lead Belly And The Opera Singer

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How do you know you’re devoted to a TV show? When you watch the low-def version of the penultimate show on the east coast feed, rather than waiting another three hours for the HD west coast feed.

I won’t say a word in way of a spoiler about the second to last episode of The Sopranos, but I will say that I now have no idea how the show will end – in all seriousness I have some ideas but they’re really just all of the possible outcomes now, rather than a hunch – and frankly it was the most painful episode I’ve watched in a while… Honestly: my stomach is still in knots after being on pins and needles, waiting for stuff to happen. Heroes, Battlestar Galactica, 24, Babylon 5 – great shows, but they didn’t cause me stomach cramps…

And God knows that cramps are a great barometer for TV quality.

digital pity

Score!

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Interesting times my 1337 gam3r friends… got handed a copy of Halo 2 for Vista last week – another happy day in games land: Forza 2, Shadowrun for Xbox 360, and Shadowrun for Vista came my way today.

I’m stoked for Forza 2 because I know I can trick out a MINI Cooper, but it’s Shadowrun that presents an interesting quandary. Either way I’m playing with a 360 controller. That’s a given. At home I’ve got a larger screen yet on the road, I can take yet another fun and multi-player Xbox game with me… and that’s in spite of the specs for the PC version: they are not for the faint of heart. According to the box, the following are required: dual processor, 2GB RAM, and either an ATI’s X1800 or nVIDIA’s 7800 level of video card. What is nice is that these seem to be the ligitimate estimates rather than the “typical” feeling that “you can run with 512MB, but don’t plan on liking it”. In fact, I’m able to run it on my notebook – Core Duo 2.16GHz, 2GB RAM, ATI’s FireGL 5200, Vista Rating of 4.3 – and that’s at 1400×1050.

What’s really neat about Shadowrun is that it’s the first “active” cross-platform game for MGS: you play online with a PC via Games for Windows Live against other players on their Xbox 360 via Xbox Live. I did that this afternoon without even knowing it – only the Achievements that I earned told me it was a cross-platform game… and those points are welcomed: I finished wh0r3’ing myself out for some more Achievement points this weekend and finally broke 10,000.

And props to FASA for their Achivements list: you get points for fragging or restoring players on the “other” console, which should keep things very interesting.

Windows

Halo 2 For Vista: Released!

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Is it out? Depends on who you ask. People are found it at Circuit City and a couple of other places. I know I have copy waiting for me at work. And I know I’ve written about it before, since I was indirectly tied to it as it was in development…

Whether it’s out or not isn’t the question – the question that I get from most people is “Why?”
Continue reading Halo 2 For Vista: Released! →


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