Test Results and A Weekend Of Painting

Test Results - We went in for the HSG test Thursday. The wait in the outpatient check-in was a long one. From what I could overhear my wife wasn't in their system for some reason. Eventually they called us up and we got checked in and she got a bracelet. Off to the radiology waiting room from where we were very soon escorted to the x-ray room. I had to wait in the hall, so I pulled out my Palm and read a book on it.

My wife had been dreading this test for a while after reading stories of it being very painful for some women. I could hear her laughing from time to time, though, so I figured it maybe wasn't nearly as bad as she had thought it would be. Still, I was prepared to hear a scream and rush to the door. (Okay, maybe just comfort her after - there were x-rays in there after all.) Soon, though, the nurse came out and told me I could come in. The delay in the check-in didn't amount to anything consequential, as it turns out, because the doctor was late. We chatted a little bit, and my wife flashed her bare hip at me as she sat on the xray table, and I patted her butt. She asked me to fetch her a bit of paper from the adjoining restoom, and as I came back the doctor entered. They shooed me out and I went back to reading.

Before long I sensed someone near. I looked up and the doctor was there, rolling down his sleeves. He said everything looked normal, and there was nothing he saw that would get in the way of her getting pregnant. When my wife was done dressing she came out, and as we left she told me about it.

As with many of the procedures so far the worst for her was when the doctor was inserting the hardware. Once everything was in place they had her lie down and the x-ray machine was moved into place. Then the doctor started injecting the dye. My wife says it felt like a bad cramp at its peak. Afterward the doctor rewound the tape (they recorded the whole thing rather than just take a few shots along the way) and showed her what was what. There was nothing amiss in her uterus, and the dye flowed freely through one tube. There was so much flowing through the one, it was hard to see the other, but he could see enough to know that at most there was a blockage, and nothing else.

Before the test she had taken some anti-anxiety medication, so on the drive home she slept most of the way. She woke up right as I turned off the highway.

Weekend Of Painting - As I had promised my wife earlier in the week, this weekend I finished a long put off project: painting the den. When we first moved into the Secret Lair we painted the walls in this room a pale peachy pink. I don't remember the name of the color. The trim was sort of a pastel pinkish mauve. It worked well, but I don't think it was quite what she was after. A few years ago - October of '04 according to the sticker on the paint can - she picked a different pair of colors: terra cotta for the walls, and sand for the trim. We pulled the furniture away from the walls in phases, painting each wall and its trim and allowing it to dry before moving the furniture back and moving on to the next wall. The end of the room where the computers are posed a bit of a problem. My wife had, at that time, a huge corner desk with cabinets, and of course my smaller desk was heaped with junk on top and underneath. It was a daunting task. She wanted to get a new desk anyway, so we decided to put off finishing the paint job until she could pick one she liked.

Finally, not long after alluding to it in this post, we got the new desk. The old one is in the dump now. It was fun tossing it into the compactor. But still we didn't paint. We had the whole IVF thing going by then, and that just ate up too much of our time. Plus, I was hesitant to expose her to paint fumes. We're in a lull now, and since we're doing a frozen transfer next we don't have to worry about the conditions for developing eggs, so now is the time. Friday night my wife cleared off her desk. Saturday morning she headed out to the gym and then to Secret Headquarters to catch up on some paperwork. I stayed home to paint.

The first thing I did was disconnect her computer and move the components out of harm's way. Then I removed her keyboard tray and drawers, taped the computer cabinet door shut, and rolled the desk away from the wall onto its top. It slid over the carpet easily after that. Then I started clearing off mine. That took a while. I boxed up most things, and put some in a pile on the sofa. There were many things I threw away, but the piles of papers I just moved intact without going through them. I'll do that when I put them back. My current computer has been sitting on top of the desk, while my old one remained in its cubbyhole below. there was also a much older computer, salvaged from the junk pile at my former workplace, sitting idle on the floor under the desk, with the cable modem and router on top. I moved both old computers out permanently. (I'll strip out the hard drives later.) Man there was a lot of dust! I vacuumed as I went along and the dust cannister, which started out pretty empty, is now about 1/3 full. The place where the older computer was on the floor is visibly lighter than the rest of the carpet. I think we need to clean it, or replace it - it's been here since before we bought the house.

My desk is much lighter, so I was able to lift it out of the way. That being done, I started the actual wall prep, beginning with a wash with some TSP substitute. My wife has had a long habit of squishing bugs against the wall, then not cleaning them off, so the wall by her desk was a bit of a mess. I scrubbed the worst spots, then did an allover wipe down. After that dried, I did a dry wipe with an old clean towel to clear off any lint from the disintegrating washcloth I'd used with the TSP, and the walls were ready for paint.

We had a full can of the terra cotta left, plus a partial cam. I opened the partial can first and found that there was some corrosion around the rim that had rubbed off and sprinkled into the paint as I opened the can. If the paint had been fully mixed I would have skimmed it off the top, but after over three years the color had all settled to the bottom. I tossed that can and opened the other, which was fortunately pristine. I finished up, including the brush painting in the corners and along the ceiling, around 9PM and after a quick clean-up we headed out for a much-needed meal. Afterward I discovered I had had my fly open the whole time we were out. Good thing I was wearing a coat. We had to switch from one sale to another at midnight, so I rolled her desk back over, moved mine back into place, and set up the computers.

Today my wife headed out again, to the gym, Secret Headquarters for a bit of work, and to her sister's house for a visit with the family. I stayed home to paint the trim. This time it didn't take so long to move everything out of the way. The main part of the trim went fast, but the den is sunken a couple steps down from the rest of the house, so there was a banister to paint as well. It meets the wall with an oval piece which was a lot of fun to tape around. After that I went back to the beginning and gave it all another coat.

My wife wanted to get on the computer tonight, so I set them back up again. It's still temporary and the desks are out from the wall a bit since I want the paint to have time to dry well and adhere tightly before we have anything rubbing against it. Tomorrow evening I plan to go along the trim with a small art brush to touch up the places where the trim paint seeped under the tape. After that, it'll all be done. Yay!

Back Online Again

As I mentioned yesterday, we got a replacement modem, but were told that there was an outage in our area. In hindsight, maybe taking the new modem wasn't such a good idea. I'd still make the same choice, though - the old modem could have been bad and if it was that would have cost us another day. We need home access for our business & banking.

Anyway, when we got home around seven or so I hooked up the modem. It still wouldn't connect. Well, they did say there was an outage, so I looked at its diagnostic screen via the web browser to monitor its progress. Almost right away it started progressing through the connection sequence, though much more slowly than normal. Then it reset. It did that a few times then stopped, then finally connected. Yay!

Or not so yay. Nothing would resolve on DNS. Nothing but the comcast.net web site, anyway, which was showing a welcome message and instructions to download installation software. (That link didn't work, by the way.)

I called in and the technician who answered tried to activate the new modem. She said there was something blocking it and she would forward me to billing so they could clear the blockage then send me back to her. I thought that was odd since we currently have a $40 credit on our account, but in a large corporation there's no telling which department will need to stick its fingers in when so what the heck. She transferred me over and after listening to an increasing annoying piano piece that apparently has no ending I got a menu. There was nothing on the menu that sounded like what I was told I was needed, so I hit 0 to try to talk to an operator. After a little while waiting for someone to pick up I hung up and called in again.

This time I had better luck. The woman I got seemed a little slower going through the routine questions, but in a methodical way, not like she was "slow" if you know what I mean. She tried to get the modem activated but ran into an error. Instead of transferring me she contacted the provisioning department and had someone there set me up. While waiting for that to be done I asked where they were located. Turns out she's from New Orleans, but still displaced by Katrina. They're waiting for their electrical system to be inspected so they can put up their drywall. The modem reset itself again, I reset our router and released & renewed my computer's DHCP connection. (See instructions below - much faster than a reboot in such situations.) And it worked! I had my wife release & renew and she was up too. I thanked the woman and wished her luck getting back home soon.

How to release & renew your connection instead of rebooting...
(These instructions are for Windows 2000 and XP.)
1. Bring up the Command Prompt. You'll find it in Start > Programs > Accessories
2. Enter "ipconfig /release" and wait for the prompt to return.
3. Enter "ipconfig /renew" and wait for the prompt.
You're done! You can check your connection by pinging something, like "ping johnssecretblog.blogspot.com"

Big Bang or Big Boot?

I just browsed (via this blog entry at the Scientific American web site) an interesting site exploring the question of whether we are all living in a computer simulation: The Simulation Argument.

Don't laugh. I did at first, but it's an interesting question. It is put forth here in a very interesting paper written by the director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University, Nick Bostrom, and published in Philosophical Quarterly. Okay, you can laugh if you want to, but you really should read the paper.

One thing you should realize, though, if you're thinking otherwise at this point, is that Bostrom is not actually claiming that we are living in a simulation. He only claims that if humanity or its descendants survive long enough to develop the required computing capability, and there are not barriers in the way of such simulations sufficient to prevent their being run in significant numbers, this world we are living in is much more likely to be one of the many simulations than the one true original history of humanity. Or at least that's as I understand it.

Personally, I think that there is, at least currently, strong societal pressure and barriers against running such simulations. You see it in the recent frenzy of anti-human-cloning laws and in countless examples in both literature and reality of the vilification of those who would dare to "play god." But, of course, there are always those who want to play anyway, and they often find ways to do it.

I invite comment, but first make sure you read and understand the paper, at least in its essentials if not the math.

Is This Progress? or The Post Office Pisses Me Off!

I just mailed out a package. That should be a simple proposition, but in this case I had two different zip codes for the recipient so I had to check which one was correct.

In the past I've just fired up a handy little program called the USPS Shipping Assistant. It's a free program downloadable from the post office web site. I'd been using version 2.2 for a while and it worked great. It was much faster and more convenient than using the web site for such things. This time, however, it wouldn't run. It told me I had to run 3.0 or later.

Okay. It had been a while since I'd had occasion to use it so it was understandable that there was a later version. I'm not so sure why the old one should stop working, though. Anyway, I downloaded the new version 3.1 (over 7M compared to 2.2's 225k - that should have been my first clue) and installed it.

What a piece of crap.

It takes forever to load, which is only natural since it's built on .NET and Internet Explorer. (Damn, I hate lazy "programmers". No better that "script kiddies" if you ask me.) Every time a new dialog comes up you can watch it draw all the controls and graphics. I kid you not - it's that slow. From the looks of it, whoever "programmed" it spent most of their time doing graphic design for the interface. I'd characterize it as putting lipstick on a pig, and stand by that as being 100% accurate. If this is the sort of thing the money from the postage rate increase is going to I want a refund!

Also, when I closed it it didn't stop running! It just minimized to a little icon in my tray next to the clock. I had to right-click on that to tell it to finally exit. Why? Do they perhaps know that the thing is dog slow to load and decided that the "solution" to the slowness of loading this bloated piece of crap is to keep it running? Get an actual programmer to actually fix the thing!

I emailed the following to the USPS on their contact page, specifying in the form that it was a technical issue regarding Shipping Assistant:

Please! Please! Please! Reactivate 2.2!

I tried to use it today and it wouldn't run. I had to use 3.1 and it is PONDEROUSLY slow.

Failing reactivation of 2.2, please include the following changes in 3.2 or 4.0...
1. Drop .NET so it won't require so much memory.
2. Drop the IE interface and do some actual UI programming so it won't take forever each time you switch dialogs, or switch fields for that matter.
3. When the user closes the program, close the program. Don't leave it running in the tray.
4. Get rid of the gingerbread/bells & whistles. Fire the designers and whatever postal official let his ditzy trophy wife approve the interface while you're at it too. If the programming & design were outsourced, get someone else this time because the people who made 3.1 padded the project with useless crap.

In other words, get rid of all the crud that just slows the thing down, defeating its purpose of *assisting* our shipping. It doesn't assist if it slows us down. The changes from 2.2 to 3.1 only serve to further cement the USPS's old reputation for slowness.

I doubt it will get any action, but maybe if enough people read this blog, agree, and decide to stop settling for crap software and complain, maybe together we'll make something happen. I will post about this again when and if I get a response.

Meanwhile, I also intend to see if I can't hack 2.2 into thinking it's 3.1 so that just maybe it will work again. If I have any success with that I'll post instructions. If you have already been able to do it, please reply with instructions - no sense reinventing the wheel.

A Mishap At Saturn

Some years ago, a good decade now that I think of it, I bought a program that I very much enjoyed: Microsoft Space Simulator. It was very cool for its time, particularly for a DOS program as you can see from these screen shots. It's been a while since I've run it. I may still have it stashed away, but I really can't remember if I got it on 3.5" or 5.25" floppies. My current computer has neither so the point is moot. (For now, anyway - I plan to snag one off of an older system before I junk it.)

So, curious to see if Microsoft has followed up with a version that can take advantage of modern computers, I did a search. I didn't find an updated version, but I did find mention of Orbiter.

Orbiter is a freeware space flight simulator that looks a lot nicer than MS Space Simulator, as you can see from its screen shots. Unfortunately, it, or my computer, has a problem. When I tried to load the Saturn scenario from the demo section it instantly reset and rebooted my computer. That's just plain annoying.

I do play to try it again, perhaps with nothing else running, but I would like to hear from other users who have had the same problem with it and hear how they fixed or avoided it.

Anyway, if you haven't seen it, give it a look yourself. It looks pretty cool.

A Cooler Monitor

My wife's new monitor, a Samsung Syncmaster 971p, just came in. (Sans memory cards we also ordered, but that's another story.) I'll be setting it up tonight and maybe posting a review here later.

Anyway, she wants to replace her ginormous (it's officially a word now) corner desk with a smaller one. I was doing an image search on "corner computer desk" to find her old one and show an employee just how big the thing is (well, I couldn't very well tell them it's the same one the girl on JenniCam had) and along the way found a blog mentioning the two displays above.

They're pretty cool. The one on the left, manufactured by Sharp, displays three different images at once. Which one you see depends on which direction you view it from. Their press release on it suggests it be used in a dashboard display, allowing the driver to see directions, the front passenger to look up destination information, and the kids in back to watch a movie. I think it would also be cool in a crowded house where arguments over what to watch are frequent and heated. Just add headphones (bluetooth stereo, anyone?) and a couple extra tuners with independent remotes and you're good to go.

The one on the right is very cool too. Back when I was playing more FPS games I would have been drooling over the thing. The company who makes it, Seamless Display, makes flat display panels that fit together seamlessly (or at least with a small enough seam so you can't see it in the example pictures.) If you can't tell from the picture, the monitor is made of three panels, with the side panels joined to the center one at an angle to arc around the user. Sweet.

Helpful Things You Can Do On The Internet

Apparently there are several sites on the interweb where a body can sign up to contribute their time to those sites' projects. Here are a few I already knew about or recently heard of, followed by a list of others.

Distributed Proofreaders
I have this on in my blogroll already. Basically it's a site where you can help proofread, one page at a time, scanned and computer-transcribed public-domain texts to be included in the collection of Project Gutenberg. You get to pick from a list of current projects, some of which can really suck you in. (Yes, I have participated in this one.)

Stardust@Home
The Stardust probe traveled to a comet and once there held aloft an extremely light gel block (aerogel, the stuff is called) to gently catch bits of interplanetary & interstellar dust. They then put the aerogel under an automated microscope and took over a million pictures, scanning the position and focus depth along the way. Volunteers scan through the pictures, noting tell-tale signs of dust impacts so that the scientists can retrieve the captured dust for analysis.

Galaxy Zoo
An astronomical photographic survey promises to reveal a good million or more galaxies. The astronomers want to find and classify them all, but while computers are good at finding possible galaxies, they aren't nearly as good as humans at verifying that they are in fact galaxies and noting their characteristics. You can help by looking at the pictures they have gathered and noting whether each is a galaxy, what type, and the direction of rotation for spirals. They say that as a participant you may be the first human to see these galaxies.

And here's a list of others (more details at Distributed Human Projects at distributedcomputing.info)...

• Common Sense Learner
• Distributed Proofreaders Europe
• Project Dolphin
• Twenty Questions
• Open Mind Indoor Common Sense
• BeWeS MouseTracker
• Uptime Project
• The ESP Game
• questsin
• Amazon Mechanical Turk
• Herbaria@home
• systemic

Have fun!

Busy At HQ

Backing up my pc @ Secret Headquarters so I can reinstall it fresh. Meanwhile, enjoy these ducklings & goslings we saw Saturday by Outback.

Yesterday At The Fertility Clinic

I would have blogged this sooner, but my PC's been having fits.

So anyway, it was an up and down and up and down kind of day. We went in to have my wife tested and ultrasounded to see how she's progressing. It looks like she's got six or so follicles. One is bigger than the rest, but they're all of decent size for this stage of the game. For our age that's a real good number, but she's been reading message boards and hearing about people with a dozen to twenty of the things and was greatly disappointed when she heard she had six. Also her estrogen level was lower than she was expecting, and that all put her in a funk.

Since then she's learned, as mentioned above, that six is a really good number of follicles for a woman her age, and also that the estrogen level is actually right in the zone of where it should be at this stage of things. It will get higher later. So she's feeling better now, but for a while she was an emotional yo-yo (as was I, though I made sure to be "up" around her.) I'm guessing that's probably normal too.

We go in for another check Sunday morning. The retrieval will likely be early too, so I guess it's no more late nights for me until after the transfer. We're in the stretch now. Wish us luck!

The Problem With Outsourcing

How May I help You?
Exit 9:30:07 AM System
Welcome to TrendSecure Support Chat.
9:30:08 AM System
https://esupport.trendmicro.com/support/consumer/hcmshome.do
9:30:08 AM System
Please wait while we connect you to a customer service representative.
9:31:03 AM System
Thank you for waiting, a customer service representative would be with you in a short while.
9:44:19 AM System
John Kenneth Pangilinan has joined this session!
9:44:20 AM System
Connected with John Kenneth Pangilinan
9:44:26 AM John Kenneth Pangilinan
Thank you for contacting Trend Micro Chat Support. Please wait while we check your problem description.
9:44:31 AM JSI
hello
9:46:34 AM JSI
Tough one?
9:46:34 AM John Kenneth Pangilinan
Hi john, please perform a Windows Update to resolve the issue..
9:46:59 AM JSI
Will that change how PC-Cillin launches the vulnerabiliy info pages?
9:47:04 AM John Kenneth Pangilinan
Please check now your email.. Bye and thank you.
9:47:30 AM JSI
I don't think you quite understood the question.
9:48:20 AM John Kenneth Pangilinan
PC-cillin Internet Security is currently detected a vulnerability from your Windows OS, you need to update your Windows to resolve the issue. Sorry wrong window.
9:48:30 AM JSI
When PC-Cillin lists MS vulnerabilities after a check, the user can doube-click on a listing to see a microsoft.com page about it.
9:49:03 AM JSI
PCC launches the page in IE regardless of what I have set as my default browser. That's the problem.
9:50:02 AM JSI
oops... "doube-click" -> "double-click"
9:51:09 AM John Kenneth Pangilinan
Ok, what risk level of that vulnerability? May I know what is the exact MS bulletin PC-cillin Internet Security detected.
9:51:44 AM JSI
It happens with all of them. It's not associated with any particular vulnerability. It's a PCC behavior.
9:53:44 AM John Kenneth Pangilinan
Does still happening in this time? Can you try to turn off PC-cillin Internet Security then check if problem still persist. Please do this: Right click on the blue pill icon near the system clock then click exit.
9:54:47 AM JSI
Ok... forget the whole vulnerability thing. The behavior I'm describing won't happen with PCC off because it's a behavior OF PCC.
9:55:30 AM JSI
Here's the question: Is there a setting in PCC to make it launch web pages in my default browser? At least non trendmicro.com pages.
9:56:04 AM John Kenneth Pangilinan
There is no option like that sir.
9:56:08 AM JSI
ok
9:56:14 AM System
The session has ended!Send
The session has ended!Session ID:76007 Question40

Hard Target

Really, is there anything more majestic than Wilfred Brimley on horseback with a bow & arrow? Is there? There is? Oh, ok.

Well anyway, I just watched, or glanced at actually, bits and pieces of Jean Claude Van Damme's movie Hard Target. It was set in and around New Orleans, from what I saw, and they really seemed to play fast and loose with the geography. The opening scene was of a man being hunted by a mish-mash group of incongruously calm and sophisticated-looking sickos and dark-helmeted motorcyclists ("bikers" would be a misnomer) in the French Quarter. Cut to the same man running from same sickos and motorcyclists across the river on the west bank, making his way over the levee, supposedly to reach the safety of his small boat on the river. He is shot down with a crossbow. (IIRC, crossbows were big in the early 90s.) In the next scene, a woman is driving from the west bank (the side where the guy was killed) to the east (the side where the French Quarter is) and the gondola towers left over from the '84 world's fair can clearly be seen. Perhaps the guy eluded his pursuers by crossing over on the cables. It would be quite a feat as there were no gondola cars in sight.

At this point I was absorbed in installing Visual C++ 2005 Express (a free download from MS along with other programming languages) and the Windows Platform SDK so I missed most of the movie. I guess.

When I next looked over my shoulder, there was Wilfred Brimley, not yet on horseback, taking aim with his bow and arrow. He shoots, narrowly missing the lead antagonist, but hitting his intended target: a can of whoop-ass in the form of bottles & jars of highly volatile & flammable liquids that ignite on the impact of the arrow. BOOM! Bad guys aflame. Lead antagonist shows he's a nice guy in an evil sort of way by mercy killing a flambe'd bad guy. The the dynamite goes off and Brimley takes off on horseback after taunting the baddies and attracting a hail of pitifully aimed automatic gunfire and one grenade or rocket or something that hits a convenient shed. The picture above is the best I could find. It does not do justice to the scene, which includes a slow-motion shot of Brimley bouncing on his galloping horse towards the camera as the Convenient Exploding Shed explodes behind him.

Then I returned to my task of configuring VC++ to use the platform SDK. Maybe if I actually get around to learning to program in C I'll blog a bit about that.

My Strangest Work Yet...

This has got to be my strangest, geekiest work yet on cafepress.com: Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities, ROT13-encrypted.

Yes, that's right. I took the entire text of A Tale of Two Cities and ROT13 encrypted it. Then I scanned the blank back of an old yearbook of mine and used it as the basis for the cover design.

I case you don't know what ROT13 encryption is, it's a very very weak encryption scheme that's really only good for allowing people who don't want to read something to avoid it. It's often used in usenet newsgroups. (Those groups that Google Groups & others repackage in a web interface - they're much better read with a real newsreader.) Both encryption & decryption is accomplished with the same algorithm: rotate each english alphabet letter 13 letters over, so that instead of ABCxyz you get NOPklm. All other characters are left as-is. I actually wrote my own utility program to do the conversions, txt file to txt file. (Yeah, I'm that geeky. Not geeky enough to buy and read a book like this, but enough to get a chuckle out of it - and I hope bigger geeks than me will do me one better and buy the thing.)

Now that I've done this one, it should be relatively easy to do others. The time-consuming part is proofreading the formatting. The cover design was quicker than I anticipated, once I got the blank cover scanned. I'm scrounging around my book collection for other blank-backed books, of course. Can't have them all green, can I?

What I've been doing...

So... what's up with me since Thursday? Been busy busy busy.

Naturally, I've whipped up a few more designs for cafepress. I'm up to 154, if you include size and layout variations for different items. Most recently I've refined the designs for the mugs, converting many to two-sided wrap-around designs; made a few from some renaissance & other fine art in the public domain (admittedly with a tendency towards nudes - I am what I am); and made a couple to let Katrina and other disaster survivors show a little attitude. The link's still in my links, presumably to your left unless you're reading this after Yahoo does some future redesign.

Last week we ordered new computers for home since the systems we had - still running Windows98SE - were getting a bit long in the tooth and doing an upgrade on them would take too much work. We got them local and when I placed the order I told them we'd stop by with a check so they could get started on building them. It wasn't until Saturday that we had time to do so, but as it turns out they went ahead and built the systems so we took them home sooner than anticipated.

Sunday was mostly spent celebrating my wife's birthday - I'm married to an "older woman" for the next month and a week. We went visit her folks and all went out to Macaroni Grill, then back to her folks' house for cake & ice cream and family time. It was nice. The book I got her turned out to not be a substantial as anticipated - it looks a bit like a trade paperback version of a Time-Life book. Oh well. I guess when you shop Amazon you really have to keep in mind that you really can't judge a book by its cover.

Saturday and Sunday night were spent setting mine up and learning my way around configuring Windows XP Professional. For us, that means switching it to classic mode and tweaking away as much as I can of the random quirky behaviors MS decided to add. (If we could have gotten Windows 2000 we would have.)

The first step was to switch to the classic theme to get rid of the candy/toy user interface. After that it was a matter of exploring all the configuration options offered up by Windows, and research the hidden ones (like the hidden Power User user type) on the ol' interweb. And, of course, transferring over my data from the old PC (whole drive copied over to C:\OldC on the new system for convenience) and installing my software. Let me tell ya... hunting down Y2K patches for legacy software is fun!

It's not over yet, of course. I've got most of the essentials - Agent, SeaMonkey, Miranda-IM, ftp clients, ssh terminal, spreadsheet, VB, PSP7, PageDefrag, etc. Beyond that, and one or two other work-related items, it's pretty much going to be install-on-demand. Then I've got to get my wife's new one set up. Wish me luck.

I'm planning/hoping to compile a list of the tweaks and configuration changes I've made, and my reasons for them. For now, here's a useful little program I used along the way. It makes a lot more Windows components optional than are normally, allowing you to strip out the programs and services you know you don't need, giving you a leaner, meaner, computing machine. There's a free limited-capability/unlimited-term trial version available for download.

A-Rockin' And A-Geekin'

I feel like simultaneously rockin' out and geekin' out, so...

It's Time To Roll Out The Barrel... And Find Out What's Inside Today!

A little semi-random homage to ZOOM there.

I've added a few more links, some of which are my own.

Sysinternals This site is an old favorite of mine that has since been taken over by Microsoft, so it's a bit more cluttered and less informative than it used to be. The utilities there, though, are invaluable. My favorites...

PageDefrag - I have it set up to defragment my registry, virtual memory, & hibernation files on every boot.

Filemon - A great hacking tool. Lets you monitor & log file accesses on your system, and filter it by program. Great for figuring out where the heck a program is grabbing a file from, or trying to if it's not finding it.
Regmon - Similar to Filemon, but monitors registry access instead. Find those hidden settings.

Quackwatch A great resource for researching dubious medical claims. I know I've referenced it a couple times in Yahoo Answers.

John's Secret Stores

Shameless plug here! I've been going through my digital photos and picking out a few that might look good on mousepads, mugs, t-shirts, etc., and setting them up on cafepress.com. Free money, if anyone buys them. So far I've got four "stores" set up...

John's Secret Store - Gettysburg I: Path & Fence - Based on a couple pics I took of a split-rail fence and trees along a leaf-strewn walking path in the Gettysburg battlefield.

John's Secret Store - Gettysburg II: Lee - Based on the Robert E. Lee statue on the Virginia soldiers monument. This was at the same location as the path & fence.
John's Secret Store - New York - Based on a couple pictures I took of New York and the Brooklyn Bridge lit up on a cloudy night, from across the river in Brooklyn.
John's Secret Store - Roses - While visiting my brother and his family I spotted this rose in the back yard and snapped a couple close-ups. I cropped them down to just the blooms and tossed them up on a variety of items just to see what sells.

There will be more. I've got a shot or two of a duck figurine in the same flower bed as the rose that might make a good journal cover or mousepad. And I plan to dig through my older photos as well. It seems fairly easy once you get the hang of it. If you've got a high enough resolution digital camera or scanner, or a good paint program (The GIMP is free) and some artistic talent, you could make a few dollars yourself. They also let you self-publish CDs, DVDs, and books, but I haven't looked into those options.