Captive Solutions Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not after you.

I am now 30 years old.
I thought I'd take some time and write down some of the more memorable things that have happened to me in this time.

as a thank you to our fans for your continued support, we are giving away the new nine inch nails album one hundred percent free, exclusively via nin.com. The music is available in a variety of formats including high-quality MP3, FLAC or M4A lossless at CD quality and even higher-than-CD quality 24/96 WAVE.

Well what can I say other than Thank you Trent. Once again you have stepped outside the norm and blown everyone away. The album is fantastic. The art work is very cool.

Go to nin.com

I had a very unusual experience today that left me impressed with the efforts to keep customers happy.

The previous day I stopped at Starbucks on my way to work. They informed me that they were unable to process debit purchases at that time. The result? I got my coffee for free and had to run out to an ATM to get cash to buy a sandwich/scones/etc.

A jury has found Hans Reiser guilty in the death of his estranged wife.
How someone could be convicted of First Degree murder, on circumstantial evidence is beyond me.

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So here I sit, tasked with setting up 3 new computers before deployment into the field. First, serial numbers are entered and activated online. Next, all three are named and added to the domain. Boot the computers and login to them and start the dreaded process of updating windows. If you want to see why SP3 is so needed for Windows XP load up a clean Windows XP SP2 installation and see how many hours it takes to fully update your computer. Of the three computers I'm setting up none report the same number of updates that need to be added.

So the other day I was asked to setup a pair of computers. No big deal, nothing unusual. Windows XP Pro was already installed even. All I had to do was install the basic applications used. Office 2k3 Small Business Edition, McAfee VirusScan/AntiSpyware Enterprise, Adobe Reader, Kermit 95 (a telnet client), and Dameware Client. So I get all the software installed and begin the dreaded task of updating Windows. In total it takes 4 reboots to get all the updates to finish. For each computer.

Ok so first off what the hell is wrong with this picture?

That's how it shows up in the "Device Manager" or should I call that the 'Device Mis-manager'? How on earth does a system messup a driver for the damn processor? Check the device and it gives me a code to chase (code 32) whatever the hell that is :\ Anyway, so I go and check Windows Support website and find this:

A driver (service) for this device has been disabled. An alternate driver may be providing this functionality. (Code 32)

Apple went and released a beta of version 3 for the their Safari webbrowser. Why is this worth writing about? Simple, they also released a Windows version. Why am I writing about this now? Because I just now crawled out of a hole it seems.

That means that there are now three browsers better than Microsofts Internet Explorer. So why then, are so many people still using IE? Because people are content to work with whatever they already have unless they are compeled to use something better. Hell, there are people out there that still drive gremlins for christ's sake!Â

So I've been out of the loop for awhile and decided to have a gander at what news I've been missing lately.

* Microsoft buys Winternals. link
No big surprise there. Actually more amazed that Microsoft waited this long to purchase them.
* Microsoft rumored to be looking at purchasing Research in Motion (RIM), makers of the Blackberry. I pray to god this is only a rumor. I could only imagine how badly M$ could mess up this company.

So what have I been up to all this time? I've been trying to get my head around Autodesk's Maya 3D package.

This thing is huge.
No, I'm not talking about size, it's actually rather small. But this thing does everything, don't beleive me? Here's a quick 'feature list' from the autodesk.com site :

Intuitive User Interface. Data and Scene Management Tools, Polygon Modeling, NURBS Modeling, Subdivision Surface Modeling and Polygon Proxy Modeling, General Animation, Character Animation, Deformers