Archives 2008

It’s been almost a week now and iGoogle still has no option of reverting.  It is still loading slow and the new way their “widgets” load is fucking terrible.

As of today I am changing my home page on all of my machines at work and home.  I refuse to use a home page that looks and functions like crap.

My new home page, which it seems a lot of iGoogler’s are fleeing to, is Netvibes.  A very clean, organized, and functional ajax home page.  I have it set up exactly like my iGoogle page was, matching feeds in the same place and it even has a Gmail widget so I can still keep an easy eye on Gmail!

If you used iGoogle and are upset with their changes, leave them.  Leave them now and be happy with your new home page.  I know I am!

FAIL:

WIN:

My girlfriend loves The Sims 2.  Unfortunately she has to play it on my main computer because it’s also a gaming rig so it handles The Sims 2 with ease, where as her computer would stroke out.

Because of this The Sims 2 is installed on my computer.

I have my system setup with multiple hard drives, but for the sake of this article, we’ll say I have my C: which is where Windows and all it’s crap is installed, and I have a D: where I install all my games and keep the [legal] images for them and stuff.

Well The Sims 2, thanks to EA’s shitty programming, when installed to another location besides the C:, like the D:, even though it installs to d:\program files\ea games\the sims 2 it still feels the dire need to install files on you C: in your Documents folder!  Even more so, if you have every expansion pack and add on like we do that EA Games folder on your C: can balloon up to over 5gb!!!  This is incredibly frustrating because this is the EXACT reason why I install games to the D: I want to keep ridiculous amount of files OFF my much smaller C:

As far as I know, I am the first person that has come up with a way to move this folder-of-shit off of your C: and to any other location you please.

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Going to make this short and sweet.

What the fuck is up with the new iGoogle home page?  They moved the “tabs” from the top where it was nice and sleek to bulging out the side fucking up the whole screen layout.

This looks like absolutely ass and I hate it.  FAIL google.

I am not alone in the utter disgust of this change.

If anyone knows how to switch it back, please leave a comment.

EDIT:  You can change it back (for now) by going to your Settings page, and setting your Language to (English UK)

This will only last until Google forces this new load of manure on the UK as well.

EDIT 2: This fix does not seem to stick between page reloads.  FAIL.

A month ago I posted on how to disable the annoying Open File- Security Warning dialog when opening files downloaded from the Internet.

At the end of the article I mentioned that there was a side effect in doing this…

The only side effect is that IE will have a warning bar at the top when you fire it up trying to scare you in to enabling it again.

And I come to you today with a way to disable this across both Business(Professional) and Home editions of XP and Vista

Fire up your trusty registry editor and go to:

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Security

Note that you may not have the Internet Explorer and Security keys under the Microsoft key.  You can create these your self, just be sure you remember the registry is all case sensitive.

Under the Security key create a new DWORD Value and name it DisableSecuritySettingsCheck and then set its value to 1

Now the next time your have to fire up that turd IE, you won’t be harassed by a silly warning message!

You can now search this site using the new link at the top, obviously labeled “Search”.

I found my self looking for older blog entries in my own blog and decided it was time for a search page.

It’s pretty plain-jane and straight forward for now.  I hope you find it useful.

I know at least I will!

Over all I like Microsoft, but some things they do just really really annoy the hell out of me.

The most recent happened today when I was out at a client site. Long long story short, I needed to create a scheduled task for this particular computer. Well I kept getting an error message when setting the user account password for the account it needed to run under. Come to find out Microsoft knows about this issue and there is a Hotfix for it, but no patch has been released.

Ugh.

Getting a Hotfix from Microsoft in the past has been like prying a nickel out of a jew’s hands. (Damn near impossible).

Why on Earth can they not simple make the damn Hotfixes available for download! Seriously! There is NO reason why they can’t do this, other then the fact the love to make things difficult.

I filled out their form to email me the Hotfix. It said it would be there some time in the next 5 minutes.

20 minutes later I was sick of waiting around on it as I had things that needed to be done. I started searching around on the web for this Hotfix and finally found a site that had it for download… once you registered. FUCK I hate sites that FORCE you to register just so you can download 1 file and never every visit their site again. Stupid.

So I jump through the hoops, register, confirm my email address so they can spam the shit out of me and FINALLY download the file. Downloaded it, ran it, rebooted, and I was finally able to create a scheduled task.

Well the story doesn’t quite end there. I get back to the office and about an hour after my original request I sent in, I got an email from MS with a link to download the Hotfix. I thought well finally, I might as well download and archive this damn thing in case I need it again in the future. I clicky their link and it downloads a Zip executable, not a standard winzip packager, but some shitty looking MS in-house zip packager.

I run the exe to extract the actual Hotfix exe and guess what…

That’s right, I can’t even use the fucking file they sent me a link for.

I refused to do any research on THIS error code now as I am fed up with it. The problem has been fixed and I am done with the issue.

WHY DO YOU FAIL SO HARD MICROSOFT???

What is so fucking hard about having a list of Hotfixes where you just staight-up download the Hotfix. Why so many shitty hoops, then you end up with an unuseable file???

WHY???

Apparently with a recent “security” update pushed out by Microsoft, it now causes ANY file you download from the internet and try and open to pop up with a security warning like this one:

Good LORD this has got to be the most OBNOXIOUS WINDOWS UPDATE EVER.  What on god’s green Earth was Microsoft thinking when they pushed this one out?!  Shut the hell up, I know what I downloaded.  I have updated virus protection (I <3 NOD32), so leave me the hell alone about it and let me run what the fuck I want to!  I don’t need you baby sitting my downloaded files as I’m not a moron, thanks for assuming I am though MS.

It finally pushed me over the edge today when I saw this warning pop-up for the 9000th time in one day.  I had to find a way to make it go away and never come back, as unchecking that box simply applies to that 1 file, not ALL files as you might think it would.

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First off, let me say I don’t have anything wrong with magicians.  I actually enjoy them and have been to one of David Copperfield’s shows.  I even practiced the hobby when I was younger.  Everyone loves a good trick.

My problem is with people like Criss Angel who are not magicians in my opinion, but perform this “street magic” and with people who actually believe this guy has powers.

He does not.  He is nothing more then an illusionist who uses planted people in the audience and camera tricks.  That is not magic in my opinion.  That is called being a talentless hack.

Recently Criss Angel was supposed to escape from a building about to be blown up for demolition.  Except that no one was allowed to be with in visual distance for “safety”.

Well they weren’t counting on a news helicopter exposing his trick with a zoom camera.  I think the video evidence is pretty clear here and exposes Criss Angel for what he really is.  Nothing more then a fraud who couldn’t put on a decent magic show if he wanted to.

See for your self