So this is one I don't think I'll ever understand. I've got a WaMu Online Savings account, and somehow they're providing 3.93% interest / 4% APY. How is this possible when they basically went under and got bought out. 4% is one of the best rates around. Meanwhile looking at my 401K is rather depressing, since January 28th, it's -23.4%. I know it's stupid to look at it short term but it's just lame to think I would've been better off putting my money in a failed bank than putting it into a well diversified 401K (not counting the tax stuff of course). Either way, I don't think I'll ever get over the way credit and savings works. Seems like a complete sham when we can be charged 10% or more in interest yet we're lucky to even be getting 4% on the money the banks hold for us. Sure banks are a bit more reliable at paying up but still. I think maybe I should just invest in salt for the forthcoming apocalypse.

So I finally caved and decided to try out the always on instant status craze. Now I pretty much update my Live Messenger PSM all the time, especially when my Now Playing is turned on. However, I used to only update Facebook once in a while. Never updated MySpace. That was it, I didn’t (and still don’t really) care about any of the other sites, which frankly seem like a fad.

Like I said, I caved, logged into my Twitter account that I apparently opened a year ago, set it up so that Facebook and Twitter would communicate. Then I added the Messenger application to Facebook so those two could talk. I then updated my status in the Live Messenger dogfood, saw it updated Facebook and was amused, but looking at Twitter… saw nothing. How very lame.

Then I remembered reading this article on TechCrunch:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/31/pingfm-centralizes-status-updates-but-is-it-enough/

Hoping that maybe, possibly, someone would’ve managed to have the services in place to spread a status message across all services regardless of origin. This concept while simple and something that has been touted as the future for some time still eludes us… None the less within 30 seconds I was registered at HelloTxt, yet another website with yet another login to manage.

I then gave my login details to the 4 other social services that I have accounts with. This seems odd considering how much phishing is going on. Heck I bet there’s a lot of money and data to be had if someone were to create a cute Web 2.0 site that gathered account data like HelloTxt does then just sell it to the highest bidder.

After some additional reading and browsing I found this blog which discusses differences between HelloTxt and Ping.fm:
http://masontechbeat.blogspot.com/2008/07/title-fight-pingfm-vs-hellotxt.html

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m all for this reinvigorated interest in the web, if anything it seems geek is now chic, can’t go wrong there. But seriously? How on Earth do the 21 networks that HelloTxt communicates with manage to attract and keep users using their services? What value do any of them really have or add? Where’s all this VC coming from and can I have some please?

Now the point of all this is that it seems like there’s a lot of cool stuff going on, but the key issue to really making everything work is a central service for which all services communicate. There’s no central standard like RSS to make it all take off. In my mind all it’s going to take is Google, Yahoo, Facebook, or whoever to release a true framework that will be the platform for future services to grow. Google seems like the obvious candidate here with their ad platform and fingers dipped into everything you can think of.

It would seem like now is the prime time to make a move leverage the hundreds of millions of Live Hotmail and Messenger users and create an open platform for these Personal Status Message(PSM) sites to communicate. I’m sure that most people already have a Live ID so that won’t even be a major caveat. I tried finding a plugin for HelloTxt or Twitter for Messenger, the best I could find was this:
http://www.msgplus.com/scripts/search/?q=twitter
Sadly this will only update Twitter and since HelloTxt doesn’t seem to pull from Twitter the rest of the sites I’m on won’t get updated. FAIL.

If Microsoft has 300 million active Live Messenger users there must be at least half a billion or more PSM’s set every day. I’m going to guess if Microsoft had the open platform it would get used. Update your status on Windows Live, have it updated everywhere. Simple concept. This seems like a much better use of resources than changing bitmaps, adding more winks, and confusing users with design changes. Microsoft has Live Spaces, Live Messenger, and Live Mobile, what more is needed? Not to mention the close ties with Facebook. That’s a pretty fine start imho. Get tied to Twitter build some momentum and you’ve got the workings for real added value to Windows Live.

Now considering my PSM in Live Messenger doesn’t update my status on Zune or Xbox despite using the same Live ID. I’m just a little nervous that Microsoft may be latecomer to the conversation it should have started. Are there any conversations going on like this in Windows Live right now?

We shall see…

So one benefit of my job is that I get to work on some cool hardware long before it's released. While I couldn't say either way if I've played with the Inspiron 910, I have played with a PC running the Atom chips and such. I must say it ran Windows just fine and was totally usable. The form factor of x unit wasn't quite right for me, but this Inspiron 910 looks pretty sweet.

For the longest time I've had the thought that I'd only ever get laptops from now on. Figuring I could just get one with DisplayPort or HDMI and get an external keyboard, mouse, and 24" or 30" LCD for the 1920x1200+ experience. But that sort of requires a dock and such. Fine dandy, but I'd be paying a lot of money for lower end hardware. While I'm sure it'd run my daily stuff just fine it doesn't quite cut it for more hardcore stuff.

So I've sort of been thinking that a quad core iMac would be perfect for me. At the same time I want something mobile. Perhaps a quad core Mac Book pro or a Latitude would do it. Anyway, this got me thinking, why not get an iMac or regular Dell desktop. Then just get the Inspiron 910 as my Internet and IM box :). When I really think about what I do on a laptop... the only thing I do outside of IE is Messenger and some file management. So what's the point of having some crazy high end mobile PC?

I'd probably do a lot more if it weren't for the form factor or the fact I'm sitting down on the couch doing it. It's sad, in this day, I still can't quite live away from the de facto standard of PC usage, desktop, monitor, keyboard, mouse.

So my thought process behind getting rid of Exchange for a much simpler Hotmail or Gmail solution has got me thinking about simplification in general. I've been giving serious thought to dumping other complicated solutions for much mor elegant ones. For example no longer running my Server 2008 box in a domain, dumping all the services on the server and just hosting my blog and photo gallery in the cloud. In the end the server would just be a glorified file server.

Somehow though I can't bring myself to do this, I think it's got something to do with the feeling of control. Right now I can do whatever I want to the server or to any of the data. If I want to have my gallery full of 20K 8MP images I can, if I want to stream all my music I can. If I were to switch to Wordpress and Flickr I'd lose all that control.

I also find it amusing that while I want to just simplify things I'm also considering doing crap that's just the opposite. I'm tempted to switch from dasBlog to Community Server. I'm also thinking that if Apple announces Core 2 Quad's in the iMac's or MacBook's this month that I'll likely buy one and run Vista on it.

I'm tired of buying Dell's, they're just boring and work :), plus I wouldn't mind trying out OSX even if it's only for a few hours. I have considered just getting a new E series Latitude but meh, I'm not a fan of any of the Dell desktops either, they're cheap and quiet sure, but they just lack a certain something. Thinking about things a bit further, I'm kind of tired of using a laptop as my main machine. My neck is killing me from always sitting on the couch and typing away. On the other hand a laptop fits what I need really well. I guess I just need to get a small desk with a dock along with a real monitor and keyboard and mouse.

Who knows, things really aren't that complicated, everything I've got going on now just sort of takes care of itself and I don't do anything. When something does break though it is a pain. Would be nice if that wasn't the case.

I think I'm going to try and install Community Server now on coreygo.com get that running and migrate things over. Not sure what I'll do for redirection of this old site and how to migrate the data plus the RSS feed. Yay for complications.

I've been running Exchange 2007 for a while now. It was actually pretty quick to set up and maintaining it ever since hasn't required more than 5 minutes a month. There was the initial hurdle of needing the Edge Transport and the Hub Transport on different machines. Solved that with a 64-bit install of Server 2008 in a Hyper-V VM. Running your own Exchange server is definitely overkill, at the same time there's also something inherently geekishly cool about it. I mean I've got Outlook Web Access from anywhere and I can have one Outlook session download all my RSS feeds into Exchange which I can read anywhere or while mobile.

But why then have I removed 100% of the RSS feeds from Outlook and switched to Google Reader? Why now, am I considering becoming close friends with the Archive dialog and just keeping all my existing mail in a PST? Why am I considering just redirecting mail from my domains to a Gmail or Hotmail (oops sorry Windows Live Mail) account?

Email is the life force behind Microsoft, without it I'd be reduced to actually speaking to the person next to me :-), okay not really, I enjoy the cube work style at MS, I couldn't stand it if it were like Office Space but at MS it's a great social thing. Getting back to the point though, there are times where I'll email the person sitting next to me, it's just easier there's a record, and it usually moves work along. I couldn't give a percentage but Outlook is never closed, never. I don't know how many emails I get daily, the rules sort them all out.

Email at home... there isn't a whole lot to say about email at home. I get random red neck, McCain, and other weird emails from my Dad, I get emails from people warning about viruses and other crap which is usually fake or old, so I reply back with a link to the virus database or snopes.com. Oh and I get emails from family at Hotmail, at work, and 2 different domain addresses. The only other "real" email I get is all related to accounts I have online, whether it's NewEgg, Amazon, or the electric company. After that it's all spam, Exchange blocks it all, and I never see it. But when I look at my email for the past 3 months and see only 4 real emails that I've kept, WTF is the point!? Email for me personally at home is just dead.

So I don't know, I'm not sure why I even bother keeping my mail the way I do going back to the days of 1997. I should probably just export everything to a PST and then redirect all the mail to Hotmail then forget it, no reason to even import the old stuff really. Another option I have is to migrate my mail to a hosted Exchange account that's managed by the borg, even that seems like over kill.

Anyway, still not sure what I'm going to decide on, I've still got Outlook open at home, no real email since Thursday, I guess I should just start telling people that my email is dead and to never email me. Send me an instant message instead.

I really love Netflix and I'm sure I'll love it more once it's built into the Xbox. Still though there's a couple things I really want.

1. Maintain a complete history of every movie that I've been sent and have watched instantly. Denote these movies with a different icon or something. I can't really remember half the time if I've seen something or not. The rental history is obscure and annoying.
2. The new releases feature is kind of annoying now, not at all useful. I'm sure some love it, I personally hate it. What would serve me better and I'm sure anyone else who prefer home theaters to the overpriced counterparts would be a release history similar to what IMDB does for movie releases. Just list movies by release date in the theater from now until 6 months back. Even if the movie isn't on DVD yet at least then I could save it for later.
3. Allow me to share my list of watched movies in a nice view on the web more easily. Especially if it were possible to tag movies as "owned".

Heck, if there were a Media Center app to expose this that also worked on the Xbox as well that'd take care of one other little thing I'd like to have :).

I just moved to West Seattle and I love it. From the first day I woke up in my new place I think I knew I'd love it. I haven't even had a chance for everything to sink in and for me to discover all the new surroundings but no matter.

1. Running on Alki beach rules.
2. It reminds of all the good things I missed from SoCal, like the smell of salt water and real sandy beaches.
3. I'm close to everything, at least it feels that way. I've got a Safeway around the corner which I can walk to. Plus 10 other stores that I frequent.
4. Metro Market, PCC, and soon a Whole Foods. I went to Metro Market 2 miles from home and can only say that this place rules, and I'll probably stop buy most of my produce from Safeway or QFC. The yellow corn I bought today was the sweetest ever.
5. Real record stores within walking distance.
6. Sunday farmers market.
7. Awesome restaurants nearby.
8. Pagliacci pizza, best delivery I've ever had.
9. My commute to Issaquah is under 30 minutes, period.
10. There's a great feeling of being in a huge city like Seattle yet having the small town feel, people actually say hello and strike up conversation out and about.

I'm sure I'll end up having 10 things I hate, but so far, I can't really think of one. I think there's also something I love about the place I'm in, which was meant to be a half million dollar place but couldn't sell. So I'm getting a great deal on rent. One of the rooms is making for an awesome home theater and I can finally crank the volume up and can keep on having people over without any issues.

This rules!

Today I finally managed to prevent history from repeating. For the past two or three weeks I kept on thinking of stuff I needed to do before and after work. The odd thing is every single time I thought of something I'd make a mental note to remember it. Then I'd just forget it. I'd get to work or get home and realize how stupid I was for forgetting, and then... nothing. I'd not bother making a note to remind myself the next day.

Self defeating really, I know my memory sucks when it comes to a lot of stuff, why I don't make notes is things is beyond me. I guess I just figure it's a waste of paper and I'd lose track anyway. Making notes electronically doesn't work for me either since it's too slow and I never have the method for input readily available.

So the bottom line? Well, yesterday and today I broke out of it. Not sure why but I finally remembered to bring the Silk coffee creamer from the fridge at home into the one at work. Lame? Yes, but it's a perfect example of the crap I forget on a daily basis. In this case I bought the stuff over a week ago, and every day I'd arrive at work and forget it and slap myself mentally for being a dumb ass.

How to combat this mental block is beyond me. I just figured I'd finally remember to write about this sort of stuff instead of thinking, "oh I should make a note of that on my blog" then never doing it.

What can I say? Gore describing ways of giving the US a kick in the ass aligns to exactly how I feel right now as far as energy goes. Where's the $25K Tesla and the subsidized solar for homes? :)

The answer is to end our reliance on carbon-based fuels. In my search for genuinely effective answers to the climate crisis, I have held a series of “solutions summits” with engineers, scientists, and CEOs. In those discussions, one thing has become abundantly clear: when you connect the dots, it turns out that the real solutions to the climate crisis are the very same measures needed to renew our economy and escape the trap of ever-rising energy prices. Moreover, they are also the very same solutions we need to guarantee our national security without having to go to war in the Persian Gulf. What if we could use fuels that are not expensive, don’t cause pollution and are abundantly available right here at home? We have such fuels. Scientists have confirmed that enough solar energy falls on the surface of the earth every 40 minutes to meet 100 percent of the entire world’s energy needs for a full year. Tapping just a small portion of this solar energy could provide all of the electricity America uses. And enough wind power blows through the Midwest corridor every day to also meet 100 percent of US electricity demand. Geothermal energy, similarly, is capable of providing enormous supplies of electricity for America. The quickest, cheapest and best way to start using all this renewable energy is in the production of electricity. In fact, we can start right now using solar power, wind power and geothermal power to make electricity for our homes and businesses. But to make this exciting potential a reality, and truly solve our nation’s problems, we need a new start. That’s why I’m proposing today a strategic initiative designed to free us from the crises that are holding us down and to regain control of our own destiny. It’s not the only thing we need to do. But this strategic challenge is the lynchpin of a bold new strategy needed to re-power America. Today I challenge our nation to commit to producing 100 percent of our electricity from renewable energy and truly clean carbon-free sources within 10 years. This goal is achievable, affordable and transformative. It represents a challenge to all Americans — in every walk of life: to our political leaders, entrepreneurs, innovators, engineers, and to every citizen. A few years ago, it would not have been possible to issue such a challenge. But here’s what’s changed: the sharp cost reductions now beginning to take place in solar, wind, and geothermal power — coupled with the recent dramatic price increases for oil and coal — have radically changed the economics of energy. When I first went to Congress 32 years ago, I listened to experts testify that if oil ever got to $35 a barrel, then renewable sources of energy would become competitive. Well, today, the price of oil is over $135 per barrel. And sure enough, billions of dollars of new investment are flowing into the development of concentrated solar thermal, photovoltaics, windmills, geothermal plants, and a variety of ingenious new ways to improve our efficiency and conserve presently wasted energy. And as the demand for renewable energy grows, the costs will continue to fall. Let me give you one revealing example: the price of the specialized silicon used to make solar cells was recently as high as $300 per kilogram. But the newest contracts have prices as low as $50 a kilogram. You know, the same thing happened with computer chips — also made out of silicon. The price paid for the same performance came down by 50 percent every 18 months — year after year, and that’s what’s happened for 40 years in a row.

I don't even care if it's alarmist or if the polar caps are going to be changing from a solid into a liquid in a few years. It doesn't even matter, it just seems to make sense to do go renewable.

1. They're all sold out.
2. I read the fine print, AT&T is bonkers, and I'm not paying $500 for a phone that'll be replaced in a year.
http://www.wireless.att.com/cell-phone-service/specials/iphone-info.jsp

Yeah, screw that. Shame really, since having used the iPhone for a good hour I must say it totally kills my BlackJack II which is running Windows Mobile 6. I guess I still have the 6.1 update to look forward to though I imagine I probably will be seeing the v3 iPhone by that time and come March will grab one of those :-).

Went to refresh my camera equipment listing on Expo and instead got this...   

Windows Live Expo will discontinue service on 31 July 2008. In preparation, the following features are no longer available:

• Create a new account.
• Post a new listing.
• Extend a listing.
• Upgrade a listing to a premium listing.

All current listings will remain on expo.live.com until they expire.

We thank you for your patronage and apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.
-The Windows Live Expo Team

Annoying, but not too unexpected. I've never actually seen anyone use Expo outside of the Seattle/Redmond area. Oh well. Back to Craigslist. Unless of course Microsoft buys them out and does a redirect :).

So I was Googling my Dad just now to see if I could find any of his eBay listings since I was curious. I ended up just searching for his name and Arizona. Sure enough it returned his phone book entry as the first result. Next I tried my Mom, now what's funny about this is that my Mom has always been kind of paranoid and so back in the days of me living at home she'd make sure our info was unlisted. I guess somehow that got reversed and now it's nicely published. Oh and be sure to check out her Stained Glass website at GoStainedGlass.com.

The funny thing to me is that besides having her home phone it also has her address. I checked it out to see if Google updated the satellite view, nope, Live Maps still has newer. But Google has done one better. They actually for some reason unbeknownst to me went through Joshua Tree with a street view car and photographed poor little Joshua Tree. I lived there for I don't know, 13 years, so I guess you can say I grew up there. Now there are only 3 reasons why people actually know of Joshua Tree, the first is U2, the second is because it's sort of near Palm Springs, and the third is because of the National Park. I'm sure if my Mom had her way it'd also be known for it bearing the gift of her stained glass and my amazing wit. Har har.

Hopefully pasting in this iframe will work, but if not, feel free to explore. It's just completely amusing to me. I mean I know based on examination of the view that both my Mom and sister were at home and most likely sleeping during the time the street view car drove by and took the photos. I also know it was likely a Tuesday because they left the trash out but it hasn't been taken yet. What's more amusing to me and something I'll have to call dear old Mom about... I didn't know she replaced the front door with what looks like a red one. Truly, Google, thank you, "nostalgia without the plane fare". Though by the looks of it she needs me to come visit, that mailbox is looking a little dilapidated and in need of me fixing it once more.

Lately I've been digging the idea of selling my 06 GTI and somehow acquiring a good EV. I figure an EV combined with solar power on the roof of a house would be a wicked way of doing things. I guess the only real limitation at this point is financial. I can't afford a Tesla, but that's exactly the type of car I'd go for, especially since I only need something that'll do 80-100 miles a day. It's a shame the thing is so expensive, normally I'd never consider spending more than $30K on a car but somehow an EV would be the one exception to that. The Wrightspeed X1 would be cool if it were $50K, enclosed (only because of Seattle rain... and street legal.

I wonder how hard it would be to convert the GTI to all electric.

The ButtKicker LFE Kit just arrived today. All I can say is wow. I'm busy watching all the big blockbuster films with loads of bass. Right now it's Terminator 3 time. From the very first nuke that goes off, to when Arnold makes his debut, all the way until the truck chase scene. The wow factor does not stop. I'm totally looking forward to watching Band of Brothers tomorrow.

I've got a sub in the form of the Boston XB6 but I've got the volume down nearly all the way, apartment living and such. The Boston VR3's go pretty low anyway, the cross over is set to 60Hz but but Boston says 35Hz can be cleanly achieved. The sub and ButtKicker are set to 80Hz. Somehow even at lower volumes it just sounds and feels amazing.

The transducer hits with precision but also rolls extremely well giving big flaming explosions a new sense of realism. Combining that with the great Boston sound and it really makes for an awesome experience.

I'm not sure what else to say beyond that. It's definitely something that one needs to feel and experience to understand. It's not gimmicky feeling at all, one person I talked to asked if it was like a phone vibrating, but not at all. It's far more complicated, smooth and natural.

I haven't had a chance to test it with music yet. That's for tomorrow during the day. I will say, it might need some adjusting then, when I first hooked it up I ignored the manual set the thing to 75% volume. I think that was a pretty extreme, it kinda felt like the provided amp was giving the unit /too/ much power. If that's even possible. Turning it down half way and it's perfect.

Went down stairs and sure enough, couldn't really notice any of the vibrations or anything. Not sure about next door though.

That's the review for now, more tomorrow after music.

I think this must be one of those moments for me where things come together nicely and I just kinda chill about life and live for enjoying everything. I'm not too sure how many hours I've been working since I started my job, I'm not too keen to figure it out either. All I know is that it's probably over 60 a week if you count at home time on the computer reading up, writing, doing email, you name it. I'm feeling like I'm getting loads done and despite having to wind up again to the normal level of multi-tasking that's required I honestly think I'm getting a lot done. At some point it's going to have to calm a bit since I can't keep up this pace. I don't think there's any reason I can't get a little more economical with my time though and gradually balance stuff out.

Speaking of which, damn, do I need to get back to the gym. I've been maintaining my weight but I can already tell I'm losing some of the tone I had gained just by not working out for 2 months regularly. I do miss going to the gym for an hour a day, it's an awesome stress relief when others don't come as easily, oh and gaming isn't much of a relief sometimes. At least not when I get my ass blown off by some punk kid yelling out racist comments.

The only thing I really dread at the moment is the commute. I know some people have crazy commutes at close to 2 hours or more. For me though, if I'm in the car for more than 30 minutes each way I start feeling like there's better things to be doing with my time than sitting in the car waiting for people to learn how to merge.

Despite all the great little things that come with working for the jolly green giant that is Microsoft, I don't really think my team nor my review would take kindly to me suddenly deciding to cut one more car from the road by working from home. Meanwhile it does seem like I've been in the new role for quite some time, in reality it's been 3 months, not 3 years... unless I count contracting time.

One thing I seem to very poorly at is having a good idea of how much time I'm going to actually have available. I mention this because I had intended on chronicling the initial year or so of actually what it means to be FTE. In some ways I guess I've not really failed since my writing has been sparse that in itself is a good indication of what life is like in year one.

I'm a little biased in my perspective and experience as well having been around here a little while, I can't begin to imagine how much that has actually helped me built up momentum.

Considering it's now going on quarter past 2AM, I'll quit rambling and go to bed.

So this discussion came up recently about home theater's and what various people are doing, I just kinda figured whatever and throw my info out here as well.

First off, here is a link to an RSS feed that has some home theater examples which are pretty sweet:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/eh/rss/C154 via http://www.electronichouse.com/

Photos can be found here: http://cid-491062c199155578.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/Home%20Theater

Not the ideal set up in terms of layout but it’s an apartment…

Equipment:
56” Samsung HL-T5689S 1080p - currently $1400 (through a long history I originally paid a lot more)
Denon AVR-3808CI - $1200
Dell XPS w/dual OCUR and a LG HD/BD drive (dvi w/hdcp to hdmi) - believe this can be had for $1200
Dell PowerEdge 2900 with 4TB RAID5 in a closet up stairs - $3000
BostonAcoustics VR3 * 4 (front and rear) - $250/ea
VRC (center) - $250
VRX (sides not in use) - $250
XB6 (sub) - $250
Xbox 360 Elite (plugged in via HDMI), Wii (component), PS3 (HDMI) – retail

All the furniture is the cheap but decent Ikea stuff. Unfortunately because it is an apartment and the layout kind of sucks the rear speakers are way too close to the couch, but using the Audyssey in the Denon helps adjust for that and the surround experience is still pretty good. Oh and the fact I’m totally blocking the fireplace that’ll never be used anyway. The main thing for me was finding something cheap and simple to put all the equipment and TV on. Luckily the TV stand thing has space underneath so the cables are tied nicely under there. The only cable that’s visible is the wireless receiver for the KB and mouse. That new Logitech looks like it might be a good replacement though.

Monoprice.com for all the cabling which cost about $60, and considering that included 100ft of 12 gauge speaker wire, banana plugs, 3 spdif cables, 2 HDMI cables, cable for the sub… that’s pretty sweet. I also had previously bought a lot of CAT5e so the entire apartment is wired now though the cables are run under the baseboards.

There’s a single HDMI cable going from the receiver to TV and the TV is permanently set to that input. Luckily there’s no real overscan issues with the TV and MCE. The Dell w/OCUR is plugged in to the receiver via DVI w/HDCP to HDMI, for audio there’s a SPDIF cable as well as the normal 5.1 analog cabling. This allows me to normally use the digital output and get DD and DTS to the receiver, if I want WMA 5.1 and Uncompressed 5.1 PCM I switch to analog and that’s as simple as pressing the Input button on the Denon remote (it cycles through HDMI and Analog quickly). Now I did have an issue with the ATI 2600 card and the HDCP stuff when I added the receiver into the mix, the picture and audio would just cut out every 30 seconds or so. I switched to a nVidia 8600 and the problems went away (ATI driver issue I guess). There’s nothing too special about the setup though beyond that.

I actually use MCE for everything with no standalone players or devices other than the game consoles. It’s just nice and simple that way. The complexity is added by having ALL media stored on the RAID5 upstairs with everything in a domain. It’s pretty well organized but there’s still not enough room to rip all the DVD’s, though Network Media Sharing and Zune handle all the other media.

The speakers are possibly the best part of the setup since they were a total steal. I bought them from OneCall.com who pretty much is the only online retailer for BA. I had some Bostons way back when but they were stolen so it was kinda nice finally getting some again. I had looked at Magnolia and Definitive. I compared Klipsch, Monitor, Definitive’s, and B&W’s. I actually had no way to hear the Boston since Circuit City sucks like that.

My first choice was the B&W’s the 703’s were just awesome and at some point far in the future I hope to have some B&W’s. Randomly though I noticed OneCall had all the VR stuff for insane prices $249 vs. $629 so I ended up jumping on that. Turns out Boston EOL’d the VR series so they were just clearing inventory. They disappeared for a while but it looks like they’re up for $399 now. But this is a good point I think, you can get an awesome deal if you buy slightly used or EOL’d products, as long as you know the product is quality to begin with and the company making them is decent you can’t really go wrong. If and when I go for some B&W’s I might buy the current model year product just after the updated models are out.

All in all it’s a comfortable setup and the budget really isn’t that bad. I personally feel that however much is spent on the TV should be spent on the audio and however much is spent on the audio should be spent on the receiver and stuff that powers it all. So everything is right about that level. Flaws would be the fact it’s all in an apartment with a crappy layout and not a lot of wiggle room. It sucks I have to block the fireplace but that’s the only option in my case, we’ll see what it’s like when I move this month. The center channel is a little weak but I’ve adjusted that. I’m probably going to get a ButtKicker LFE after I move to still be able to enjoy things a bit. Though I’ve actually turned the sub down all the way I’ve still had noise complaints, the VR3’s go down to 35Hz and at a decent volume on some music can probably bug neighbors. I also can’t even use the VRX speakers at this point since I don’t have walls to mount them to, they are dipole surrounds which create a more theater like experience but even so I probably will use them in a dual surround config not 7.1. I mainly bought them because of their discount and the fact they’re EOL.

Anywho, there’s my quick personal review of my own setup. Hoping that at some point in the future I can do a proper home theater room with seating, acoustically transparent projector screen and so on. :-)

I'll go over the first reason in this post. In the Windows SysInternals suite, there is a tool called Process Explorer, which is an amazingly powerful app. It will allow you to view what's going on behind the scenes of most everything running on the system. Just doing quick search will show just how powerful this tool is. For this issue though, what we'll do is find any open handles on the file we're trying to access and delete.

1. First, start Process Explorer.
2. Press CTRL+F to open a search window.
3. In the 'Handle or DLL substring' field type in a portion or the complete name of the file you are trying to delete and press Enter to begin the search. In my case the file was "08 mer du japon.mp3".
4. You should now be presented with a list of open handles. Next double click on the handle in the search window to show the file handle highlighted in the lower pane along with all the other open handles on the system.
5. Right click the row for the handle and click Close Handle.
6. You should now be good to go.

In this particular case it would seem the handle to the .MP3 file wasn't properly closed by Windows Media Player despite it having finished playing and updating the metadata. Because of this I was unable to move the album folder. By using Process Explorer I was able to find the culprit and close down the handle which allowed Vista full access to move the file and folder. There are some other third-party tools available as well as other tips and ways of doing the same thing. However, I highly recommend the method I just described, as using and further exploring Process Explorer and the other tools available in the SysInternals suite of applications will allow you to gain a much greater understanding of your system.

This, combined with a few good search queries, a deep curiosity through Wikipedia, and the Microsoft Knowledge Base will help turn any enthusiast into a real power user. Check back shortly for part two where I discuss how to take back ownership of your files and folders through permissions in Windows Vista and Server 2008.

There'll be more on this tomorrow when I'm laying in bed in full blown sore throat and dripping nose mode.

But my current Messenger PSM just about sums things up: 6 hrs = W2K8*2, AD, EX07*2, IIS, DHCP, DNS, Hyper-V

I was in a team meeting thing the other day and had my laptop out taking notes. Unfortuantely despite the fact I always run with all system sounds off, I kept on getting the annoying system beep every so often. It was maybe coming from Outlook and holding down the backspace for too long. It happens even if you mute the sound on the system, and heck, even if you disable the "System speaker" device in Device Manager which is listed under the System devices. And man is the beep loud, amusing really, since the mono speaker on my Dell Latitude D430 is barely audible but that bloody system beep is loud as hell and definitely attention grabbing.

So here's how to disable the Beep, yes that's actually what it's called.

1. Press WIN+R
2. Type in devmgmt.msc and press Enter.
3. Click the View menu then click Show hidden devices.
4. Expand the Non-Plug and Play Drivers branch out.
5. Look for Beep and double-click the device to bring up the properties window.
6. Click on the Driver tab.
7. Under Current status, click Stop.
8. Under Startup type drop down switch the driver to Disabled.
9. Click OK

You'll now have true silence from your desktop or laptop PC regardless of whatever crazy error messages pop up or however much spam gets delivered to your Inbox. Though this won't help if you if you've got a bunch of 80mm fans running at 8000RPM still :-). But that's for another post... Tip though, voltage converters for fans or fans with a high CFM and low dB rating work amazingly well as do rubber gromets for fans and HDD's and not to mention that Dynamat isn't half bad for noise absorbtion as well.

So I was just talking to Mooney about how I used to have my PC audio hooked up. Which immediately led me to talk about the Creative DDTS-100. In this day and age I really have a bad taste from using most Creative products. They can't write drivers to save their life, their audio cards suck, their speakers suck, just about everything Creative makes these days suck. But it's not all bad for Creative, they've got one good product that I know about. They simply need to look at products like the DDTS-100 and then go to eBay and see how much those products go for used.

The Creative DDTS-100 quite simply is the equivalent of a PC audio receiver in that it'll take SPDIF, TOSLINK, PC multi-channel analog, and RCA and it will decode Dolby Digital as well as DTS and it even includes DD and DTS upmixing, I was especially fond of the DTS NEO:6 Music setting. Why would anyone need this? Well it was great, I had multiple PC's all connected via SPDIF and one via analog. I could switch between PC's and use a single set of speakers. I even had an Xbox connected to it as well. I sent out a nice digital signal and it decoded all my content awesomely. Sure it's not a real receiver/amp, but when you're using Klipsch 5.1 Ultra speakers it's perfect.

Like I said though. You know you have a good product when you can look on eBay over 3 years after you bought it, and it has actually gone UP in value! I buy a lot of crap, and usually after a while and some upgrades I buy better crap and sell the old stuff. The two things I'm very very reluctant to sell though is the Creative DDTS-100 and those Klipsch 5.1 Ultra speakers. The speakers, sure, maybe, but the DDTS-100, one day a year from now I'm pretty sure I'll need it.

That being said, it's questionable if the DDTS-100 would be worth as much a year from now. It does the job it does amazingly well. Yeah it's ugly as all sin and they could've saved a shit ton of money by cutting down on the LED's and silverness but as far as I know the product is the only one of its kind.

There's a reason why I could sell it for $200 tomorrow and take a $75 profit though.

Creative needs to learn something fast, which is that people want quality. There's a reason people even still would consider Creative products today, it's not because of the crap that's made today, it's because of the stuff that was made back when the word SoundBlaster meant sound on PC's.