Root Canal Part II

I had the second part of my root canal done this morning, I've got to go back in April for part three.  It turns out that I'm a mutant, and have four roots to my tooth, rather than the normal three.  Lucky me...

A friend's mother passed away Tuesday night, completely without warning.  Amy's dad woke up, and found his wife dead of a heart attack in bed next to him.  Pretty scary, as my friend is two years younger than I am , and people my age (24) don't generally expect our parents to suddenly die in their sleep.

Radio killed the video star

As expected, Radio Userland doesn't work quite right for me.  I set it up at home last night, got subscribed to a few channels, and then left it running when I came to work this morning.  I logged in to it, read a news story, then clicked "delete" on the home page, to remove it.  All I get is an HTTP 500 error message.  Right now, I wouldn't pay anything for this software, so it's a good thing that it's free...

Time has an article comparing TiVo to Microsoft's new UltimateTV system.  Since the author didn't, I should point out that the DirectTiVo models will have dual-tuner capability, just like Microsoft's box. 

Many thanks to Al, who this evening helped me find a phone number for Saint Johns Tire, in Saint Johns, Oregon.  Information couldn't find it, I couldn't find it on the web either.  It turns out, it's a district within Portland, so Al just had to crack open the phone book.  He's my hero...

I'm playing around with the new release of Radio Userland. It's progressed a great deal since the last time I tried it. Now I need to figure out how I can run it as a service under Windows, so it's always on...

So far, I'm underwhelmed by editing my weblog in this manner. It's not obvious how you create subject lines, as you'll notice above on the left side, all I get is the date. Also, the editor box lacks the WYSIWYG editor that I've come to know so well...   10:08:09 PM

Warning: Easy CD Creator 5.0 can kill!

I've spent most of the day battling the problems that Roxio's Easy CD Creator 5.0 can cause with Windows 2000.  By performing a complete install, you can render your operating system unbootable.  I've also discovered that uninstalling Easy CD Creator 4.0 can leave your CD-ROM drives unusable to Windows.  In short, I've had a frustrating day, but I've learned quite a bit.  I've also come to loathe Roxio, and I wish a plague on upon their programmers, their tech support people, and their Quality Assurance people, if any actually exist...

I've detailed the problems, and the fixes, that go with this new product.  As far as I can tell, I'm the only place on the web that has the info about this new product, as even Roxio's pages don't have any support information for version 5.0.  You may want to spread this information far and wide, for I predict there will be a great many others who will have these problems...

Dell Rumors?

Our Dell Field Rep stopped by this morning.  It was the first any of us had met him.  He seems like a pretty nice guy, and was very honest with us about what he was willing to do to get our business.  What I was happiest about, was getting  a chance to look at the roadmaps for Dell's Optiplex and Precision lines.  It appears that the Optiplex GX150 Mini-tower will be released on or by the 23rd of this month.  We've been buying the GX115 series lately, but we despise the integrated video, and the lack of an AGP slot.  The GX150 series have the AGP slot, but the current cases lack options for Zip drives.  The new GX400 models are using the Pentium IV CPUs and the expensive RDRAM that comes with them.  Too rich for our blood...

I also told him that Dell should start offering Microsoft's optical mice as an option with their computers.  We prefer them, as we don't have to clean them all the time, especially in high-traffic areas like our computer labs.  I was told by both him and our Texas-based Dell rep that such a bundle was likely in the works.