Author: Matt (Page 33 of 41)

Reloading my machine: A Windows XP Drama

01/17/2007 / Matt / 0 Comments

I had to reload my machine this past weekend. I was very proud of the fact that it was going on 2.5 years and Windows XP SP2 was still as solid as a rock. You can imagine my disappointment Sunday morning when I discovered my machine hopelessly infected with some kind of combination popupware/virus. Being the IT dork that I am I spent a good hour trying to clean it up, but the damage was done & all I could do was admit it would be safer just to reload.

The first step was to backup what I need & do a quick list of what I had installed. While I do keep all of my very important data on a separate RAID drive, I did have several gigs worth of stuff on my desktop (including some Jazz selections Christa and I spent hours selecting with our friend Ryan for the wedding) that while I could get away with losing, would just just be a pain to recompile. Things started to get really complicated at this point and required another cup of coffee to mull over… The virus piece started producing automatic shutdowns every 1 minute, and if I aborted that would render the machine hopelessly useless by killing off all kinds of services requires to make anything happen in windows. Safe mode should offer me a method to get in and move the gigs of files I need to a backup external firewire drive, right? BZZZT!! Safe mode by definition only loads up the minimal subset of drivers needed for Windows to operate. So how the crap was I supposed to back my stuff up? Luckily being an IT dork pays off here as I knew I could run a windows repair without having my desktop deleted, and hopefully fix stuff enough to get in & throw everything on my firewire drive.

By now I’ve managed to fight with Windows for almost 2 hours and have only gotten to the point that I could finally reload the machine. Fast forward another uneventful 2 hours of watching Windows XP install configure and prepare to run, having to track down drivers, update to SP2, and then install the remaining 62 critical security updates. So for 4 hours into this little project and all I’ve got to show for it is a fresh reload of Windows. Super! Add another few hours to reinstall the rest of the required set of apps, all my assorted XP tweaks, and other miscellaneous tricks, and you’ve got a full day of doing not much else but waiting for things to happen on my computer.

So it’s now Wednesday morning, and after tinkering around a bit more last night, I’m pretty confidant that I have everything set the way I want it, and the machine is running spectacular. I just hate that I had to forfeit a few days of use to get it that way…

The North American International Snooze-Fest

01/16/2007 / Matt / 1 Comment

Went to the North American International Auto Show in downtown Detroit last night, and I’ve got to say I was completely underimpressed. We got there at about 7pm last night, and I was initially concerned we wouldn’t have enough time to completely explore the show. We ran the full circle around Cobo Hall in a little over an hour and a half and felt like we missed half of the show, but we had covered all the manufacturers including the Chinese company hidden in the basement.

If the crowd told any story, it mirrored my own feelings towards the American automakers; hello unimpressive mediocrity. The only vehicles remotely interesting were the concept cars – which we all know will never make it to production as they are just ridiculously flashy and gimmicky to catch the eye and make it appear that the company has great new ideas coming down the pipe. Looking out over the floor of Cobo, the highest concentration of people seemed to be at every car company other than Ford, GM, or Dodge. The only exception to this was the Hummer display, but thats only because it was filled with wanna-be-rappers & pretentious-mid-life-crisis-compensaters. None of the display areas really held my attention for more than a few minutes. What happened to the elaborate shows every hour on the hour; the pyrotechnics, the Cirque du Soleil ripoffs?

There were only 3 cars that even peaked my interest, and none of them were American. The Volvo C30, the VW Fahrenheit GTI, & the Scion tC were all pretty nifty, though only the Scion is remotely in my price range.

All in all I left the show very unimpressed & worried about American auto ingenuity. I would have been upset if I had paid to get in.

Problems with Microsoft .Net Framework & applications – 1.1 vs 2.0

01/15/2007 / Matt / 1 Comment

I had to reload my machine yesterday (story here). It was not fun. In the process of installing applications I came across a peculiar issue with Microsoft’s .Net Framework which didn’t appear to have much documentation, so I’m documenting it to save others with this problem time & effort.

In reloading my machine there were a few applications that required the .Net Framework 2.0 from Microsoft. I then attempted to install Sony’s Sound Forge v8 to find that it will only run using the 1.1 version of the framework. So there’s a problem: different applications requiring different versions of the .Net framework. I already had 2.0 installed, could I install 1.1 and be able to run all the apps I need? The answer was suprisingly simple: YES!

Microsoft in a fit of surprising sanity & intelligence designed the .Net framework such that

applications requiring 1.1 will only call 1.1, while applications requiring 2.0 will only call 2.0
each successive version is standalone as to avoid DLL hell

It blows my mind that for once Microsoft did something right! Now if they could just apply this to Vista or Office 2007 the world would be a better place…

Monty is getting back to normal

01/14/2007 / Matt / 0 Comments

Just a quick update tonight that we’ve successfully weaned Monty off the anti-nausea medication, and he seems to be keeping food down on his own now. He has also returned to his normal crazy-ass self. He’s still on his antibiotics for a few more days, so it looks like he’s making a quick recovery. Will we know what was wrong? Probably not. He’s got a follow up appointment on Wednesday and I anticipate he’ll get a clean bill of health.

Man’s best friend and my Friday night

01/13/2007 / Matt / 0 Comments

Monty had his vet appointment last night. I think ideally we were both hoping that we would go in, they’d be able to diagnose his severe stomach flu-like symptoms, and we’d come home and he’d be better. Unfortunately, thats not quite how last night played out. Two hours, a battery of several blood tests, x-rays, and a urine analysis, and I’m not sure we’ll ever know what has caused his sudden sickness. But that’s only 1/2 of the story…

They first took him back for a set of x-rays to see if he had an obstruction in his digestive tract. It was good to see everything looking ok from the outside, and other than a large gas pocket in his stomach (which is par-for-the-course for this stink bomb anyway) that came back normal.

Next up they drew blood to run some tests. 10 minutes later the doctor came in and scared the living shit out of us; according to the results, Monty should be comatose with acute diabetes & liver failure. I give her credit for realizing something wasn’t right, so they ran a second blood test as well as a urine analysis to rule out diabetes. The 2nd blood test came back in within the norm except for one value: Alanine Aminotransferase (ALT). ALT is an enzyme considered liver-specific in dogs and cats. It is used as a screening test for liver disease but will not diagnose the disease itself. You may also see an increase in ALT when there is damage to liver cells, skeletal muscles, the pancreas and the muscles of the heart.
Insert shock here. Could Monty really have liver disease, or did he just get into something that his liver is working overtime to get out of his system? Luckily the liver is one of the most resilient organs in the body…
At this point we were given a choice: take him to an emergency vet for overnight observation, or have him prepped to be observed at home. We chose to give up our Friday night, so they gave him a shot of B vitamins, a camel hump of fluids on his shoulder to be absorbed to combat dehydration, and a shot of some anti-nausea medication. We also received some antibiotics & more anti-nausea as a prescription to take home.

As soon as we got home he wanted to eat. We gave him several small meals of some wet food all of which he wolfed down. We stayed up with him until almost 1am and he appeared MUCH better than he had the previous evening, so we were very positive going to bed. I woke up around 5am to Monty puking on the carpet, which in all reality is better than the 4 or 5 times i woke up Wednesday and Thursday night to puking.

So I guess right now we’re taking baby steps. He started on his antibiotics last night, and has continued to eat and drink this morning. He seems much perkier and more himself today running around like a crazy dog, so we’ll update his condition later tonight.

How to tell you are getting old

01/12/2007 / Matt / 0 Comments

I can really tell I’m getting old. I used to be able to go out during the week and not worry about having a few drinks or missing my bedtime for a few hours. Not so much anymore…

Christa and I met up with “the girls” last night for some drinks at Gusoline Alley in Royal Oak. Although we were only out until 11:30pm or so, getting up this morning at 6:30am was not the highlight of my week.

I can remember staying out all hours of the night and only getting a few short hours of sleep before getting up in the college days. How naive I was to think I could keep doing that. Now I become a crotchety old man if I don’t get my full 8hrs of sleep.

The joy of animals

01/11/2007 / Matt / 1 Comment

Between Bailey the “awkwardly acrobatic” Cat & Monty the “if I eat this will I get sick?” Dog I’ve cleaned up more spilled coffee & puke piles in the past 24 hours than I have in the past year.

There’s nothing better than snuggling up with a puke breath dog in bed…

Update:

Monty is going to the vet at 5pm today (01/12) as he hasn’t been able to keep anything down for 24 hours.

Detroit Revival: Midtown

01/09/2007 / Matt / 0 Comments

Detroit is in the midst of a revival, and while the wounds of years of neglect & rot will take some time to heal there truly are measurable strides that the downtown corridor is slowly returning to life.

Just today I discovered an article in the paper about the resurgence of a neighborhood of spectacularly concentrated poverty & blight: the Cass Corridor.

Cass Corridor 2002

Years ago, the Cass Corridor was Detroit’s Chinatown. In the past few years, there has been a resurgence of interest in the area for development. Lofts & trendy boutiques have sprouted up amidst the shells of abandoned buildings. Students have returned to consider the area residencies. The area has even been fashionably renamed “Midtown”, although the Cass Corridor stigma still remains.

It’s always great to hear good news coming from Detroit!

Mystery on Rural Road: Woman Found Dead

01/08/2007 / Matt / 2 Comments

Original article from The Hamilton Spectator:

Police hope an autopsy scheduled for today will help unravel the mystery of how the partially clad body of a woman ended up in a bush area on the edge of Powerline Road West, near Copetown.
The body, which bore no obvious signs of trauma, was discovered around 11 a.m. yesterday on the north side of Powerline Road West between Highway 52 and Field Road. Acting Staff Sergeant Kevin Stanley said the body had been there for a day or two.

Many of those reading this blog know of the location where the body was found. This is all we really know at the moment, and you can bet we’re all following this story…

Body Found on the Farm

Update:

The body of a woman found last weekend on the farm property has been identified as a Hamilton woman last seen Friday January 5th. Police are calling it a “suspicious death” but so far have not used the word “murder”.

Matt’s secret to awesome burgers

01/07/2007 / Matt / 0 Comments

Some of you have been over and had the Matt-burger-experience.
Here’s the delicious secret:

1 lb ground sirlion
1/2 red onion, diced
palmful of Montreal Steak Seasoning (to taste)
2-3 Tbsp red wine vinegar (to taste)
2-3 Tbsp Worcestershire Sauce (to taste)
splash of lemon juice

Mix the ingredients in a bowl until all of the liquid is absorbed. Form into 3 patties. Grill 2 minutes per side on high heat to sear in juices, then ~3-6min per side on low heat to cook to desired doneness.