Brent Simmons has a short gripe list about MacOS X. From what little I've played with the public beta, his complaints are all valid. The Memory Walk raised $41,000 yesterday, and was a great success. Rain clouds threatened at the start, but fortunately we only received a sprinkling of rain. I'm a little sore this morning, I must be getting old...
I've been running Windows Millennium Edition for about 24 hours on my home machine now. I removed Windows 2000 to install it, and as soon as WindowsMe suffers some sort of corruption, I'll be going back to Win2K. There are things I like about WindowsMe, but probably not enough to make me use it rather than Windows 2000. The installation went smoothly, I fdisked my hard drive to blow away the NTFS partition, created a FAT32 partition, rebooted with the Windows 98 startup floppy I had lying around. I formatted the hard drive, then copied the .cab and setup files to the hard drive, so I never have to track down the CD when I need a device driver or Windows Component. The one strange thing I noted here, is that Windows 95 files are in a directory on the CD called "Win95". Windows 98 files are kept in "Win98". WindowsMe files are kept in a folder called "Win9x". I just found that rather strange. One thing that I found annoying is that if you're using a USB mouse, like my Intellimouse Explorer, you'll have to either dig up the USB -> PS/2 converter, or navigate Setup with the keyboard. I just used the keyboard, and the mouse worked fine once the OS was up and running.
I was rather annoyed that after setup finished, I still had to go download the device drivers for my video card. I have a Voodoo 3 3000 AGP card, it's been on the market for over a year and a half, you'd think that Microsoft could have included a driver for it on the CD. I hate browsing the web at 640x480 and 16 colors, but I got a beta driver downloaded from 3dfx and installed, no problems. I installed the software for my Handspring Visor, and it worked with no problems. Logitech says they'll have drivers for my QuickCam Pro soon, and they specifically warn against trying the 5.30 drivers currently available on their site. I'll probably try it anyhow. ";->" I hooked up my Video Blaster Webcam II, and that worked fine with the Windows 98 drivers from Creative Labs. My aging AWE64 sound card was detected and worked right away, as was my network card.
Microsoft's claim that boot times are greatly reduced is 100% true. My computer boots in about a fourth of the time that it normally does. The first time I rebooted after installing it, I was actually shocked at how quickly the login prompt came up. This is a major improvement, since most home users insist on turning their computers on and off between every use.
Another new feature that I appreciated was the automatic windows update process. This component will download the updates for Windows in the background, then alert you that they've been retrieved and ask you if you'd like to install them. This would be very handy, since everytime I go to my grandparents' I wind up waiting a few hours for the latest OS updates to trickle in over their 26,400 baud connection. This new method seems to download very slowly, as not to consume all of your bandwidth, and the behavior can be modified, if you don't want it to retrieve the updates for you.
I looked briefly at the Windows Movie Maker app. It seems much like iMovie that Apple bundles with their computers, suited for basic editing of home movies. Microsoft included about 7 new desktop backgrounds, in addition to the new ones included with Windows 2000. They're all very nice photos, I'm using the black and white photo from Yosemite right now. There are a few new games included as well, including Internet-enabled versions of several card games, but there's nothing really exciting there. Microsoft should at least bundle some of its older games, like Age of Empires or Microsoft Golf with the OS, you'd be surprised at the number of end-users who'd think that the OS was really great if it just came with a decent game, and those products are already in the bargain bins.
WindowsMe has some compelling new features for the home user, but I didn't find it to be quite as responsive as Windows 2000 was on the same computer. Windows 2000 just "felt" faster, and seemed to multi-task much better. If you're a power-user, go for Windows 2000, if you really only use one application at a time, WindowsMe is right for you. WindowsMe is what I'd give my mom to use, but Windows 2000 is what I'd use, if that makes the distinction any clearer. If you're competent enough to reformat your hard drive and do a clean install, use Windows 2000. If you're unsure of your ability to do that, upgrade to WindowsMe, but do it before January, when the current upgrade price of $49 will increase to $99!
Beloit College has issued their Class of 2004 Mindset List. This is a list for faculty and staff to keep in mind when considering the knowledge of the freshmen that are now roaming our college campuses. The list is pretty entertaining, I've posted a few of my favorites below:
Look out for yellow bottlecaps! I'm trying to earn a copy of The Sims by collecting Pepsi product bottlecaps. The caps have a code on them that you can enter over at Pepsistuff.com in exchange for points towards stuff. Each cap is worth 100 points, and I need 9,900 points to get the game that I want, so if you're not going to participate, and want to send me your code, I'll be very grateful! I added a stat over to the left that'll track how many I've accumulated so far. Okay, so this isn't exactly exciting, but I thought the contest was cool because you don't have to send anything in, you do it all via the web! Jeremy thinks I'm nuts to go through so much work to get a computer game, but I raid the recycle can every time I go by it, so I'm hoping to have enough points in a couple of weeks...
If you've never read anything by Terry Pratchett, do so. I finished Feet of Clay last night, and I enjoyed it immensely. If you liked The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, or anything else by Douglas Adams, then you'll love Pratchett. Pratchett weaves marvelously complex plots, in the insane fantasy Discworld, with humor so funny you'll find yourself giggling the whole time your reading. Feet of Clay returns us (once again) to the city of Ankh-Morpork, where two murders have been committed, and it's up to the City Watch (made up of humans, trolls, dwarves, and a werewolf) to find out whodunit. While all of Pratchett's Discworld novels take place in the same world, there's no "proper" order to read them in. Next time you're faced with a long layover, take one of these books with you, just try not to giggle too loudly.
I watched I Dreamed of Africa last night. This movie has beautiful scenery, decent acting, and piss poor writing. Maybe some of these events were connected better in real life, or in the book, but the movie is written for those with Attention Deficit Disorder. There are forty mini-stories in the movie, almost none of which have any resolution, or play any bearing on anything that happens afterwards. The most frustrating one was this egg that hung above Kim Basinger's bed. Her husband tells here there is a secret message inside, her son repeats that in another scene, her daughter gazes at the egg longingly, but the movie never tells us what's in the egg! I gave this movie 5 out of 10 points, mostly for the cinematography. Start spreadin' the news... I'm leaving in two weeks... I got the job over at CSBS. I don't know for sure when I'm starting yet, they're going to work it all out with CHFA, my current employer. Why am I leaving? More money, both in my salary, and in the coffers of that college. They're allocated the same amount as CHFA by the University, but have a fewer number of computer labs to outfit with that money. This translates into an easier time doing my job, and having the money to buy the tools I need.
It looks like my trusty Visor is already out of date. Actually, I don't see any real reason to upgrade to one of these, so I won't be ditching it anytime soon. I don't need color on my PDA, especially not for $450! UNI pays for my cell phone, so I don't really need it integrated with my personal PDA either.
I solved a PageMaker frustration this morning, thanks to this document from Adobe. If you're running Windows NT or Windows 2000, and you get the error "Can't find PageMaker's registry settings" when you try to run it as anyone other than an Administrator, this will fix it for you. Now I just have to sit down at all 25 computers in the Communication Studies Lab and modify the registries...
I discovered, via Slashdot, a Macintosh web site, called MacSlash, that is using the Slash code. I like being able to display the comments in a flat format, and the moderation system that the system offers.
Yet another new weblog from someone I know, J Dylan started a weblog last night. Hopefully this one will last longer than Jeremy's, which can probably be declared dead, since it's been almost a month without a single update. Liz is still going strong, even if I don't like the theme she's using for the look of her site. ";->"
Don't like Al Gore or George W. Bush? Vote for Harry Browne. I probably won't be, however. Iowa (and its 7 electoral votes) may still be up for grabs, and I don't want to undermine Gore's chances by casting my vote for Browne. You could say I fall into this category:
If you vote for Al Gore because you're afraid of the religious right, your vote will be interpreted as an endorsement for all the plans Al Gore has made for running your life.
I don't agree with that statement, since by that logic, a vote for Harry Browne is an endorsement for all of his plans. I agree with many of the libertarian positions, but like every other party, there are things I just think they're plain wrong about, for example, this:
Bring the troops home from overseas where they breed anti-American resentment — and quit relying on our overwhelming national offense, create a secure national defense, withdraw from all international organizations and mutual-defense treaties, and allow other countries to manage their own affairs.
So we should withdraw from the UN and NATO, give up our bases in Okinawa, Korea, and Cuba? That's a bad idea, mister.
Looking to kill three hours? I watched Magnolia last night. I think I muttered "this is weird" about ten times during the movie. It certainly is weird, but I enjoyed it. It's one of those films that's very hard to describe. I think that it's about life, death, regrets, suffering, love, guilt, and frogs, but not necessarily in that order. I gave the movie 8 out of a possible 10 points over at IMDB, but I can easily see how people could hate this movie.
I don't want to go off on a rant here, but sometimes the University I work for really ticks me off. Today, they've closed the parking lot where I normally park, a privilege for which I pay $90 a year. Are they doing maintenance on the parking lot? Construction? Flooding? Nope. There's a ceremony this afternoon to dedicate a memorial on campus, and they want to let the visitors use our parking lot. Of course, there is a parking lot already dedicated for visitors, but apparently they decided that it wasn't close enough to the memorial site. But, they told us, that for today only, we could park in the visitor lot. How generous of them.
