05.27.08
Posted in General at 10:04 pm by tom
Earlier this decade a lot of conservatives were saying that even though Saddam Hussein did not have WMD it was good thing we took him out because the Iraqi people were suffering under him. Well, what I want to know why in the world is Bush not sending hundreds of thousands of troops into Myanmar to take out the Generals there and bring relief to the people who are suffering from the cyclone and their authoritarian rule? Seems like if that argument is going to valid for Iraq then it should be applied in all instances where citizens are suffering.
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03.28.08
Posted in General at 7:53 pm by tom
Will the demise of HD DVD push you to buy a Blu-ray hi-def player?
So this poll which appeared at Computerworld after Toshiba announced the end of HD-DVD asks a very specific question. But notice, there is no possible answer here for “Yes, I will buy a Blu-ray player now”, worthless poll. If you are going to ask a specfic question then at least give the option to answer said question in a positive way.
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02.14.08
Posted in Family at 12:20 am by tom
It is fixed now, took some messing around to get the software to output a true letterbox, essentially created DVD files with the aspect set to 4×3 and the had the black bars added top and bottom then ripped the video to a new file. Seems like there should be an easier way to do this. Oh well, head on over to youtube to watch it, not going to try embedding it at this time since it messed things up here before.
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01.27.08
Posted in General at 7:58 am by tom
I was considering installing XP today on a new drive I picked up last week (a vast expanse of 500 gigabytes woohoo) when it occurred to me that the next service pack for XP is due out soon. Wanting to save some time since it can typically take an hour or so to install a service pack I went to google and searched for “windows sp3 status” whereupoon I get a “We’re sorry” page, apparently this is similar to automated requests from virus or spyware. This took me by surprise, just what is the spyware looking for here? This seems like a pretty generic query to me. Turns out I just need to remove the status term and it works but if I simply search “windows status” it works.
It gets even stranger, apparently the problem only occurs when I search from the firefox specific page, kind of wonder what is going on here. And I just tried it again and the query worked, perhaps google figured out I am not spyware or something, whatever it is they are doing something interesting here.
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Posted in General at 7:47 am by tom
When I logged into my linux box this morning the quote that come up was:
“He is the best of men who dislikes power.”
Interesting quote that and also interesting that this apparently came from Muhammad. I’ll leave the interpretation to the reader.
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12.31.07
Posted in General at 9:12 pm by site admin
I got a copy of visual studio 2008 at work and was eager to give it a try after going to a demo at microsoft and heard about its capabilities. For the most part it worked well but it has given some problems that make non-starter for me. The big one is that I was working on a new page with a number of gridviews on it and when I selected the edit template option the view changed but the correct controls that would allow me actually edit the templates never came. In fact all of the gridviews disappeared from view. When I closed the page and reopened things were good again but the edit template still did not work.
Obviously we are going to have till service pack 1 on this product also. I wish that microsoft would realize that this shoddy work gets very tiresome.
The other problem I am not sure I can blame on visual studio 2008 or not but it is was certainly coincidental. After installing the application on a toshiba laptop the configfree program started crashing and blue screening the computer on bootup. I cannot definitively say it was visual studio that caused this but the problem did not exist before it was installed.
Also a big annoyance concerning VS is that when installing it insists on including a large amount of stuff for doing windows mobile development. I do not need this and never wanted it but it all goes on anyway. This of course makes uninstalling this thing a cast iron bitch since there about 15 items that have to be removed. Would it be so difficult to make this as an optional install?
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10.12.07
Posted in General at 8:06 pm by tom
So Apple announced that third part development will be allowed on the iPhone and iPod touch, very cool news and certainly took them long enough to realize the desire there.
As I thought about this more I realized why Apple took the stance they did initially, they could see that this product was going to be very popular and widely used so to keep it from going the way of Windows where there are tens and hundreds of exploits and viruses a day being released Apple said no development then no exploits. I can understand this attitude, Apple has been skating by on their perceived security for a long time now. We all know that if the Mac were to have been as big as Windows is now then a lot of bad stuff would been released for it, perhaps it could not do as much but that would not stop the criminals from trying. So in order to avoid that security black eye Apple said no development outside of the browser, a strategy which has been an abysmal failure.
Going to be interesting to see what security they add to the iPhone since it apparently has little security at this point. If it did then it would not have been so easily hacked and then rehacked.
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10.03.07
Posted in General at 10:56 pm by tom
Went in to the Department of Licensing (DOL) to renew the tabs on the car today which went fairly smoothly. One very interesting thing is that Washington citizens are now required to show a valid drivers license in order to renew their car tabs. Not sure what problem they are trying to solve here, if someone is driving around with an expired license then when the police pull them over they will be punished. Why should having a properly licensed vehicle require the registered owner to have a valid drivers license? I could very well be registering the car so my child could use it and I no longer drive for whatever reason.
What is truly amazing here is that this is the same department that issues said drivers license, seems like they could easily check this themselves. When I pointed this out to the person behind the counter I was told that at an earlier time DOL had spent 39 million dollars to try to connect the two databases and the process failed. This is just truly amazing, how hard is it to add a new field to the car tab database where the registered owners drivers license is stored and then create a process which would check said license against the drivers license database. Something like this should not take longer than a month to put together, lets give them 3 months since they are an odious bureaucracy who the Vogons would be impressed by. Certainly not 39 million dollars worth of work here.
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08.23.07
Posted in General at 9:14 pm by tom
I had to pick up a new dvd writer since the Sony I had picked up a couple years ago stopped ejecting the disks and would scratch them. Disappointing. So I went up to Frys and found a Pioneer drive that came with Nero and got it. My first attempt to install the Nero software was and absolute failure, it did warn me but I figured I could install the version on the disk and then upgrade with the latest update, no go.
The way to make this work is actually quite easy. Download the latest update from the nero website and start the install using that. When the screen comes up asking for the key click on the button (might be a link) at the bottom on this screen there is Check button, insert the CD that came with the drive and click the button. This will cause the installer to pull the key from the CD at which point the install can continue. Everything should work properly now. Good luck, hope this helps.
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07.23.07
Posted in Programming at 10:45 am by tom
I was working on some tables today and found the need to drop all the foreign key constraints. There is no easy function in the manager so I whipped up this little bit of SQL that will create the commands needed to do this. This will work in MS Sql Server 2000 and 2005
SELECT ‘ALTER TABLE ‘ + TABLE_SCHEMA + ‘.’ + TABLE_NAME +
‘ DROP CONSTRAINT ‘ + CONSTRAINT_NAME
FROM information_schema.table_constraints
WHERE CONSTRAINT_TYPE = ‘FOREIGN KEY’
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07.21.07
Posted in General at 12:29 am by tom
The first page is a couple quotes about death and how even if friends die they are still with us. An ominous beginning, on to the first chapter, I promise not put up any spoilers here since I really don’t like to read them myself.
Took a few days, I was doing other things around the house but did finally finish the book by Tuesday morning. Kind of had to since the kids were back from their trip and they wanted a copy. A ripping good read, J.K. again spins a very engaging tale .
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Posted in Daily Notes at 12:22 am by tom
Just got home, I went to Borders Olympia this evening and waited around for a while. Finally the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows book at 12:55 AM. Not much to say, time to get reading! Enjoy
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07.01.07
Posted in General at 10:14 pm by tom
So the top story today in the Seattle Times was state employee pay. This article actually deserves a much longer reply than I will put up here tonight but I needed to get something started at least. I found it interesting that this was a lead story for the first section, it reads very much like an editorial instead of simply reporting.
A couple things that was never noted in the article are that the big raises they noted, the 10, 15, 20 percent and more are not a result of the union bargaining but from salary surveys that the department of personnel performs. The other thing to note is that the intent of the salary survey is bring compensation to be at most 25% behind that of the private industry. That would not exactly count as being overpaid.
more later, this was a long article it irritated me a great deal.
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06.11.07
Posted in General at 9:17 pm by tom
Found this fun little game today when reading this entry at coding horror. This really a fun addictive little game.
Desktop Tower Defense
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06.03.07
Posted in Daily Notes at 8:35 pm by tom
Today got really busy, started out this morning with my getting out early before it got too hot in order finish digging up an area so that we could plant a Magnolia which was the afternoons entertainment. In between that we all went to see Pirates of the Carribbean, At Worlds End. A fun movie, not as much comedy as the other two movies but still a decent show. I read a review of the movie and he did not like it but I did not quite see the problems that the reviewer picked out. I suppose the reviewer was expecting Casablanca and was disappointed. And I still made time to sit down and read the Sunday paper. A good day, the only drawback is I did not get hold of my sister, will have to look for her online tomorrow.
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05.28.07
Posted in General at 8:40 pm by tom
Kathleen saw this on Paul’s site, thought I would give it a shot too and the result is:
Which Princess Bride Character are You?
this quiz was made by mysti
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05.17.07
Posted in Travel at 10:47 pm by tom
I have spent this past in Seattle attending a class at netdesk on XML. An interesting class, the capabilities of XML and the various enhancement surrounding it like xslt are quite amazing. I am looking forward to using this in the future to do interesting things with xml.
The other times I have been up I stayed at the Red Lion but this time I am at the the Sorrento Hotel. This is a nice place, apparently one of, if not the, oldest hotel in Seattle. That is not a bad thing, the place has been well kept up and it also means that the single room is not some tiny little compartment where turning around is a challenge. The closet is big enough to walk into and store bags and such in without trouble. And the windows open! hardly ever find that today.
The only thing I have found to be disappointing is their fireside room. The room is nice enough and if meeting friends it is good but the food service in there leaves a lot to be desired, the prices high for how little they serve and service is slow. After I finished my sandwich, did I mention it was somewhat sparse, I asked for a couple minutes to decide on a desert, the server finally returned about 15 minutes later. I just asked for the check and left.
Now this just the opposite from what the main dining room was like. The server was very responsive and the Seafood Pot-a-feu I had was very good. I missed desert because I was late going down but even though I was there 10 minutes before closing the server was very accommodating and responsive.
So, this is a nice place and if you can afford then I certainly recommend it.
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05.15.07
Posted in General at 5:41 pm by tom
So, a friend of mine posed the question recently, now that Blair is retiring who will Bush appoint to replace him? Which caused me to wonder if whoever it is would get Congress’ approval and then it hit me, Condi! What the perfect stepping stone for her. Now if only Parliament does not mind.
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05.11.07
Posted in Web Fun at 10:01 am by tom
Notes on the various fish in SimAquarium, a fun widget that is available for the Opera browser. I have been looking for information on the fish in this little widget but have not been having much luck so here some my observations.
Southern platyfish - Inexpensive fish that reproduces quickly. Does not produce a lot of pollution. Short lived.
Guppy - An inexpensive that reproduces ok. Short lived.
Rosy Barb - Keep this fish in the tank all by itself and it will reproduce well. When it has to compete with other fish then its reproduction is slow to non-existent. Must have at least an underground filter or the water will dirty quickly. Slow growing but long lived. Appears the max per tank is 13.
Cardinal Tetra - This fish will reproduce quickly but does not cause too much pollution. A tank can support more than 60 of these fish without problem. Lives a little longer than the Sailfin but not much.
Marine Angelfish - very slow growing and reproduces quite slowly. They do look nice in the tank though.
Freshwater Angelfish - slow to grow and long lived, once full grown will reproduce quickly, especially when some breeding hormones are tossed in.
Discus - grows fast and short lived but will reproduce quickly especially with breeding hormones in the tank.
Paradise Fish - If you are looking to breed more fish then keep away from this one, it is very slow to reproduce if ever.
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05.03.07
Posted in General at 9:50 pm by tom
I really need to make more time to put things in here, I have not been ignoring this for any good reason, either get too busy or just involved in something (civilization III has been my recent distraction).
This was productive evening, along with finally getting something written up here I managed to fix the lamp that was not working. This lamp had a dimmer switch and it always had an annoying buzz, well it appears that the switch gave up and was not letting enough power through to light the halogen bulb. Pulled it apart cut out the switch and reconnected the wires and all was well. Now we can see things in the living room again.
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