Please please please don’t read this if you don’t want to know how this season is going to end.

With that said, the season’s finale sounds like a winner. I can’t wait to actually watch it. And what a mind-trip of an ending!

AKA, JCPenney has it all figured out and no one else does.

This past weekend, Heather and I decided to do our gift registries for our wedding. We chose to file at JCPenney, Sears and Bed Bath & Beyond. Our experiences are below:

• JCPenney, Easily the most “organized” of the wedding registry systems. As far as scanning goes, the kiosk appears to be custom made, with barcode scanners “locked” in the right hand side, and a printer/keyboard underneath the touch-screen monitor. The interface was really easy to control, and within minutes we had unlocked the barcode scanner (it’s a “gun” type scanner) and was shown a quick video on how to use the scanner (such as changing quantities, colors, etc.) Items were easy to scan, and the barcode scanner could show your entire list thus far, with options to edit or delete items if necessary, right on the scanner. Bringing it back to the kiosk and docking it downloaded our items, and we were done. JCPenney has a special deal where if you register for XX items (I believe it’s 15?) you get a free wedding planning book, which sounds cheesy, but is actually pretty spiffy. It’s a hard-cover binder that includes a compact three-hole punch, calculator, paper, business card holders, and folders for every aspect of your wedding, to make it easy to file away say, your catering contract. Nice!
• Sears, The worst, hands down. Their kiosk is an old CRT monitor, a laser printer, and a keyboard. The interface is basically Sears’ own web site (on a slow connection, at least at our location.) We tried repeatedly to log in, but kept getting invalid password errors. Turns out the keyboard’s caps lock was pressed in. Ugh. Made us print out a sheet to take to the nearest customer counter, to pick up our scanner. Went over to the counter where an elderly gentleman (God bless him!) honestly had no idea what to do for wedding registries. So he tried to page someone who would. We waited around for about five minutes, until someone else came over, who also didn’t know what they were doing, but she was able to at least get the scanner working. The scanner was a glorified Palm-pilot, with barcode scanner on top. The barcode scanner would often not work, and I’d have to press other buttons, and then the scan button, in order to get it to scan. After we were done, there’s no “docking” involved, I guess it’s all realtime. So we laid the scanner back on the counter and left.
• Bed Bath & Beyond, Could have been terrible, but was redeemed by excellent customer service. We met with someone at the front counter who asked for our names. My bride to be gave her name, and the woman asked if the wedding date was 7/14… we told her no, it’s 10/13. She thought for a moment and did something else, then issued us a scanner. This one was also flat (like Sears) but had a hand strap on the back, making it much more comfortable to use. The display was very basic, only listing the brief descripton and quantity. There was no way to delete a just-scanned item or previously-scanned item via the controls by itself. There was however a “oops” barcode you could scan on the sheet they provide in order to undo the last item you scanned. We spend about an hour and a half or more scanning items, then returned to the counter to see what we had chosen. Another employee helped us this time. Upon printing out the registry, it was completely blank. He had no explanation, and couldn’t figure out why. He promised to take our information and call us back on Monday. Monday came, and no phone call. So Heather called and got in touch with another employee at that location. They apologized profusely, and promised they would look into it and get back within the hour. They did call back this time, and explained that they cannot find our scans at all, and promised a gift card for our troubles. We decided to come back down Monday night and re-scan our items. Sure enough, we got a $50 gift card out of it, and our items scanned in correctly this time. Big points to BB&B’s customer service here. However, I can’t help but feel that this whole thing would have been avoided if the first employee had just double-checked our wedding information (we couldn’t see her monitor, and she never offered.)

So there you have it. If you’re getting married soon, might be some helpful advice in there. Just stay away from Sears. Unless you like pain?

Some of you may know that I recently purchased a 2007 Nissan Altima 3.5SL, fully loaded, including a navigation system. In general I like the navigation system, but there is definitely some spots that are lacking. Here’s my likes/dislikes so far:

• Con, I’ll start with the biggest con of all, and the one thing that has frustrated me the most with this unit. You can’t use most of the buttons on the screen while the vehicle is moving! Forget the fact that a passenger may be sitting next to you, perfectly capable of programming the unit while you drive. No way. Can’t do it. You must stop the car to enter a new address, etc. 98% of the functionality is just disabled when your car starts moving. My previous navigation system, a Magellan Roadmate 700, did not have this behavior, nor does my mother’s TomTom navigation unit. I asked the dealership if this “feature” could be disabled, but they firmly said no, it’s for my own safety. Gee, thanks. Luckily there are people (such as a fellow named gtcompscientist) who have figured out what wire leading to the back of the unit provides this functionality, and have shown simple switch-workarounds for it. I’m tempted to do it on my own car..
• Pro, The screen is large, and bright enough during the daytime to easily see. The car has an “auto” light setting, for my headlamps, and it ties into the navigation system to dim my display when it’s night time.
• Pro, I really dig the “3D” view that the system offers. It also can switch to the traditional 2D view if necessary, but I hardly find myself doing that.
• Con, The screen updates “slowly”. I’d say once every second or so. In 3D mode, this feels like an eternity, where I’m spoiled by redraw rates on other devices, such as my computer. There also is considerable jaggie-ness going on. Some antialiasing wouldn’t have hurt…
• Pro, The system comes with quite a few points of interest pre-loaded. I don’t know the exact number, but it’s found nearly 90% of the random places I’ve thrown at it. There are some newer developments (built in the past 2 years) that it doesn’t know about yet, but I’m sure a newer DVD will come out.
• Con, The system doesn’t do text-to-speech at all. Just provides the turn signals.
• Pro, The turn signals are excellent, and the screen even shows a preview of what the upcoming off-ramp, intersection, turn, etc. will look like. Pretty darn accurate, too. Helpful for those times where you need to get off the freeway, but stay in the left lane on the off-ramp, etc.
• Pro, XM traffic integration. If you drive through traffic every day, you owe it to yourself to get a system that has traffic integration. I’ve routed around slow traffic at least four times so far, and avoided an accident scene because of it. Whew.

And that’s just what I thought of right now. More to come as time progresses…

This is targeted mainly towards server administrators running IIS, but if you’re just an internet user, you may find it of some value too.

Jeff Atwood, over at his Coding Horror blog, briefly touched on HTTP compression a while back, following it up with a post involving IIS 6.0 and compression, and later a post regarding using a .NET HttpModule to handle compression in ASP.Net sites. You should definitely read these posts if you have no idea what HTTP compression is. Don’t worry, I’ll wait. Back? Good.

I had been using the HttpModule approach for a while, with the well-made (and free) blowery HttpCompressionModule. I have run into some problems, though. There are some redirect actions that can cause the module to fail, as well as other documented problems. Plus, the module does nothing to compress non ASP.Net content, such as ASP pages, style sheets and javascript files.

In doing more researching, I came across IISXpress, another free (for personal use only, not on a server) HTTP compression program. This one hooks into ISAPI, which means that any content that IIS serves wil be passed through this program for compression. IISXpress allows you to define content types you wish to include/exclude, as well as directories.

I really liked how IISXpress showed a history of every file it compressed, and what the savings were. There’s no guessing on my side if it’s working or not. I know it is from the history’s output. I liked the program so much that I decided to buy it almost immediately. $50 well spent!

If you run a web server, you owe it to yourself to research HTTP compression. It will allow you to serve the same content, but using less bandwidth in the process. And your end-users won’t need to do anything special!

After getting numerous power bills at my old place that were making my eyes bug out, I decided to take some action during the move to my new place, and build a brand new server from scratch, with the mindset of saving as much power as possible, but not sacrificing performance too much.

I was able to pull it off for about $300 worth of parts from NewEgg. Here’s what I chose and why:

• PC Chips V21G VIA motherboard. Features a CPU soldered right onto the motherboard (no upgrades.) The CPU is a VIA C7, a low power alternative to Intel/AMD chips. It also comes with onboard video and sound, always a bonus for server applications. It looks like NewEgg isn’t selling this particular C7 board anymore, but you can find others.
• Corsair ValueSelect 1 gigabyte (2 x 512MB) 240–pin DDR2 SDRAM. Cheap RAM that works great. It’s not ECC, but I’ve never really needed ECC anyway. Not for this sort of thing.
• Rosewill RV200 SFX 200 watt power supply. It doesn’t fit in a standard ATX case (it’s smaller) but my custom duct-tape solution to hold it up works fine. Very efficient. It’s getting harder to find lower-wattage power supplies… but really, do we need 700+ watt power supplies yet?
• Two Seagate Barracude 7200.9 120 gigabyte, 7200 RPM drives. At the time, these were the best bargain for space vs. cost. Not sure what would be a better buy now. I have mirrored them via software RAID (in Windows 2003 Server) and they work great.

My old server was AMD-based, and would use approximately 200 watts while “idle”. My new server? 55 watts. Wow. Now it’s going to cost me the same as leaving a 60 watt light bulb on all month, which is just a couple of dollars, compared to tens of dollars I was spending before.

Another side benefit to lower wattage is less heat being output by the power supply/CPU itself. My home office space is considerably cooler than it was before.

And the speed? I notice a slight difference compared to my AMD, but nothing really to complain about. My server’s hosting internal project files, as well as public websites, such as my journal.

Not bad at all. Let me know if you have any questions.

Selling a picture of a cell phone, and not an actual phone? Judy won’t take that.

Best parts:

“You’re an idiot! And a scammer!”

“Why don’t you get a job?!”

Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had.
  - Michael Crichton

Now playing: Barenaked Ladies - One Week (Radio Paradise - DJ-mixed modern & classic rock, world, electronica & more - info: www.radioparadise.com)

Scott Hanselman wrote another article about thumbnails disappearing from Windows Explorer under Vista. I had this same problem happen to me a short while ago, and ended up giving up on the solution, since I was going to reformat my system in a few days anyhow. Kinda lame that Windows doesn’t automatically repair itself when this happens, but anyways…

He’s offering a registry patch to try and fix the problem. It appears to boil down to a ShellEx registry key value, as well as potentially a PerceivedTypes registry key, found under each file type’s extension.

He recommends downloading the CCCP (Combined Community Codec Pack) to handle almost all video/audio codecs you’d ever stumble across. I’m usually apprehensive about codec packs, since they tend to be overzealous and do more harm than good, but the CCCP seems well-rounded and thought through.

Yes, ‘tis my birthday. I’m so old now. A ripe 25 years of age. I should retire.

Anyhow  Hope everyone has an amazing day.

For giggles, check out my sweet wrestling mask.

Feel generous? Check out my Amazon.com wishlist:

Or you can donate whatever cash amount you’d like:

( http://www.amazon.com/paypage/P1W0J7CR0NI1S )

Over at the Windows Vista blog, they’ve announced the final version of the iPod patch for Vista. This is for users who use the “safely disconnect hardware” icon to remove their iPod, rather than using iTune’s eject button.

I’d really like more details about the patch and what it does, but haven’t found anything thus far. I have to believe that it’s mainly an Apple problem, as the patch is very specific in targetting iPods. If it was some low-level USB problem in general with Vista, the patch would be labelled as such (and the bug probably wouldn’t have even made it out of Beta 1.)

Anyhow. If you’ve got an iPod and are running Vista, better update just to be safe.

I wonder if I write to Steve Jobs, and tell him a convincing story, that he’ll send me one for free?

Isn’t his e-mail address sjobs@mac.com ? Anyone know?

Or hey, want to donate to my “Give Nicholas a Macbook Pro” fund? I promise I’ll give Apple a fair chance!

Seriously, if you’re ever down, bummed about life, questioning whether or not to go on. Just watch this, and all is better:

If you have Netflix, feel free to add me as a friend:

http://www.netflix.com/BeMyFriend/P7oIQjDeHkb8hq7XedPC

 

And she said yes  We will be getting married October 13th of this year. I can’t wait! I’ll keep everyone posted. We’re working on a website for the two of us, to share the story, photos and more. Stay tuned!

Nice HTML there, Tom! And grrrreat spelling! It’s so awesome that you were able to get $200 million for your piece of crap site.

And Tom, you wouldn’t have to deal with spammers, phishing, cross-site scripting attacks or other nasties if you’d just get a stinkin’ clue. You’re not the first website in the world to deal with user-provided content/HTML. Do you really have anyone else programming on the site? Are they monkeys?

And let me close by saying what a great NON security feature. You’re changing people’s links to a domain name that doesn’t even have the word MYSPACE in the name. People are going to think that’s not normal and freak out, regardless of your cute little announcement box.

And nevermind the fact that you’ve just given yourself a way to police all links on your site and determine what is “allowed” and “not allowed” to be linked to, nor the fact that you’ve created your own database of links referenced by people using your site, which you will no doubt go on and sell to some marketing firm, privacy be damned!

Blah blah blah. I hate MySpace with a stinkin’ passion.

Look, I know LiveJournal is re-posting old posts of mine as if they were new. I have no idea why this happens, nor how to fix it. Blah.

All I know is that LiveJournal has a terrible RSS implementation, as neither Google Reader or FeedReader have a problem with my feed. So it’s not my fault as far as I can tell.

Worth mentioning is the other fact that LiveJournal will not let you administrate your feed through them. I would like to turn off LJ comments if I could, because I usually don’t read them unless I specifically remember to view all of my “converted” feed items that get posted. But nope, can’t do that.

If you’re into reading RSS feeds/blogs (and not just LiveJournal), I encourage you to try Google Reader. It’s free, fast, and best of all, accessible from any computer with internet access.

And that’s about all I have to say about that.

I won't pretend to know what you're thinking
I can't begin to know what you're going through
I won't deny the pain that you're feeling
But I'm gonna try and give a little hope to you

Just remember what I've told you
There's so much you're living for

There's a light at the end of this tunnel
There's a light at the end of this tunnel
For you, for you
There's a light at the end of this tunnel
Shinin' bright at the end of this tunnel
For you, for you
So keep holdin' on

You've got your disappointments and sorrows
You ought to share the weight of that load with me
Then you will find that the light of tomorrow
Brings a new life for your eyes to see

So remember what I've told you
There's so much you're living for

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2807602702866411553&hl=en

Penn and Teller’s Bullsh*t! show, speaking about gun control and how useless it is. Needless to say, there’s language used. If that bothers you, then don’t watch it.

I’m not libertarian, but Penn & Teller make a lot of sense sometimes.

Yes, I’m a member of the NRA. I believe in the right (yes, a right) to bear arms. I do believe that if more people had concealed weapons permits, it would help, and not hurt, in situations such as the recent Virginia Tech shootings.

And if you’re someone who wants a concealed weapons permit, odds are you are one who is not afraid to use it in the appropriate situation. And that’s why there are rules/processes to obtain a concealed carry permit. Here in California, it is up to your local county sheriff to make the call.

Anyways, I get tired of hearing the same old baloney every time there’s some mass shooting in the news. Newsanchors/public blaming guns, lack of gun control, blaming video games, etc… God forbid we actually blame the thing responsible— the person who was firing the weapon!

Look, we have enough gun control laws. And criminals, murderers and general psychopaths just don’t care about those laws. If they want to harm someone, they’re going to. Regardless of what the law says. What if this guy had used a knife instead of a gun to murder 30+ people? Would we be hearing public outcry against the lack of knife control laws?

Guns are tools, and can be used for good as well as bad. Don’t blame them for what their owner is doing with them.

I suggest everyone check out A Human Right.

Having trouble viewing Windows Media content in Firefox under Vista? You’re not alone. Microsoft has finally released a patch to fix the problem.

Does Outlook 2007 just crawl on your screaming-fast machine? Microsoft has a new patch:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=c262bcfd-1e09-49b6-9003-c4c47539df66&DisplayLang=en

I just applied it, and already can tell a huge difference. My PST file is fairly large, and this fix is meant to target just that. Enjoy.

Pandora can seem weird sometimes, but hey, I dig all three songs/bands, so there ya go. It works. Now it’s playing Flyleaf… awesome!

It’s not fun, let me tell you.

The motherboard in the XPS 400 requires a special driver in order for Windows XP setup to see the hard disks. If you’re trying to install Vista, you’re going to be just fine without these drivers (as they come with the Vista disk.)

However, for the unfortunate few who must reinstall XP on this type of machine, you’ll wonder why you don’t see your disks. You have to create whats called a slip-streamed XP installation disk.

This is definitely not for the non-tech savvy. I don’t know how Dell expects grandma and grandpa to be able to stick their Dell XP CD in and have it reinstall properly (because it won’t.) And why didn’t Dell put the drivers on the XP disk in the first place? Bah.

Anyway, you’ll have to use a program called nLite to assemble this slip-streamed Windows disk.

I’m not going to spell out the directions here, hopefully you can follow along to these instructions.

I recently started working at my new job, and my boss was generous to provide a top-of-the-line system for me to use. It’s got a Core 2 Duo processor, 2 gigabytes of RAM, and two 80 gigabyte 10,000 RPM drives in a RAID 0. Vrooom.

Problem is, every so often, my machine would “pause”. Not freeze, because I could move the mouse and such, but couldn’t perform any actions. Then the machine would “catch up” with itself and work fine again. While this was happening, the hard drive light would remain lit.

Looking in the system’s event log, I found numerous entries that said a timeout occurred in iaStor.sys — I’ve had my share of problems in the past with this particular driver, so I knew it was an Intel driver.

I tried updating to the latest drivers. No joy. I tried the Dell drivers.. nope!

And then I searched the internet and found the jackpot. A post over at the Things Worth Knowing blog regarding this very issue. There’s so much in the comments, it would take you days to wade through. Let me just save you the trouble: Intel has admitted that it’s their fault.. and they blame Microsoft! I found this information on The Flying Nerd blog.

You can read the full writeup at Intel’s website. They have a registry fix you can attempt yourself if you’re savvy enough. It solved the problem for me. But isn’t it a bit childish to blame Microsoft for your lack of proper testing?

And in the end, I feel sorry for Joe-Schmo consumer who spends $2k+ on a computer just to get it home and have it freeze every so often. I also blame Dell… I mean, come on, even basic computer usage tests would have revealed this problem. And judging by the response online, you can bet a lot of people are unhappy and affected.

Scott Hanselman writes a blog post about missing image previews under Media Center in Windows Vista. I recently faced something similiar, but with video files. I tried everything, and nothing would bring back the preview icons for .MPG, .WMV, etc… I eventually wound up reinstalling Windows Vista. And I believe I tracked it back to an older version of Nero.

So if you’re having the same problem, you too may need to reinstall. Or try the registry tricks from Scott. Maybe you can add that “PerceivedType” key to the different video files and get it working again. Who knows. I’m just frustrated that a company I have trusted for years (Nero) could have released a version that blows those away with such ease.

I’ve become a bit of a contest junkie lately. I enter contests left and right, without care to my personal information floating around the intarweb. Yay me. But hey, I might win a free Macbook or iPod, right?

The two sites I’ve been using have been http://www.online-sweepstakes.com/ and http://www.contestgirl.com/ — they both seem pretty on-top of the internet contest “scene”.

So yeah, check it out if you like that sort of thing.