After studying the machine and deciding what I needed (and getting advice from my friend Sinc), I decided to go ahead and replace the motherboard, CPU, RAM, and case. I would be able to salvage the hard drives, DVD drives, and power supply from the old machine. I suppose I could have salvaged the case as well, but I had never been very happy with it. It was an aluminum case, and was extremely flimsy. A good example of it was in the front-panel USB ports; one of the ports actually ended up breaking, thus becoming unusable to me. The wires going to the motherboard for the audio didn’t work properly, either. In short, it was time for a change.

I ended up purchasing an AMD Athlon X2 245 CPU, an Asus M4A78-EM motherboard, and 2 GB of DDR2 800 memory from Newegg. I would have bought a video card, but the motherboard came with onboard video, which will do fine for another month or two when I’ll go ahead and get one. However, after I checked the specifications of the motherboard, I realized I’d have to retire the main PC’s name.

This may surprise a number of people, but I didn’t get my first “modern” PC until my 21st birthday. That machine was an IBM Aptiva 486/66 with 8 MB of RAM. When I got it, I had given it the designation Tiamat (after the Fiend of Air from Final Fantasy). Ever since then, my main PC always had the name Tiamat, as I would constantly use components from previous machines in the newer machines. Every machine since then has had at least one component from the original Tiamat. Well, the one final component from the original in the new Tiamat was the floppy drive. For those wondering why I would keep the floppy drive even in 2005, the answer is that I needed to load drivers for the SATA RAID controller from floppy for Windows XP setup to recognize them. Well, this new motherboard did not support a floppy drive, so that last component was no longer needed. I’d have to come up with a new name.

In any event, I spent Sunday afternoon doing a final backup of local files to my iPod Classic, and then finally shut Tiamat down that evening (with a bit of a wistful feeling, I might add). As soon as I got home Monday evening, I began the process of taking Tiamat apart and removing the hard drives, optical drives, and power supply. I had gotten a new case from Micro Center , and while it had cost less than the flimsy original case had, it was definitely of better quality. I installed the power supply into the case, followed by the motherboard, CPU, and RAM. As I installed the drives, it occurred to me that the install was going very smoothly. In my experience, that usually meant that there’d be a serious problem as soon as the system was powered on and booted for the first time. I also couldn’t help notice that while my case was black, the optical drives were beige. I didn’t have replacement bezels for them, so they’ll just have to stand out. Once everything was connected to the motherboard, I took the open system to my room, where I connected a keyboard, a power cable, and the monitor to it for testing.

To my surprise, it booted right up without a problem. I ended up taking it back into the office and putting all the case components back on, and then took it back to my desk and hooked everything up to it. Once everything was in place, I powered it up, and began setting the machine up. As before, I decided to run the two SATA hard drives in RAID 0, as it would provide increased data throughput. RAID 0 isn’t fault-tolerant, but then anything vital other than A/V media was sitting on my server. Once that was taken care of, I popped my Windows 7 Professional CD in the DVD drive and started the installation. As that was ticking over, I saw the blue glow coming from the fans inside the machine, and decided that the name I had been thinking of for it was appropriate. My machines are typically named after female video game characters, and I had wanted something Microsoft-specific (as I had gone with it over a Mac)… plus the blue glow evoked a holographic/high tech look. So, I decided to name the machine Cortana.

Remember how I had said I had expected something to go wrong? Well, it happened during the OS install. The installer for Windows 7 refused to recognize my product key. Now, I KNEW it was legitimate, as it was purchased from Office Depot. I ended up calling Microsoft support and had them walk through fixing the issue with me. Once that was taken care of, the reinstall went fine and the system came up without an issue. Restoring my Firefox and Thunderbird profiles went smoothly, and copying my media back to the PC went off without a hitch. About the only problem I had was that my iTunes library database didn’t copy over correctly, but I had a backup of my most used playlist stored anyway.

I also have to admit, I picked a new wallpaper for the system based on its new name.

Cortana wallpaper on Cortana PC...

All in all, everything seems to be working properly on the new system, and it’s definitely running faster than it did before. Most of my old apps are installed, and all needed data has been restored. In the meantime, Mom has asked if I could use the old components to build her a new machine, but considering the problems I had with it before, I’m not entirely sure that’s a good idea. I might just end up buying a separate desktop system for her.

For now, though, I’m just going to enjoy my newer and faster system.

Well, yesterday, a friend of mine posted on her Twitter that she planned on doing double posting of her games to her wall simply to annoy those people who had joined that group. Her point was that instead of complaining, they should just use the built-in functionality in Facebook to hide the apps. Normally I would agree, but there are two problems I have that prevent it from being a long term solution.

The first problem is the sheer number of apps. It seems to me that every time I hit “Hide” on an app, two more pop up in peoples’ wall posts to take their place. It almost seems like every day I’m having to hit “Hide” on one app or another to get rid of these annoying posts. I’d love to be able to just click a box or set a setting to hide them all en masse… and that’s the second problem. To my knowledge (and I’ve asked others to no avail), there is no way to just hide all application wall posts. In short, I’m fighting a losing battle: I can constantly manually hide apps, but new apps keep springing up every day and I have no way to just blanket hide them.

I suppose the easiest thing to do would be to stop using Facebook, but considering how many people I know plan events and get-togethers using it these days, it would make life much more inconvenient in that respect. Unlike before, I actually DO have a social life now. I don’t begrudge people actually using the apps; I (and others) just would like a way to not see them, and Facebook doesn’t offer an easy or convenient option to shut them up. I don’t foresee it changing anytime soon, as I’m willing to bet the money made off the apps overrules any number of complaints. Until/unless something is done, though, those who use the apps should understand that while it might be easier to click “Hide” than complain in the short term, in the long term all we have to look forward is constantly clicking “Hide” or bearing with the annoyance of this filler crap polluting our walls.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/12/world/europe/12germany.html

BERLIN — It usually takes an author decades to win fawning reviews, march up the best-seller list and become a finalist for a major book prize. Helene Hegemann, just 17, did it with her first book, all in the space of a few weeks, and despite a savaging from critics over plagiarism.

The publication last month of her novel about a 16-year-old exploring Berlin’s drug and club scene after the death of her mother, called “Axolotl Roadkill,” was heralded far and wide in German newspapers and magazines as a tremendous debut, particularly for such a young author. The book shot to No. 5 this week on the magazine Spiegel’s hardcover best-seller list.

For the obviously gifted Ms. Hegemann, who already had a play (written and staged) and a movie (written, directed and released in theaters) to her credit, it was an early ascension to the ranks of artistic stardom. That is, until a blogger last week uncovered material in the novel taken from the less-well-known novel “Strobo,” by an author writing under the nom de plume Airen. In one case, an entire page was lifted with few changes.

As other unattributed sources came to light, outsize praise quickly turned to a torrent of outrage, reminiscent of the uproar in 2006 over a Harvard sophomore, Kaavya Viswanathan, who was caught plagiarizing numerous passages in her much praised debut novel. But Ms. Hegemann’s story took a very different turn.

…

Although Ms. Hegemann has apologized for not being more open about her sources, she has also defended herself as the representative of a different generation, one that freely mixes and matches from the whirring flood of information across new and old media, to create something new. “There’s no such thing as originality anyway, just authenticity,” said Ms. Hegemann in a statement released by her publisher after the scandal broke.

If I can be forgiven the vernacular response, BULLSHIT. The difference between what this girl has done and the “mixers” to which she refers to is the fact that those who produce commercial mixes not only acknowledge who they are sampling from, they get the original copyright holders’ permission first.

The biggest reason for that is the song “Bittersweet Symphony” by the Verve. They sampled a section of the Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”, and the Stones’ record label (the copyright holder) sued saying that the Verve did not have permission to use that sample. The courts agreed it was an infringement, and now 100% of all proceeds from the song go to the record label instead of the Stones.

If she had admitted to what she had done beforehand, and gave references in her novel, then I could understand what she did. As it stands, right now what she’s doing is making an excuse because she got caught committing the biggest cardinal sin in writing. The story says the book is still a finalist for the Leipzig Book Fair; I (and I would hope others, including author friends of mine) believe she should be instantly disqualified. This should be a black mark on her reputation, and that she’s apparently getting away with it is something I find shameful.

Recently at the “Tea Party’s” national convention, the opening speaker (a former Republican congressman named Tom Tancredo) suggested that Barack Obama was elected because “we do not have a civics, literacy test before people can vote in this country.”. Such literacy tests were used in the South to prevent blacks from voting, so one could imagine why that would have leave something of a bad taste in several people’s mouths.

On the other hand, it seems to me that in a way this is kind of hypocritical, as it has seemed to me that many of those who support the Tea Party are themselves ignorant of current civics. For example, the Tea Party seems to be a home for the Birther movement (those who believe Obama isn’t a natural born US citizen despite the overwhelming evidence he is). In response, movie critic Roger Ebert recently posted his proposed civics/history test for potential voters, saying that to vote you should pass this test. I’m going to go ahead and repost his quiz here.

How well will you do?

1. Does the Bill of Rights have anything to do with the U. S. Constitution?

20. Before the passage of the Civil Rights act of 1965, members of which party in the South were more opposed to “literacy tests” for voters?

Does a bum WHAT in the park?

The following is excerpted from a conversation between myself and Jennifer on the way home from work yesterday:

Jennifer: “That’s the park where I see the guy poop. Of course, he hasn’t done it as much the past few months because the leaves are off the bush…”
Me: “Okay, I have to ask… is he REALLY pooping, or is he just squatting?”
Jennifer: “Well, let me put it this way: he’s got his pants around his ankles while he squats.”
Me: “Yeah, he’s pooping.”

Parenthood should be easier than this.

A friend of mine and his wife have been documenting their journey towards adopting a child from the Ukraine. They’ve done numerous applications. They’ve had to get CPR certified. They’ve had to get the fire marshall to do an inspection. They’re going to be undergoing a home study this week. It’s exhausting what they put potential adoptive parents through.

… on the other hand, it strikes me as kind of sad that adoptive parents have to go through all this preparation to take in a child, when Joe and Jane Idiot can just pop one out without so much preparation or a blink from the state. Don’t get me wrong; as much as I feel Scott and Lindsey will be great parents, it’s great to see that the agencies are making sure they’ll be ready for him/her. I just wish the parents of natural-born children got held to such a high standard sometimes.

(Then again, not that I consider any of my friends or anyone I know bad parents; indeed, they’ve been proving themselves to be exceptional parents or parents-to-be…)

Internet Explorer 6 is no longer welcome here.

Internet Explorer 6 is approximately eight years old. There are much better alternatives out there, including IE 7/8, Mozilla Firefox, and Google Chrome. At this time there’s a serious IE6 vulnerability (which also exists in 7 and 8, but is apparently much harder to exploit), which was behind the Google China compromise. As a result, I’ve decided to load the IE6 No More code (via a plugin) that places a banner at the top of the page if someone enters the site using IE6, telling them to upgrade their browser. Educating the user is always a good thing, especially when it comes to an outdated web browser.

When I got into work this morning, the boss asked me as a favor if I could take his wife’s old first generation iPhone and turn it into an iPod Touch. In other words, he simply wanted to use the iPhone without the cellular capability. Normally that wouldn’t be an issue, but he had wiped the iPhone and now it needed to be activated through iTunes. What worried us was whether activating through iTunes would disable his wife’s new iPhone. So, I did some research, and came across this Apple knowledge base article that said what we wanted to do is easily done, and that iTunes would happily activate the phone with the invalid SIM for use as an iPhone without cell service.

Sounds simple, right? It wasn’t.

Once I plugged the iPhone into my laptop and iTunes came up, it asked to activate through AT&T. Confused and unwilling to continue lest I mess up Kendra’s phone, I called AT&T for assistance. After explaining the situation to the tech support specialist, I got the tech support equivalent of a blank stare. She ended up transferring me to Apple, where the support tech there knew what I was asking for but didn’t have the right information for me. After talking to a supervisor, he told me I needed to talk to AT&T regarding the SIM card still in the phone (as the phone will not activate without a SIM card). After getting off the phone with him, I called AT&T back and got another tech on the phone. I explained the situation to her, but she told me that what the Apple tech said wouldn’t work. We tried going through the different options on the iTunes activation, but every route we took led to the same result: we would be deactivating the cellular service on Kendra’s phone and activating it on this one.

The AT&T tech eventually got another Apple tech on the line, and we tried different options, including even trying to activate it with MY iPhone’s SIM card in it. The iTunes activation wouldn’t even allow it to proceed on mine. Finally, the Apple tech suggested asking an AT&T store person, and the AT&T tech called the nearest store to me and found a employee who could do what I asked. I thanked them for their help, got off the phone with them, and headed over to the AT&T store. The problem would soon be dealt with.

… or so I thought. As soon as I walked in the door and handed the guy the phone, he looked at it and said, “The tech told me it was an iPhone 3G.” I said no, that I had quite clearly told her it was a firstgen one. As the tech explained, for some reason it was not possible to activate the original iPhone for non-cellular use. Only the 3G and the 3GS could be activated that way.

So, I took the phone back to the office and told the boss the sad truth: the only way we were going to be able to unlock the phone for his daughter’s use was to jailbreak it. We had wanted to do it via an “authorized” method, but that had been closed off to us. Fortunately, a quick word with a friend of mine who had more iPhone knowledge than me pointed me in the direction of blackra1n, a quick and easy jailbreak tool for the iPhone. Once the phone was successfully jailbroken, it was available for use. The boss checked it over, made sure everything was available that his daughter would need, and thanked me profusely for getting it running.

If you were to ask me where the failure here was… while I’d lay it at both Apple’s and AT&T’s feet, I’d probably lay it more at AT&T than at Apple. I don’t know how Apple looks up SIM numbers for activation, but I’m willing to bet that whenever an AT&T SIM card is entered in, it automatically tries to sell cellular service as opposed to giving the option of activating without cellular service. Apple’s blame comes from the fact that their knowledge base article didn’t make ANY mention of problems with activating without cellular service if it was formerly used on AT&T and had an AT&T SIM.

In any event, the iPhone is now operational without cellular service. Jailbreaking was a last resort as the boss and I are both people who like to stay as official with software as possible (even though I have no problems with others jailbreaking), but in the end it was the route we needed to take to get the phone up and running where the boss’s daughter could use it. Now, if only Apple and AT&T hadn’t made the process so painful in the first place…

One thing that people generally ask me is whether I’m afraid that my job would be outsourced to somewhere like India. The answer I give is most often “no”; over the years, it’s become plainly obvious that while it’s cheaper to send tech support and development to such countries, the cost savings are undone by the language barriers, quality of work, time zone differences, and even possible corruption. Plus, with them being overseas, there’s little chance of them being called on whatever they do.

Anyway, this story, called “Maybe I Needing Later”, should serve as a very precautionary tale about hiring a developer in this manner. While this is one of the worst examples I’ve ever seen, it also doesn’t surprise me one iota. I figure this guy is not the first to be burned in this way.

How bad is it? Well, I’ll just quote one line that says it all…

“If you don’t paying, then I delete files that I send you,” he responded, “I don’t want deleting your web, but it is not fair for me. I know you changing my password and I can’t logging on, but I don’t needing SQL or server password to delete.”

You can read the rest of the story here.

Nearly two years ago, I started a new exercise regiment in order to get healthier and lose weight. What I started doing was exercise with small hand weights for five minutes when I get up every weekday morning, and doing 25 minutes of Dance Dance Revolution three times a week. While I enjoyed doing it, it got to the point where I wondered whether it was doing any more good for me or not. It didn’t help that I always felt it really wasn’t as much of a workout as I should be getting. So, with Jennifer’s support, I took the plunge this past Sunday.

I’ve officially joined a gym.

Jennifer’s been a member of 24 Hour Fitness for quite some time, and had been encouraging me to join. She and I went on Sunday (with me using a free week pass), and I was impressed enough to join as soon as we were done. My big hangup with gyms previously was that even with personal training, I’d never be able to keep up with how to do most of the exercises. (I speak from experience.) However, most of the machines have directions on them, which put me at ease right away. The staff was also very courteous and helpful.

So, now I’m going to the gym four times a week. I’ve settled into a good exercise routine that should do me pretty well, once my body adjusts to the extra level of exertion. Keeping to the routine shouldn’t be hard, either, as there are locations right outside my neighborhood, right by Jennifer’s neighborhood, and one or two by our offices. Here’s hoping it works out pretty well for me… no pun intended.

Amazingly enough, neither of us woke up with a hangover the next morning. After a nice breakfast in Shula’s (which the hotel gave us a free breakfast at because the concierge lounge was closed for Thanksgiving), we wandered over to the French Quarter to browse around. With it being Thanksgiving, almost everything was closed, which gave us an opportunity to quietly browse around without any crowds. As we wandered, we took in all of the sights, including St. Louis Cathedral, the river, and the French Market. Once we were finished looking around in the French Quarter, we headed over to Canal Street, where we took the trolley over to the Garden District to walk around and look at the houses there. They had some really beautiful homes there; we even looked to see if we could find Anne Rice’s old house, but had no luck. After wandering through there aimlessly for a while, snapping pictures and admiring the houses, we went back to the trolley station and took a trolley back to Canal Street, where we walked down until we reached Harrah’s. Once in Harrah’s we ate lunch in Fuddrucker’s, and then went our separate ways; Jennifer and her parents looked for the video poker machines, while I went to the poker room and played some $1-$2 no-limit Texas Hold Em.

At this point, I’m going to digress and mention that I REALLY did not like how Harrah’s handled making money off of the poker tables. When I played in Vegas, the house took a cut out of every winning pot. In Harrah’s New Orleans, though, they made all players pay $6 every time there was a dealer change (which was every half-hour or so). I preferred the old way, where you could stay in and only deal with blinds, but only paid if you won a pot. I wasn’t the only one; more than one person I spoke to at the table agreed with me. In the end, I walked away down about $30. While I can say that I don’t know how much I would have been down if they were on the other system, I know that when I take the Harrah’s system into account I was only down $6 due to actual losing hands.

Once I was done at the poker table after a couple of hours, I sought out Jennifer and her folks, and we made our way back to the hotel to rest for a bit. Once we got a bit hungry, we wandered out to the French Quarter, where we had dinner at Pierre Maspero’s, which we had noticed was one of the few restaurants open. Once we had finished eating a delicious meal there, we wandered out to get coffee and beignets from Cafe Du Monde. Along the way, we happened upon a musician who made music out of water glasses, and a man with a telescope with which we saw the Moon and Jupiter with two of its larger moons. Once in Cafe Du Monde, we were struck by how quiet it was (there were a number of wait staff just sitting around and talking), but that didn’t stop us from enjoying our coffee and beignets, which were delicious. Once we were done there, we made our way back to the hotel, where we turned in for the night.

The next morning, we had breakfast in the concierge lounge. Once that was done, we packed, checked out stuff in with the bellhop at the hotel, and made our way back to the French Quarter. One of our first stops was K-Paul’s Louisiana Kitchen, which is owned by Chef Paul Prudhomme. After having a VERY delicious lunch there, we proceeded to wander around the French Quarter, which was MUCH more lively that day, complete with bands, artists, performers, and the like. We also walked past Cafe Du Monde again, and were rather glad we went the night before; the line to get in to the place was down the street. We wandered down the streets of the French Quarter, stopping in the French Market to have a sit down and a drink. (I swear, the margarita I got was loaded with every liquor known to man.)As we left the French Market, we were greeting by a rather… unusual sight: a whole group of sousaphone players marching down the street. It turned out there was some event going on involving sousaphone players; we watched them march to the French Market and play for a bit, and then headed back towards the hotel. Along the way, we encountered the gentleman seen on the left; despite his relatively rough appearance, the man had an INCREDIBLE singing voice. I actually wish I could have recorded it because he did so well. After listening to him for a few minutes, we made our way back to the hotel. We had planned well; as we were leaving, people were arriving from Grambling State and Southern University for the Bayou Classic football game being played that weekend, and the line to the elevators was unreal. We got our luggage from the bellhop, got our car from the valet parking, and left for Lafayette.

Once we arrived in Lafayette, we checked into the hotel… only to find that a college football team had arrived at the same time we did. Fortunately we managed to find a way around the lines to the elevator. After resting for a bit after the drive, we made our way to the Blue Dog Cafe. Jennifer’s parents had been wanting to go there for years but never had the chance before that day. The food there was EXCELLENT, and we really enjoyed ourselves. After dinner, we went back to the hotel, where Jennifer and I had a drink or two at the hotel bar. Once done with that, we made our way to bed.

On Saturday morning, we got up, had breakfast in the concierge lounge, packed, and made our way out. Instead of heading home, our first stop was Avery Island, which was home of the Tabasco manufacturing plant. After crossing the toll bridge into the island, we almost thought the plant was closed, as we seemed to be the only ones there. As we waited in the waiting area, more people arrived… and soon a single woman came out, gave a quick history, led us into a theater, turned on a video, and left. We had been directed to go through a hallway when we were finished, which showed the plant floor (which was shut down as it was a Saturday). As we left the plant area, we encountered some displays which we looked at, and then stepped outside. All in all, the tour (while free) was nowhere near as interesting as the one at the Blue Bell plant. We went into the Tabasco country store, which sold everything Tabasco-related one could imagine. They even had samples of Tabasco ice cream and soda. The ice creams were decent. I didn’t try the soda; Jennifer and her father said the soda was horrifically nasty. When we were done there, we headed on out and headed back to Houston, with a stop just outside of Beaumont for lunch.

All in all, the trip was a lot of fun. The food was excellent, though admittedly it’ll be a while before I’m ready for Cajun seafood again. In addition, we had a great time seeing the sights. I’m not sure where next year’s Thanksgiving trip will go to (if we go instead of spending Thanksgiving with my parents), but I can already say that based on this trip it should be a pretty fun time.

I’m not really “up” on the whole con thing, really. I’ve been to one or two, but my experience has been mostly with trade shows like E3 and OTC. However, the one con I’ve known about for years due to friends attending and talking about it was Dragon*Con. I’d considered going for years, even when slightly annoyed when undergoing overload of D*C. However, there had always been a reason for me not to go, from not wanting to fight with hotel rooms, to not having a friend to go with me, and so on and so forth…

Well, yesterday, I found a VERY good reason not to go. Yesterday, Ryan Sohmer of Blind Ferret Entertainment (responsible for the popular webcomics Least I Could Do and Looking For Group) made a post on the LICD forums talking about their experience with Dragon*Con staff this year as a paying vendor, and why they will not be back next year. Lar deSouza (Ryan’s collaborator on LICD and LFG) asked that people retweet Ryan’s post and get the word out; while I’ve already tweeted about it, I figured I would go ahead and repost the story on here.

http://forums.leasticoulddo.com/index.php?showtopic=31068

My mood is less than pleased right now, and I’m going to tell you why.

- Because I can.

Once again, I have no desire to support any company that treats their paying customers in such an appalling manner. Reading the replies to Sohmer’s post, it’s looking obvious that actions like this are becoming (if not established) typical behavior for Dragon*Con. Personally, it isn’t that big a deal to me, as there are two shows that I would much rather go to instead: San Diego Comic-Con, and Penny-Arcade Expo. PAX happens the same weekend as Dragon*Con, so I would have had to sacrifice D*C anyway. Still, it’s a shame, and the way things are looking (especially the way this story is getting out), the staff of Dragon*Con might be thinking about an apology at some point soon…