This past weekend, I wiped my laptop and main machine clean at home and installed the final version of Vista, available from MSDN if you have a subscription.

I'm loving it so far, but I ran into some hard drive problems along the way.. namely one of my hard drives dying in the middle of installing iTunes. Joy! Not Vista's fault, though.

Anyway, Vista's start menu is completely different from XP, and by default always shows the top used applications. You have to click "All Programs" to see your full start menu. And the view then switches to a single scrolling list, with folders that expand inside this list. What's been driving me crazy is that clicking/hovering to open the start menu folders takes seconds. CPU usage goes to 100%, and the start menu becomes sluggish while this happens. Then the folder opens. Unacceptable.

I did a search on Google, and funny enough, people have been having this problem since early betas of Vista. It's crazy that it hasn't been fixed in the final, but here's hoping Microsoft releases some quick fix later on, and preferably before the January public release, hrm?

In the meantime, like that forum post suggests, if you go into your start menu options and turn off the highlighting of new programs, it solves the problem. I'm guessing that Vista is trying to look up the "last modified date" of every start menu item on the fly, and that's causing the delay?

You've probably heard about this video floating around YouTube of UCLA police officers using a taser on a suspect:

Let's just cut right to it. My thoughts:

• Based on this clip, we don't get a full picture of what happened. According to "news sources" the guy was not supposed to be in the CLICC area after 11 without a student ID. He was asked to leave, and did not do so in a timely manner, so UCPD was called in. This video seems to start a little while after the initial confrontation. Who knows how he acted to the cops initially. And as any decent officer will tell you, treat them with respect, and they'll show the same. I'm sure this guy didn't, based off of my next point...
• "DON'T. TOUCH. ME. Don't touch me. Don't touch me." while being escorted out of the building. That's just dumb. If an officer has his hand on you to escort you out, you need to just relax and be escorted out. Don't insult him, or pull away and tell him to not touch you. Put yourself in the mind of the officer, here. This guy is being uncooperative, and keeps trying to pull away from you. He's not in cuffs at this point (as far as I can tell in the video) so who knows if he has any weapons he could reach for, etc.
• The Taser is used, and he screams "I have a medical condition! Here's your patriot act! Here's your fucking abuse of power! I'm not fighting you! I said I would leave! I said... I... WOULD... LEAVE. I got tased for no reason.. I was leaving this god-forsaken place, you stopped me, you're abusing your power. Here's your justice.." Yeah, you were really complying when you were yelling at the officers and pulling away from them, genius. And way to make this a patriot act issue-- that's just odd. Kind of like you wanted to make a scene? Hrm. As for the medical condition comment, what medical condition keeps you from complying with the officers? Is it something breathing-related? Because you seem to be having no problem screaming yourself hoarse.
• And what happens when the officers tell him to stand up? He tells them to fuck off. Wrong move, buddy. That's just disrespectful! And would it have been so hard to get up? I am reading all over the web that people claim that being tased immobilizes you for minutes, and you can't stand up or anything. I happen to know a sheriff deputy who has been tased (and has tased others) and knows this claim is bogus. Most officers go through training and get tased themselves so they know exactly what it does to the body and how it feels. Go ahead and do a search on YouTube for "taser" (and no, a stungun is not a taser.) Watch how quickly people can recover once the juice is done.
• If you're not in the know, a taser fires two "dart" type projectiles with barbs on the end that try and catch the person's clothing or skin. These darts have long wires connected to them (that stay in the ammo pack in the gun) that deliver the actual shock to the person. Once a taser is fired, and the probes are stuck in someone, as long as the trigger is held down, a cycle occurs: the initial shock is sent (several seconds) and then several 1.8 second bursts are sent. The initial shock is going to make your muscles and body involuntarily tense up. The follow up shocks are going to keep you from ripping the probes off your body. Anyhow. Update: There are reports that the taser was used in "drive-stun" mode, which is the secondary-fire essentially of a taser, where the front of the taser is pressed directly against the subject, no probes involved. This causes localized pain in the area being hit, but does not incapacitate like a full taser probe-hit would. This doesn't really change anything in my opinion, and makes an even greater case for him being able to still physically comply with the demands.
• People constantly criticize the police's use of taser weapons. What-- you'd rather they had used lethal force in those cases? I hate to break it to you, but your odds of taking a taser hit and surviving 100% undamaged are waaaay better than having a police officer shoot you. As most police forces train to shoot-to-kill (and not to "wound"), I find the non-lethal approach a good stopping/compliance method for police to employ.
• The people crowding around didn't help this particular situation, and I'm sure that's why quite a few more police officers showed up to calm the scene. And of course they keep yelling they want badge numbers, etc.-- what would they do with them anyway? They could request a copy of the police report and get them that way, as well. This isn't some undercover operation, or anything. Sheesh. I'm reading on many blogs that the general sentiment is that the crowd should have overpowered the police and protected this suspect. Hah.

In general, I agree with the amount of force deployed/shown in the video. If the suspect had just cooperated from the start, none of that would have happened. And don't try to turn this into a racial/Islam issue, ugh.

Update: Michelle Malkin picked up on the story, and got some feedback from an officer.

Police officers that attempt to match a person’s resistance with the same amount of force all to often end up in litigation or dead.

Wow. I am just speechless right now. I’ll let you read the response that MySpace’s technical support gave me regarding the cancellation of my account:

Hello,

If you wish to terminate your MySpace Account, start by clicking on "Home" in the top navigation menu from any MySpace web page. Once on your personal home page, click on "Account Settings," appearing in the upper left portion of the page, next to your picture. Click on the "Cancel Account" link. You can find it above the "My Account Settings" box. This will link you to the "Cancel My Account" page. There click on the "Cancel My Account" button. Your MySpace Account has now been deleted. Keep in mind, canceling your MySpace account will permanently remove all of your profile information from MySpace, including your photographs, comments, journals, and your personal network of friends. This information cannot be restored. You may re-register your current email address after canceling, but you will need to rebuild your personal network from scratch.

If for some reason you should be unable to delete the account, provide the email plus password for your profile and we will cancel it for you. If you don't remember the password or it has been changed, please send us a salute as verification and we can remove the account.

To send a salute, please do the following:

Create a hand written sign that says MySpace.com and your friend ID. Your friend ID is the number between ID= and &mytoken in your profile's URL.

Get an image, or digital picture of yourself with this hand written sign.

This is image is a salute. Next, reply to this e-mail with the salute as an e-mail attachment, or as an e-mail link to where it is uploaded.

If this does not answer your question, please click:

http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=misc.contact

Thank you,
MySpace.com

What the.. so let me get this straight. I can’t use the automatic function to cancel my account, which is what I e-mailed support in the first place with; indicating that this is a standard response letter. Okay, no biggie. They say I need to e-mail them my password and e-mail address, and they’ll delete it. Okay, I already e-mailed you from that specific e-mail address, asking to be deleted. Why do you need my password too? Ugh.

Furthermore, if you forgot your password, you’re supposed to take a picture of yourself, holding up a sign with “MySpace.Com” and your profile ID? Wow. That just blows my mind. I won’t even get into privacy implications.. why they need a picture of yourself.. and who recieves/views/stores these photos.

I’m reminded of Vinny’s fun time at trying to cancel his father’s AOL account. JUST CANCEL MY ACCOUNT.

MySpace is scum. Block it from your computers, especially if you have young children. If you’re running the network at a business and haven’t blocked it yet, shame on you.

I tried to delete my account. They send you an e-mail with some sort of confirmation link, which of course, I never receive... probably the same broken e-mail logic that doesn't send me an e-mail when I want to change my e-mail address. So, in their support section it says to e-mail them directly from the e-mail address the account is under, and they'll cancel it manually. It's been a week, and still no deletion!

So I decided to just make my account "dead"; remove everything from it, remove all my friends, remove my "real name" so people can't find me on there, etc... After I'm done with all that, I go back to my home page and see:

Apparently I "haven't added any friends yet", but I have 13 friends.

And that, my friends, is reason #46835 why MySpace sucks.

Okay, I get like a million people a day hitting my old blog post about Fergie's "London Bridge" song and it's lame lyrics.

Let's set the record straight. Of course the song has it's own Wikipedia page, so here goes.

According to Fergie herself, the song refers to a sex act whereby two women and two men form a bridge-like shape during intercourse

Of course. Thanks Fergie. You're charming and sophisticated!

While I'm ranting about her lameness, has anyone heard her new "single", Fergalicious? Just how many songs can she steal on one track? I heard at least 3 freestyle beats, including J.J. Fad's "Super Sonic" and Afro-Rican's "Give It All You Got". This just proves she's a talentless hack riding on the success of Black Eyed Peas, and using mostly sex to sell records.

Okay, this is my last video post of the night. Sorry!

I couldn't find any detailed links about these, but they seem a bit dangerous. But then again, I'm sure there are giant warning signs and such saying to stay away unless you have the proper dood-dad to lower them.

Reminds me of the hundreds of tiny toll-road pop-up things here in the US, to block off toll roads when they aren't in use. But they are flexible...

If you've never done the "match wizard of Oz up to Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon" trick... someone did it for you on Google Video. It's about 2 seconds off, though. But no biggie. You get the point.

I love MythBusters. They remind me of Mr. Wizard. If you know who that is, you get a cookie. Anyways, here's some video I found on YouTube of MythBuster bloopers, as well as some more "flatus" myths that didn't make it to air, such as "Do Girls Pass Gas?" and "Can You Light Your Farts On Fire?" Hah.

There is only one issue in this election that will matter five or ten years from now, and that's the War on Terror.

 

And the success of the War on Terror now teeters on the fulcrum of this election.

 

If control of the House passes into Democratic hands, there are enough withdraw-on-a-timetable Democrats in positions of prominence that it will not only seem to be a victory for our enemies, it will be one.

 

Unfortunately, the opposite is not the case -- if the Republican Party remains in control of both houses of Congress there is no guarantee that the outcome of the present war will be favorable for us or anyone else.

 

But at least there will be a chance.

 

I say this as a Democrat, for whom the Republican domination of government threatens many values that I hold to be important to America's role as a light among nations.

 

But there are no values that matter to me that will not be gravely endangered if we lose this war. And since the Democratic Party seems hellbent on losing it -- and in the most damaging possible way -- I have no choice but to advocate that my party be kept from getting its hands on the reins of national power, until it proves itself once again to be capable of recognizing our core national interests instead of its own temporary partisan advantages.

 

To all intents and purposes, when the Democratic Party jettisoned Joseph Lieberman over the issue of his support of this war, they kicked me out as well. The party of Harry Truman and Daniel Patrick Moynihan -- the party I joined back in the 1970s -- is dead. Of suicide.

Link to Civilization Watch - October 29, 2006 - The Only Issue This Election Day - The Ornery American

If you’ve been wondering where I’ve been lately, since I haven’t been updating my blog… then I suggest you get out a bit more. There’s more to life than my blog!

Hah, just kidding.

Anyways, she is going to kill me for posting that photo of us, but it’s all I have right now. Heather and I have been dating for two months now, and it’s been amazing. I love her!

This is coming from a guy who thought he’d never date anyone and be alone for the rest of his life. This just proves it… girls can find geeks sexy too!