It's me, Pete... from the podcast.

No More Windows Support

There was a time when I worked in Windows every single day and knew it inside and out, from 3.1 to XP. When friends needed advice, I was the guy they’d call. When they screwed something up and needed to be bailed out, my phone would ring.

So, even though I’ve been a Mac user for two years, it was me who got the call when my friend Lauren’s Sony VAIO started acting up. She’d told me that she thought it was acting up because it was full. It was — at least one partition — so I started going through apps to dump to free up some space.

We got to Hotbar. I really detest Hotbar. It insinuates itself into every little thing you do, from Explorer to Outlook, really ugly. So I ask her — do you use it? No? Mind if I delete it? No? Great!

The file MSVCRT.DLL is a shared file. If you delete it, other programs may be affected. Do you want to delete the file MSVCRT.DLL?

We were talking and catching up, and I was sort of haphazardly clicking and said, “Yes.” Everything continued to work.

A few hours later, I was sitting in my office, and my phone rang. It was Lauren. “Do you know why my computer won’t boot up?” Damn. I buzzed back by her place at 4:30 in the afternoon and rebooted myself. This is the error, I swear to God:

Explorer cannot find the file MSVCRT.DLL. You must reinstall Windows. OK.

So, this is it. As of this moment, I’m no longer qualified to do Windows tech support for friends. That’s it, there it is. I knew the day would come, and today is it.

Open Source Selling

This is fodder for an idea I have about creating open source marketing and sales organizations.

Tagatose: The New Sugar!

Yeah! This is fantastic. Not only did I get to brush up on my chiral chemistry, but I also learned a helluva lot about sweeteners. Did you know that saccharine is a derivative of coal tar? Ugg. Check thisout over at Wired.com, and then get a diet Slurpy. And hurry!

This is SO just like the first time Sophie pooped in the potty

WIL WHEATON DOT NET: i haven’t felt so alive in years

And I mean that. I’ve been reading WWdN for long enough now — certainly over a year — and I have to say I’m proud of the guy. Proud like I’m proud of Sophie when she tries to say her own name. Or when she puts on her nice, clean gloves and picks up mud. Or when she poops and gets it all in the potty. All of these things have happened recently to me. And that’s how I know how happy Wil should be today. Congratulations on a job well done, Wil. You’re hands down one of the most honest writers I’ve had the pleasure to read, and this has been a fantastic journey we’ve taken together. Let’s go to the mall and hang out at the Apple store sometime, as long as your mom picks up.

Timeline

Now, here’s a movie that I don’t think I got.

I read the book, and I have to say that the characters and the science that Crichton put in there were expertly sucked out for the purpose of the film. It moved like a constant stream of punchlines… one after another… people talking and talking at one another, discovering clues that might have well been tossed in from another movie’s plot.

I’m thinking I’ll get the thing when it comes out on DVD – next week – and add a laugh track to the thing. That should frame the whole picture better.

Virtual PC

I’ve written about this before, but I have to say, this application is so sweet. Today, my corporate IT person finally sat down and configured all the security and corporate apps in the Windows XP custom install they do on all our corporate assets. The thing works like a champ. Got the Nortel VPN working as a service now so that when I’m working at home, the thing just logs in as I boot – logs me into the domain, no less. No more static IPs, it finds its tunnel on it’s own.

Man, I don’t like to have to have it running on my machine, but that Windows makes me transparent in an all-PC environment and let’s me continue to use the PB? Cheap at any price.

Birthday

Tomorrow’s my birthday. It’s my thirty-first. It’s also the first taking into account my new resolution to never work again on my birthday. I put in for vacation three months ago, cleared my schedule, and am right now preparing for my day tomorrow.

As it stands, all the friends I’d planned on playing hooky with for the day are abandoning me for one reason or another. Ted’s uncle died. That’s legit, of course. Dumb luck that the funeral would be on a day of freedom. Why couldn’t it be on a day with something worth canceling? Curt’s got his weekly scoring class in Seattle. I don’t know if this one is as legit as a death in the family, but he’s spent a ton in gas so far, so I can understand how missing one week would be a blow to his educational ROI. And, of course, Kira has to go to school.

Here’s what I’m thinking. First, I’ll take the baby to daycare. I’ll probably linger around the house a while and go in a little later than usual. On the way back, I’ll be stopping at Krispy Kreme and picking myself up a half rack of original glazed and a latte to munch on for the morning. At around 9:00, I’ll be heading to Fry’s. It’s my birthday, after all, and I have yet to find something I’d like from my parents. I have to fix that trauma. Hopefully, I’ll still have some KKs to nosh on in the car on the way down to Wilsonville. If not, I may have to stop for a turnover and a Coke. No, I won’t.

On the way back up, I’ll stop at the new Apple Store in Washington Square. Kira and I went over there on opening day on Saturday. I was expecting more. It’s “well-lit.” That’s what Curt said about the place. Well-lit — too true. It’s well-lit and a little cold. They have all the same computers as the Tigard Mac Store a few blocks away but the Mac Store is warm, homey, welcoming. Not to mention the fact that the guys in there remember your name when you walk through the door, but, I’ll be stopping at the Apple Store anyway, just because I want to get to know the place a little better.

So, we have Krispy Kreme, Fry’s, and the Apple Store. Then, Curt’s buying me lunch. No, I know what you’re thinking, but I insisted. So, there’s lunch. And then the movies begin. I need to see Elf and Scary Movie 3 because those are the two that no one wants to see with me. Fair enough, they’re probably crappy, but what if they’re not?

And the rest is improv. I will note that I’d like to have my last Krispy Kreme at 10:41 AM. That’s when I was born. And that’s how I’ll be celebrating.

DVD Madness

This is such a sweet little machine. I burned my first DVD today — a selection of the movies I’ve been making of Sophie over the last year and a half. The process was a breeze, finished in about and hour and a half, and popped the disc right out. I immediately tested it on the laptop itself, where the DVD opened and worked right away.

Then, I put the disc in my TV DVD player. It’s an older Toshiba drive, apparently made in the days before DVD-R and the likes and no, in fact, the thing failed. That’s frustrating. Here I have these projects that I’m queuing up and targeting output on DVD and I can’t even watch the results on my own set. This is where a standards-based industry direction, whether in software OR hardware manufacturing, really would come in handy. Would the Sony’s of the world PLEASE quit dicking around with your own crap and make something that everyone can use? [ed. I know, oversimplification. I’m ranting and I’m pissed]

As it turns out, my Playstation 2 of all things plays the DVD from my Superdrive just fine. So, now I’m only pissed in principle. But I’m still pissed.

Swath of Destruction

So, I was home for lunch today, and it was time to feed Sophie. I tried some soup. No go. I tried some cereal. No go. Finally, I tried some yogurt with ground-up pumpkin seeds in it, and she was happy. She was so happy, in fact, that she proceeded to create one of the biggest messes I’ve seen since she learned to feed herself with a spoon. As it happened, I was off at the sink washing dishes, only vaguely aware of what was going on behind me. When I did turn around, there was Sophie, all right, covered in food and seeds, sound asleep.

MPAA/Matrix: Revolutions

I went to see the Matrix: Revolutions on Saturday. While there, waiting through the obnoxious that is “The Twenty” now playing at Regal Cinemas, I saw an anti-piracy add by the MPAA. OK, that’s about as related as these two topics are going to get in this post.

MPAA: I think this is the first campaign that has gotten the message right, first and foremost by getting Jack Valenti out of the way of all this nonsense. Really, the simple message that not all Hollywood insiders are godzillionaires and that yes, real people get affected by piracy, both of these things are great to get across to the public. That, and it’s done in such a professional manner that you can’t help but tear up just a little bit as the music swells. Damn music. This is the sentiment that has completely eluded the tough-guy approach that the RIAA has taken; this could, of course, be thanks to the fact that there are no real people to profile in the music studios.

The Matrix. I don’t know if I’ll actually review the thing. I think I need to see it again. But I will say this: I liked it. As a matter of fact, I liked it a lot. I liked both the others in the trilogy and I felt that this was a great send-off. I’m not entirely sure that this third piece in the series was an end to the story that began in the first piece of the series, so I have some homework to do there. But other than that, it was big and fast and fantastic.

Hanging out at the Potty with Sophie

I haven’t written much about Sophie lately. Come to think of it, I haven’t written much about nuthin lately. And I think, as irony would have it, that’s because there’s simply so much going on. 

Rather than boil it all down and catch up the annals of history with detail, I’ll boil it down to this. Sophie is 17 months old, and this morning, she went to the bathroom by herself. She was running around naked while Kira and I were getting ready for the day when she disappeared for a few minutes. She came back into the room clapping and saying “YayYayYayYay!” Kira went into the bathroom and came back hollering, “She gets it, She gets it, She gets it!” Which might as well have been “YayYayYay!” We all stood around the toilet and waved “Bye” at the pee as it flushed away. 

These kids, they’re pretty amazing little creatures. 

I’m trying to get back into the habit of blogging more. Part of the problem is with the other two blogs that I run and the cat-wrestling that I go through daily to teach the others on the team that they need to participate. Kicking and screaming, I tell you, they WILL come into the now. Anyhow, I think I’ve just had a hard time focusing on the personal stuff to write here. And it’s worse than that — I’ll be browsing along and find something that I really do have a comment on, and I’ll say something to myself like, “Man, I should really say that out loud.” Then, I’ll close the tab and keep on browsing. It’s as if there’s a fundamental disconnect between my brain and my blog fingers. 

At least I don’t feel too left out of the world while wearing my Blogger Hoodie. What a great sweatshirt that is.

Cell Carriers that Don’t Get It

Gizmodo : The results are in: what the carriers are charging each month for portability

Here’s the latest spread on the cell carriers charging for number portability. T-Mobile is not charging a dime and is actually giving loyalty minutes away. All the others are charging. Funny, I have a rousing chorus of “one of these things is not like the other one” rolling through my head. I know around my office, where we happen to have corporate contracts with both T-Mobile and AT&T Wireless, we’re seeing mass defections over this issue. I’m an AT&T guy myself, and I have to say, T-Mobile, I salute you, savvy corporate citizen.

Apple PowerBook 12″

I finally have it in my hands. It’s beautiful. My new Powerbook 12″ arrived at my office at 9:01 am this morning, and, as only the most beautiful irony would have it, our IT guy Nathan delivered it personally to my desk. He wanted to see it. He wanted to touch it. He wanted to insert and eject CDs from the Superdrive over and over again.

Of course, there was the usual maligning of my gadget habit, and I don’t blame him. This month has been really something, even by my own estimation. I sold my old cell on eBay, and made an $81 profit there. Now that I have the phone with a built-in calendar and contact list, I found precious little use for the Tungsten, so I sold that to Dad, who will appreciate the thing far more than I have been of late. Then, thanks to the push of the $100 off coupon from the Apple Store, I got the Powerbook and sold the 12″ iBook again to Dad, who again will appreciate it more.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved that iBook. It was plenty speedy and plenty light. It did everything I needed it to do. But there’s the rub: it did everything I needed it to do… not everything I wanted it to do. Big difference there. Now, finally, I can burn DVDs.

But there’s something else that I appreciate only now. I’ve written before about the experience I have working with the Mac. The tactile experience of the Powerbook is an order of magnitude different than working on the iBook. The keyboard is faster, firmer, and more forgiving. The trackpad is more accurate and a little smaller. Dodge said last time he was in town that it really doesn’t matter how fast the machine is that you’re working on if you’re not a terribly proficient or efficient user. Over the last two years, I’ve become a more proficient and efficient user; now, the hardware is opening the door for me even more and getting out of the way.

I’m sure there will be more. I have yet to decide if it really runs too hot for me. It’s warm, no doubt, but I haven’t been burned yet. I try not to do so much naked computing as I did in my youth. Some, but not so much.

Breaking it off

I broke up with my broker today. Lee. Been with me for six years. Seen my total portfolio with him go up 80% and down 90% in that short time. He’s given me some good advice (HRPT Properties) and some bad advice (BGEN, SNDK – the latter of which was particularly smarty when he advised me to sell at 30 before the thing hit 60-something). Still, he was a good broker and I’d like to think a good friend too. Alas, these things can’t last forever. And at $60 a trade this was a big dog that just couldn’t hunt.

So, I’m at Ameritrade. At least, I’m in the mail to Ameritrade right now and in three weeks I’ll be joining the world of those blissfully trading online.

Cats

Cassie was just sitting on the back of the couch, and she started heaving. I said to Kira, “Get her!”

Kira must have mistook what I’d said. I’m sure she did because, just at that moment, she ran over to the cat and caught the vomit in her hands.