BrokenMonitor.NET

Anyone wanna donate to my cause?

So I’ve bounced between Vista Ultimate and XP Pro on my Asus A8js laptop for some time now. It starts out fine with Vista, but after about a month, the hard drive is just constantly being written to (more so than what should probably be happening) and brining the system to a crawl. Even after about 6 format/installs, it continues to do it; but of course not in XP. I’m not particularly sure of the cause, since my main PC with Vista Ultimate doesn’t seem to do that; but if it does, the 10k RPM drives are probably just writing fast enough that I don’t notice. My laptop however has a 5400 RPM drive, so I’m guessing thats why I DO notice it.

Anyone wanna buy me a 7200 RPM laptop drive?

Oh wait, no one reads this…

Yes, UAC, I want to play Purble Place

So, I’m not saying that VMWare Server on a PIII 1400mhz with 2Gb of memory is fast, but it does at least let me get to Purble Place to build cakes in the cake factory. Haven’t played Purble Place? 3D Chess? Fancy 3D-ish solitaire? Mennonite friendly ‘flower fields*’? Well then go buy Windows Vista!! Be careful, though. Most retailers have User Account Control turned on, so you may be asked up to 4 times if you really, really, really want to purchase that software. Besides, what if it really isn’t you trying to purchase Vista and it is a malicious process? Thanks UAC!!

*That’s right. Mine Sweeper is too deadly for some. Go under options and choose ‘Flower Fields’. Cheese and rice.

Ho, Ho, Ho, Ho………F-R-A-N-K-E-N-M-U-T-H!!!!!!!

That’s right. To finish off the Summer of 2007, my family and I are headed to Frankenmuth, MI. Home of loads of German-ish things (e.g. beer, gutan tag, polka) and the main reason women love it…..it is Christmas all year round!! Christmas shopping!! Christmas lights!! Christmas songs!! Christmas Polka!! Other great polka hits including: Roll out the barrel!! I don’t like her, you can have her, she’s too fat for me!!

Rather than being Floridians for a week this summer, we’ve decided to keep things small (and actually save loads of cash). So, we’ve already completed a one night stay at Kalahari Resorts (indoor water park) in Sandusky, OH, and will finish off with Frankenmuth, MI, by staying 2 nights at the Bavarian Inn. Not considered a water park when compared to Kalahari, but 5 pools and 3 spas suites me just fine. I would encourage everyone to visit frankenmuth.org and hear the polka song that will stick in your head all night. If you want to download it for permanent, safe keeping you can get it here.

Maumee River Sighting

Not that I’m an IRL (or NASCAR) fan, but seeing Sam Hornish Jr. jet skiing on the Maumee river is quite a treat. Since my infant child is screaming, I’ll talk to you later.

My Salvation Comes From R/C Tanks

Well, since my XP Pro laptop is blue screening before the XP splash screen, it may be a good opportunity to blog about Ghost 4 Unix (g4u). Snazzy little tool (bootable CD) that enables you to create gzipped images of your hard drive and save them either on another disk, do a disk to disk clone, or save images on a FTP server. So, I booted my g4u cd and started making an image of my disk (uploadpart yourServerIPaqui test.gz wd0d). Why? Well, I’ll probably have to reformat and install my OS as I have a corrupted registry. Why? Well, probably because I installed the lastest QuickTime last night as I was working on operationrc.com. Not blaming Apple directly….but ever since SoftwareUpdate.exe crashed, I’ve been unable to boot my OS!! Teats!! And besides, if it wasn’t for Apple, I wouldn’t be blogging using Opera, downloading MSN Messenger for the Mac, listening to liveireland.com in iTunes or have a place to FTP my hard disk image!!

P.S.
XP has the BSOD (Blue Screen of Death), while Vista has the BSOD (Black Screen of Death). Not sure why they decided to change the color. I would have went with red myself….

Not So Awesome; NSA & AT&T spying on net usage…

I always figured it’d happen eventually, let alone already be in place for years. An AT&T whistle blower is finally gaining some publicity with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The following 2 links are to stories I saw recently. Please, whoever reads this, read those links. But here’s a summary: The NSA (and who knows what other government agencies) is split into the net backbones, and is collecting data. YOUR data.

FrontLine
Wired

Go ahead, tell me to just sit here in my tin-foil hat; You may say “Well, I’m not doing anything wrong…” OK, that’s fine. But they’re still (possibly) looking at your transactions, your e-mail, etc. Shouldn’t they only be looking IF you’re doing something wrong?

Edit: Ironically enough, it seems brokenmonitor.net crashed when I posted this. I’ll be sure to write everyone from prison!

Hand Shakes Still Mean Something and Pepsi S-diddly-ucks

Remember the good ol’ days, when a hand shake was strong enough to close a sale or get a loan? Don’t worry, I don’t either. But it is something I do each time I want to use the Internet. Yes, I ‘dial-up’ using my POTS (plain old telphone service) copper line to connect to a company that pays for a faster really, really, bigger connection to the world. I pay for a small amount of that connection and they make out like bandits as more and more people pay for his or her portion of this larger connection. It is good enough for me? That’s a big negative whilst trying to enter Coke Rewards at mycokerewards.com. Whoever thought websites that consist of a giant flash movie were cool should be shot. First, with several rubber bullets to break his or her ribs and such, and then with a tazer followed by a harpoon gun and then maybe a real gun.* It takes me almost 10 minutes to enter 1 reward. For what? A piece of clothing to advertise for Coca-Cola? You bet. Death to Pepsi and all that it stands for. Amen.

*Opinion sponsored by NRA

Metal Gear Solid 4; a PS3 exclusive.

Sweet; I knew I spent $600 for a good reason. Now give me a Final Fantasy 7 remake!

Test from the N770

Just a test post from my new Nokia N770. (Thanks WOOT!) Not exactly super efficient, but it works. I’ll be posting some specs, projects and mods.

OpenMoko: Not a variation of sudoku

I’ve been following this project for awhile, and it’s finally getting ready to roll out. This will be excellent competition for the iPhone, but unfortunately will probably never catch on outside niche nerd groups.

OpenMoko is basically a unlocked (can be used on multiple carriers, not locked to just one provider) GSM phone that runs on a modified Linux stack. From both a developer and user standpoint, this will give much more freedom on what software can be used on the phone (the iPhone is fairly locked down.)

Now, the Neo1973 (the first “mobile” phone was successfully tested by Motorola in 1973) model phone does leave a bit to be desired in physical design, but for $300 (and if we actually had GSM support here) I’d probably pimp it just because of the open capability; some initial downfalls are the lack of WiFi and only has USB 1.1, but this IS a developer release. The final release (whenever that may be) will be much more promising.

You can read more about it here.