Computer Frustrations

I've been really frustrated with my Windows Vista box. When I first got the machine, last summer, I loved Vista. Now, with each day, I tend to loathe it more and more. This is due to many frustrations I have with it.

Things seem to freeze all the time. Whether it's Internet Explorer (yes, I use it to check the compatibility of websites I work on), Windows Explorer, Windows Sidebar, or pretty much anything else. I don't run a lot of programs at once and have 2gb of RAM (which Windows while idling uses about 44% of) and these things still freeze.

Things just don't work. Windows Media Center is a piece of crap and can't play DVDs without freezing or taking forever to load. I went to burn a cd this morning using Nero and clicked "Burn" forgetting to put in the cd. No problem, Nero notified me and I put in the blank disc. What's that? Windows decided to drop the drive altogether? Nice. So then I had to reboot the machine so it would pick up drive. All to burn the cd.

Another factor weighs in on my continuing hatred for Vista. My MacBook. While I do find some faults with OSX, for the most part, it's a good OS. It's fast on my MacBook, there's good software, and the look and feel is great. And I never run into any of the problems I run into on Windows. My next desktop computer is going to be a Mac. Too bad that won't be for a while.

I could install Linux on it, which I do have Ubuntu installed via Wubi, but I don't want to have to do a lot of work to get something to just work. I don't want to go around the bend to get my ATI card to work to it's full potential all while sacrificing other aspects of an environment I like (If I want to use the ATI drivers for desktop effects I can't play games or have a screensaver because the screen flickers while doing those things). Too bad OSX won't work on PC hardware (without mass amounts of hackery).

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SOTW: Tech N9ne- One Good Time

Kansas City, Missouri's Tech N9ne recently came out with a new album entitled Killer. With each new album Tech reaches more and more people and gets closer and closer to the mainstream. This album is the closest he has ever been. He is selling out shows all across the United States, hooking up with major rap stars, and even has had his video for Bout ta Bubble, from his last album, on MTV. His new album debuted at number 12 on the charts, a very respectable debut for someone who is independent in every sense of the word. He has not had any promotion on TV or radio for this album. All the promotion has been in interviews in magazines and his amazing performances at shows.

Tech N9ne is definitely rewriting the books on being an independent rap superstar. You need no look any further than Killer for proof. Ice Cube, Paul Wall, and Scarface are a few of the bigger names that appear on the two-disc album. You can even tell that Tech is reaching for the mainstream with his selection of beats on the album. It's not his best album, but has several great songs in the 32 track set. The best song on the album, in my opinion, is a song in which Tech does what he does best. It's a song in which Tech takes us on a trip into his psyche and let's us into his deepest emotions. This song is about how he wishes he could cry just once. Everything would be better if he could cry and the tears could wash away all the bad things in his life. It's a pretty deep song and it's not every day you hear a rapper talk about crying, let alone wishing they could cry. Have a listen and purchase the album.

[See post to listen to audio]

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Wisdom Teeth

Yesterday I had my wisdom teeth removed.

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TBS: Very Annoying

There are a few shows I watch on TBS. I missed an episode of one of them. Luckily, at TBS.com you can watch episodes for free. Or not. I go there to catch up on a missed episode and guess what. We're sorry, you must have Microsoft Windows to watch this video. Wtf? Seriously. Aren't we at a point where specific operating systems shouldn't be a requirement to watch a video on the internet? It's not like my MacBook is a new invention and Macs haven't been around for a while. They have. And their market share is growing. Rapidly. Support other operating systems so you don't alienate users. I know I'll never be going back to their website again. That's a shame, because I could have generated them revenue by visiting to watch videos. Now if I miss episodes, I'll have to find some other way to watch them.

Now if I could just get Adobe to allow for the most recent flash to be on the Wii so I can watch Hulu, I'd be happy. Not the Wii's fault. Not Hulu's fault. It's all on Adobe.

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History Books

I've been craving some new history books lately. I really like early 20th Century American history. Topics that I've enjoyed reading about the most seem to be about business. The rise of advertising, franchising, and rise of an urban society interest me a great deal. I've read books about Franchising in America, the creation of American food in Selling 'Em by the Sack, the story of American beer in Ambitious Brew and the Rise of Modern Business in Great Britain, the United States, and Japan.

Last night, I purchased a book called 1920: The Year of Six Presidents. I never knew that six men who were/would be Presidents of the United States ran in that election. It should be a very interesting book. Does anyone have any suggestions for some more reading regarding 20th Century American history?

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The Messiah, Part II

I found a very interesting article on Time's website. The article talks about a tablet that has been found which talks about the rising of a messiah after three days in the grave.

A 3-ft.-high tablet romantically dubbed "Gabriel's Revelation" could challenge the uniqueness of the idea of the Christian Resurrection. The tablet appears to date authentically to the years just before the birth of Jesus and yet -- at least according to one Israeli scholar -- it announces the raising of a messiah after three days in the grave. If true, this could mean that Jesus' followers had access to a well-established paradigm when they decreed that Christ himself rose on the third day -- and it might even hint that they they could have applied it in their grief after their master was crucified. Keep reading at Time.com

Of course, if you know your history, or have seen the movie Zeitgeist, you'd know that the Christians took a lot of mythology from past religions and deities, including being born upon a virgin, the date of Jesus' birth, the miracles he could perform, etc. If you've not watched the video, go watch it now.

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Teddy Roosevelt Changes the American Language

In America we spell certain words a bit different. Colour is color, favour is favor, parlour is parlor. Have you ever wondered why? Well, I was reading a good book called One-night Stands with American History and found out the answer: President Theodore Roosevelt.

On August 27, 1906 T.R. decided to change the American language. Some changes were small and were quickly adopted by American dictionaries. Many words had silent vowels removed, such as the words I listed. Also changed were words like rumor, which was rumour. Some of the other changes were not as elegant and were not kept. For example, the word kissed became kist and blushed became blusht. As soon as Congress came back from their recess there was a great debate. Shortly after, T.R.'s changes were knocked down and the Government Printing Office was ordered to "observe and adhere to the standard of orthography prescribed in generally accepted dictionaries of the English language." Of course, since the dictionaries had already adopted some of the new spellings, they stuck with us. I bet T.R. "blusht" when he heard he had been beaten.

SOURCE: Mark Sullivan, Our Times (New York: Scribner's, 1930-36), IV, 162-90.

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Goodbye msnbot

User-agent: msnbot

Disallow: /

Yes, I've blocked you msnbot. I'm tired of finding you in my stats coming from random searches that don't even show my site in the search results, such as "keeping," "album," "comments," or any of the other thousand or so one word searches you come to my site for. I don't show up in your search results (at least not high enough for me to care) nor do I really want to show up in the top 100 pages in search results for the word "keeping." So, you are no longer welcome here. I don't want to see you on my property anymore. I don't really care that this may drop me out of live.com's search altogether. It's a crappy search engine and anyone who uses it is an idiot and shouldn't come to my site anyway. So, in conclusion, stop visiting my site msnbot. You're not welcome here.

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Cancer

Just a quick update.

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The Dark Knight

I have to say I am extremely excited about The Dark Knight coming out. The movie looks to be fantastic. The viral marketing is like nothing I've ever seen before. Just check out Gotham Cable News, Gotham National Bank, and The Gotham Times for examples.

I thought Batman Begins was great and I knew they had to make another. Every preview for TDK I've seen has blown me away. This does not look like a comic book movie. This looks like a crime thriller, such as Heat. It's being compared to The Godfather II, meaning it's a sequel that is so good it blows the first film out of the water. There are even whispers going around that if Heath Ledger doesn't win an Oscar for this it will be a travesty. Christopher Nolan is a talented director and Christian Bale is one of the top actors in the business.

I'm counting down the days until its release. I've seen every Batman movie in the theater. I've seen every one, since the first back in 1989, when I was 6, with my dad. I'm looking forward to going with him. It's one of our traditions. 19 years of Batman movies. Thankfully, Christopher Nolan was able to revive the franchise after the horrible Batman and Robin and hopefully he'll come back for a third in the series reboot. Until then, I'll continue to drool over more news and previews of TDK and wait impatiently for the day my dad and I can see it together.

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My Ten Favorite Music Videos

Last night I was thinking about my favorite music videos of all time after looking at Michael Gondry's list of his favorite 25.

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Hope for Songbird

I recently downloaded and installed Songbird .6. Songbird is the open source music player that is based on Mozilla code. With each release Songbird gets better and better. With this release comes support for larger media libraries, smoother scrolling, improved memory management, faster search, and a bunch of new add-ons. I have a feeling that Songbird will eventually replace Winamp for me. Since AOL took over Winamp it seems to on a steady downhill spiral. The plugins for Winamp are pretty crappy and if you use a skin that isn't one of the defaults, most of the time the plugins (if they require their own pane) look out of place. This is not so for Songbird. The add-ons are just like the add-ons in Firefox and seamlessly integrate into the program. I have a feeling that there will be a huge community to support Songbird, just as their is with Firefox, that will create great add-ons and themes, or feathers. It's not going to replace Winamp just yet on my system. While the memory management is better, it still takes up quite a bit of process power. The search often freezes the application as well. The guys behind Songbird are on the right track though. I can't wait until I'm able to use it full time without any problems.

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George Carlin You Will be Missed

1937-2008

He was one of my favorite comedians.

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Be Kind Rewind

Last night I watched the movie Be Kind Rewind starring Jack Black and Mos Def.

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Firefox 3 Download Day

Firefox 3 will be released later today.

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Fox News is Racist

I really don't understand how the American public is letting Fox news get away with their smearing of Obama.

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I Can't Watch This

Earlier this evening I tried watching a movie called Funny Games. The basic synopsis is as follows:

In this exploration of our violent society and how depictions of violence reflect and shape our culture, a middle-class housewife Anna tells the story of how she and her husband George and their 10-year-old son Georgie submitted both physically and mentally to the torture, violence, and death foisted upon them by two young, unexpected, white-gloved visitors at their weekend vacation retreat near a lake.

Violence has never really bothered me in movies. I've watched movies that have been considered incredibly violent. There has only been one movie where the violence actually bothered me. That was in the remake of The Hills Have Eyes. That movie was not a horror movie as much as it was violence-porn, meaning they tried to get away with as much as possible and still have it rated R. I started watching this movie tonight and I couldn't. It was making me sick, and it wasn't that violent when I turned it off. Maybe it was because the serial killers were incredibly nice but you could tell they had bad things in mind for the family. Something about it just disturbed me. When I started to think about it, the new Rambo film gave me this same feeling. I didn't think much of it at the time because I was ill as I was watching it but now I wonder if the feeling was due to the violence in the movie. Strangely, movies like The Departed, The Boondock Saints, and Pulp Fiction don't bother me. Maybe I'm getting too old for such violent movies. I typically am a lover of all movie genres, but this may be one I have to start straying away from.

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Stand in Line for Me

So, the day that the iPhone 3g comes out, July 11th, I will be having my wisdom teeth removed.

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Lego Indiana Jones

In celebration of the end of the school year, I went out and purchased Lego Indiana Jones for the Wii. I've been watching videos of this game for a while and was looking forward to playing it. This game is really fun. It is very easy to play and has great graphics. The story is really good with a bunch of humor added to the original Indiana Jones story lines. All of the original three movies make up this game. The only thing that I wish was different are save points. You can only save once you finish a scene. For someone like me, who only likes to play for 10 or 15 minutes at a time, being able to save mid-level would be a welcome addition. I guess the one good thing about it is since you have to complete the level it increases my chances of finishing the game. So far, I'm only in the first movie, but I can't wait to get through the next couple. The Last Crusade is my favorite and I'm looking forward to playing that as a game. I think the developers of this game did a great job incorporating all the major aspects of the movies and injecting some humor to the Lego characters. I can't wait to see what the Lego version of Batman has in store.

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The School Year in Review

There are two things that are special about this post. First, it is my 600th post. I've been posting for four years now and it just amazes me that I've posted 599 posts before this. Thank you to all that read my site. I hope you've enjoyed reading it as much as I've enjoyed writing. Second, it's the last day of school. Now that the school year is (almost) over, let me sum up my thoughts.

ISS teachers have to have the toughest jobs (besides SpEd teachers). Besides dealing with the worst kids (behavioral-wise), you have to jump in where their regular teachers left off. When you're dealing with three grades this makes it even more difficult.

Breaks are nice. During MAP testing I actually got a couple breaks. Other than that, I didn't have a break all year long. I don't even have a lunch break. I'm with the kids for 7 hours straight, from 7:15 until 2:15. I do believe I lost some sanity.

If silence is golden, I want platinum. Being in a setting as restrictive as this means no talking. I talk to explain homework to students one-on-one, but other than that, no talking. I'm someone who likes to develop a rapport with students. You can't do that easily in this job. The silence really is deafening. What little sanity was left after not having any breaks, I lost due to the silence. Of course, once the school day was over you couldn't get me to shut up. I feel bad for the other teachers.

I would never do this job again. It's true. This job sucked so bad that I could not fathom doing it again. There are no breaks, dealing with the troublemakers everyday tends to kill your passion for teaching, and hearing one thing from district office about what I can and should do and something totally different from building administration tends to lead to a lot of gray area.

Luckily there were a few teachers who helped me keep my sanity over the year. These were the ones I shared many a happy hour with on Friday afternoons. For those wonderful people, I will forever be grateful.

So what is in store for me? Well, if you didn't catch one of my previous posts, I'm going to go work for a company that creates, manages, and hosts websites for churches, organizations, and small businesses. It should be a fun time and I'm looking forward to the change in scenery.

So there you have it. It's been a long year and I'm glad it is over. At the same time, looking back, though this year has been slow, it's amazing to me that I've written 600 posts now. I hope you keep reading.

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