Windows Needs Your Permission to read this Blog Entry
So I've been trying to use Vista as my primary OS on my laptop this week. However, since I heard grumblings about XP Product Key deactivation it went on my secondary hard drive which had previously had Zod (Fedora Core 6) on it. That got wiped and my old copy of Win2kPro went on, to be immediately upgraded to Vista. Happily it did a fresh install, but left a lot of 2k cruft around. So here's my opinion of Vista after a few days of use.


1) No PNGs for desktop backgrounds? Are you frickin' kidding me? Argh. That would be a feature removal from XP. Quite annoying.
2) UAC. I tried. Really. I tried to keep it on. But holy Hades in a halfshell... Windows Needs My Permission to any little damned thing at all. Not only that, but I don't trust it. I trust SpyBot's TeaTimer to protect me more than UAC. So after running it for a week, and clicking allow buttons more times than I count, I've given up on that. I wish it was a per-user setting, just in case someone else used my box. But of course not that would have been a handy feature.
3) Open-Apple-Tab is really cool.
4) I hate - HATE! - not being able to set the Start Menu up the way I want it. Since Win2k, I've been sorting my start menu and renaming things so that I can hit Open-Apple-P-A-N for Notepad, Open-Apple-P-O-W for Word, Open-Apple-P-D-V-5 for Visual Studio 2k5, Open-Apple-P-D-P for Python, etc. Without fail, I am faster and more efficient than 90% of the people I know when navigating around on the computer and getting things running because of this. The new Search box embedded into the Start menu destroys my ability to do so and worse annoys the crap out of me. Happily, though, since the last beta, you can revert to a Classic start menu and not lose the other Aero visual enhancements. Yay.
5) Sitting here idle with nothing running, the CPU routinely takes up around 13% of the CPU, but I've seen it spike up to 40%. What in the hell is it doing while doing nothing? My XP box with several apps open (but doing nothing) only take up between 1% and 4%. I don't like that at all.
6) I thought the Battery and Speaker icons in the task bar hadn't yet been drawn out when I played with the last beta, but nope, they are supposed to look cheesy and white like that I guess... WTF were they thinking? Any why the several extra pixels on the left of the battery icon?

I have yet to actually do too much with VB6, and VS2k2, 2k3, and 2k5. I've heard gumblings that the latter doesn't work too well. (????!?!?) We'll see.

Posted: Wednesday, 9:51am | Topic: /Rants

Voicemail-haters of the world - UNITE!
Reddit had an article regarding this Guardian author's hatred for Voicemail, to which I can only say "Bravo!" Up until a little over a year ago my feelings were exactly the same. I can't stand listening to Voicemail. Mostly because it seems like the Voicemail lady speaks at 3 words a minute... "Welcome to X voicemail.... you have...................... 25................. new messages. First message... received.............. Saturday......... at................. 9........... thity........ six...... PM....... 1....... minute......... thirteen................ seconds." I'm already 3 minutes into the call to retrieve the messages and I'm no more informed than I was before I called in to get my messages. And of course, I can't remember which key it is to get her to shut up and play the damned message already. Furthermore, Verizon - my cell provider, Vonage - my home service provider, and Voicepipe - my office provider, all use different keys to get the lady to hurry up. (Interestingly, the lady sounds the same for all three.)

Happily, when I switched my home service from POTS to VOIP, I immediately activated the email voicemail attachments. ("...And there was much rejoicing -yay!") Since I spend the majority of my day in front of Thunderbird, I can get my messages pretty much instantly and then delete them through the web interface. My office also switched to VOIP around the same time, and as long as I'm in the office or somewhere with internet access, I leave that to email the messages as well. The bonus with VoicePipe is that the message isn't saved, so I don't have to log on to their God-awful web interface to delete the message.

Now if I could get Verizon to email my messages and allow me to delete them through a web interface, I would be VERY happy. If any other provider offered this, I'd switch instaneously. I'd also have the added benefit of not having to threaten The Wife to never leave me a voicemail. I have a list of missed calls. Don't leave a message on the cell. If I've missed your call, I'll call you back. Better yet, text message me.

Posted: Friday, 2:05pm | Topic: /Rants

Home Keys Please
I would like to know when I missed the meeting when "they" decided to change the orientation of the Home Keys block on computer keyboard. It's damn near impossible anymore to buy a keyboard with the old standard three across, two down Home Key keyboard configuration. See here:

All you can find nowadays is some new design where the Delete key has been made twice the size and the Insert key is GONE. See here:

Why is this a problem? Well, Copy-N-Paste for us who grew up before Windows existed was always Ctrl-Insert and Shift-Insert, respectively. Old habits die hard. Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V are for wimps and newbies. I guess I'm going to need to start buying up all the MS Natural Keyboard Pro's I can possibly find. As far as I'm concerned that was the peak of keyboard innovation. Gotta have the split keys, and you gotta have the 3x2 Home Keys.
Somehow this is Microsoft's fault. I just can't figure out how.

Posted: Wednesday, 2:07pm | Topic: /Rants

I hate Rush Limbaugh and if you drive in Ohio I hate you too.
I found myself listening to Rush Limbaugh* on my way to lunch today and I actually agreed with him on something. God help me. Basically, Rush was reporting on a story in which Dell told a bunch of Muslim employees that they couldn't take time off from work to pray. Of course the employees are up in arms and so is some civil liberties group. Excuse me, but you are at work to work, not to pray. Pray at home, at church, at temple, or wherever else appropriate. The place I agreed with Rush is that (God help us) if this was a Judeo-Christian group that was complaining there would be no civil liberties group up in arms. (Of course the religious wacko nutjubs would be, but not other freak shows like the ACLU.) I don't care who you are or what you pray to. It's not for work. Shut up and get on with it. Get a different job or start your own company and work with like minded people. And go out of business because you'll never get anything done.

Anyway, the only reason I had the time to hear this was because more than 3 snowflakes fell in Cleveland last night, so the maximum speed one can travel is 2 miles per hour. One would think that living in a town in a snowy climate, one would learn how to drive properly in such conditions. Nope, the entire population has to piss me off by driving ridiculously and needlessly slow. What should have been a 5 minute round trip took 15 minutes each way. Maybe I should drink less coffee, but I am the most impatient person in the entire world when driving behind an idiot. And Cleveland has no small lack of idiots.

* Not on purpose; my radio was still tuned to 1100 from my morning drive in.

By the way, I hate Al Franken too.

Posted: Tuesday, 10:52am | Topic: /Rants