Oct
01
2009
When I got back from class, I installed Firefox, MS Office, and Palisade Decision Tools. I haven’t used it enough to give a review, but Windows 7 is really fast. It should — but does not — come with virus protection. It popped up a little red flag to tell me there was none installed.
Oct
01
2009
So I installed the updates, and now, the computer is stuck in a “configuring updates” loop on boot. According to everything I’ve seen, the only solution is to undo the updates, but then, I can’t install Win 7 and keep all of my files and programs. So, I’m going to just install the OS and […]
Oct
01
2009
It won’t let me install and keep my files and programs unless I install Vista SP1, so I’m doing that now. Grrr!
Oct
01
2009
I just started installing Windows 7 Ultimate on my desktop. Supposedly, you can install it and keep your files and programs. I backed up my files just in case.
It’s searching the internet for hardware driver upgrades now.
Oct
01
2009
What happens when a math geek wonders which line in the supermarket is fastest? He collects data and runs a regression! There are a lot of variables he doesn’t take into account, such as the sex of the shopper, which I discussed here, but others can take the baton and run with it.
Thanks to Darren […]
Aug
21
2009
Bad Science has an excellent article up about how we are hardwired to find patterns:
But we have an innate human ability to make something out of nothing. We see shapes in the clouds and a man in the moon; gamblers are convinced that they have “runs of luck”; we can take a perfectly cheerful heavy […]
Mar
15
2009
About a month ago, I deactivated akismet. It was catching nearly no spam comments compared to wp-spamfree, and the really annoying things was that the comments get sent to akismet before the wordpress blacklist, so even if you have a spam site and put the domain name in the wordpress blacklist, all of the comments […]
Mar
13
2009
I am one of Ed Driscoll’s biggest fans, but I am just as profoundly uninterested in the latest, hottest web 2.0 gimmicks as I am pop culture. I’m not sure what the excitement about Twitter is about; from what I’ve seen, it’s nothing more than individual sentences, blogging reduced to its tersest and least communicative, […]
Mar
09
2009
i want one! (h/t der blogvater).
Feb
22
2009
Ken has a story about streamlining processes (we call that operations):
Last year, we used a scoring template built by a math teacher at one of the participating schools (a GREAT GUY!) which required sorting to find the individual and teams scores after. Being a bit of a “Spreadsheet Jockey” (dubbed so by a former coworker) […]
Feb
15
2009
I said:
Apple is the quintessential liberal OS. Steve Jobs knows better than you do what you should and should not be able to do, and he’s going to control what you can and cannot do on that idiot icon idiot box because you’re too damned stupid to know what you should and should not be […]
Feb
12
2009
I’ll stop bitching about the weather, but not today. Now, you’d think after a high of 60 (!) yesterday, and nearly all of the snow gone (yes!), I’d be happier. The guys at Pensblog report gale-force winds in Pittsburgh during the game last night, and we got them early this morning. Not a storm. Just […]
Feb
12
2009
It’s screwed me again. It was supposed to record the Pens - Sharks game last night. So I get up this morning, turn on the NHL channel, and find out that against all odds, the Pens beat the Sharks — the top team in the NHL — last night. I wonder how the hell that’s […]
Feb
04
2009
The Best Page in the Universe:
I don’t know why Mac users get so defensive when you call them idiots. I mean, Apple is a company that has built its entire user base around the fact that its users can’t do simple things like turn their computers on.
My side! My side! It hurts!
Feb
01
2009
Here’s another really annoying thing about that DirecTV DVR. If you set up a season pass — all episodes of a show — on DirecTiVO, if it can’t record all first-run episodes due to a scheduling conflict, it will tell you. This one does not.
So we started to watch this week’s Lost episode, but […]
Jan
30
2009
From Ann Althouse. A news story from 1981.
This one, from 1969, is even more interesting, and is, in some ways, a better prediction.
Jan
29
2009
Slideshow, season three of Future Weapons.
Jan
10
2009
Wordpress allows you to start something and save it as a draft, and I found this in my drafts. I should have finished and published it in May. Better late than never.
MOGS has posted a good response to my latest Sci-Fi article, a really good response, and it may very well spark a couple of […]
Jan
09
2009
It just has to get done. I’ll be done very soon.
Jan
06
2009
Remote no programee cause IR on receiver no workee. So DirecTV is sending me a receiver, which will get here in 2-5 business days. Until then, the only way we can operate the satellite is from the front of the box.
Grrrrrrrr!
Jan
06
2009
Best Buy sent me to DirecTV (it’s leased equipment). The tech has had me reset the remote, but we can’t program it to operate the DVR. I’m on hold.
We bought this DVR on June 24 2008.
Grrrrrrr . . .
Dec
19
2008
I like Chrome, but there’s one problem, and unfortunately, it’s not a small problem. The screenshot below is from my Wordpress post page. See the blue bars with the + signs on the right corners?
Those use Javascript to open them (they’re all closed), and one of them is trackbacks. In Chrome, the Javascript doesn’t work. […]
Dec
17
2008
It’s very fast. Really, really fast. It hasn’t hung or crashed, which Firefox would have done at least five times by this time, and it doesn’t hog my resources like Netscape Firefox:
It has no interface to speak of, however, and no options I can find. And WP-Spamfree doesn’t seem to like it. But it does […]
Dec
17
2008
I thought I’d try out Chrome. I’m using it now, sort of.
Where’s the damned menu? Look:
Do you see a menu? Where do I change my options? Flush my cache? Access my bookmarks? Do anything at all?
Dec
17
2008
Shell tectonics on Mars.
Ice volcanoes on Titan.
Dec
06
2008
SnagIt screen capture utility. Fast, easy, and automatically dumps your screendump into an editor. It beats the hell out of PrtScr to Photosuck.
Dec
03
2008
Testing embedding a google docs spreadsheet.
Dec
01
2008
Did the Geek Squad instead of formatting the HD, since the only software CD I own but cannot find is the XP CD. It’s running faster now.
Note: Install no new software!
Nov
29
2008
I’ve started my power Excel series, now that I have Office 2007 on this crappy laptop. Check it out and tell me what you think before I drive myself nuts creating more screenshots (i.e., dealing with Photoshop).
Off to do errands, and see if XP is on sale anywhere in town.
Nov
24
2008
After months of failed attempts, I have finally installed Office 2007 on this crappy laptop.
Yay!
This machine is a mess. I’m thinking of backing up the data, then wiping it entirely, and starting from scratch, assuming I can find the XP CDs that came with it. That might solve the firefox problem.
Nov
14
2008
The first extrasolar planet photographed with light.
Nov
08
2008
I couldn’t figure out why there was an HDMI cable with the new monitor. It just hit me. The reason the monitor looks like an HD set is because it essentially is.
I have no idea if there’s an HDMI port on the desktop. I’ll look later.
Nov
05
2008
I got a monitor and hooked it up. So much for Vista plug-n-play. The computer had no idea it was a different monitor. I’m running the setup now, though.
UPDATE: Setup ran fine, it looks great. Crisp, great color.
Nov
05
2008
The monitor on my desktop is dead. You’re no doubt visualizing an LCD monitor, but that’s because you don’t know me. I used to take a lot of flack from my colleagues at the business school because they were (stupid jargon alert!) “first adopters,” people who will buy the latest toy to come out just […]
Oct
19
2008
Last night, with five minutes left in the third period of the Penguins game, my DVR froze. By the time it rebooted, the game was over.
But right after that last goal.
The TiVO never froze. This one freezes about once a week. I should start rebooting it regularly, I guess.
And so far, no BSOD on the […]
Oct
19
2008
The first BSOD happened last night when company was here, so I just rebooted it. This morning, I went into the office to see another BSOD. I rebooted, and didn’t get past the initial screen. I rebooted again, and again, couldn’t get past the initial screen. Four times.
He plugged it in and it came right […]
Oct
19
2008
I plan to be sitting in front of the door at Best Buy when they open at 11. I want that machine to be the first one they look at, because I am not going to put up with them keeping it for a couple of days.
And get a camera battery.
Oct
16
2008
to hate Apple, that is: Environmentalists Cheer on Apple for Getting Greener.