Saturday, July 24, 2004

Hey, this tastes a little funny...

Ewww. Read this. I'd rather starve, personally.

The CRN Test Center recently evaluated Windows XP Service Pack 2 Release Candidate (RC) 2 - and 3 of their 5 test machines no longer worked, blue-screens of death appearing after the install completed. Whoopsie. Sounds like SP2 RC2 is still not ready for prime time, hopefully this gets corrected soon - because that service pack is desperately needed.

Friday, July 23, 2004

Or maybe she WILL come back some day - update on the Linda Ronstadt/Aladdin controversy

The chairman of the prospective new owners of the Aladdin Hotel and Casino, Planet Hollywood Chairman and Chief Executive Robert Earl (a partner in the group that won the right to buy the Aladdin in bankruptcy court) has responded to the controversy - read the article here. He's also offering to take Michael Moore up on his offer to join Ronstadt onstage. It's also noted in the article that the Raelians, "a group whose religion revolves around beliefs about extraterrestrials and cloning, named Ronstadt an honorary priest or guide, a title that previously has been bestowed upon celebrities such as Moore, Madonna, Sinead O'Connor and George Michael." So she's got THAT going for her.

On a more personal note - this is my 100th post! A small milestone to be sure, but worth noting I think. It's quite a bit of fun to write this blog, and I think it won't be long till I've written my 500th post and beyond. That's all for now, more to come later maybe. 

Thursday, July 22, 2004

NASA releases pictures from the Apollo 11 mission

A large number of pictures taken from space and from the surface of the moon by the Apollo 11 astronauts have been digitized and are available online here. This was just linked on Slashdot, so site response may be lousy right now. You can view the thumbnails, but I haven't been able to pull down a full-size image yet.

New Look

The page IS different - you aren't seeing things. I changed templates, decided I liked this one better than the old one (with some help from my wife - thanks honey.) I've added most of the little extras I had on the page into the new template, but haven't added the Haloscan comment/trackback scripts in. Blogger hosts commenting now - and I may just stay with that instead. The drawback would be that any comments added thru Haloscan under the old page would be gone. Haven't decided for sure yet - and I'm sure I will change other things - so leave comments for me and let me know what you think of the new layout. Your input is appreciated!


Wednesday, July 21, 2004

Well, I guess she won't be coming back some day...

Singer Linda Ronstadt removed for the Aladdin Hotel & Casino following a concert Saturday night after expressing support for controversial documentary filmmaker Michael Moore. Whoa. Sounds like someone touched a nerve, eh? This really shouldn't have surprised them as she's been making the same dedication at EVERY show. Since her recent summer tour began.  And here's a great response from Michael Moore via his website - an Open Letter to Bill Timmins, President Aladdin Casino and Hotel. God, that's a great response.

Fallout of the Download.Ject/Scob worm

The writer of this article raises a valid point. Now that the problem is (hopefully) fixed, why can't we know which sites had a problem? Sure, they are afraid of lawsuits - but isn't hiding the truth from the world just as bad? I guess the watch word for Net users these days is "suspicion" - be very cautious of what websites you visit and what they might be doing "behind the scenes" while you are there. As always, be sure you are updating Windows, running anti-virus scans at LEAST once a month, running a firewall or behind a router, and using spyware/adware/malware detection and removal utilities like Spybot and Ad Aware.