What’s a Gravatar you ask?

Simply: it’s a universial avatar.  A service that gives your email the same avatar any where you post (that supports Gravatars of course).

I’ve known about them for a while but never really bothered messing with it.

I must admit, the Gravatar Website is ridiculously easy to use.  I mean seriously, stupid easy.  It took me less then 3 minutes to set up an account, upload my image, and crop and size it how I wanted on their site.

Since I figured I have an account, I should use them some how, right?

All comments on all posts now support Gravatars, so if you have one, we’ll get to see it now.

If you don’t have one, you seriously have no excuse not to if you comment on here or other sites a lot.  It is too easy to NOT have one.  Bravo to the Gravatar people.  They put together a nice easy-to-use service.

Today at work I needed some data off a DVD-R from about 3 years ago.  I shuffled through my stack of discs and located the one I needed.  Upon first glance I could tell it was aging because while other discs were still nice and silver, this once-silver disc was very very yellowed and gold-looking.  I didn’t think much of it until we tried to read the disc.

Nothing, nadda, zip, zero, zilch.  We tried 3 different machines and none of them would read the aged disc.

I’m a bit disappointed in Philips’ quality here.  This disc was only around 3 years old, and in my opinion was way too new to have gone bad already!  What a let-down from the Philips brand name.  I can’t say I have bought any of their discs since then, and I’m glad.  I’ll be sure to avoid their media products from now on.  I have other memorex discs from approximately the same era, and they were still perfectly fine.

Below is a picture showing the bad Philips DVD on the right next to a nice good silver disc on the left.

Luckily the data on the disc was unimportant and archived else where, but never the less there is an important lesson to be learned here.

Never use recordable disc media for archival purposes.  This disc was not mistreated, and was not left out in the sunlight.  It was stored in a stack of ~15 other discs.  Recordable media is a great way to transport or play your files, but it should never be used for archiving or backups.  Besides, with how filthy dirt cheap hard drives are, there is no good reason not to use hard drives as your backup medium.

A few weeks ago I wrote about how Microsoft was artificially crippling “lesser” versions of Windows.

Blocking you from running software you have a right to use, simply because you didn’t buy their more expensive version.

Well, it looks like the Free Software Foundation is launching an attack against Microsoft, pointing out just that…

“Microsoft is up to their usual tricks again — only this time, they’re also inserting artificial restrictions into the operating system itself. While not the first time they’ve done this, this is the first release of Windows that can magically remove limitations instantly upon purchasing a more expensive version from Microsoft.”

I for one am glad to see this.  This mentality over at Microsoft of “we wrote your OS, so we control everything on your computer” needs to stop.  Unfortunately Microsoft has done this shit since the early days of Windows… they always want to control what you can and can’t do on your own machine and it seems like a constant fight with Microsoft and Windows just to be able to do what you want on your machine.

They’re pushing Linux based software of course, and I wouldn’t be opposed to switching to such a platform if it weren’t for one major issue, which is gaming.  A lot of my home PC use is gaming, of which almost none of the modern games run on Linux platforms.

Maybe in time Linux will mature enough and get a large enough market share that developers will pay more attention to it.  If this would happen we could finally switch off of Microsoft and their bullshit strangle hold on our machines.

I’ve been using Windows 7 for a few weeks now, and it’s alright I guess.  It would’ve more appropriately been named Windows Vista SE (Second Edition) though.  It does not feel like a new OS.  It feels like Vista SE.

While a lot of changes are good, there are some changes that just make me go “WTF?”

One such WTF change is the new Windows Media Player.  It’s freaking BUTT UGLY in Windows 7.  I mean it looks like Microsoft just completely forgot to develop any kind of skin for it.  I am completely dumbfounded by this.

First, lets look at Windows Media Player in Vista…

Nice pretty transparencies, a nice defined playback window.

Now lets look at Windows Media Player in Windows 7…

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Ease of Access on the login screen was always something I disabled on my Vista machines… and of course Windows 7 hasn’t added any built-in option to disable this useless and annoying feature, so I’m here to show you how.  As far as I know you can’t remove the button, but you can disable it.

I call it useless and annoying because it is… it allows people to mess with YOUR computer settings even when your machine is LOCKED!  The entire point of locking your machines is so people CAN’T mess with it.

All you need to do is replace 1 executable file it is:

c:\windows\system32\utilman.exe

This file is what controls the pop up when you click the Ease of Access button.

I have taken a replacement file from an older version of Ease of Access Disabler.  This was a useful utility in it’s earlier versions, but the new version throws a bunch of shit-ads on your screen for their site, and if there is something I really can’t stand, it’s ads on MY computer.

So here you go…

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Well, it’s a mystery as to what the hell happened to my parcel, but it looks like it has been to hell and back…

When I received it it was folded in half and covered in packing tape.  Upon closer inspection, it looked like someone has cut it in half and taped it back up.

Why do I have a sneaking suspicion that my goods were rifled through to see if there was anything worth stealing in it (there wasn’t to the average joe)?  Maybe I am just being paranoid?

So I cut the tape and dumped out everything in the envelope.  My paypal receipt and the plastic baggie my product came in were completely mutilated.  Corners cut off and missing, pieces sliced away…  I know UPS opened it because I couldn’t find all of the pieces cut out of the plastic baggie… and my item was not in the plastic baggie, it was just sitting in the envelope.  Luckily my item was not damaged durring whatever destruction happened to my envelope on its journey from California to here.

This folks, is why UPS should go out of business:

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When you’re a company who has ONE job… delivering packages reliably and on time… and that is the ONE thing that is impossible for you to do, you should probably just fucking close up shop.

Every damn time I am shipped something UPS it is a fucking disaster.  Today was no different.  I had been waiting for this package all week, and it was finally scheduled for delivery for today.  I was excited to receive my precious goods I had purchased from the magical world of the internets.

When it became late afternoon and I still hadn’t seen a UPS truck, I decided to check their tracking site… my heart sank

SPRINGFIELD , IL , US 08/07/2009 9:35 A.M. MULTIPLE ERRORS EXIST IN THE ADDRESS LABEL. UPS IS ATTEMPTING TO DETERMINE THE CORRECT INFORMATION TO COMPLETE DELIVERY / THE ADDRESS HAS BEEN CORRECTED. THE DELIVERY HAS BEEN RESCHEDULED

Fantastic.  Now instead of having my goods on Friday as I should have, it will be Monday at the EARLIEST.

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With Windows 7 RTM hitting official Microsoft channels, I figured I’d load up the final version of Windows 7 and check it out.  I’ve commented in the past about being completely unimpressed with 7 and for the most part, that is holding true, with some added hatred for the big-wigs over at Microsoft for arbitrarily deciding what I should be allowed to run on MY machine.

I upgraded from Vista Home Premium to 7 Home Premium.  The upgrade process itslef took around 3 hours, but it did go off with out a hitch.  I was happy for the most part, until I went to fire up one of my virtual machines in Virtual PC 2007.

This is when my joy turned to pure black hatred for 7 and all it represents.  It is a step backwards in technology.  It is Big Brother watching over your every single move tell you what you can an can not do.

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