Why I [Now] Hate Windows Vista

Windows Vista, the next generation of computing. The visual eye candy masterpiece of the century. The most stable operating system from Microsoft to date. This is what they want us to think. We were told that Vista would be so stable that you wouldn’t have to restart because of programs locking up, or explorer crashing. I wish I could believe this, and I did until today.

Today alone I had to restart upwards of six times. The day before even more. It seems that the more the operating system is updated, the more problems arise. It all started a few days ago when an update was released for my monitor (Samsung SyncMaster 940bw). I’m fine with updates as they usually make things better. This one however changed the color profile of windows to look more “realistic.” If they think realistic is white being a shade of yellow, then I must be color-blind.

Trying to fix this wasn’t easy, it kept reverting the color profile back to what it thought was best. I even tried a system restore; that’s another story. But along with this color profile came something else. Photoshop decided to stop working. It would open just fine, then right before the toolbars load, gives me the error:

Hardware error. Photoshop will not exit.

Hmm. I wonder what caused this. System restore was my only option. Oh great, system restore is broken. That’s just great. In fact, it’s still broken today. If anyone knows how to fix it, I would sure love it if you could assist in fixing it.

That’s not the end of this yet. I tried to run system restore off the Vista Business CD Microsoft sent me … no system restore points found. Oh that’s great. Yes, I did have them enabled.

Ok, so today is really what sets me off. I sitting here, not more than an hour ago downloading updates for Quake 4. I was trying to burn files to a DVD at the same time. Although, Windows isn’t happy with letting me do what I want, instead, they must make me suffer. The computer crashes, 90% done with the download that has been going for about fourty-five minutes. This was the last time I had to restart today. Throughout the day, Vista has decided to just stop working. Mouse works great. But the GUI is completely unresponsive. Animations don’t play when you mouse over the red x, star menu doesn’t come up. Ctrl-Alt-Del doesn’t even work! This was supposed to be a safeguard way to make sure you didn’t have to hard reset your computer!

It’s working again for the time being. And I’m not very pleased right now with Vista as you can tell. Don’t get me wrong, I love the new system. But why on earth did they take RC1 which worked perfectly on my computer, and destroy it for no added gain? Sure games do run now, but is that a tradeoff of stability?

Microsoft, if you read this, please fix my Vista. I would call tech support, but I don’t want to pay for it. Somehow, I think you knew this was coming so you can easily charge people to fix problems with your new OS.

Top 8 – 12th Grade Essay Excerpts

My English teacher was talking to the class about the “senior project” with is nothing more than writing an overly fluffed out analysis of some poetry that one does not read until the weeks before the project is due. To get right to the point, my teacher handed out a paper with the top eight excerpts. The following are in their raw format. Nothing has been altered.

1. Palamon and Arcite are losing who faught together in battle they both were taken as prisoners of war. While in jail in Thebes found Emily in the garden.
2. The way that Aristotle sees youth is that the young are more calm and the older are more made and get all up tight about more things then the usual.
3. “It is truly said , age has a great advantage: in age there is both wisdom and practice,” This is important because Saturn is noticing that “one may outrun the old and still not supass them in council” , this I believe is true because he is trying to explain that although and young person like himself can out run an older man literally but, an older man can be bigger, faster, and smarter in the head, because a man in his prime has had more experience with situations in life and can make more of the right decisions than a young man who is blind to many situations.
4. The reason he choose to do a romance is for several reasons. One reason is because fantasy is more exiting than fiction.
5. Aristotle says, “sexual by which they are most swayed and in which they show absence of self-control (The Retoric. Book II, Ch. 12).”
6. The two kights who want to fight for a girls hand.
7. Aristotle calls them “Prime Adults” , this people are in their 30’s or 40’s. “Its truly said, age has a great advantage ; in age there is both wisdom and practice ….” (The Knights tale, 1589-1590).
8. He thought for a lack of a better word that he was the shit.

I really feel sorry for my English teacher. I thought I had English problems! Sure makes one feel better after reading this.

Firefox Secrets Book Cover

One warmish evening during fifth period, my graphics arts teacher had the brilliant (and I’m not being sarcastic) idea of making a book cover for an existing book. The moment she announced the project, I was already started. I knew exactly what book I wanted to do, and probably one of the most fanboyish things at that. I chose Firefox Secrets by Cheah Chu Yeow.

I completed the project with amazing speed. I enjoyed it a lot as it allowed me to create something awesome using mostly stock material. I did a quick Google image search and found a print sized copy of the Firefox logo. Sadly, I could not find a large size Sitepoint logo. I believe this was the only thing I had to actually made.

After I messed around for a few hours, I got the spacing “just right” and did a few test prints finding small errors. I actually spelled bonus ‘bounus’. That even got by all but the last test prints.

To leave this post short, here is a link to the full view.

Facebook Poke States Live (Again)

I was looking at the stats today and noticed that none of the new pokes were being logged. This made me wonder if the database had died on me. Nope, that wasn’t it. Upon further investigating I found the problem.

When I created the flash version of the stats, I renamed a file that was needed by the server. I present you with a diagram of how the auto-poker/logger works.

Strange IE7 Bug

Ok, so I was doing some work on my new blog and discovered a weird IE (and only IE) bug. After many hours of testing and re coding, it turned out to be something quite simple: a missing comment.

Now, comments should not be rendered, in fact, they should be discarded by the browser. Not in this case. If the comment is missing, IE fails to render the div correctly. Now, it doesn’t matter what is in the comment, just as long as it’s there.

Proof:

• Fixed bug-free version (Works in IE).
• Bugged Version (Only fails in IE).

If anyone can give me some insight as to why this happens let me know.

The Downfall Of A Brilliant Idea

A few months back, A friend of mine was talking to me about creating an online radio station. I was weary of this because there are lots of online radio stations and not much money to be made from it. However, two-hundred thousand cups of coffee later and much hair pulling and yelling, I came up with the idea to make a Digg-like user-driven online radio.

The concept was simple. Music artists and podcasters could upload their stuff. People would listen to it and if they liked it they would vote for it to be played on the air, or tubes. Sadly, this idea never went further than four photoshop layers. I forgot completely about the idea until about twelve minutes and fourteen seconds ago. There was a story that hit the homepage of Digg. Now, the idea isn’t exactly what I wanted to do, but close enough to get me angry that I didn’t follow through.

Will I ever pursue this? Probably not. I have a lot of projects in the works as it is. The last thing I need is another to take up my already busy schedule.

Moral of the story: If you act now, we will throw in an extra “Magic Onion Cutter” abosolutely free! No really, if you have an idea that’s not out there yet, go with it. It may fail, but it may also be the thing that makes your life so much better (as money does buy happiness, at least in my world).