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Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?
 Saturday, August 30, 2008
LMFAO - after only 10,604 viewings, you-suck-my-tube has now decided to "reject" the "Barack Obama:He Completes Us" video that someone named "RugbyHoe" formerly posted at www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJEGmBlOTZY (but is curiously still currently available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1E8DLooMxTU and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3JR_Fvpy9o)

The good new is, "RugbyHoe" still has the orignal video and has consented to re-post it for you here (along with the email comments it recieved before the u2b gestapo yanked it) for your continued entertainment (note: requires Windows Media Player):
I know this copy of the video is of REALLY poor quality, but since I host my own website I need to keep my bandwidth levels fairly lean lest I piss off my Comcraptic ISP. That said, if you'd like the original high resolution version (~70 MB), feel free to download it from Obama Completes Us by right-clicking the link and selecting "Save Target As..."
The following are the comments this video received before it got deleted by the youtube_smokers:
ehiga has made a comment on The Daily Show - Barack Obama: He Completes Us:
This is perfect. Daily Show is brilliant.
wingspantt has made a comment on The Daily Show - Barack Obama: He Completes Us:
The Jerry-Newman handshake brought a tear to my eye.
alex23khan has made a comment on The Daily Show - Barack Obama: He Completes Us:
hahahahahaaaaaa he's ready enough-ish to lead!!!!!!
taxangles has made a comment on The Daily Show - Barack Obama: He Completes Us:
The Daily Show continues to bring not only the best news to viewers, but also brings it in the most entertaining way. I have set my DVR to record EVERY episode of The Daily Show until the November election. Jon Stewart and his crew are brilliant!
ChicoFiesta4 has made a comment on The Daily Show - Barack Obama: He Completes Us:
genius
AmiraNZ has made a comment on The Daily Show - Barack Obama: He Completes Us:
this was the funniest thing i saw all week!!
clubbeata has made a comment on The Daily Show - Barack Obama: He Completes Us:
This is the best!!!
ericholmgren has made a comment on The Daily Show - Barack Obama: He Completes Us:
Finally something is telling the TRUTH!.., in the midst of all the other so called NEWS. Thank you John, for yet again holding up a mirror to nature
scathian has made a comment on The Daily Show - Barack Obama: He Completes Us:
Just saw this this morning. Made my entire day! Priceless stuff right here.
zanyboy23 has made a comment on The Daily Show - Barack Obama: He Completes Us:
"Every time he speaks, an angel has an orgasim."
Brilliant!
blunt1984 has made a comment on The Daily Show - Barack Obama: He Completes Us:
LMAO-LMAO-LMAO-Even though I saw this live last night!
markess1981 has made a comment on The Daily Show - Barack Obama: He Completes Us:
HAHAHAHAHA and to think I could have had to wait 3 hours like a sucker for this to be broadcast in the UK
PETAVER has made a comment on The Daily Show - Barack Obama: He Completes Us:
heh lol
Motohouse2 has made a comment on The Daily Show - Barack Obama: He Completes Us:
HEHEHHEHEHHEHEHHEHEHEHHELOLOLOLOLOL~!
Do you think the rest of the world will finally figure out that this guy is a no accomplishment sham?
Brilliant video!
betomena1 has made a comment on The Daily Show - Barack Obama: He Completes Us:
I'm a big Obama supporter but not a blind faith Democrat and I found this Obama bio film spoof hilarious. For those that say this film proves he isn't ready to lead your missing the point. In spite of him being half black of an African father, being born poor in Hawaii and raised by a single mother he's already lead a major American political party composed still mostly of white people to vote him in as their presidential nominee with no PAC money and leading the way with multimedia technology.
WhiteBuddha has made a comment on The Daily Show - Barack Obama: He Completes Us:
When I watched that last night I was crying from laughter.
knowlesgraham has made a comment on The Daily Show - Barack Obama: He Completes Us:
That's awesome - sometimes I wonder if he is the second coming of Jesus (everyone knows Jesus was 1/2 black 1/2 Jew).
mal3607 has made a comment on The Daily Show - Barack Obama: He Completes Us:
I support Obama too, but damn this is funny as all hell. I love the Daily Show.
alvagoldbook has made a comment on The Daily Show - Barack Obama: He Completes Us:
this is absolutely awesome.
Beavers347 has made a comment on The Daily Show - Barack Obama: He Completes Us:
this vid kicks ass
Spartan68333 has made a comment on The Daily Show - Barack Obama: He Completes Us:
"He was black, and white. Christian, and muslim. Land-mammal, and sea-creature."
Epic, absolutely epic.
COLDWIND8282 has made a comment on The Daily Show - Barack Obama: He Completes Us:
the angels part was very funny.angel organism.lol. that clip was from "angels in america"
Shmilfke has made a comment on The Daily Show - Barack Obama: He Completes Us:
Hilarious video. I think it demonstrates how unready America is for an African Muslim president.
NickBoettcher has made a comment on The Daily Show - Barack Obama: He Completes Us:
lol, was he really in Whats happening?
gadgefan48 has made a comment on The Daily Show - Barack Obama: He Completes Us:
"Every time Obama speaks, an angel has an orgasm." LOL, this is original stuff here.
IAmTheInternets has made a comment on The Daily Show - Barack Obama: He Completes Us:
In B4 Viacom'd
billthebutcher2 has made a comment on The Daily Show - Barack Obama: He Completes Us:
I can't see how a person of any kind of political belief could not find that funny. That about killed me, lol.
DaLizard2137 has made a comment on The Daily Show - Barack Obama: He Completes Us:
Fucking Epic.
sjp0902 has made a comment on The Daily Show - Barack Obama: He Completes Us:
this is the best freakin thing I've ever seen. "everytime barak obama speaks an angel has an orgasm" i think we all must be angels then. cause holy shit. i'm feelin it.
trench0989 has made a comment on The Daily Show - Barack Obama: He Completes Us:
All hail the goat
spiritualutopia has made a comment on The Daily Show - Barack Obama: He Completes Us:
A gif. must be made of Symba Obama lulz will be had
jj237 has made a comment on The Daily Show - Barack Obama: He Completes Us:
ready enough"ish"
larrieking has made a comment on The Daily Show - Barack Obama: He Completes Us:
This is just....epic. "One hundred and eighty million years ago...." AMAZING. This man better win. And show THIS video at his inauguration. Lol.
lifeandfaith has made a comment on The Daily Show - Barack Obama: He Completes Us:
Thanks from a big Obama supporter whose known him for many years. It's hilarious to see people make him the devil or a saint. He's such a regular guy. It's been a beautiful experience for me to watch America lift up one of their own.
--------------------------------------
Thanks for watching everybody, but unless "RugbyHoe" gets another C&D notice from Viacom (courtesy of IAmTheInternets he suspects), we'll keep this video right freakin' here...
PS - The "Twins" video is still online for some reason, and it's a pretty damn funny clip as well (even if I do say so myself). Better check it out "B4" the gestapo gets wind of it...
 Friday, August 29, 2008
The Daily Show strikes again!
Update: The tube smokers at youtube pulled the public posting, but guess what? You can still find it if you look over here
Short Attention Span Theatre
Closed by order of Viacom/Youtube Gestapo
Thank God the Democrat National Convention is over. I only hope Mr. "my ego is too huge to fit in the Pepsi Center so let's go ahead and close the only north/south interstate highway in Colorado during rush-hour in Denver so I can give my acceptance speech at Mile High Stadium (which, technically speaking, no longer exists and is now a parking lot (that no one could actually use during the speech) at Invesco (which also no longer exists) Field)" and company dropped a ton of money in our local economy while they were here.

Good riddance...
 Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Gotta love The Daily Show!
 Tuesday, August 26, 2008
It seems our fair city is absolutely crawling with democrats. Anyone know a good pest removal service? This town needs a good fumigating.
 Wednesday, August 13, 2008
I've never been a big fan of sports games on the XBox, but the cover of the newest edition of Madden Football releasing today made me laugh.

Oops. Maybe they'll send everyone that registers their game a little stick-on Jets uniform.
 Wednesday, August 13, 2008
So it's what, day 5 of the Olympics? Here's my take so far:
- The US is apparently really good at swimming
- We suck at air pistol marksmanship (but do not underestimate the accuracy of, and willingness to use, our gun-powdered and rocket-propelled versions anywhere in the world)
- We can arbitrarily exceed or fail to meet expectations at gymnastics, inspecific of gender (but if those Chinese gals met the minimum 16 yr old age criteria I'll move to California and vote the Obama Bin Laden/Clinton ticket - I'm calling bullshit on that one)
- Synchronized diving is not a prime-time sporting event (supposedly this is also a gender specific event, but I got a very strong feeling that all parties involved were definitely in touch with their female sides and they should probably just do this one as a unisex thing, like wrestling)
- We whooped China's ass at hoops in front of over 1 billion viewers in their own hizzouse
and last, but certainly not least:
- Never. Ever. Give a sabre to a US woman.
I'm already pretty bored with the whole thing. And the fact that the Chinks hope all this brouhaha will help ease our concern over their behavior in places like Tibet and Darfur nauseates me. You could just as easily argue that Georgia (not the one by Alabama) and Russia are really the same thing.
Oh?
Wait.
Nevermind...
 Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Please bear with me as I work on rolling out the new and improved home of Hopelessly Aporetic (lots of new geeky goodness here). There are still quite a few bugs to iron out so it's likely to be a little unsettled around here for a bit. I'll do my best to get stuff calmed down as soon as I can, but until then I am still pretty happy to have something running other than the IIS 7 default page...
[Update 1] - Finally got permalinks and comments working (I hope). A bit of a PITA trying to get this new dasBlog version working on IIS 7. First off there was no <modules> section under <System.webServer> in the web.config file, and then something called the "blowery.Web.HttpCompress.HttpModule" would throw an exception if you didn't end the url with a trailing "/" character (helloooo?), so I commented it out and so far so good (I hope). Next up, try to import all of my old content...
[Update 2] - W00T! (as in I am happy, not the recent and totally lame 2 day woot-off! that just ended with no 'banjo of consternation' being offered). The content import seems to have worked with nothing more than a couple of quick cut and paste operations from the old site. Next on tap will be some skinning love (obviously this plain vanilla wrapper just won't do, now will it?)...

 Thursday, June 19, 2008
So yesterday the Dumbocrats in the US House of Representatives proposed that the government should nationalize US oil refineries in order to "better control the flow of the oil supply."
This is such an obviously bad idea that it really doesn't merit further criticism from me. Perhaps we should let the Amish control the gas supplies instead...

 Wednesday, June 11, 2008
So. I was just wondering how all the V1 iPhony owners are feeling about the latest news from [Cr]Apple?
Let's see, the V2 iPhone offers 3x better internet speeds and worldwide coverage via AT&Ts' 3G wireless service, opens up the OS for 3rd party apps (finally!), doubles the storage capacity (woohoo - 8 whole gigs, WTF? Why not 32 or 64? Is [Cr]Apple flash memory that special?), and it finally adds MS Exchange synchronization (the lack thereof was definitely one of the biggest show stoppers with V1 for me).
The best part? You'll be able get all this for about one-third of the $599 price tag that the original 4GB iPhone sported (of course, you'll eventually have to pay all of that discount and then some back to AT&T since their 3G data plan is $10 more per month than the EDGE plan - since you will get locked into a two-year plan, add $240 to the new lower price, and more if you want to add text messaging to your AT&T data plan).
I'll wager that all the early adopter fanboys are feeling really good about that decision to camp out at the [Cr]Apple store to snatch up one of those crippled, obsolete, V1 phones right about now. But at least it looks like they can get a firmware upgrade, which just shocks the hell out of me given [Cr]Apple's history of leaving users to swim in their own misery when it comes to OS upgrades - who knew?
Kind of ironic that their stock dropped 4% after the announcement too. I guess even the AAPL shareholders seem to be tiring of the way that bunch in Cupertino treats their loyal users. Can't say I didn't warn you though...
PS - and no, you won't find me queuing up with the rest of the rabble at the [Cr]Apple store on July 11.
 Friday, May 16, 2008
The Colorado State High School Rugby Championships are being held tomorrow at the "First Municipal Rugby Stadium in the U.S.," and, since I've never been to Infinity Park Stadium before, I headed over to the online home of the Glendale Raptors to see if I could find a map. I found the map fine, but what stuck out the most on their website was this little chunk of the right-hand section of the home page.

Good Lord that's one ugly chick (probably of East German descent). If all the Glendale Womens' Raptors look like this they should probably win the Women's National Championship without any problems whatsoever...
 Wednesday, May 14, 2008
The fine folks over at Microsoft Research have just opened up a way-too-cool new public beta for all of us astronomy geeks. It's called the WorldWide Telescope (or WWT for short).
Just WTF is WWT, you might ask? The answer to this question and many more can be found in the overview, but I've included a quick shot of the general description to get you started:

Long Zheng over at http://www.istartedsomething.com/ has already created a very nice tutorial that shows you how to do screen captures with WWT so you can create your own out-of-this-world desktop wallpapers.
Very cool stuff, I must say. Go download it now - you know you want to.
And no, Mac-boy, you can't play with it...

 Wednesday, May 14, 2008
OK, I'll confess that I like the Justin Long "Get a Mac" ads as much as the next guy. I think some of them are actually pretty humorous - but I have to say that I am starting to get a little weary of them constantly bashing Vista's reliability in the latest round of ads to hit the tube. I realize that [cr]apple is doing anything they can to gain some traction in their hopeless war for market share with Microsoft, but I think some of the tactics they are using in their current ads are simply ridiculous. Either that, or I must be the only person in the world that is not having any problems with Vista, especially when it comes to reliability (as measured by continuous uptime in my geeky little mind).
Here is a screen clipping from my "daily-driver" PC at the office:

This screenshot was taken this morning after I installed the "Patch Tuesday" updates that downloaded overnight. No reboot necessary. This machine has been running without a reboot for close to 35 days and counting. The last time I had to reboot was on April 9th, and that was because I accidentally allowed Windows Update to apply a security patch for Office while I still had Outlook running - but that was my bad and not a "Vista reliability problem." Prior to that, the last time it was rebooted was when I installed Vista Service Pack 1 on February 21st. Before that, the last time I had to reboot this PC was when I needed to power it down to replace a failed graphics card back in mid-January - but once again, this was not due to a "Vista reliability problem," it was due to a hardware failure (so it would be more accurate to say this was a Diamond/ATI reliability problem).
In the interest of full disclosure I do have to admit that this machine was suffering daily blue-screen crashes there for a while in early January. But those were being caused by the failing graphics adapter, and this behavior ceased when I disabled that device until I got a replacement (this PC has 2 graphics cards so it can run 3 or 4 monitors, and suffering with only 2 displays for a week was really painful). Vista reliability problem? Nope.
I realize there are folks out there that do have issues with Vista, and I do feel sorry for them. But part of me thinks that a lot of these problems are probably self-inflicted as well. Feel free to go get yourself a Mac if you think it will solve your problems with Vista (and you can afford one and don't mind never being able to upgrade the hardware). Just don't go quoting "Vista's reliability problems" as your excuse, it won't fly with me.
 Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Performing "Sweet Home Alabama" with backup vocals by the Red Army Choir (yes that Red Army).
Short Attention Span Theatre
You just can't make this stuff up folks. Nikita Khrushchev is probably rolling over in his grave (not to mention poor Ronnie Van Zant).
Gotta love that hair too...

 Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Meh, it's raining here today. Yes, it does actually rain in Colorado occassionally, but I can take some comfort in the fact that I know it is snowing in the foothills and mountains at elevations above 6,000 feet (or about 500 feet higher than my house). I actually like rain every now and again, but I am more of a thunder-boomer fan and this constant gloomy cold drizzly stuff we have been getting since last night is just downright unpleasant.
When we get thunderstorms, it usually rains like hell for a half hour or so, you get some wind (tornadoes are rare), a good light show, some big ka-booms, and then everything calms down again and the sun comes back out while the rainbows put on their finest colors. Generally this is not a problem (unless hail is involved or the power goes out). But when it rains slowly and constantly like today, it saturates the ground - and when the ground gets saturated in my yard, it decides to pool in one of my basement window wells. If it rains long enough, eventually the water will build up to the point that it will start to leak in from around the window sill. Not good, but it could be worse (there are 3 other wells that will stay dry, I just have the one trouble-maker).
This is not entirely unexpected because it has occured about once or twice a year since I bought this house (and May is our rainiest month). My usual remediation plan is to use my shop-vac's pump feature to suck the water out before it gets high enough to infiltrate around the window, but I do have to keep vigilant when it starts happening because the well will refill to the fail-safe point about once an hour once it starts going. This routine usually works pretty well since it does not happen all that frequently, but it can definitely get old when I am still doing it at 1 or 2 in the morning. Plus the shop-vac is cumbersome, noisy, and bit of a pain to get setup for pump duty. Meh, again.
So when I woke up this morning and checked our "well," I was not terribly surprised to find that the water level had risen to about 1" below the bottom of the window. Having just suffered a major pain in my patoot with a broken drain line that flooded the basement floor a couple of months ago, I was not at all amused at the potential for more water down there today. Nor was I all that thrilled at the idea of having to possibly endure another marathon session with the shop-vac. Triple-meh.
So this time I decided to do something different and headed off to the Home Depot at 7:45 this morning (did you know that it is not very crowded there at all at this hour on a Tuesday? It was actually quite a pleasant experience - no parking hassles, now crowded aisles, no lines - just me and the contractors). There I plunked down $150 for a small submersible pump with a built-in sensor that automatically starts the pump-motor when water is detected, and shuts itself off once it has sucked it back down to a depth of about 1/4 inch.
All I had to do was connect it to a garden hose, place it in the window-well, plug it in, and watch it do its thing for a couple of run/stop/restart cycles to make sure that it was actually working as advertised. The well has already been sucked dry and seems to be staying that way. I can hear the pump cycle every 10 minutes or so, run for about 5 seconds, and then it goes back to sleep - with zero interaction on my part. I now have enough confidence in it that I could probably get by just forgetting about it until the weather passes (but since I'm so paranoid about water + basement combinations now, I'll still be checking on it every now and again just to keep my comfort level as high as possible - wouldn't want to get complacent now would I?).
Total time invested in my latest "water event"? A couple of hours, max. Not quite what I had in mind for spending some of that "economic stimulus" tax-rebate money we got last week, but it did buy me some precious peace of mind. And at this rate, I figure that the somewhat pricey little pump will have actually paid for itself in the form of "my-time-saved" by the end of the day (or at least by 1 or 2 tomorrow morning when I am not having to babysit the shop-vac).
I am thinking the next house I buy will be on stilts though. I've had it with "water features" in basements...
 Tuesday, May 06, 2008
Want to get some fresh rock for your Zen or Zune (or God forbid, an iPod), for the price of just a little bandwidth?
Nine Inch Nails is following the precedent set by Radiohead and is offering up their new album, "The Slip," as a free download. You can choose to directly download an 87 Meg zipfile containing the album as high-bitrate MP3s, or you can use your favorite BitTorrent client to grab the tunes in CD quality FLAC or Apple Lossless (M4A) formats, or as even higher than CD quality 24/96 WAVE files (although you will need pretty good audio gear to take advantage of the high-def WAVE format). All downloads are DRM-free and also include a PDF file containing all the liner notes and artwork from the album. You can even download all 4 formats if you feel like it, all you have to do is provide them with an email address so they can send you an unlocked url to get you into their download location.
Way cool! Go grab yourself a copy and let the head-banging commence!

For those of you that are still hooked on retail packaging and physical media, the band will be offering this release on CDs and LP vinyl later this summer (but it won't be free). Mucho thanks to NIN - you guys truly do ROCK!
 Thursday, May 01, 2008
Feeling lucky?
It seems that HP is promoting their new HP Pavilion HDX Entertainment Notebook PC series by giving away one of them a day for the 31 days between 08 May and 09 June. You can find all of the details at bink.com (amongst others), but in a nutshell, each of 31 different websites will be conducting some sort of sweepstakes/competition offering the new notebook as the grand prize.
This new HP looks to be loaded too. According to the folks at Bink, the prize package consists of the following:
"The HP HDX Dragon comes with Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate (64-bit) and is powered by an Intel Core 2 Extreme Processor X9000 (2.80GHz, 6MB L2 Cache, 800MHz FSB). Other features include 20.1" diagonal WUXGA High-Definition HP Ultra Brightview Widescreen (1920x1200) 1080p, 4GB DDR2 System Memory (2 Dimm), 512MB NVIDIA GeForce 8800M GTS, HP Imprint Finish (Dragon) + Fingerprint Reader + Webcam + Microphone, Intel PRO/Wireless 4965AGN Network Connection and Bluetooth, 500GB 5400RPM SATA Dual Hard Drive (250GB x 2), Blu-Ray ROM with SuperMulti DVD+/-R/RW Double Layer, Integrated HP HDTV Hybrid TV Tuner and 4 Altec Lansing speakers with HP Triple Bass Reflex subwoofer, and 9 Cell Lithium Ion Battery.
The entertainment notebooks will come with these software titles: Microsoft Office, Corel PaintShop Pro X2, Corel Painter Essentials, Corel Ulead Video Studio Plus 11.5, Symantec Norton Internet Security.
For the gamers in us the winners will receive the following games: Viva Piñata,Microsoft Flight Sim, Microsoft Flight Sim Expansion Pack, Gears of War.
And since this is an entertainment beast, you will enjoy the following Blu Ray movies out of the box: Pirates of the Caribbean - The Curse of the Black Pearl, Pirates of the Caribbean - Dead Man's Chest, Pirates of the Caribbean - At World's End.
The total retail value of each of these prizes would be over US$5,000."
For me this definitely seems like it might be worth the investment of the small bit of free web-surfing time it will take to enter. The first contest starts tomorrow (02 May) at http://www.absolutevista.com/
You can't win if you don't play, right?
 Thursday, April 24, 2008
For you XP users that also happen to be MSDN subscribers, the CD ISO image for XP SP3 is now available for download. If you don't have an MSDN subscription, look for the new service pack on Windows Update sometime in early May (if I were to hazard a guess I'd say on or about May 5th, a.k.a. "Patch Tuesday"). If you want to check out what is going to be in this service pack you can download an overview from here.
This is probably all my fault since I just spent the better part of a week repaving not one, but two Windows XP machines (don't ask). After doing a clean install of XP with SP2 included, the very first hit on Windows Update included 95 OS patches and security updates. Of course, you still need to hit WU about a dozen more times or so to get an XP PC to the point that no further updates are required. If Microsoft Office is installed this number goes up significantly. Between the hardware and software updates I'd bet the number of patches I installed on each of my "fresh" XP+SP2 builds went well into the high 100's.
Grrrr. Thanks Microsoft, an XP SP3 CD would have come in mighty handy about a week ago.
Fair Warning: I am going to get my car washed this afternoon, so count on rain...
 Thursday, April 24, 2008
It appears that I am being exiled to NYC for a few days next week. I generally try to avoid venturing east of the Mississippi River, and I especially detest going places with such ridiculous population densities as found in NYC, Boston, etc. All things being equal, I'd just as soon stay out here in the wide open spaces that we enjoy in the wild wild west. So wild in fact, that just yesterday our HR manager had to send out a corporate memo on what to do if approached by a mountain lion or a bear.
What? Just lions and bears? What about tigers? Oh my!
But duty calls and Manhattan here I come. I'll be easy to spot, just look for my cowboy boots and shirts with pearl snaps.
Good thing I have one of these though.
 The World's Greatest Laptop Bag
Don't leave home without it. I just wish that the 17" version was offered in Swiss Army Red like the old one I have for my 15.4" Dell was...
 Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Yesterday, Intel announced that it is cutting the prices on their Core 2 Quad Q6700 processor by half (from $530 to $266). I suppose this discount will officially mark the end of the road for their 65-nm Kentsfield processor line, and paves the way for volume shipping of their new 45-nm Yorkfield heir-apparents later this summer. It's great news for folks that may have been considering a quad-core upgrade though. The Q6600 (2.4 GHz) and Q6700 (2.66 GHz) are great processors that offer a lot of overclocking headroom. At the new prices ($224 and $266 respectively), they are an absolute steal! Of course, the new 45-nm line does offer better performance and lower power consumption, but you will now be paying a premium price for those advancements in Intel's CPU technology with the Q9450 running you about $90 more than the comparable Q6700.
If the thought of upgrading to a quad core CPU trips your geek trigger, now's definitely a good time to get in the game. Let the Kentsfield clearance sale begin!
 Monday, April 21, 2008
Okay, so maybe that little file corruption problem has been giving the Windows Home Server folks a pretty bad beating, but this $539 deal for an HP EX470 Media Smart server over at newegg.com is pretty hard to resist if any of you are still in the WHS market. And if that sale price ($20 off their regular price and $40 off retail) isn't enough to grab your attention, they are also throwing in free 3-day shipping (except to HI, AL, and PR), and a wireless router as part of the deal.
This is the base WHS offering from HP so it only ships with a single 500GB drive. At first glance, this small amount of storage capacity may seem like it's a bit on the puny side to many users, but what it really offers is enough space to at least get started implementing your backup and file sharing strategies, and still remain immune to the file corruption bug (that can only occur on WHS machines using multiple disks and the WHS Drive Extender technology). Since Microsoft is working on this problem and plans to release a fix sometime in June, this presents a great opportunity to go ahead and get started with WHS on a single disk configuration, and then add more disk capacity after you get the patch. The HP will hold 3 more internal drives, and you can also start daisy-chaining external USB drives if that's still not enough room for your precious media collections.
I don't have any details on the wireless router, but what the heck, it's free right? This really is a great deal folks. If you are at all interested in joining the Windows Home Server club, this would be an excellent time to do so. Don't dally though, the sale price on this combo deal is only good through April 30th.
 Sunday, April 20, 2008
Can you believe it's already been 9 years since Columbine? Make sure to take the time to hug your kids and tell them you love them today.

 Tuesday, April 15, 2008
April 15th is a date that generally strikes terror in the hearts of all tax-paying Americans, and I am certainly not immune to those feelings of pending dread that occur each year as this date looms. But this year is different for me, and I am absolutely thrilled that April 15th has finally arrived. Ecstatic in fact.
Did I suddenly decide to become a tax-renegade? Nope, I still had to bend over and grease up for my good Uncle Sam as I do every year (actually worse than ever FWIW).
Then why am I so tickled about the arrival of the Ides of April? Because today marks the first payday in several years that I am not required to contribute any portion of my check to the ex-Mrs. P. in the form of an alimony payment. As a result, I am officially declaring today as "A-Day" (a.k.a. "Alimony-free Day") in celebration.
As of today, my disposable income will begin getting a well deserved (and long anticipated) boost. I have not been totally freed from the ties that continue to bind me to her bank account balance since I am still obligated to cough up a significant child support payment each month, but I really don't mind doing this because it directly benefits my kids' welfare, and I would spend at least that much on them if they lived with the current Mrs. P. and I full-time anyway. However, having been forced to pay her an additional "spousal support" stipend each time I got a paycheck was a different crap-burger to chew on entirely, and I am completely overjoyed to finally be rid of that particular financial burden once and for all. I must say that being liberated like this feels reeeeally good. "Cry Freedom!" I'll not reveal exactly how much this event will be impacting my bottom line each month, but let's just say I can fully relate to how those folks that get to burn their mortgages after making the last payment must feel (and if you were to go calculate the monthly payment on a $300,000 mortgage at 5.75% over 30 years you'd be right in my newly liberated, feelin' good ballpark).
Happy "A-Day" everyone! The drinks are on me. I know it's also tax day and that's a drag, but I must beg you to please try to remain tolerant and understanding if I do spontaneously erupt with a big old ex-pat Texan "Yeeeeeeee-haw!" every now and again today...
 Thursday, April 10, 2008
For laptop users, the ability to hibernate a Windows session can be a pretty useful tool. In a nutshell, hibernation allows Vista to copy the contents of your computer's memory to hard disk and then power down without completely turning itself off, thus saving precious battery resources and allowing you to pick up where you left off at some other time (like after you get off a plane). Pretty cool, but it comes at a cost.
If hibernation is enabled on a PC, Windows will create and reserve a file called hiberfil.sys approximately equal in size to the amount of RAM you have on your system, even if you never intend to use hibernation. If you have a PC with 4 gigs of memory, then this feature might be silently laying claim to a pretty substantial piece of your disk real estate. In "always-on" scenarios, where you are running a Windows machine that you never intend to hibernate, you'd probably think it would be nice to just turn this feature off and reclaim that huge chunk of wasted disk space that you'd previously been freely donating to the OS.
In XP this was an easy thing to do, just open the Power Options in the control panel and uncheck the box to allow hibernation. In Vista this is not the case, there are no Power Options settings that will let you directly control whether hibernation is enabled or not. All is not lost however, but you do have to get up close and personal with your administrative command prompt in order to enable/disable this feature.
To disable hibernation in Vista you need to take the following steps:
- Click the Windows button and type cmd in the Start Search box.
- In the search results list, right-click Command Prompt and click Run as Administrator.
- If you have UAC turned on, you will need to give it permission to Continue.
- At the command prompt, type powercfg.exe -h off, then press ENTER.
- Close the command window.
To re-enable hibernation simply repeat the same steps and use the substitute comand powercfg.exe -h on for step 4.
Or if you are really a Vista shortcut geek, you can simply type the appropriate powercfg.exe command in the Start Search box and hit Ctrl+Shift+Enter to execute it (Ctrl+Shift+Enter is a keyboard shortcut to run a command with admin privileges). A command prompt will flash and disappear, but since the powercfg app doesn't give you any feedback when you run it anyway, you won't really be missing anything.
So go grab yourself that extra disk capacity, it could come in mighty handy on machines that might be starving for some available disk space.
 Thursday, April 10, 2008
Yesterday I mentioned that I had to do some impromptu remodeling in "Dexter's Lab" but I didn't have any pictures handy when I created that post. Since I am working from home today (due to the fact that it is currently snowing sideways in beautiful metropolitan Arvada, CO), and since I once again have a fully functioning home office at my disposal, I thought I'd go ahead an share a couple of the before and after snaps with you (while it's still fairly clean).
Demo-time (note that the wood trim and cleats are all that is left of Workstation #1).

I think we found some of Saddam's WMDs in my basement.

Presenting the new and improved PC Workstation in "Dexter's Lab" (disregarding the fact that there is no flooring done yet). Note to self: replace colored tape with real labels on the main power panel:

The PC menagerie consists of the following (from left to right): Domain Controller (white-box; old-ass AMD K6-2 running at a blistering 450 mhz), Web and File Server (with green LEDs; self-built, AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+, 4GB RAM, 2 TerraBytes of storage space), the "Deathstar" (blue LEDs; my hotrod - also self-built, Q6600 quad core, 4 GB RAM, 1.5 TB storage, dual 8600GTS SLI graphics cards, and much much more), and on the cart is my trusty Toshiba laptop (Satellite P105-S9339, T7200 dual core, 2GB RAM, 200GB HDD, 17" display).

The desktop is 40 inches high (so I can stand and work if I tire of sitting), 10 feet wide, 2 feet deep, with an additional 2 foot return on the right-hand side. It is constructed entirely of select-pine, and finished with MinWax Puritan Pine stain and two coats of Tung Oil. The work surface itself is made from three separate 4 feet by 2 feet by 1 inch edge glued pine panels (think butcher-block). The PCs are situated on a similarly constructed 18" deep wheeled platform that keeps them from having to be directly on the floor, and also allows for easy access to the back panels. The whole thing is constructed in a fashion that will allow me to easily remove it without having to totally destroy the thing (this was done knowing that I'll have to eventually put some flooring under it). The support legs are actually stair balusters, and serve to prevent any sagging in the middle (like the old surface wound up doing). The legs are removable so I can pull out the PC platform (just remove a couple of thumb screws on each one), and have adjustable levelers in the bottom to compensate for any irregularities in floor height (assuming I ever get around to installing one).

In my effort to both declutter and maximize the free space on my work surface, I placed all of the cables, power bricks, etc into a recessed plenum area located at the back of the desktop that I then covered with a removable shelf to keep them hidden but still be easily accessed. I also mounted my cable modem, router, ethernet switch, external floppy drive, and the VOIP and USB hubs to piece of pegboard attached to the bottom right-hand corner of the desktop where it is all completely out of sight unless you are sitting on the floor (zip-ties ROCK). Warning, folks suffering from OCD should probably avoid looking at the next photo, but the wire mess eventually had to surface somewhere, mmmKay?). The trash can and portable drawers fit in this corner and serve to conceal the 2 UPS units and an auxilliary power strip quite nicely too.

As I said before, I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out and there's still quite a bit of work to do before I can officially call this project "done," but at least I've managed to get far enough along to be back in business!
 Wednesday, April 09, 2008
Yes, I know that I have not posted anything for a spell and that this site was actually down for a while (we'll just call it "unscheduled system maintenance," mmmKay?).
It seems I had a bit of an "issue" with the 30-something year-old plumbing at the homestead on Easter Sunday that resulted in having to deal with a stinky, soggy mess in my basement office on Easter++. Of course, my PC lab is located in there, so I had to dismantle the whole nine yards in order to make room for the plumbing repairs and to protect the electronics from the dust that would get generated when they jack-hammered out the concrete floor to get at the offending drain-pipe. Since I self-host my blog (because I don't like to play by the COC rules on the free places and I am too cheap to pay for a hosting service), it went down as soon as I took my domain controller and web server offline. Sorry, but it was all I could do to find a place to rig up the cable modem and wireless router so we wouldn't have to be totally off the net for the duration.
The plumbing repairs were completed by 3/27, but since my built-in PC workstation also had to be removed to provide room to work on the pipe, I no longer had any place to reinstall the PC gear until I could rebuild a new one. So my spare time for the next week was consumed by designing, creating, installing, and finishing a new workstation for the lab (and dusting off all my old hippie-gypsy-carpenter skills). I decided to take the time to do some aesthetic upgrades this time, and put some extra thought into things like providing better cable management, task lighting, power management, and storage solutions, so it took me a bit longer to get completed than I'd have liked. It was worth the extra effort though, and I am pretty happy with the way my new workstation turned out (it even got the seal of approval from the hunny bunny), but my work is far from finished in the lab - I still need to deal with the floors, but bare concrete is still a lot better than the rank carpeting that was previously installed in this room. But, I guess the good news is that I was finally able to get my servers back up and running last weekend and the prilliman.com domain is once again in a fully operational state.
The even better news is that my good neighbor State Farm cut me a check that was more than big enough to cover the plumbing repair, rebuild the workstation, and replace all of the carpet in the entire basement with a surface that won't get ruined if it ever does get a little wet down there in the future. I am really amazed at how generous they were when they came to assess the damages. I'm thinking the fact that Elvis followed the claims adjuster everywhere he went may have had something to do with it. You probably don't want to piss off a policy holder by denying claims when there's a 100 pound dog staring you down...
 Monday, March 10, 2008
No, it's not the title of some warped Dr. Seuss book; it's the motto for the Frozen Dead Guy Days festival the Hunny Bunny and I decided to attend this weekend.

For those that may be unfamiliar with the saga of Grandpa Bredo Morstøl, the Reader's Digest version is that he was born in Norway in 1900 and stopped breathing in 1989. But rather than conduct a conventional funeral for the dearly departed Bredo, his daughter and grandson had him cryogenically frozen and have been storing him on dry ice in a Tuff Shed in Nederland, Colorado ever since (read the full story).
Obviously, deciding to create an annual event called Frozen Dead Guy Days to profit from this unusual story is something that could only be dreamed up by the folks that live in this sleepy little community on the western end of Boulder Canyon (let's just say that there's a lot of old Boulder hippies living in "the Ned," and their puffy reddish eyes made many of the inhabitants look pretty "sleepy" to me). Highlights of the FDGD include a parade (mostly consisting of vintage hearses and costumed revelers), coffin races (6 costumed folks running through a slushy obstacle course while carrying a person in a "coffin"), the polar plunge (where hearty folks with dubious decision-making skills are convinced that jumping into a frozen pond is a good idea), Grandpa's Blue Ball (masquerade contest and gala), an arts and crafts market, and lots of live music and cheap beer. I'm not usually a big fan of attending things like the People's Fair, or Taste of Colorado type events, but do I have to say that we both really enjoyed the slightly twisted version provided at the Frozen Dead Guy Days.
Given the nature of the event I guess it would be inappropriate to complain about the weather, but the combination of clouds, wind, and temperatures in the 30's made it pretty uncomfortable for us city-folks to stand around on the snow and spectate for very long. So the HB and I endured the parade and polar plunge, but decided to pass on attending the coffin races (we saw all the contestants during the parade anyway), and moved our base of operations to the local brew-pub to do some people watching from a climate controlled venue. Probably the best decision we made all day. It was just simple math: good food + good beer + a delightful waitress named Jamie (with blue and green hair) = one great time. If you ever find yourself in the Ned, FDGD or not, I'd highly recommend a visit to the Wild Mountain Smokehouse and Brewery, their BBQ is excellent and the Hop Diggity IPA is to die for (sorry)...
 Wednesday, March 05, 2008

So. What's your tolerance for pain?
Personally, I think this is exactly why Virtual PCs totally ROCK! Repeat after me: "VMWare is my friend. VMWare is my friend..."
Now go download the IE8 Beta (if you dare)...

 Wednesday, February 20, 2008
 Wednesday, February 06, 2008
So let's say I might have "borrowed" a USB drive from a guy who "borrowed" it from a guy who "inherited" it somewhere. On this alleged drive there might be close to 400 gigs of digital music files (it might be a collection of rock, country, pop, jazz, and live music sets totalling somewhere in the neighborhood of 40,000 songs). Of course none of us would ever dream of copying the contents of this drive since that would be illegal in the eyes of the RIAA, but let's just say that I've been asked if I might catalog its contents for the owner while I have it on loan. Nothing fancy, just a list of the basic information for each folder including the artist, album title, genre, file format & bitrate, the number of tracks, and make some comments if I were to find any stuff that may be needing some extra work (files out of sequence, missing titles or metadata, etc).
Hypothetically speaking, I'd probably just manually scan the folders in alphabetical order and enter the data into a spreadsheet to record the requested information (even though I probably could have created a program to do this automatically without much trouble if the directory structure had been at least a little more consistent - theoretically, that is). It would be tedious, but it would definitely be fun to see what all might be hiding on there. If I started doing this in my spare time about a week ago, I guess that by now I'd probably be about up to the letter "L" (as in Lenny Kravitz), and have recorded the contents of around 18,702 songs in 1,500-something folders representing the work of 400-some-odd artists. In other words I'd be a little less than halfway done.
So far I may have found things ranging from a mostly complete library of AC/DC albums, to a 5 disc box set by Johnny Cash, to a collection of over 50 Bob Marley concert sessions, to KC & the Sunshine Band's Greatest Hits. But the coolest thing I probably would have found by now would be some of those more unusual artists and/or titles that might exist on such a drive.
Songs like, "My Cellmate Thinks I'm Sexy" by Cledus T Judd.

Or "Tequila Makes Her Clothes Fall Off" by Joe Nichols.
If any of this were true, I might have to start listening to more country music. I think those titles are hilarious!
 Monday, February 04, 2008
Eighteen and ONE?
'nuff said...
Thanks Giants.
 Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Anyone who has ever lived along the Front Range in Colorado knows that it can get extremely windy around here from time to time. This is especially true in the winter, and gusts in excess of 70 mph are not an uncommon occurance where I live (Chicago - you got nothing on us Denver west-siders). There are two typical sources for these winds: when cold arctic systems move in from the north and the wind caused by the dropping air pressure gets trapped against the mountains (a wind-tunnel effect of sorts); or when high pressure systems from the west spill over the mountains and force any existing low pressure conditions off to the east (resulting in a chinook condition that actually ends up warming things up around here despite the gales).

I am normally a pretty light sleeper so it is not unusual for these high wind events to wake me up two or three times during the night when they are kicking things around outside (e.g. trash cans, patio furniture, etc.). Last night was no exception, the wind was howling and it ended up waking me twice. Like I said, this is not extraordinary by any means, but what struck me as strange were the times:
- The first time I woke up it was 1:23.
- The second time it was 4:56.
Very odd. I suppose it was a good thing I had to get up by 6:30 or I might have really freaked had I been awakened a third time with the clock reading 7:89.
PS - while we are on the subject of time, I learned something else this morning. 7:15 AM is far too early for me to switch on the TV to be greeted by Ted "OJ did it all wrong" Kennedy on the CBS Early Show. It nearly scared the bejabbers out of me.
 Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Saturday afternoon I could sense that the whole family was starting to exhibit all of the tell-tale signs that indicate the sudden onset of a severe case of mid-winter cabin fever. It was cold, cloudy, and trying to snow again, the kids were already holed up in their rooms glued to PC games, the Hunny Bunny had taken off to go thrift store scrounging, and the dog was snoring under the coffee table while I was trying my best to relieve my painful end-of-football-season withdrawal symptoms by watching some time-shifted Heineken Cup Rugby matches on the DVR. Basically we were all bored silly and were not being very successful in fighting it off using the same old tried and true resources at hand. The situation was dire. Something must be done or we would all be faced with yet another pizza and a movie night, huddled together in a zombie-like state by the warm glow of the TV set in the family room.
So I decided it might be time to try something new. I bundled up and headed off to the new Broomfield Events Center (BEC) about 10 minutes north of where we live, where I purchased 5 tickets for Saturday evening's hockey game between the host Rocky Mountain Rage and the visiting Colorado Eagles (all the way down from Ft. Collins - maybe 50 miles). For those of you that may be unfamiliar with those teams, they are members of the Central Hockey League (CHL), which is pro hockey's equivalent to the double-A minor leagues. The BEC holds about 6,000 for hockey so there really aren't any bad seats in the house (the club level suites are actually further from the ice than the "nosebleed" seats behind each goal), and tickets for the entire family to sit within 15 rows of the ice cost less than $100 (or roughly the price of a single seat in a similar location for the Colorado Avalanche).
The Rage and the Eagles are apparently somewhat bitter rivals (who knew?). I suppose this makes sense given the fact that they are not only the top two teams in the CHL's Northwest Division, but are also both competing for essentially the same Northern Colorado fan base (and dollars). As a result, the BEC was filled to capacity with fans of both teams and the pre-game atmosphere was charged. It was every bit as noisy as a much larger arena as well. This was partially due to the fact that it was "Cowbell Night" ("I need more cowbell"), and everyone that entered the arena was given one of the obnoxious little noise makers, but I also think that your average AA-circuit minor league hockey fan might just be a little less, shall we say "inhibited," than are their NHL counterparts to begin with. At any rate, the place was rockin'.
Life in professional hockey's "bus leagues" is probably something less than glamorous, but you definitely can't accuse these guys of not playing hard, and the competition was fierce from the second the puck was dropped. Just check out some of these stats: 6 goals (plus one that was disallowed after review), 46 minutes in penalties, 3 fights, and one exploding piece of glass behind the Rage goal. And that was just the first period (well, actually, the glass got broken in the pre-game warmups). There were two goals scored in the first 31 seconds of the game! The goalies finally got their acts together in the second period, but the rest of the game was no less action-packed. The Rage went on to win 5 - 4 in overtime after trailing by two goals entering the third period. The win moved the Rage into first place overall in the CHL, one point ahead of the Northeast Division leading Bossier-Shreveport Mudbugs (now there's a team name you won't hear outside of Louisiana). Don't ask me how a division that consists primarily of teams from Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi can be considered as "Northeast" though (Northeast of what? Laredo?).

Anyway, the whole family had a rockin' good time. It was the Hunny Bunny's first hockey game and she really got into it (I think she liked her cowbell the most though), the teenager liked the action and the predominantly metal music, the little dudes loved all the big hits, and the dad enjoyed the game, the bargain, and the smiles on the faces of his happy family. We all agreed that it would be fun to do it again sometime, although I might find it a difficult to get behind a team that uses such an abstract noun for a team name ("Here we go Ra-age!" just does not roll off the tongue). Nor does it help any that they have a mascot that looks like he/she/it might be related to the Hanson Brothers from Slap Shot (see below - Note: the Rage actually do have a Jeff Hansen on their roster, but he is of no relation).
  Is "Rowdy" a Hanson?
I don't think I will have any problem becoming a fan of minor league hockey in general however. These players may be a step or two slower than the big leaguers, and they may not be as nifty when it comes to handling the puck, but lacking any players named Sakic, Crosby, or Forsberg on the ice with them, I certainly couldn't tell the difference. I can tell you one thing for sure though; they were not holding back when it came to checking - they were positively knocking the doggie-doo out of each other. But the best part is probably the fact that these guys aren't really playing for much more than love of their sport - sure they are getting paid, but face it, the dream of ever earning NHL big bucks is probably long over for the vast majority these 28-30 year old athletes who are two levels of play removed from the "big show."
Despite their lack of big-time skills, they put on a good show and truly do give it a quality effort. Absolutely worth the price of admission. IMHO this CHL game was every bit as exciting as anything I've ever experienced with the big league version (short of Av's v. Red Wings Stanley Cup action anyway). It certainly provided a far better bang for my entertainment buck (especially when you consider the fact that beer prices are slashed to 2 bucks for 10 minutes following each Rage goal). I like the NHL too, but I'm afraid it's going to be a pretty hard sell to get me to pony up the price to go to any future Av's games. Unless it's a playoff game, I think I'll just save my $400 and watch them on the tube. When I get the urge to see some live hockey action I'll take the whole family out to see the Rage at roughly 1/4th the cost, and enjoy a few $2 beers (barring a home team shutout - God forbid) while sitting in great seats at an arena that is 30 minutes closer to home and offers free covered parking as part of the ticket price. Plus no traffic, no long walks, no lines for concessions or restrooms...
No brainer, eh?
Old Time Hockey
 Wednesday, January 09, 2008
Most of you propeller heads in the audience have probably already seen this star-studded spoof of Bill's last day on the job, but I thought I'd serve it up for the rest of those that may not have been following the CES.
Note - this video requires the Silverlight browser add-in.
Bill's Last Day: The CES Keynote video
Think he really drives a Ford Focus?

 Thursday, January 03, 2008
There are not a lot of things I enjoy more than seeing the OU Sooners lose football games. Kudos to West Virginia for puttin' a whuppin' on those Okies despite the fact that your coach bailed to Meechigan. One word of advice though, you probably should try to avoid having Johnny Dingle sit next to Scooter Berry when they are on the sidelines.
 World's Biggest Dingle-Berry?
 Tuesday, January 01, 2008
Happy '08 peeps. How did we ring in the new year? Take a gander at the following photo; it should give you the general idea (please forgive the craptastic quality of my smartphone camera though).

 Thursday, December 20, 2007

Okay all you Johnny Knoxville fans, and you know who you are (there is no use in denying it either), Blockbuster has just made the new Jackass movie available for your online viewing pleasure - for FREE (until 12/31/2007). It's not likely to take the sting out of the latest price hike they just inflicted on their online users (who do they think they are, Comcast?), but at least it's something.
You'll have to register and swear an oath that you are of appropriate age to view the movie, but c'mon, do they really think most kids aren't smart enough click the checkbox saying they are > 17 so they can gain access too? If you don't feel like giving out your real email address, you might want to try what I always do in such situations that might result in unwanted spam: use www.10minutemail.com to get a temporary email account and register with that one (you'll need to keep it open long enough for Blockbuster to send you back an "authorized" link though, and be sure to keep a copy of the temporary email address because you'll need it to log in once you get there - don't ask how I know this, but let's just say I now have 2 different alter egos registered).

So go grab yourself some popcorn and a refreshing beverage, then click on the link below and enjoy.
www.blockbuster.jackassworld.com
PS - Looks like the Blockbuster site requires the Silverlight browser add-in. Go get it at www.silverlight.net - c'mon you know you want it.
 Wednesday, December 19, 2007
For those of you build-it-yourself PC enthusiasts in the audience (or those that are just contemplating upgrades for your Vista or XP based computers), I'd like to remind you to visit the Windows Hardware Compatability List before buying and installing any new components. This is especially true if you are outfitting a PC to run one of the 64-bit flavors of XP or Vista. Trust me, there are few things more frustrating than installing new devices only to find that there are no supported drivers available for your OS of choice. Taking a couple of minutes to do a simple search against their database of systems and devices that have been certified to work properly with Windows can save you a ton of time, effort, and the headaches involved with returning incompatable parts for refunds or exchanges (RMAs, restocking fees, etc).
So do yourself a favor, check the HCL before purchasing and installing hardware upgrades.

This has been a public service announcement from the fine folks at prilliman.com technical support.
 Wednesday, December 12, 2007
This one was actually a pretty easy decision for me since I despise anything Sony, but I have taken my stance firmly on the HD-DVD side of the high-def disc format war.
My new(ish) Toshiba laptop came with an HD-DVD player built-in, but I have to admit that I've only used it once to view an HD movie just to test it out. The picture was supurb, but since I have not been travelling all that much this year, I've had little need for a portable DVD player, and buying discs that would only play on my laptop made little sense to me. So I continued to be a non-combatant in the HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray conflict.
Then this summer, when I finally broke down and decided to buy an XBox 360, I found that I could get a smokin' deal on the XBox HD-DVD player if I bought both items as part of a packaged set. Adding the HD player to the package cost a little over $100 and I ended up with 7 free HD-DVD movies as part of the deal (after rebate). Hooking all that stuff up to my HDTV and a/v gear was pretty painless, and the result was being able to play games and view movies in stunning 1080i resolution (my TV doesn't do 1080p) with surround sound. I was instantly spoiled by my video system's hitherto unused HDTV capacity.
But there was a catch. The XBox + HD player are god-awful noisy. Since my a/v cabinet is open faced, you can easily hear the cooling fans and drive noise during the quiet parts of movies. This is not so distracting during game play, but quickly becomes downright annoying during movie viewing. Since I had replaced my standalone DVD player with the XBox stuff I also had to endure a noisy disc player when just watching "standard" DVDs. Another annoying "feature" of the XBox HD player is that it is not able to upconvert my standard 480p discs to 1080i. Not that standard def DVDs look all that bad, but even the fairly low-end players on the market can upconvert now.
As the family and I were enjoying King Kong in HD a few weeks ago, at an abnormally high volume level to drown out the fan noise, I'd finally had all I could bear. Something had to be done about that infernal noise! I toyed briefly with building an enclosed insert for my a/v rack to help insulate the noise from the XBox gear, but after reading so many horror stories about 360 overheating issues and the red ring of death I quickly decided against doing anything to restrict its airflow. If I built any sort of enclosure, it would need to be well ventilated, and probably require having its own cooling fan which would sort of defeat the whole purpose. It soon became apparent to me that I was either just going to have to endure the noise or pursue a different noise reduction strategy altogether.
I decided that I would start looking for a deal on a standalone high-def disc player. Since the format war still rages, I thought it might be worth checking out the LG player that supports both formats - until I saw the prices. No way I was going to drop more than a grand just to get back to the middle of the format road and still satisfy my irritated aural sensitivities. I was simply going to have to decide whether or not I could live without Disney movies in high-def (sorry Mousketeers, Disney only does Blu-Ray). That took about a second (even though Pirates of the Caribbean would probably look great in HD), but since I'd already made an entry-level investment in the HD-DVD format, it soon became a no-brainer to me.
Last week I found a Toshiba HD-A3 for just under $200 (after my Amazon 30 day price guarantee gave back $25 yesterday). The thing that enticed me the most though was that it ships with 2 movies in the box (one of which we already have, anyone need a copy of 300 in HD?), 5 more free movies from a decent selection pool as part of a promotional package, and a rebate coupon for 5 more freebies via the US Mail. So, for the grand total of $199.98 I received an HD-DVD player that is both fanless and can do upconverting to 1080i, a total of 12 free movies (okay 11 if you discount the dupe title), and free 2 day shipping (I love my Amazon Prime). Not bad, eh?
Oh, and did I mention it is dead silent when it operates? Yessss!
Since Microsoft was nice enough to use a standard USB connection on their drive, I now also have an HD-DVD player for my main PC so it may not totally go to waste. Vista picked it right up, Nero plays the HD discs just fine, and the drive noise just blends right into the ambient noise that exists in my PC lab anyway. Might come in handy if the kids ever want to enjoy an HD movie while I'm watching rugby on the big screen.
So, I have made my definitive choice in the HD format wars. One can only hope that it is Blu-Ray the ends up on the shelves next to the BetaMax in the Sony Hall of Shame once the dust settles (or that the prices on the combo players drop substantially at some point in the future).
¡Viva la Revolución!
 Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Okay, so we all know that Amazon has this nice little 30 day post-order price-drop guarantee, right? You don't? Well, you probably can't blame them for not going out of their way to advertise the fact, but if you do a little digging on their help pages you will find it here. In a nutshell, if you order anything from Amazon (that is sold by Amazon, not a third-party vendor), and the price drops within 30 days of your purchase, you are entitled to a refund of the difference.
All you have to do is ask them. Unfortunately this is not all that easy to do either (again, can't really blame them for trying to hang onto their profits, they are a business not a charity after all). But even if you can't figure out how to contact them about it online, you can call their customer service at 1-866-216-1072 (use extension 7 to get a human) and ask them about it (have your order number handy). The really cool thing about it is that if the price drops again in the 30 day period, you can request another refund even if you already got one, and they'll give you back the difference between the new low price and the one you already acted on.
The only real hassle is that you have to keep tracking the prices for 30 days so you'll know when to request a refund. But there's good news for you here too. I've found this cool little site called Refund Please that will keep track of your items for you and send you an email if they detect a price drop on Amazon. All you have to do is provide the item number, the price you paid, the date the order was processed (that's when Amazon charges you), and an email address at which they can notify you.
Today, I got a notification from Refund Please that an item I ordered from Amazon last Friday is now selling for $25 less than what I paid for it (no, it's not body armor). I haven't even received the item yet, but I went ahead and requested my refund from Amazon anyway. They processed it with no fuss and informed me that I should be seeing the credit to my account within the next 3 to 5 business days. Now that's what I call customer service (too bad they hide this stuff under their rug though).
But Refund Please just ROCKS! I certainly won't be buying anything else from Amazon without registering it over there. You just never know when something you already ordered might end up on sale, and these guys make it simple to track.

 Tuesday, December 11, 2007
I think I'll buy myself some of these sexy new undies for next year.

Then maybe I can start going back to places like schools, churches, shopping malls, or, Heaven forbid, the Post Office in relative confidence.
What in the Sam Hell is wrong with people?
 Sunday, December 09, 2007
I know Vista is pretty poor at copying files, but this is just silly:

37513 days (and 18 hours)?!?!?
Oh well, I guess the kids will definitely be mature enough to handle watching T2 by sometime around 11:00 AM on August 24, 2110.
Sheesh...
 Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Can you believe it's time for Thanksgiving already! Man where has this year gone?
My Hunny Bunny and I do love the holiday season, but I must confess that we have not been terribly enthused about the idea of preparing a full-on turkey-day feast since it will be just our nuclear family in attendance this year. In truth, doing the whole roast turkey, dressing, sweet potatoes, mashers, gravy, the ubiquitous green bean casserole, punkin pie, etc. thing sounded like a little too much work to serve up what would probably wind up being just another typically unremarkable turkey dinner. I mean, if you are going to go through all that time and effort, why not create something interesting, right?
So this year we have elected to try something a bit different as we celebrate the holiday. How does this sound for your basic, run-of-the-mill, non-traditional Thanksgiving dinner menu?
¡Una Fiesta Del Mexicano De Thanksgiving!
- Raspberry Chipotle Glazed Turkey Breast
- Chicken Taquitos
- Borracho Beans (Anasazi beans cooked in beer)
- Calabacita (Mexican Succotash)
- Southwestern-style Steamed Potatoes (with tomatoes and Poblano chiles)
- Jalapeno Cornbread and Chorizo Dressing
- Mango Salsa
- Flour Tortillas
- Pecan Pie
Oh! I almost forgot the most important part:
Man, it's making my mouth water just typing this...
So, what's going to be on your table?
Seriously, I hope everyone enjoys a safe and happy Thanksgiving holiday. And please don't forget to take the time to include our troops overseas when you are counting your blessings. They are the guardians of the freedom too many of us seem to take for granted.
 Friday, November 16, 2007
Just a few of the strange things that have happened in professional baseball over the past week or so:
- A-Rod walks out on his $252 million contract with the Yankees.
- Troy Tulowitzki and Todd Helton both get hosed when Gold Gloves are awarded.
- Tulo gets hosed again when the Rookie of the Year goes to a guy that made almost 30 fielding errors this season.
- Clint Hurdle finishes 3rd in NL Manager of the Year voting - behind the skippers of 2 teams the Rockies swept in the playoffs.
- A-Rod agrees to a new $275 million contract with the Yankees.
Next you'll be telling me Matt Holliday will get screwed over for the NL MVP award.
If it weren't for the fact that Barry "soon to be needing bail" Bonds just got indicted for being the lying, cheating, head's so big it even obstructs justice, piece of crap that he is, I'd think that Major League Baseball might actually have a problem or two. And don't even get me started on pro football (Mike Vick, OJ, Pac-Man, Ricky Williams, etc).
It all just makes me really glad I TiVo'd all those rugby games earlier in the year...
 Monday, November 05, 2007
Apparently today is the official launch day for Windows Home Server. For those of you that have to maintain 2 or more PCs on your home network, you really owe it to yourself to have a look at this new product. WHS is targeted at the "typical" home user and it really will simplify your file sharing, system backup, and disaster recovery scenarios (without any of the headaches associated with rolling your own via deploying a full blown Active Directory domain). I have been participating in this beta for almost a year now and I think WHS is definitely going to be a great product for families with multiple PCs (assuming they are 32-bit Windows XP and Vista PCs, that is).
You can now pre-order a pre-loaded HP MediaSmart Server from a variety of retail sites for less than $600 (i.e. Amazon, Best Buy, CompUSA, Circuit City, etc). My quick and dirty scan indicates that Amazon is offering the best price for the 500 GB base model and is throwing in free shipping. Most of these folks look to be shipping the servers sometime toward the end of the month. Best Buy has a pretty cool flash demo up on their site if you are interested in seeing more about the new HP home server.
And for those of you that are:
- not really a huge fan of HP hardware (like me)
- slightly more technically inclined (like me)
- in posession of a spare machine with a metric butt-load of unused disk space (like me)
- cheap (like me)
You can also order a free 120 day evaluation kit (well, almost free, the shipping and handling is $5.99 in the US) and install it on your own gear. You'll have to buy and activate a license if you decide to keep it, but for 6 bucks it's definitely worth a look (Newegg is currently selling the software for $179.99).

Who knows? It might just make a great holiday present for the alpha-geek in your family...
 Monday, November 05, 2007
According to this announcement on Somasegar's Weblog, the next version of the World's Best Development tool (a personal opinion) is still on schedule to ship by the end of this month. This is good news for us .Net developer geeks, especially those of us that have already been using the Orcas Visual Studio 2008 betas and CTP releases for quite a while now, and have been somewhat concerned over the prolonged drought of CTP or RC previews since the July Beta 2 release. Truth be told, I had actually been anticipating some news that the VS 2008 release was in danger of slipping due to the relative silence of the Orcas dev team over the summer. So this announcement comes as welcome relief and it appears the VS folks have simply been heads down trying to get the product shipped on time as advertised.
But something else happened this morning that was completely unexpected. That would be the almost immediate and personal response I received from "Soma" when I voiced my concerns over the lack of interim releases since beta 2, and possible breaking changes, in the comments section on his blog. It is very cool to know that even Microsoft Corporate VP's can and will make the time to respond directly to their customers. Good job VS team. I can't wait to get my grubby little hands on those "gold bits" later this month.
 Saturday, November 03, 2007
So, if the Baseball Hall of Fame decides to exhibit the asterisk adorned baseball that Barry Bonds hit to break Hank Aaron's home run mark, Barry says he plans to boycott the Hall. No induction ceremony, no speaches, no nothing.
Sounds like a "win, win" to me.

 Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Here's a little video from the rest of America to congratulate the Red Sux fans on their team's 2nd championship in the last 89 years.
I couldn't have said it better myself, thanks Jimmy.
 Tuesday, October 30, 2007
It's no big secret that I hate going to places like SuperWalK-MarTarget with a passion bordering on obsession. They are all generally crowded, somewhat grungy, and staffed by retirees and/or kids that couldn't pass the McDonaldland aptitude test. When our family needs discount paper goods, cleaning supplies, or basic toiletries, I can generally rely on the missus to happily head over to the local discount chain to acquire the necessary goods, and leave me free to confine my shopping excursions to places like Home Depot, Auto-Zone, Amazon and Newegg.
So why is it that I found myself heading down to Wally-World at lunchtime today? Because of this.

I have to say I am really not a fan of this exclusive retail channel music distribution trend though. First it's Collective Soul's "Afterwords" being made an exclusive Tar-jay product, Paul McCartney's "Memory Almost Full" only at Starbucks, and now this. WTF? Is it some evil plot to force me to comingle with the great unwashed? I swear I am going to seriously consider giving up on buying any more new music until it hits the used bins over at Black and Read.
However it is a pretty good album (if you like the mellow side of the Eagles) and sells at a fair price ($12). Worth the trip if you can deal with a little Wal-Martaphobia...
 Tuesday, October 30, 2007
That the Broncos blew a game they should have probably won against Green Bay on MNF last night really didn't surprise or bother me all that much. With all their personnel/personal problems and injuries I think the Broncs are going to have their hands full simply trying to maintain mediocrity this year. Like I said, no big surprises there.
What bugs me more is the pathetic excuse for a football broadcast that ESPN continues to try to foist on the viewing public. It's simply unbearable. Who the hell is Tony Kornhole and why is he on my TV? Ever? And what's with all the "public interest" and "celebrity" interview crapola during the games? I admit that I do sort of like Brett Favre, but do I care enough about his wife to have her share the broadcast booth for nearly the entire second quarter and chat about her cancer survivor book? Or recite poetry about "Brett, the man, the legend," during breaks in the action? Nope, she's more than welcome to go do that on Oprah. And why, exactly, was Vince Vaughan in the booth? I like him too, but why was he even in Denver? Did he not look a bit "baked" on camera? Does ESPN think anyone watching a football game really gives a rat about some smarmy Christmas movie? I don't think it's even a Disney production for crying out loud (I do have to say I thought it was pretty funny when he gave props to the NFL Network during an ESPN broadcast though).
I wish ESPN would get their shit together and realize that they are actually supposed to be broadcasting football games on Monday nights. If I wanted talk I'd tune in to Rome is Burning. Get rid of the clowns in the booth and replace them with a real play-by-play announcer and a qualified analyst (although, in all fairness, Mike Tirica might be okay if he weren't saddled with "Jaws" and the Kornholer). Man, if it weren't for the satellite lag and other artificial "wardrobe malfunction/Don Imus" delays on the tube, I'd just mute the damn thing and tune into the local radio broadcast (maybe I'll just have to develop myself a time shifter that will let me stream a delayed radio feed from my media center PC).
What's really depressing is that the Broncos still have 2 more games scheduled for MNF this year. Watching them blow games they should win is bad enough, but suffering that broadcast crew could make them as unwatchable as the NBA.
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