Dosboy's Bits and Bytes

... but the clip you selected isn't available from your location.

Complete and utter bullshit.  This happens ALL THE TIME.  US TV stations post their clips online and, traditionally, being a Canadian I can't watch them.  Even though we see the actual television shows on the same US (syndicated) channels that US viewers do, and at the same time.  And now I'm in Thailand.  And have access to a US proxy server.  But I'm STILL getting this message when I try to watch the Battlestar Galactica Webisodes.  WTF??  GeoLocation is cool and all, but there's no reason for it to be limited in this respect.  IT'S THE INTERNET FOR GOD'S SAKE!  If I email the right person and say "Hey man, can you use some sort of cool software to grab that flash video and send it to me or post it somewhere so I can watch it?" it'll be done in a flash.  But why?  Why can't SciFi.com just remove their Geo-shit and let me watch these webisodes?  I've been looking forward to it all day, my internet is finally not crawling along like a snail, and I get hit with the above shitty message. Bull-Shit.

</rant>

P.S. If you're "the right person" and have somehow acquired these clips and posted them somewhere that my current country of residence is not taken into consideration, please email me some links so I can watch them.  Thanks.

Would you believe it, I'm 2 for 2 with good tech support this week.  Just now I was having a problem with my Usenet account.  As an aside, Internet here's been really flaky lately.  I believe in a totally non-technical way that it has something to do with the rain - for some reason whenever it rains here the Internet slows down to a crawl, and it's DSL, not satellite, which doesn't make any sense at all, but from an observational perspective this is the conclusion I've drawn.  At any rate, my newsreader was telling me that I'd exceeded my maximum connections.  Since I've given my account info to a few friends I figured it was just other people maxing out my connections, so I logged into my account management page and changed my password (to you friends that are using my account, just email me and I'll give you the new password).  But even after doing that it was still giving me the same error.  So I went to open a support ticket with UseNetServer.com, and on their support page they had a Live Chat option which was currently showing Online.  So I figured I'd use that option since it was bound to be faster than back and forth emails.  About 2 mins after I posted my question a support tech pinged me back.  He asked me a couple questions, had me change a couple of options, and BAM! my client connected properly and all was good.  Total support time about 5 mins.

I love the Internet.  And I love good tech support :)

Who could possibly imagine that Vista is such a piece of shit? I mean, it's not like this is Microsoft's first foray into OS development. But it sure seems like it is. For the record, DOS was far more stable and predictable. Anyway, without further adieu, on to my latest Vista issues.

Telnet
It seems that, by default, the Telnet client is not installed. That is, telnet.exe. Why MS would choose not to include this 211 kB executable in the default install (when they've included it in every version of Windows prior, including 95) is beyond me. But for those of you who need this and don't know how to install it, here's what you do.

Disappearing System Tray Icons
Booted up my machine the other day and for some reason the Volume and Wireless icons didn't appear in my System Tray. I'd seen this before, but another reboot always fixed it. This time however no matter how many times I rebooted they just wouldn't appear. I'm not going to go into the specifics of the issue as they're documented here, but the fix follows.

1. Run regedit.exe
2. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion \TrayNotify
3. Delete the IconStreams and PastIconStreams values
4. Reboot

Now, I'm no n00b when it comes to editing the registry, but having to edit it for this seems like a HUGE oversight on the part of MS. Utterly ridiculous.


Folder View FUBAR
This has got to be one of the most frustrating aspects of Vista. Vista just seems to randomly change folder views on me. I don't even know how to explain it. I'll set a folder to Tile view, and I'll go back in later and it'll be List. Or I'll set it to Details with default columns and I'll go back in later and it's changed the columns to music-type (i.e. Artist, Album, Track #, etc.) - not very useful when i'm browsing a folder containing no music files. It truly seems random. I've found this quite detailed list of fixes that can be applied to prevent Vista from doing this. And trust me, this fix list appears quite comprehensive. However as a dumb user, I want Vista's "intelligence" to work for me. If I have a folder of music files I want Vista to display music-related columns (well, ok, I don't really, but a truly dumb user might). Then there's the folders of mixed content. If I have a video file, a music file and an image file all in one folder, what folder type does Vista think this is? Cuz I guarantee no matter what it chooses it'll be wrong. So DON'T CHOOSE ANYTHING. Just use the default. If I as the user want to change the view I'll do so. I don't want my OS trying to outsmart me. Cuz I've yet to meet an OS that can. Suffice it to say that I haven't actually implemented the list of fixes above, mostly because I keep hoping that eventually Vista will settle on a folder view for each of my folders which is actually correct. Or MS will issue a fix. Also, I'm lazy. And a dumb user. Really though, I can't stress the dumb user bit enough. If my mom was using Vista (god forbid) and her folder views switched on her all the time she'd be lost, and most likely think that she'd done something wrong. And there's no way in hell she'd go through the fix list above, let alone even think to do so or even search for such fixes. We're not talking power user scenarios here. We're talking simple folder views. I never had any such problem under XP, but then XP never tried to outsmart me. In fact, I used to sort of get off on stuff like this. Problem solving and troubleshooting new OS "features" for deployment and such. But this issue is just fucked. It's unpredictable, which is never a good thing when supporting a mass deployment. Thank god I'm just a hack now and not actually an IT specialist. Cuz I'd hate to have to support this in the field, especially on a mass scale of hundreds or thousands of machines.

For some reason I feel the need to write an entry about this. Maybe I'm hoping that others will read it and realize the error of their ways. At any rate, this is one of my biggest pet peeves...

It really pisses me off. I mean, think about how many URLs you type a day, and how many times you put in "www." when it's absolutely not necessary. Hell, people use it on things like "www.mail.google.com". WTF?!?! "www" is not a subdomain of "mail.google.com". If you're typing it into the address bar of your browser and NOT specifying something other than http://, it's part of the World Wide Web, and "www." is assumed. Admittedly there are a few sites that don't get it, and their root domain just gives you an error page, but those are few and far between. What spurred this is that I saw a link to some guy's blog that was "www.[blogname].blogspot.com". And the blogname was long. Do I really need to type the extra "www." every time I want to go to his blog? No, I don't. Also, using "www." breaks (or worsens) the auto complete in your address bar. It means that whenever you go to a site (like dosboy.ca), you have to type "www.d" before your address bar even has a clue what to show you, cuz EVERY site begins with www. Compare that to simply typing "d".

Also, if you'll note, my blog actually DROPS the "www." if you try typing it and redirects you to the root domain. As it should be.

</rant>

Well, I've been here almost exactly 2 weeks. And following is a list of things that have gone wrong with the "loose ends" that I thought were tied up but apparently weren't. This post is more a means for me to vent than anything, so to all my loyal readers, just bear with me.

1. I bought Ken some headphones when I was in Bermuda. Had them shipped to Gillian. She forgot to bring them with her when she came to Canada. No biggy, right? She shipped them when she got back to Brooklyn, but they never arrived. Got bounced back to her for some reason (she presumes it was because she shipped them in the Amazon box). So, time to spare, she shipped them again. Or rather had a friend ship them. They didn't arrive before I left, so the usage that Ken intended for them (his return flight) was lost.
2. Mike tried to pick up the headphones from security today. They have them, but told him that a) they were addressed to #1101 instead of #1011, and b) they don't have the authorization form that I specifically signed to let him pick up my packages. So he's got to go to the management office to sort things out. PITA.
3. Had an offer on my condo. It was low. I modified the offer and sent it back, but so far haven't heard a peep. Dunno if it'll go through. Hope it does, cuz I could use the cash (see #4 below).
   
4. This one's the big one. I requested a new Visa card before I left Canada (points, better travel stuff, etc.). It didn't get to me before I left. Had my mail forwarded to my mom. She got the card on the 21st. TD told me that my old card would be functional until I activated the new one. No problem. Told my mom to hold onto it until I got to Thailand. However I tried making a purchase on it today and it was rejected. Just got off the phone with TD and it seems that my old card was "closed" on the 27th and that my new card was automatically activated. So my new, active card is in Waterloo, and my old, useless card is in my pocket. And I have no functional credit card. And apparently there's nothing that Visa can do to reactivate a closed card. Not the best feeling when I'm on the other side of the world. In addition I had to have them "block" the new card cuz I don't want an active card shipped to me in case it gets lost, which means once I have it in my hands I need to call them back and get the block removed. Did I mention PITA?! Not to mention worrisome. Oh, ya, and it's probably gonna cost a couple hundred dollars to express ship the new card to Thailand. Thanks TD!
5. Xdrive, the online backup solution I was using, blows chunks. Their desktop client which lets you schedule automatic backups (and which was the only reason I chose them over the dozens of other free online backup solutions) sucks. Every time my laptop loses internet, be it from Ken's flaky connection (i.e. Vista) or cuz it went into sleep and woke up, the client executable XdrSmb.exe chews up 50% cpu and never reconnects. Just sits their chewing up horsepower and making my laptop run hot, not actually doing anything. And when I emailed them for support (which I had to google endlessly even to find the address) I got an automated response and still haven't gotten an actual person response yet. So now I'm running backup-less until one of my friends installs FolderShare so that I can back up to their machine.
   

I know, it's been awhile since there's been a technology rant, and my loyal fans must be chomping at the bit to know what piece of tech has been my biggest hindrance in the 3 days since I left. Well, what would my first rant be without paying tribute to the biggest pain in my ass since the CONFIG.SYS of OS/2... Vista! Yup, no matter how hard I try to make it purr like a kitten, it never fails to moo like a cow.

So here's the scenario. I'm hanging out with Ken and I think to myself, "I should check my email". So I ask Ken what his wireless settings are and he provides them, with the following caveat - "Are you running Vista? Cuz it doesn't work for some reason. It disconnects every 10 mins requiring a reboot or doesn't work at all. I reloaded XP on my Vista laptop and it works perfectly now". Hmm... this seems odd to me. Not because Vista is bulletproof, but because Ken is a smart guy. So I go through the standard connection rigmarole and it says I'm connected. But I can't surf. DNS resolution seems to be alright, ping/traceroute work fine, IM is connected... but no surfing. Neither Firefox nor IE are able to hit a website. Also, this does not appear to be a wireless issue but rather a full-on networking / TCP/IP issue. So I hop onto Ken's laptop and check my email, firing off a tech support message to Gregg in the meantime as he's actually been doing a little Vista support for awhile now. I get a message back from him awhile later suggesting the following things:

1. Network Discovery (as in disable the bastard) - http://www.home-network-help.com/network-discovery.html
2. Disable IPv6

Well, whaddya know but option (1) did the trick. It still seems that after a few hours I lose HTTP again, but that's far more acceptable than the previous situation, especially since I'm not going to be here all that long. So, the long and short of it is that MS has made Vista too "smart" for its own good. I shouldn't have to disable a feature like this just to surf the web (especially since the actual usage of Network Discovery is to detect other network devices LOCALLY; shouldn't have anything to do with what's beyond my gateway). Effing Microsoft. Effing Vista.

As promised, here's my latest Vista rant. Before I begin, I must point out that I still get multiple hits a day from searches on "I fucking hate vista", which I find totally amusing. Hopefully this post will bump me up in the "fucking hate vista" pagerank :)

Anyway, I got my new lappy on Thursday. It came with a neat little remote control that fits in the ExpressCard slot. On this remote control is a Media Center button which launches, you guessed it, Media Center. So, since I like to play dumb user whenever possible, I decided that I'd use this remote and Media Center as my primary media playback combination. Sure, Media Player Classic is really my video player of choice. Winamp is my audio player of choice. And MediaPortal is my 10' UI of choice. But no matter. I have Vista Ultimate on a shiny new laptop with a shiny new remote control, so let's pretend I don't know any better.

First thing I did was add my Download directory to the video files section so that it scans this directory and picks up my TV show (specifically Entourage) downloads. Unfortunately at the time I didn't have any TV shows in that folder or any subfolders. No matter though, because they'd eventually be there and OF COURSE Windows would be smart enough to know that subdirectories are to be included even if none actually existed when I added it to the config, right? WRONG! So once I had some stuff downloaded I had to remove and re-add the directory, making sure at this point to check the "include subdirectories" checkbox (which obviously didn't exist when there weren't any). Fine, I'll concede that point (even though I shouldn't have to, but it's Vista after all).

I get the directory indexed and see my nice new episodes of Entourage. I click one to play... Error! Oh, I forgot to install the XviD codec I think, so my bad. I'll concede another point here (even though the error message actually said it couldn't FIND the episode I'd JUST CLICKED ON when it actually should have told me it didn't have the appropriate codec, but no matter). I install XviD and all of the other Gordian Knot niceties. I test in Windows Media Player. All is good. I relaunch Media Center, navigate to the Videos folder and click on an episode. Error! Same as before. Can't find the file. WTF?! Do a little googling and find this site. Oh, it seems that I need a third party plugin and the latest ffdshow (which I generally don't use to play XviD). Alright, fine. I'm not conceding this point to Vista, but I'll jump through a couple of hoops. I download the x64 plugin version (cuz I'm running Vista Ultimate x64), do the config, make sure I have the latest ffdshow, and that it's configured to play XviD files. All seems good. I launch Media Center, navigate to the Videos folder and click on an episode. Crash! As in Media Center just hard crashed back to desktop. Boo!

So, what did I learn from this experience? Well, Media Center sucks ass (actually, I didn't learn that... I already knew it, but in playing dumb user I figured I'd go at it with a clean slate). It has nothing to do with the standard Windows media controls and is quite independent of anything else going on in Windows. It doesn't use the standard codecs, and it doesn't let you configure anything at a level beyond dumb user. So what's the solution you might ask? Install (actually just download and run - there is no installer) Media Player Classic (interestingly enough there's a new version out... the first one in a few years). Sure, the Media Player button on my remote doesn't launch it (I have to do that manually) but at least the play/pause/volume buttons work in it. I'm sure I'll find some sort of middleware app at some point that intercepts the remote control's buttons above and beyond the default functions, but in the meantime I can make due. Yay Vista! Yay Media Center! (Please note the dripping sarcasm in the previous two sentences).

Moral of this story... I STILL FUCKING HATE VISTA. And yet, I continue to use it. I must be masochistic at some level.

---

UPDATE: Solution to my problem found and documented here. Everything works like a charm now.

I just tried to email what I consider to be a pivotal blog post from my phone. It won't send. Stuck in the Outbox. Why? I have no freaking clue. It just doesn't send. I then tried sending the same message (copy/paste) to my gmail account. Same thing... won't send. I cleared my Outbox and sent a test message to my gmail. Went through perfectly. I then queued up both of the failed messages and tried sending again. Failure. I then queued up another test message and tried sending. All three failed. So it seems that the two failed messages are preventing the test message from being sent. I can only presume that the messages are failing due to the length (as it's a somewhat long post). So, to avoid this problem I pasted the contents into a Word document on my phone and sent it to myself as an attachment. It went through fine. Problem is that it's a .docx (as opposed to a .doc file) which the Eee PC (and OpenOffice) won't read. So, the only way that I can think of, given my lack of computing power, to post that message, is to type it out manually. Or to use Mike's machine which has Office 2007 installed, though that's a bit of a cop out and not something I'm about to do at this particular point in time. I can think of no more frustrating a tech scenario that I could be presented with at 6am. Seriously... WTF?!

Everyone knows what it's like to brush your teeth then drink orange juice in the morning, right? One word... Horrible. I hate doing it until I get past the first few chugs of OJ and the minty taste is gone. So why in the world do companies insist on putting citrus and mint together? First there was Sprite Ice. I admit to trying it out of curiosity, but after drinking it I figured it was just a one-time mistake. But now I'm looking through a collection of half eaten gum packs that are lying around, and one of them is Excel Fuse. I'm sitting here chewing a nice piece of mint gum, and the thought of adding citrus to it makes my mouth recoil in fear. It'd be like drinking a big glass of OJ (or in this particular case, melon, as it's called "Melon Mint") while still chewing the gum.

Now, one company, one mistake... no problem (though it is pushing it after Sprite Ice hit my tatebuds). But according to the wikipedia article on Excel, they make 9 flavors of this monstrosity. "Tangerine Freeze"?? Are you kidding me? THAT would be like drinking a big glass of OJ while still chewing minty gum. I admit, the Wikipedia article is far from complete, as it doesn't list Fuse as having a Melon Mint flavor, but here it is in front of me. Nonetheless...

Do people actually buy these things (other than whoever brought this into my house)? I understand wanting citrus-y gum, but not with MINT! Disgusting.

NOTE: This is not the "mint" like a candy shell with a citrus center, this is actually gum. "With Micro Mints Inside".


UPDATE: I set my gum aside and had a smoke. No more minty taste. Then I poured myself a nice big glass of OJ. Refreshing!

I've been in a bad headspace for the last few days. Everything's pissing me off. Can't win a game of squash for the life of me. Ankles are hurting and apparently I'm a prime candidate for Ankle Tendonitis:

"Ankle tendonitis is caused by excess stress being placed on the posterior tibialis tendon. Those most at risk of developing the condition are people involved in sports that involve a lot of stopping, starting and sharp movements and those that are not properly conditioned to physical exercise. Sports like basketball, squash, baseball, tennis and football put a lot of strain on the ankles."

So apparently I need to take a break from squash for a few days, which is quite the bummer.

My primary computer died today for no apparent reason. The UPS it's plugged into has a dead battery (which may have been the cause of the PC's death, but even plugging it into the wall will not allow me to turn it on... thinking dead PSU). There's shit all over the computer room so I can barely even get to that box to pull it out and troubleshoot it. Plus I hate hardware work. And since it was acting as my spam filter I am now inundated with spam on my phone whenever my laptop's not on.

Feeling like the forward progress I was making with my personal life has come to a screeching halt. Shit's not going as planned.

Seeming unable to troubleshoot the simplest things at work.

The front loading laundry machines that they just installed suck. Every time I pull a piece of wet laundry out 5 more pieces fall onto the dirty floor. And the dryers blow (no pun intended) because you can't change the temperature part way through the 60 min timer... so if I want to blast some shirts on low for 10 mins then change to medium for the rest of the load I can't. I have to let it run for the full 60 mins, pay another dollar, THEN change the temperature. Bull Shit!

Oh, and since I'm trying to lose weight and get in shape, I was drinking vodka sodas last night. Have you ever had a vodka soda? It's like drinking water. With a little bit of carbonation (and I do mean little). And vodka. It's bland. I want my pints!!

And I'm breaking out. Acne sucks.

AND I apparently need a new swimsuit, as my current one makes me look like Raoul the pool boy (i.e. it's too short).

On a positive note, I was having a good hair day today, but now I'm gonna go swimming and even that will likely have done a 180 by the time I end up going out tonight. ARGH!

Do people that buy Macs buy them because of the commercials? I read yesterday (or was it today?) that Mac had 6% market share. That is neither here nor there (i.e. positive or negative - i'm being market share agnostic here), but they spend a lot on advertising. Way more than Dell (27+% market share as I recall) or HP (20+% market share... I should really look this crap up). Or, well, maybe Dell and HP spend more than Apple does, but as a consumer I see WAY more Apple ads. So my question is... does advertising, at least in the PC space, equal revenue / market share? Or are revenue and market share independent? I suppose they are, since if Apple increases market share by 0.1% they increase their revenue by a much larger percentage than 0.1. However if Dell decreases market share by 0.1% their revenue may decrease by significantly more than 0.1%. At any rate, Apple has a lot to gain and Dell/HP have a lot to lose. But seriously, if you're gonna buy a Mac, you're gonna buy a Mac. If you're gonna buy a Windows box and you see an Apple commercial, will that sway you? Cuz I'm thinking not. However, I'm obviously a Windows fanboy. Anyone? Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?

Error. Unable to connect. This is like the 3rd or 4th time I've plugged it in. Unplugged, plugged again, not even an acknowledgment that it's connected. I don't even know what to say. When will MS fix this crap?!

So, it seems that my poor Kaiser is delayed again. Apparently it's going to arrive at some location in Mississauga tonight at 9pm, and is being picked up tomorrow. Which means I can get it tomorrow. I don't think Paul realizes the seriousness of this situation... hell, I'd give him a lift to Mississauga tonight at 9... if I had a car. But what irks me is the highly inaccurate estimates. When will people learn that an estimate should always be on the conservative side. If you think it's gonna be Monday, say Friday, and when it arrives on Thursday (one day early) I'm happy. If you tell me Monday and it arrives on Thursday (4 days late), I'm pissed.

Manage expectations!!

Vista. Need I say more?

Vista has all kinds of crap built into it which is apparently meant to provide an extra level of safety to dumb users. This, in and of itself isn't a bad thing. But it becomes a bad thing when this "protection" can not be disabled and impedes application developers. UAC is an obvious example, but if you know what you're doing you can disable this. Ironically, I haven't yet, as I actually don't find it very intrusive. However I did have an issue when installing Visual Studio and all its components that the Windows Mobile 5 templates didn't install properly (i.e. at all). Apparently this is a problem caused by UAC. I read somewhere (wish I'd furled it) that the reason this fails is that some script tries to run during the install and since it's a separate process from the installer it runs under normal rights, doesn't know enough to ask for elevated rights, and fails. Silently. This isn't a huge deal as this particular install was my first Vista install, so I'm bound to reinstall (correctly) at some point in the near future. But it's a PITA.

So the other day I wanted to set up MaxiVista so that I could extend my laptop's display to my HTPC (projector). If you don't know what it is (and you're not running Vista) check it out. It's a really cool app that lets you use a second PC as a secondary monitor. Sure, you can't run games or video on it, but it still comes in really handy. Specifically, I was reading a PDF on my laptop and just wanted to throw it up on the projector so that my buddy could read it. But I didn't want to have to copy the file, remote control the HTPC, install Acrobat (cuz who the hell installs Acrobat on an HTPC) and load the file. Way too many steps. Anyway, back to the rant. I d/l the demo of MaxiVista to try it out, and it says very clearly that "Windows Vista is only supported in classic display mode with XPDM drivers". When you dig in a little what this means is

1. MaxiVista does consequently not support the Aero display mode. (or essentially any driver that does support Aero, whether running Aero or not)
2. Windows Vista generally does not allow you to log on to remote PCs using any 3rd party software "for your safety". This means, that the new MaxiVista feature to use the viewer program as a service and to log onto the secondary PC via the remote control feature does not work.
3. Windows Vista x64 disallows to install software with unsigned drivers "for your safety". As MaxiVista drivers are not signed, it does not work under Windows Vista 64 Bit OS.

Now, #3 isn't a huge deal, as there is a way to tell Vista64 to allow unsigned drivers. Not sure where I stole this from, but if you need to do that, here's the steps:

run CMD as Administrator
bcdedit /set loadoptions DDISABLE_INTEGRITY_CHECKS
reboot

But #1 and #2, afaik, are impossible to get around until MaxiVista updates their product. Now, I understand that new OSes will cause compatibility issues and such, but any "feature" that is in place to protect the end user should have the option to disable it. MS isn't using this computer, I am. And if I want an "unsafe" or "unprotected" experience, I should be allowed to have that.

Message to Microsoft: You're not in the condom business. Stop trying to protect me "for my own good" and give me some function.

Things were going along well for awhile (with the exception of that Bluetooth issue mentioned here). But over the last few days I've noticed that when I plug the Q in via USB things are odd. Right now for example, the Q is plugged in. ActiveSync says it's connected. But Vista (WMDC) is reporting an error, details of which are:

Synchronization could not be completed. See http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=72544.

That link takes you to the main MS Windows Mobile page, here. Utterly useless. The only references I can find to the error code, 0x8007274a, are regarding older versions of ActiveSync, and nothing relating to Vista. I suppose I could try the crap outlined here (4th post down) and adapt it to Vista, but that seems like a real pain.

I just looked down at the Q and ActiveSync said it was sync'ing. Wheel just spinning, nothing happening, error message in Vista. So I disconnect the USB cable and sync via Bluetooth. Works perfectly. ActiveSync on the Q says it's connected. WMDC on Vista has a nice little green checkmark.

Why is this tech so flaky? Where are my log files with some sort of useful information? Bah.

---

Update: See here for a mediocre workaround.

I don't. At all. I really need to tag all these posts at some point so that I can just keep a list of unresolved, stupid Vista issues. And yes, even though this is a Firefox issue, I blame Vista. Maybe I'm wrong in doing so, but I doubt it.

What's the latest you might ask? Well, lately Firefox has just been blanking out on me. I mean, I have a dozen tabs open, then all of a sudden they all disappear and the current page just blanks out and becomes the Firefox grey background. And becomes totally unresponsive. The only thing I can do is to close it. But when I open it again it doesn't ask me if I want to restore my session. So I lose all the tabs I had open. They're in my history, but it's still a PITA.

And that stupid keyboard flipping issue described here keeps happening. Typing along merrily and all of a sudden French characters start appearing everywhere. Close the app, relaunch it, back to English.

Alright, post tagged "VISTA", except in hex, cuz that's how DOS would do it :)

I'm sitting here about to shut down my laptop, so I try to close Outlook. Nothing happens. I hit the X in the upper right a dozen times, nothing happens. Outlook is still plugging away, happy as a pig in shit (hmm... Outlook = pig; Vista = shit; interesting analogy). I hit File > Exit and nothing happens. It's not even that Outlook's not responding, cuz it is. Everything is snappy, I can navigate folders, write emails, etc. I just can't close the bastard.

Why is it that we're supposed to upgrade again? Oh ya, cuz MS tells us to. And stops selling the functional versions to make room for the headache versions. They're probably in cahoots with Tylenol or Advil.

Having wireless issues. Connection up and down. Probably not Vista's fault. But in trying to re-establish the connection, Windows Live Messenger decided to barf. It was not signed in, but I did not have a sign-in option either (greyed out). And this is what it looked like:


Now, I may not have a lot of friends, but I'm sure I have more than that.

Every day a new reason surfaces for my hatred of Vista. Today it was SQL Express being unable to browse particular directories. Turned out to be a combination of Symbolic Links and NTFS Permissions. Then just now (and this happens repeatedly, at least a few times a week) Outlook just stops responding. Sits there. I click it, it greys-out. I click it again and nothing happens. I close it and it tells me it's not responding (duh!) and that I should wait while Windows tries to figure out what's wrong. Unless it's planning on formatting my drive and reinstalling with XP, it won't ever figure it out.

ARGH!

Why does this keep happening to me?!?! Is it Vista? Is it Lenovo? WTF?!?!

inhale ... exhale ... inhale ... exhale

Ok... so my effing keyboard keeps changing its character set, but only in a specific application. Happened once here when I was talking to my sister via MSN Messenger, but it was limited to MSN. Now it just happened in Firefox when I was creating this blog entry. My quotes (") were showing up as weird-ass-apostrophes (`). And my question marks (?) were showing up as capital E accent aigu (É). Why does this keep happening?!


P.S. I hate how Blogger's WYSIWYG editor interprets <'s and >'s as HTML. I understand that if I click the "Edit Html" tab it should do that, but not in the "Compose" tab. The "Compose" tab should translate < and > to "&lt;" and ">" respectively.

Wow, that paragraph was hard to figure out manually and get it to display properly.