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Windows 7 and its upcoming greatness

Well as some of you know I had, up until a couple weeks ago, ceased being an early adopter of operating systems.

As part of a better beta program from Microsoft I had been running Vista for a very long time, and other than a few frustrations, found it to be superior to XP in almost every way.  (Interface!)  Some of the third party driver support sucked, but that is due to the vendor and NOT Microsoft.  After all, Apple has a very specific hardware base to support, so no comments from the Apple zombies.  I hear they are all liberals, anyway.

Please take into account this article was written at least two weeks after the installation.

Updated:  You can get a copy of the release candidate for free from Microsoft that will work until next June.  So that is a free year.

BTW:  Why buy a macbook just to install windows on?  Seems stupid to me.  (Yes, I have a Mac also.)

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Posted in Computers, internet | No Comments »

System Restore Aggravation

One thing that has been bothering me more and more of late, is the so called “PC Repair” shops around the area that employ, or are run by, untrained or half trained personnel with zero experience.  Some of the kludgy fixes that they make to hardware are just plain scary.  Zip tying a fan to the top of a cpu cooler might work, at least for a bit, but it’s still not RIGHT.  Selling used parts, and not even bothering to CLEAN them up, as new parts is also wrong.  (Selling used parts for repair stuff is fine as long as the customer knows up front that what he is going to get.)

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I Like EBooks

Oh yes, I love eBooks.

• Small size, carry them anywhere
• Don’t dry out your hands on old paper
• No paper cuts
• 2 gig of library in eBook format is tiny.  2 gig worth of dead trees is no very portable

I currently, as per my old article, read on the pc, tablet, and Blackberry Curve with MobiPocket Reader, currently free.

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Posted in Books, Computers, Tablet PC's and Ink, internet | No Comments »

Ah, Activity from GrandCentral!

As you know, I’m a fan of GrandCentral, the one number for life follow me service that was acquired by Google back in July of 2007.  The acquired it and basically told NOONE what they were doing with it.

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Posted in Computers, internet | No Comments »

18 Years

I’ll start this like I did last year.

CALVEY, Donald C.; b: 13Dec1906, Hardin, Il.; d: 27Feb1991, Pittsfield, Il.; bu: West Cemetery, Pittsfield, Il.; m: Coralee McBride on 4May1946 in Bowling Green, Mo.; fa: Charles E. Calvey; mo: Agnes Ferguson. WWII Navy vet. Survived by his wife; two sons: David Calvey of Pittsfield and Rodney Walker of Grafton; one daughter: Mary Lee Damron of Sarasota, Fla.; eight grandchildren; one g-grandchild; one brother: Earl Calvey of Clarksville, Mo.; and one sister: Leona Roth of Kampsville. Preceded by one son: Donald Joseph; one granddaughter; two sisters; and one brother.

It’s been 18 years and a few days, and I’ve had the usual trouble starting this post.

I think I’ll just keep it simple this year and mention that I don’t think he would have approved of how the government has no longer become for the people.

I miss him more this year than ever before, probably because of the trouble with the economy and everything that’s not going well.

I miss you grandpa. Wish you were here to give me some advice.

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OH HO! Finally some action from donotcall.gov!

According to Network World, “A federal court today spanked two telemarketers with some $1.2 million in civil penalties for violating the Federal Trade Commission’s Do Not Call (DNC) Rule.”

Read the full article here.

Spam for the phone.  I can’t escape it.

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Posted in Computers, Humorous, internet | 1 Comment »

Outlook Oops

Recently I took the opportunity to fire a contractor.  His email address was very close to another address that I basically replaced him with.

Outlook, being the helpful application that it is, “suggests” an address as you start typing.  This, of course, is NOT good when that address is the one that you don’t want to use at all, ever again.  This is an especially useful feature that I do use a lot, due to the fact that I use this notebook in tablet mode a lot.

I removed the address from the address book.  It still shows up.  I tried everything, and finally, using the tried and true method of trying EVERYTHING, I started typing the address, the tip address list appeared, i moved the focus on to the bad addy, and hit the delete key.

OMG!  It actually deleted that email address from that list.  I don’t think this is really called auto complete, but it has the same function.

Thought it was a good find.

Posted in Computers, Tablet PC's and Ink, internet | No Comments »

Unix Tools on Windows

I do UNIX system administration.  UNIX.  Not just Linux.  I work with FreeBSD, NetBSD, SCO, Irix, and even and old Xenix system every once in a while.

I used to use a BSD workstation to do it.  But I got tired of having two machines on my desk.  It’s unsightly, it’s heat producing, and you have to have a monster desk.

I then just shelled into my Unix box in the other room.  SSH out, full tools, yay.  But I knew it could be smoother.  I have used the free PuTTY telnet/ssh tool for years to do this.  Lately, if/when putty loses the connection to my server, it hangs and then runs away with itself.  Bad putty.  Bad.

So I had read about Cygwin a few years back, and didn’t bother to try it.  I’ve got it installed now and it’s amazing how much better windows is with the right command line tools.  Start Cygwin, it’s basically an xterm that gives you bash.

More later.

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The MORE tag, why you should be friends, and making Google love you.

Let’s debate about the usage of the Wordpress more tag, or the split post.  I use it to minimize the space each of my posts take up on my home page, thus leaving more and MOAR! space for more and diverse topics, so to speak.

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Posted in Computers, blogging, internet | 2 Comments »

XP Just Won’t DIE!

I read on Engadget today that Ballmer and the Redmond gang are going to extend the end of life date for XP until May 30th, of 2009.  Netbooks can still get XP till June of 2010.

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Posted in Computers, internet | 1 Comment »