Stuff

Okay, got the ATI thing to work. The remote control driver ABSOLUTELY MUST be upgraded with MMC. Don't even complain until you've done that. Of course, it would help if their packaged driver installed - it looked for Remote Wonder 2.msi, and it distributed it without the 2 part. So I had to start it, rename it before continuing, and then it installed okay. Which leads to my next thing: I get better HDTV reception with this thing from inside my house than outside. Even facing the HDTV transmitters. Weird, no? But it works, kinda. Had 9-1 and 9-2 (NBC) for awhile quite reliably (not so much today), 31-1 (FOX) and 2-1 (WB) still quite good. But that's it. Oh,and I lost all 3 12's (PBS #2). Oh well.

Budget was cut at work because the local CTN's node wasn't renewed, or our contract with them, or something. Sadly, it's a good chunk of money. But, we're just going to cut stuff we don't need from next year's budget and I went over the revised budget with my boss on that (which I usually do anyways - I like knowing the budget and what we're going to do in the future).

Fixed the bikes today. Rode it around less than 1/4 of a mile (or 1/3 a klick if you prefer that). I gotta get in shape. Of course, now that I've got the bike up and running I can do that. Gotta get a new helmet, we seem to have lost hers in the move.

At some point I've really got to call up the local Recon. Rabbi and schedule a time to talk with him regarding converting through his movement. I was looking at Temple Micah, but they require associate membership, which is currently $75 a month (and there's no way I'm spending that - a) my budget isn't firm yet, and b) that's by my way of thinking alot of money). Even half that isn't really doable right now. So we'll see. Shawn got a iMac. I want one now. Okay, so I wanted one before. I want one now too.

Oh, and we're moving from Microsoft stuff at work to Open Source stuff. Like Novell/SuSE linux on our servers (one server next year will be OES Linux/Netware), OpenOffice 2.0 (when it comes out), and we're already using Firefox internally. All because a) my boss and I prefer open source WHEN it's equivalent (which is why firefox is ok but open office 1 is NOT (yet)), and b) Microsoft no longer gives non-profit pricing to any organization that has anything to do with healthcare. Even if they don't treat clients themselves. So, we no longer like them either, so nyah!

Okay, enough junk for now.

ATI, MMC, and the HDTV Wonder

Wow.. ATI continues to amaze me at their apparent inability to make a program that actually works. MMC 9.06.1 came out recently, so I upgraded (my MMC had broken installing 9.03 (thanks ATI!) so I wiped it out and then tried MMC 9.06.1. Now, my wife got me this card for Christmas (yeah, yeah). Anyways, it hasn't worked reliably since she bought it. I mean, is it REALLY that hard to make a program that reads the bloody data from the card? Other manufacturers don't seem to have this problem. I can't even get the normal TV functionality to work! Now, I'm a programmer, and I know making programs, particularly for those who are new to the business can be hard, but this is ATI! They've been doing TV cards for YEARS. You'd think they'd have figured out by now how to make an MMC program that doesn't crash and is able to tell you in either english OR tech-ese what's wrong. Just crashing and letting Windows tell me it crashed in mmc71.dll is NOT enough.

In case...

In case Matt finds this blog, yes, it's my blog. HAH! Anyways...

Okay, got my MSDN thing at work today. So now I have the CDs to run all the software (which is pretty cool, I can now run Virtual PC and test out network configs, test the website on Win98 with IE5, etc..)

Still working on Mom's computer - it's a halfbreed Compaq setup. The repair disks? Well, they don't work, somewhere on them is a bad file that verified just fine when I made them but now makes the setup almost worthless. I had to wipe the HD, try the Compaq setup, then, when it reboots, stick the drive in my computer, copy over a retail WinXP setup on top of the compaq winxp folder, then resume setup on her hardware. It's a half breed setup, and it didn't like it - some files are still missing, and I had to call Microsoft and have them give me a new install ID (it's the same hardware, but I think they've got a flag in the WinXP setups for OEMs that is different from retail, so it looked like a compaq but didn't smell like one, or something like that).

At work we're going to deploy Novell - I'm quite happy with them and their Linux direction, and I think my boss will be happy to actually have a support contract we can use (unlike Microsoft). I wouldn't be surprised if I was able to get Microsoft mostly out of the network (except possibly the SQL Server stuff) within 2 years, but things can change - we'll see.