Archived News starting from 04-29-2007 and earlier
BlogThe flatlanders
stopped by for a visit yesterday since Melanie had to participate in the wedding planning task force. The task force quickly degraded into a drunken karaoke fest so Jaird and I hid in the basement and played my Wii (that the Morlock claims is his). The visit continued today with several
choice photo ops as I gathered up the courage to climb onto my roof and free my troubled HDTV antenna from the attic. Lisa was initially concerned since I did not yet write out a will indicating her as the primary benefactor, but she decided she could forge one if necessary and promptly forgot about me. After the relocation, all signal strengths had a bright "green" meaning full signal, but on recording I still got occasional jumps. An exciting turn of events that requires me to climb onto the roof yet again to install a
even larger antenna.
After the failed
first attempt at neutering my Cougar, I decided to go with the stock exhaust option.
Jrak, helpful to a fault, had a spare stock exhaust laying around that he not only gave me, but
helped me install yesterday. This time the operation was a complete success. So much so that I now have to resort to the tachometer to know when to shift. I haven't noticed a significant drop in power, but I'm sure the 3/4 inch smaller diameter exhaust pipe is holding back some of it. I felt so bad for stockifying my car I roped
Ron into
installing his first generation sequential taillight flashers on my car today. Since he's almost completed his second generation (with unlimited flashing combinations) a windows media center extender was sufficient bribe to get my hands on his old circuit (innuendo intended). My 96 Mustang had the same circuit and I've missed it ever since I turned that car in. After the install, I spent at least 15 minutes mesmerized by the
light display. I might have a quieter and slower car now, but at least I have a chance of waking up the 8am zombies behind me when I'm in a turn lane. Lisa was supposed to have contributed a photo of herself approving the quiet exhaust, but she decided to get sick instead.
I've been excited about Windows Home Server ever since the
unveiling at ICES. I was recently accepted into the
beta program and decided to
install it on a stolen Morlock PC today. After entering the product key, I went to mow my yard and came back to the
login screen with no other configuration required. A quick check of the control panel found everything you'd expect in a Windows 2003 Small Business server, including IIS. My ultimate goal is to make Home Server my primary webserver, file server and backup server, so I was glad to see IIS ready to go. The centralized backup is the biggest feature of WHS, so my next step was to setup all my computers with the WHS client. It was pretty clear I wouldn't be able to backup all my computers with the 40GB drive in the Morlock PC, so I added a spare 120GB and another stolen 20GB Morlock drive for kicks. WHS has a
warning screen for silly people like me that prefer traditional RDP access to a server, so I decided to go along with it and used the RDP-ish "Home Server Console" to add the drives to the storage pool. After seeing the
result, I checked the
partitions and found nothing exciting. Some kind of redundant spanning takes place on the drives (supposedly if one drive fails home server alerts you and keeps on chugging). With my improved storage I
backed up all my computers from the console interface. The advantage to this over the built-in microsoft backup (both use
shadow copy) is I can now initiate and schedule backups from one place instead of making sure each computer has the proper access, setting up scheduled tasks, and making sure they are on (WHS wakes them out of standby for the 2am backup). A backup is only as good as it's restore options, so I decided to "fail" my laptop drive by wiping it clean. I then popped in the WHS restore CD and booted into a modified version of Vista. Instead of loading every driver that does (and will) exist in the world, each backup has a "Drivers" folder you copy to a USB drive for restores. After booting up, it
scanned and
found the drivers on the USB drive. I entered the WHS
password, picked the
machine,
backup, and
partition to restore and my laptop came back to life. You can also restore individual files from specific dates, but that's not as dramatic.
File shares,
users, and
network status are also easily administered from the console, with enough detail to keep me satisfied that I'm not actually RDP'd into the box. If you've read this far, you're probably wondering why I'm so excited about a centralized backup system. You'll find your answer the next time the RIAA SWAT team swoops in with localized EMP pulse rifles and zaps all your PC's. While you cry about the cavity search I'll be booting up restores happy in the knowledge my WHS is safe underground in a lead bunker.
While the feature to load archived captures has always existed in the
Gnome Cam, I replaced the javascript popup calendar with a dynamic one. Since the backend functionality is identical, but it now has a "fresh and new" interface, I've taken a page from marketing and renamed the "Archived Captures" feature to the "Gnome Cam Time Machine." Obviously a more exciting version of the exact same thing. Now when you reminisce about
Enoryms last visit, the
Nukie© party, the Morlocks
curb job, or the
barn LAN, you no longer have to look at the URL to get the date.
Today I brought my
Cougar into the local Tuffy shop to get neutered. The noise from my flowmaster muffler was too much for Lisa to handle on trips, and my approach to 30 years of age has been making me rethink the noise as well. That or Lisa has successfully hooked into my subconscious and is now controlling my thoughts. The owner of the Tuffy shop has been named "The Rainman of Exhausts" by
Duane for good reason. He can whip up a solution to just about anything for $200. For my situation he had a muffler from a minivan ready to mount under my car, and he actually got it to
fit successfully. At idle I don't even know my car is running, but anything under load it's almost louder than it was before the operation. I'm guessing it's jammed so tight into the exhaust chamber the vibrations are transmitting directly into the cabin area. Needless to say the operation failed, and I still have a loud Cougar. My next step is some kind of vibration dampening or a return to the restrictive stock exhaust. Since old folks over 30 shake their fist at any kind of noise, and don't need a fast car, it will probably be the stock exhaust. Unless of course Lisa implants another thought into my subconscious.
Thanks again to the
transitive property, I now have a new Wii attached to my 42" Plasma TV. I decided to let the Morlock unbox, set up, and try it out before my Wii bowling debut. Lisa dominated the first few games, but the Morlock eventually beat us both. I was in last place due to the defective Wiimote which interpreted a curve for my every throw. This was later confirmed at the
Kelleys where my bowling game improved significantly on their properly calibrated Wii. I imported my Mii from Steve's Wii, and Lisa whined excessively about the suggestive nose we gave her Mii, which of course prompted a permanent lock on her character. I have to admit it's an addictive gaming console; the
giant 8-bit mario in Super Paper Mario alone justifies owning one, but something seems not quite right
from this angle.
There comes a time in every mans life when they learn the depth of their fiances love. For me, today is that day. The original
Knight Rider car KITT is
up for sale in it's fully restored condition. Will she rob a bank to give me the ultimate 80's nerd posession? Only time (and devotion) will tell.
Lisa and I recently returned from a
visit to the flatlanders to celebrate their newborn flatlander. The baby
loves bacon and eggs, so we were treated to breakfast every morning. We were also given a new addition to the Gnome family, henceforth known as "Fruity." Lisas parents also gave us "Bugsy" with his very own mushroom house. I was so excited about the new Gnomes I bought the last
Quiznos bundt cakes in Ohio (they are discontinued) to celebrate. Unfortunately, neither Lisa nor the flatlanders wanted anything to do with this delicacy, so I was forced to eat them myself.
Ron and Jen's gift of
Sleepy on St. Patricks day before Fruity and Bugsy has resulted in an exponential increase in Gnome population at my house (MiDGE is the
most disturbing Gnome ever). No longer a solitary Gnome, Butt now has to relearn socialization with
Fruity and Bugsy outside while Sleepy and MiDGE party inside. I predict an outcome similar to the
crack spider with Butt as the victor (and mushroom house owner).
Four years ago I
bought a Roomba, which I used for about 8 months before the ledge sensor busted, at which point I sold it on eBay. Fast forward to a few days ago and a
refurbished Scooba deal sucked me back into the world of iRobot. My hatred of mopping and Lisa's continued disregard for the
good wives guide created a need for something to clean my hardwood floors any ways, or at least that's how I justified it. It's definitely much larger than my old Roomba, and after a full nights charge it was cleaning my kitchen floor
better than I had ever done. The "waste water" was a dark black to prove the job was done, and so far it's performed flawlessly. It's "AWARE" programming as the manual claims still seems to be the same random circle/wall follow/45 degree turns my old Roomba did, but who am I to argue with marketing acronyms. Hopefully I'll update in another 8 months that it's still working, but even if it isn't I'd pay $180 for 8 months of not having to mop.
This plagued me for over an hour today and I thought it would be helpful to make a post since a Google search yielded lots of complaints but no solutions. I did find
this work around which avoided the problem, but I suspected the video card drivers might have been the cause. After reinstalling the drivers, I was able to re-enable all the animation options the work around disabled with no problems. If you get a "Sysfader: Iexplore.exe Application Error" dialog box with something like "the memory was unable to be written" reinstalling your video drivers will solve the problem. I'm guessing sysfader.exe interacts with the video drivers in a specific way (fade effect) and causes the error to occur.
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