Al's Journal

Al's Guide to cleaning up your Windows computer

2009-12-14T09:44:48Z

I was asked recently by a friend to help her clean up / speed up her computer. (Actually, I'm asked to do this by about half a dozen people daily at work, but that's besides the point.)

Rather than writing it out in an email, I thought perhaps a publicly accessible LJ post would be more useful.

Before You Start
You will need some little software tools and utilities to make your PC cleanup easier.
Download these free utilities:

CCleaner (be sure to uncheck Yahoo toolbar)
Autoruns
Revo Uninstaller (optional)

CCleaner installs itself like a typical application.
Autoruns is a zip file containing a couple .exe files and a help file or two. Extract the autoruns.exe file and put it in the c:\windows\system32 folder.

Part 1: Programs on Startup

Windows programs like to install themselves to run on startup. Most of these items don't need to be running as soon as you turn your computer on, and quite frequently they don't need to be running at all, ever. They're what's known as memory resident
processes, and the less of them you have, the speedier and more responsive your computer will be. The autoruns application you just downloaded and copied into your system32 folder is perfect for hunting down extraneous applications set to run on startup.

Start > Run > autoruns > OK

If this is the first time you're using autoruns, it will probably prompt you with an OK button or two. You will then get a multi-tabbed window and it'll scan through your computer slowly populating a big list of technical looking stuff. Do not panic.

When the scanning is done, you should be able to click the "Options" menu item and select "Hide Microsoft and Windows Entries".
Hit the F5 key to refresh the list (it'll rescan).

This will (theoretically) prevent you from accidentally turning off something vital to making Windows work properly. It also makes it much easier to spot the extraneous stuff.

Select the Logon tab

The "Everything" tab is overwhelming and not really within the focus of this article. For our purposes we'll stick with the Logon tab.

There's really no right or wrong answer when it comes to what you should run on startup. It's entirely a personal preference thing. If you have antivirus software (you should) it's best to leave that running on startup, but you can probably do without things like skype, google talk, AIM, quicktime, itunes, winamp, and those sorts of things.

Uncheck the box next to any programs you would like to disable from running on startup.
You do not need to click save in autoruns. Just uncheck what you don't want, and close the window.

Part 2: CCleaning your registry and temp files
CCleaner (Crap Cleaner) is a great program which saves us both a lot of time and explaining.

Close all web browsers you have running. (Yes, even this browser window. Copy this into a word document or bookmark this page or something.)
Open CCleaner, it should default to the "Cleaner" tab.
In the "Windows" sub-tab, I like to select all checkboxes except for "Wipe Free Space".
In the "Applications" sub-tab, I check everything except my Firefox and Chrome cookies. (This just saves me from having to redo my preferences on various websites.)
Click "Run Cleaner" (The cleaning process can several minutes, depending on how much stuff it finds on your system.)

When the Cleaner finishes, it should give you a spiffy report saying how much hard drive space it freed up.

Change to the Registry tab in CCleaner.
All checkboxes should be checked.
Click "Scan for Issues"
When the scan completes, click "Fix selected issues"
I typically choose to fix all issues and say "no" when prompted if I want to save changes to a file. If you're feeling cautious, feel free to save the changes to a .reg file so you can undo them later.

Your machine should now be booting and running a bit smoother. Close out of CCleaner and reboot to let the changes take effect.

Part 3: Further cleanup - remove crap applications

There's no way for me to detail here all the applications which may have somehow found their way onto your Windows machine. Hopefully you have some idea of what software you use frequently and what software you find irritating. Chances are there might be some annoying toolbar(s) installed on your system you didn't intend to install, but piggybacked their way onto your machine when you installed some other program. Revo Uninstaller is like the regular Windows Add/Remove Programs on steroids. When you uninstall an application through Revo, it'll run the applications built-in uninstaller, and then after that's done, it'll scan to make sure every last remnant of the application is really truly gone. I use it in "moderate" mode, but if you're feeling cautious, go ahead n' use "safe" mode.

Part 4: Defragment!

So, defragmenting is not quite the panacea it's been trumped up to be, but it's still handy to do every now and then. Over time, your computer writes your data in various physical spots on your hard drive. When it can't find a big enough spot to write a full file contiguously in one location, it'll break it up into smaller bits to fit it wherever's available. This is known as fragmentation. The reason this is undesirable is that it means your hard drive's little needle has to jump all over the place to read that file back when you want to access that data. That slows things down for you. Defragmenting forces your computer to reorganize your data physically to avoid fragmentation. It's slow and typically takes many hours to do it, hence I recommend running it overnight while you sleep.

Start > Run > dfrg.msc > OK
Disk Defragmenter should open up. Click the "Defragment" button. Go to bed.

Part 5: Notes and Stuff

Ideally you should have at least 15% of your drive free for optimal system performance. This gives your computer enough space to shuffle things around for defragmentation.
You may also want to head over to the Microsoft Updates site to make sure your system is running all the latest fixes from Microsoft. They release security fixes on a pretty regular basis.
Run one antivirus software program. More is not better, in this instance. Antivirus programs running at the same time will compete with one another. I recommend Microsoft Security Essentials because it's free and doesn't slow my system down.
Don't use Internet Explorer if you can help it. IE 8 is better than previous editions, but IE is still the #1 entry point for viruses and malware to get on your system. Firefox and Chrome are much less vulnerable.
Be aware of what you have running in your system tray (that's the little area where the clock lives). Each of those little icons is a program which is running in the background. If you have more than half a dozen things running in there then it's probably time to examine what you're running on startup.

Guido

2009-04-22T17:33:11Z

I just met the guy who wrote f'ing Python. (The programming language, not the movie.)

Why?

Because he works in my office.

I swear sometimes it's surreal the type of people who work here.

Just popping back in...

2009-03-17T07:26:14Z

Time for my tri-annual post! (I can recall a time when I posted something almost daily. Tri-Annual? This is just sad...)

I have talked to a few of you more recently than others, but I'm going to go with the lowest-common-denominator here, and assume you all haven't heard from me in a damn long time.

I'm still happy, employed and living in San Francisco... for the moment. It kinda feels like any of those things might change with very little notice these days though, which bears some explanation.

Sarah, the amazingly talented woman that she is, has been accepted to Columbia for their MFA program in theatre. It's a ridiculously exclusive thing to get into, being that they only accept 18 students per year, and that's out of several hundred that audition. I'm very excited for her. :)

However, this basically means that I'm facing the rather difficult position of moving to NYC or living in SF without Sarah for at least the next 3 years. It doesn't take long for me to decide that the former is definitely better than the latter. I don't want to leave SF. I love my job, I love my apartment, I love my bay area friends... I'm comfortable here. I still feel like there's so much of life in CA that I haven't even begun to take advantage of it all. And yet I'm leaving.

I'm hoping to be able to keep my job and simply get a transfer to the NYC office. I give it about a 50% likelihood of happening. It almost certainly won't happen at the same time that Sarah needs to be in NY for school, which will mean some sort of staged migration... her probably going to NY first, and me following along whenever I can. Hopefully not too long thereafter. [hope hope]

I have jokingly commanded gut that he will move to NYC with us and be our roommate. He agreed, so uh... assuming he's not lying, that's at least a bit of a bonus for my NYC move. It'll also be nice to see the rest of my NYC peeps. Perhaps give me a chance to re-forge some neglected friendships.

I'm definitely not looking forward to having real winters again. I thought I'd escaped snow once and for all. [sigh]

I've made some amazing friendships here. It'll be very hard to see those dwindle with the whole time/distance thing. Despite my percieved ability to make friends quickly, it still feels like it takes a long time to build up a list of friends to the point where I feel comfortable.

That's an odd thought. I require a rather lengthy list of friends in my vicinity before I feel comfortable. I wonder what the critical number is? Weird.

It's late, I should get to bed. Perhaps I'll post more soon, since there is, in fact, more to post...

Today, a recap

2008-11-16T09:10:00Z

It's been a ridiculously long time since I've so much as glanced at LJ, let alone posted anything. I always have some grandiose plans to rejoin the ranks of LJ and spill all manner of interesting things about my life onto the intarwebs, but then life sidetracks me and I end up with... no LJ post. Today I will shrug off the curse of no time for LJ... if only just for today.

My wife Sarah and I spent the whole day together. (Still getting used to the concept of having a wife, but it's a good getting-used-to.) It was an absolutely gorgeous day today. We rode our bikes down the mountain we call home and to a great breakfast place in The Mission called Boogaloo's. Typically there's a line out the door and down the block to get a seat there... today, no waiting at all, just rode right up, locked our bikes, and sat down at one of the sidewalk tables outside. Damn good coffee cake... not quite as good as Hobee's (for those of you bay area peeps who're familiar with them) but still darn good.

We overhear some people talking about heading down to the Civic Center (that's SF city hall) to protest the passing of CA Proposition 8 (repealing gay marriage). Boogaloo's is about 2 miles away from Civic Center and even that far away there's an obvious presence of people heading towards CC to go to the protest. People carrying signs and wearing Tshirts, etc. We finished up our breakfast and headed off to join the protest.

It was a huge throng of people. We stayed for about 45 minutes, meandering our way through the crowd, trying to hear the people shouting stuff into the PA system, but it was difficult at best. The crowd just kept growing too... by the time we left it had nearly doubled and showed no signs of letting up anytime soon. It made me happy to know that while greater California may be full of homophobic religious zealotry, my town is about as polar opposite of that as one can get.

I have a game I like to play, in which I try to spot at least 5 people I know from work every weekend. This is just my best guesstimate as to how many people I bump into on average, but I lately I've come to think of it as a quota. I only saw 2 at the protest. I'm sure there were probably many more, but spotting them would've been harder than finding Waldo in a pile of fake Waldos.

Sarah pointed out that we were being rather cavalier about the gay marriage issue. Which, admittedly, we were. We were mostly just there people watching. I mean, I'm glad to have been there and shown my support, but when it came right down to it, I felt like a spectator more than a participant. I don't agree with Prop 8, I didn't vote for it, I'll gladly sign petitions to have it repealed, but when it comes right down to it, it doesn't affect me directly, and thus I'm less compelled to take significant action about it. Which I realize is total B.S. -- human rights / equality issues are about me, they're about everyone. Sure, maybe this time I'm not the oppressed one, but what about the next time some dumbass proposition gets put on the ballot? In retrospect, I'm ashamed I didn't get more involved while I was there. :\

We rode our way west away from the protest and over to Golden Gate Park. We stopped to look at the bison. They weren't doin' much... just sitting around in the sun. Y'know, as bison tend to do.

We rode further west. We came across some guys racing model speed boats in one of the ponds. Those things are freakin' fast. I'd estimate they were going at least 40mph... which, in a smallish pond, is quite impressive. There was a guy using a fishing rod trying to hook and reel in one of the other boats which had apparently run out of fuel in the middle of the pond. I think he succeeded in rescuing it right about the time we left.

We continued all the way west to Ocean Beach. Ocean Beach was pretty busy, it being a beautiful day n' all. Lots of surfers. Sarah n' I went barefoot and played some frisbee. I sometimes forget I live near the ocean, because I rarely see it. Yes, sadly I live like 4 miles away from the ocean and I almost never see it. It's not exactly on the way to anywhere I go frequently, and it's generally obscured from my view by a mountain. I've adapted to living near mountains, but the ocean still feels weird.

We left the beach and headed back through GG park. We stopped for some Jamba Juice. We headed back to SoMa (neighborhood South of Market Street) to check out the GreenFestival which was pretty awesome. Lots of neo-hippies hocking their wares. Sarah shopped for some pants. We had a knish. (You'd be amazed how hard it is to find a damn knish in this town.)

We biked back to The Mission to catch the bus up the hill home. (Sarah doesn't like biking up the hill. I've mostly come to terms with having to bike up it.) We sat on the bus bench and waited... suddenly surrounded by 3 obnoxious teenage girls and an even more obnoxious teenage boy. Seriously, they were standing around us like we were a damn coffee table. Gotta love urban youth. :\

We got on the bus... made it about 8 blocks, and then the guy across from us starts puking all over himself. Not once, not twice, not even three times... FOUR TIMES IN A ROW. He was barely conscious as it was... presumably drunk as hell. He looked a bit like Terrence Howard but older, shorter, and covered in puke. I alerted the bus driver, who promptly stopped the bus, and confronted Not-Terrence. Not-Terrence had no idea where he was or where he was going. I think the bus driver managed to determine that Not-Terrence was, in fact, trying to get somewhere in The Mission, which is exactly where the bus had just left (we were in Noe Valley now). Upon ejecting Not-Terrence from the bus, the bus driver told everyone to get off the bus because it was no longer in service. MUNI policy dictates that biohazards must be cleaned up before a bus can be in use again. We all got off the bus. Some woman started bitching about not-Terrence
being so inconsiderate and now an entire busload of people have to wait 20 minutes for the next bus. Sarah ranted a bit (to me, not the woman... we left her behind) that it's better to have sickly drunk people on the bus than to have them trying to drive themselves home. I would have to agree.

We stopped by at the market on the way home to get groceries for dinner. I was impatient for the next bus so I biked up the hill to get the car to drive back down to pick Sarah and the groceries up. Stir fry. We watched some Buffy as we ate it. Yes, you read that right. I'm finally watching Buffy. Which has the unfortunate side-effect of denying me the title of being the world's foremost authority on a show I've never watched. I kinda liked being an expert on something I know nothing about. Ah well.

Which brings me to ... posting this LJ!

* * *

As most of you know, I've been working for The Chocolate Factory down in Mountain View for the past year. They treat me amazingly well, which includes a chartered bus to drive me to and from work every day. Which is tough to beat, but Mountain View is about an hour away... and an hour on a bus is still an hour on a bus, no matter how nice the bus is. The commute means I wake up at 6:30am every day, work a 9am to 6pm shift, have a bit of dinner, catch a shuttle bus home, and on an average day, get back 8pm. I then go to bed around 10pm. Rinse, repeat... Monday thru Friday. If they didn't treat me so well I'd never have stuck with this job. I love my coworkers, I love what I do, and well... the benefits are really nice, so yeah, I put up with the fact that I have very little life outside of work. As part of my job, I and my fellow TechStop Administrators are theoretically cogs in a big machine, able to be moved to any building in a time of need. They rearrange what buildings we work in with little or no warning. When I first started, I moved from buildings CL4 to 1501 to 1945 and then back to CL4... all within about 3 months. It made it difficult to get to know the people in any given building, being moved that frequently. Also, different buildings house different departments, and with each new department comes a bevy of specialized software and hardware issues. To be really effective one needs to be familiar with the needs of the people in any given building... which is hard to do when they keep moving you.

Back in February of this year they finally stopped moving me around and let me settle in building CL4. I've gotten to know the majority of the people in the building, and I've made some good friends there. It's nice to feel at home when at work -- after all, I spend a large portion of my life there.

This past Friday my team lead calls me in for a quickie meeting at 4:55pm. There's an opening in the SF office -- do I want it?!

I love CL4. I love The Chocolate Factory campus. I love my friends in Mountain View... but working out of the SF office means regaining ~3 hours per day of my life. I can bike to work in less than 30 minutes. No more bus. No more waking up at dawn.

No more CL4.

As of Monday I'm a full time city dweller once again. It's been a long time. I'm kinda annoyed they gave me so little warning... I didn't even have a chance to say some proper goodbyes to all my CL4 peeps. :( I think I may request a special "one last day" at CL4 sometime soon. I know several of my fellow TechStop guys would love an excuse to work in SF for a day. We'll see. Meanwhile, I'm excited to start my "new" old job. :)

Coffee, brought to you by the makers of your favorite flying discs?

2008-06-23T00:29:55Z

So in my daily meanderings through the vast wasteland that is the intarwebs, I stumbled across the Aerobie Aeropress. I now covet it, and it's significantly cheaper than the Clover 1s that I've grown addicted to.

It's weird to want a coffee maker made by a frisbee company.

Hallelujah

2008-06-11T05:12:36Z

I can't believe it took this long for someone to create this thing.

Things I've been up to

2008-05-30T06:40:05Z

I realize it's been a very long time since I've said anything here, and some of you are potentially wondering what the hell I'm up to these days. Here's a very brief (because I really ought to get to bed) synopsis, in no particular order! hoorj~ for unordered lists.

I got a new bike, which I use every chance I get. (it's a very pretty Surly Cross Check) pictures!
I walked approximately 5 miles of the 7 miles that is Bay to Breakers (along with bunnyslope, davedash, ketiya, Craig and overbo) pictures!
I saw The Cure play at HP Pavilion in San Jose with bunnyslope and rannyrooster (no pictures yet)
I fought (and lost) in the first San Francisco Cardboard Tube Fighting League Tournament of the 2008 season. pictures!
I got a root canal and an ensuing crown put on my tooth! (no pictures, but also no pain!)
I have a horribly irritating cough. Hopefully it will go away soon. (no pictures of that either)
internetsdave and attickah are in town visiting this weekend! yay! (no pictures yet)

I would also like to take this opportunity to thank the intarwebs for providing things like sarahjessicaparkerlookslikeahorse.com. Which, while rather mean and in poor taste, amuses me nonetheless. I'm eagerly awaiting saigonprincess' forthcoming "Keira Knightley Looks Like A Giraffe" site.

New toys

2008-05-16T06:11:40Z

I found a couple new software toys this week, so I figured I'd share 'em.

1) K-Meleon -- it's a really slimmed down superfast version of Firefox. I'm a little annoyed that it doesn't really allow for extensions without a lot of hackerish effort, but it's damn fast and it's not IE, so... worth keeping an eye on anyway. http://kmeleon.sf.net/

2) A rather recently developed tool that enables a 2 finger scrolling feature (similar to on a mac) in windows. Probably still qualifies as being in it's alpha stages, you can play with it here -- http://dt.in.th/2008-04-06.synaptics-scroll.html

Build up to the letdown

2008-05-04T19:16:19Z

I'm sure there's probably more than just these two out there, but these are the two that always irritate me the most, so they're the ones I'll rant about. These are the two songs that start out really great and then drop the ball completely when it comes to the chorus/hook.

#1) Heat of the Moment by Asia

Heat of the Moment starts out with these epic echoing chords and even though they're not on the track, you can mentally hear the crowd shouting as it plays. It's that kinda song. I often wonder why they didn't record it live... it certainly sounds like it was recorded in a large space. The vocalist calls out to the past, confessing his mistakes, building up to this magical point in the song he even says the line "and we would scream together songs unsung"... and then the rest of the band all chimes in with this watered down weak-as-hell chorus. In the words of Lars Ulrich's father... "it doesn't rock hard enough".

#2) Good Vibrations by The Beach Boys

Seriously, what the hell was Brian Wilson thinking when he interrupted the prototypical emo song 20 years before emo existed, only to turn it into some bubblegum pop thing which doesn't match the intro at all? Don't get me wrong, the main part of Good Vibrations is a fine song, but compared to the first 23 seconds, it feels tacked on and completely out of place.

I wish I were more musically inclined, cuz I'd love to "fix" both of those songs someday. :\

Kosher for Passover

2008-04-21T20:51:06Z

So I'm at an offsite conference for work today. It's kinda dull so far, but I guess that's better than being crazy busy. I guess.

For those of you who are keeping track, it's Passover this week. Observant Jews must avoid eating 'chametz' (leavened bread).

At the luncheon today, the main meal consisted of: salad, potatoes, rice, chicken, beef, and fish. Depending on one's interpretation of Jewish law, the only thing not-kosher-for-passover is the rice.

At a separate table was a sign saying "Passover Station" -- which had falafel, hummus, tahini, and pita bread. Again, depending on one's interpretation of Jewish law, the falafel and hummus may be okay for passover, but pita bread? If you're gonna bother to have a special Passover table, at least get the rules right. Might as well have a Yom Kippur brunch.

Root Canal

2008-04-15T05:35:20Z

Last Wednesday I starting getting horrible pains in my face. Specifically, my upper right bicuspid. (A.K.A. tooth #5)

By Friday it was obvious that it was getting worse, not better, and I would need to see the dentist. I made an emergency appointment with one Dr. Amidi. She was very nice and quickly determined that 1) I was, in fact, in pain 2) The pain was coming from my tooth and 3) I needed a root canal.

I had hoped that I could just get the root canal thing done right there on the spot and just be done with it. Alas, apparently root canals are not in Dr. Amidi's repertoire. She referred me to one Dr. Hernandez. Unfortunately, Dr. Hernandez couldn't get me into her schedule until the following Monday (today).

Today I met with Dr. Hernandez. She was also very nice and determined that 1) I was, in fact, in pain 2) The pain was coming from my tooth and 3) I needed a root canal. Unlike my Friday visit however, I got my wish. She performed the root canal right then and there. (Hoorj~?)

* * * A bit about root canals * * *

For those of you only vaguely familiar with root canals, here's a quick synopsis. They numb your face, they drill a big hole in your tooth, they scrape out all the nerves inside of the tooth, they fill it in with cement and a reinforcing post, then they bill you.

All my life the only thing I ever really knew about root canals is that they're sposed to be horribly unpleasant and painful. Having now experienced one though, I must say I don't see what the big fuss is. My biggest complaint about the procedure wasn't the pain (barely any) it was the smell. The stench of drilled enamel and whatever other random compounds they used to reassemble my tooth was horrible. I wanted one of those oxygen nose tube things. And maybe a pair of headphones. Given those two things I probably could've ignored the procedure almost completely. Though my jaw did get a bit sore from holding my mouth open for about an hour. :\

I'm sposed to be sore and swollen now, but so far I'm feeling great. Tomorrow I'm gonna make an appointment with Dr. Amidi to have the tooth crowned sometime next week. Then I'll be good as new. Maybe even better. :)

Dismissive of Peak Oil

2008-03-13T06:11:16Z

I've come to the conclusion that people love to complain about the price of gasoline. I spose if I drove more often, I too would complain about the price of gas. (I'm thankful I don't shell out $100 a week for gas, which I would be, if I were to drive to/from work every day in a vehicle of my own.)

I see a very obvious reason why the price of gas is going up, but whenever I mention it to my gas consuming friends, they dismiss it as crazy paranoid theories. That reason being the imminent threat of Peak Oil. I don't mean to say that when the price of gas fluctuates a couple cents up and down over a weekend that Peak Oil is the cause... that's more likely due to smaller market factors. I mean overall. The price of a gallon of gas is $3.50+ out here in CA. I fully expect it to hit $4 by the end of the year. It's slowly inching higher, and it's not going to go back down.

Lamenting over back-in-the-day when gas was $1.50 or $2 or whatever... it's never gonna be that way again. Oil companies aren't stupid... they've now proven they can get $100 for a barrel of oil and we'll still pay it. They also know that their product is gonna run out -- and soon. Why is it so unimaginable that the reason gas prices are so high is because they're trying to get as much money as they can before their production runs dry? Imagine what the price of gas will be when we're on the downward slope and oil production starts dropping? As it is current models predict that point is within the next 5 years. Any industry as huge and powerful as Oil thinks way beyond a mere 5 years. They see their demise on the horizon and they're provisioning for later.

There's very little we as consumers can do about the rising prices, as long as capitalism still rules supreme... so do what you can: use as little gas as possible.

If anything, I see this spike in oil prices as somewhat of a good thing, as necessity is the mother of invention. There's more research in alternative energy going on now than ever. More energy being put into alternate modes of transportation, redesigning mass transit, etc.

But then again, I don't buy gas very often.

It was a full 23 hour Sunday

2008-03-10T06:20:43Z

It was a beautiful day today. bunnyslope n' I went on an adventure, which resulted in no less than a pair of sunglasses, a repaired bicycle, and the best Thai food in SF (so far, anyway. We're always up for suggestions.)

I don't know about you guys, but I've noticed that when I live in a particular place, there's roads/routes I use almost daily to get to and from home, and then there are other roads that may as well be black holes from which only David Tennant can escape. This is particularly true of my knowledge of my neighborhood. I know my way around everything north of Clipper Street rather well, all the way up to Market. My knowledge of things south of Clipper rapidily declines the further south one goes, with the exception of Dolores Street, which I use frequently enough to get on to I-280.

For you non-SF residents, here's a map of what I'm talking about:

Today I decided to remedy the situation. We went south. We discovered a lot of antique shops, a party supply store (which would have been handy to know about for the David Bowie party we attended a couple weeks ago) and Regent Thai restuarant. We didn't eat there immediately, but we ended up going back there for dinner later. We also discovered that the 24 bus runs down there! Mystical. After wandering through the black hole for a while we hopped the 24 bus and headed up to Japantown cuz I needed some new sunglasses. Japantown has the best selection of cheap-yet-awesome sunglasses I've found in SF. I gots me some $7 not-quite-aviators. The quest for the perfect pair of sunglasses continues, but these will suffice for now. Then we stopped at Sanppo for an Island Roll -- the best sushi roll evar. I don't care that it's not authentic/traditional/whatever. It's really good. You owe it to yourself to have one.

Yesterday I'd dropped my bike off at Pedal Revolution (bike shop) to have the rear wheel re-tensioned. We swung by PR on the way home from Japantown to pick it up. Please note, PR is not on the way home from Japantown. We got my now not-noisy bike and took it home. We took a nap. We took Antony to the park. Dogs feared him and children fed him grass, petted him, put sand on him and kept picking him up. We weren't too thrilled about the last bits. We took him home. We headed back out (this time on our bikes) to the black hole for dinner at the Thai place. The Double Cooked Duck was fabulous, as was the Salmon thingie bunnyslope got. They had some cool appetizers called "Golden Bags" which were delicious onion/potato/curry puffs shaped like little deep fried money bags. Definitely going to have to make that place a regular spot. In fact, I'm kinda craving more of that duck already.

After dinner we rode back home (with a little help from the 48 bus). Then we went to Safeway to stock up on foodses. Then we watched some Star Trek TNG. Now I'm writing this. Then I will go to bed.

I would like to add that virtually all of this travelling about was done on foot, bike, or public transportation. Except the getting groceries bit. I love being able to do all that w/o a car. :)

Al Updates and other sundry thoughts

2008-03-07T07:28:25Z

The Al Bits
I'm still alive. There's no reason to assume otherwise.
I'm still employed at The Big G. Work (and related activities) keeps me busy ~13 hours a day.
I try to hang out with people when I can.
I try to go biking when possible.
I did my taxes and gots me some moneys back. Yay.
I've been watching a lot of Doctor Who lately.
I'm taking a very long time to finish reading 100 Years of Solitude.
Wedding plans are coming together
I just saw a MSP improv show starring miss bunnyslope tonight.

The Sundry
Flogging Molly has a new album. I haven't listened to it enough to form an opinion about it yet.
The 1960's black and white TV series The Wild Wild West is a bit too formulaic for me, though it does make me laugh often enough that I haven't tired of it completely.
Rickrolling is my new favorite pastime at work.
PicLens is quite possibly the coolest Firefox extension I've seen to date.
My friend dr_beep is hilarious. He bought an entire print shop on a whim. Film at 11.
This (now probably defunct) blog is a man after my own heart -- he reviews crappy beverages in a hilarious manner.
Android is gonna be f'n awesome. I hope they come up with some decent hardware to place nice with it.

Con la guitarra!

2008-02-29T00:21:19Z

Those of you who know my favorite things to say en Español will know why this song now has a special place in my heart.

Thank me and hate me later

2008-02-10T21:31:08Z

Here, listen to THIS! I apologize in advance. (Though, to give credit where credit is due, I never would've found that song without some help from dr_beep.)

In other news, I am slightly ill, though that hasn't prevented me from hanging out and biking around SF with viajes all yesterday. Our search for the cellphone-shaped-lighter-with-light-up-breasts-and-a-pot-leaf-that-says-fuck-you-when-you-light-it proved fruitless. Someone else must've bought them all. I will not give up completely though. I'm sure there are more somewhere. Hiding. Waiting.

They moved me to a new building again at work. That's 3 times in 3 months. There's a chance I'll be moved again in another month, since I'm currently part of a reorganization test-run. I don't mind this move, as I am now in my favorite (so far) building on campus. I miss the coffee maker in my first building, but I can always just bike over there if I feel the need. The food in my current building is better. I even brought the pastry chef a sample of some chocolate babka from Breadsmith and she tried to replicate it! It wasn't quite right, of course, but it was still good... we ended up with something akin to cinnamon rolls, but with chocolate and almond paste instead. Damn good, but no babka. *shrug*

The weather this weekend has been absolutely gorgeous. I wish I were feeling better, as I would love to go take advantage of the blue skies and sunshine. (Whoa, someone has secretly replaced me with Folger's Crystals, since when do I go play in the sun?) Maybe I'll go venture down to Philz for some almost-as-good coffee. Mostly I'm just looking for a way to while away the time until Sarah gets back from her grad school auditions. Today is her audition with U of Delaware. Yesterday was the "big" day for her, with Yale, NYU, ART and NTC all in one day.

Ooh, I should go get some supplies for the David Bowie party this Thursday. Where the hell am I gonna find gold face paint at this time of year?

Today's word of the day: Angola

Freedom, baby, yeah.

2008-02-06T20:02:10Z

My latest hobby is convincing my friend/ex-coworker Paul that he needs to upgrade everything. He told me he was gonna get a new macbook pro, so I convinced him he needed to max it out with 4gb of RAM.

Then he said he was putting together a desktop system, and asked me about IDE hard drive configurations. I convinced him to get a 10k RPM SATA drive with a little window in it, so you can see it spinning at 10k RPM.

I feel like I should be miniaturized, put on his left shoulder, and given a little red pitchfork.

* * *

Paul: i bought that hard drive that you can see inside
me: awesome! I will come over and drool on it when it arrives.
Paul: i won't even be able to see it work when it's in my computer though. i don't see the point.
me: it's just so that you can have that extra cool factor. you don't actually need to see the drive spinning, but you could see it if you wanted to.
Paul: lol
me: it's about freedom. it's the american way.
Paul: totally. if only it were made in america.
me: that'd be unamerican.

No overarching theme here, move along...

2008-01-11T06:29:14Z

As I think I mentioned, I now work in very close proximity to a Wii. As in I can play it without even getting up from my chair. This is a very bad thing, because I find myself actually playing the damn thing. Bowling and Tennis and Fighter Planes and Prince of Persia and whatever other things we have handy. I find myself playing it because it's there and it's on. And when suddenly I realize 20 or 30 minutes have gone by, I put down the WiiMote and feel like I've just eaten at McDonalds. I feel disgusted with myself. There's a lot of other more interesting and productive things I could be doing in that time, but no, I'm waving around a hunk of electronics and accomplishing nothing. I'm making my first post-new-years resolution. I'm never touching the damn Wii again. When I feel the urge to waste time, I'll do it reading LJ or Facebook or mucking about with gOS or python or something vaguely more constructive.

I'm going to see Information Society play on Sunday night with Sarah n' Dave n' Katie. I'm excited! All the original members together again for the first time in 15 years. I've been listening to them since I was 9. Yay.

I got some nifty new tech stuffs for myself lately... a 1GB microSD card for my phone, which is handy and awesome. I also got a 4GB SD card for my camera, only to discover my Optio S6 can't handle anything over 2GB. Neither can my f'n laptop. So now I have a 4GB card and NOTHING that can read it. Bummer. Guess it'll come in handy someday when I upgrade though. I hope.

I also got a spiffy 2.5" external HD enclosure which can do both SATA and IDE drives. Hott.

Oh, and if any of you have more than one computer, I would highly recommend playing around with Synergy. Because it too is hott.

Attention Buffy fans: Giles is in this episode of Dr. Who which I watched on the shuttle bus this morning. The robo-dog was by far the best part of the show though.

If only they'd play what I want...

2007-12-27T09:03:47Z

One of my favorite bands of all time is playing this Friday.

It's a shame that I've seen Cracker at least 4 times already in my life, and every single time they've let me down by playing NONE of my favorite songs of theirs. To the point where I am no longer even remotely interested in seeing them play live. The crowd will demand they play all their "radio" songs (Low, Teen Angst, Eurotrash Girl, etc) which is fine and dandy, but there isn't a snowball's chance in hell they'll play Another Song About The Rain, The Loser, Dixie Babylon, and all my other favorites.

Why?

Because those are sad-bastard songs that makes people want to cry. Those are the sorts of songs that a band plays in a smoky little bar where there's nothing but trucker cowboys drowning their sorrows in round after round of whiskey. Which would be my dream-come-true Cracker concert, but will never ever happen.

Maybe I should form a Cracker cover band, and insist on only playing in dark smoky trucker dive bars.

Random memory of Lena

2007-12-26T08:11:37Z

Summer of '94.
I left home at 11pm.
No curfew.
I picked you up in my father's oldsmobile.
We raced up and down highway 169 in the wee hours of the morning.
Windows down, radio blasting, warm summer night.
We went from 494 to 694 and back again in minutes flat.
No other cars in sight.
Your love for me was painfully obvious in retrospect,
but my inexperience at the time made me oblivious.
Not that I had any love for you,
you were just the only one
who didn't have a curfew either.

(This wasn't really intended to be a poem, but as I wrote it it turned into one?)

Keyboard Error, Code 39, I/O conflict -- and how to fix it

2007-12-24T23:43:38Z

I have just finished a rather frightening experience which nearly brought me to reformatting my system. Thankfully, I did not have to commit digital hari-kari. I am now going to post the story of what happened, and how I fixed it, in hopes that someday someone else will have the same issue and find my solution useful. :)

The Problem:
I installed VMware workstation, because I wanted to try running OSX86 in a Virtual Machine. (I failed to get it working, but that's besides the point.) I uninstalled VMware, and discovered that VMware's uninstaller SUCKS. It left services and files and registry entries all over my system. Including 2 particularly nasty registry entries which I will get to in a moment. Upon restarting my system after the uninstall my keyboard and mouse (the ones built-in to my laptop) were no longer working. Needless to say that's a big problem. The only input I could manage at all was my external USB mouse (and the on-screen keyboard).

Device Manager said there was a conflict between my PS/2 mouse and PS/2 keyboard. It said there was an I/O Range conflict. The keyboard had error code 39.

The attempts:
I tried flashing the BIOS. I tried removing the keyboard and mouse via the device manager in regular mode and in safe mode. I tried copying files from another working machine. I tried installing them off the Windows CD. I tried resetting the BIOS settings. I tried to disable one of the two devices, however everything was greyed out.

The Solution:
Turns out VMware was to blame the entire time. There's some registry entries named "UpperFilter" which VMware modifies and adds some stuff to, but fails to remove upon uninstallation.

1) Open Regedit
2) do a search for "kbdclass"
3) keep doing searches until you find all "UpperFilter" entires with "kbdclass" in the data field. Make sure kbdclass is the only thing in the data field. VMware had left behind some "vmkbd" crap. If you find an UpperFilter entry with more than just "kbdclass" in it -- double click it, and delete the non-kbdclass stuff.
4) once you've made sure all kbdclass upperfilter entries are correct
5) remove your keyboard via the device manager
6) do a scan for new hardware
7) reboot

I hope this helps someone else someday. :)

Sick

2007-12-15T17:47:20Z

I've apparently contracted a bit of a cold. It's not so bad yet, just a sore throat and a general feeling of tiredness. I want to go out n' do things, as Saturday is pretty much one of the only days of the week I can actually do something, but I wanna get over this cold ASAP, which means I should probably rest.

Blah.

Maybe I'll watch a movie or five.

What the hell have I done? (lately)

2007-12-11T06:37:14Z

Visited: Minneapolis (for turkey slaughter day)
Biked: to San Mateo (~20 miles, for you non-bay peeps)
Biked: Around SF in search of entertainment
Saw: Body Worlds 2 exhibit at the San Jose Tech Museum
Moved: Will n' Nadja to their new apartment
Moved: my office at work to a new Tech Stop
Hung out with: Sarah, Marina, Dave, Katie, Katie, Molly, Paul, Lili, Craig, Josefina and Phil... to name the ones I can remember off the top of my head.
Cooked: some curry and brown rice
Bought: some new components for afforementioned bike.
Watched: Bee Movie, Superbad, American History X, Black Sheep, 3:10 to Yuma, Flags of Our Fathers, Die Hard 4, the Futurama movie, some Star Trek Next Gen, some X-Files.
Finished: The Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson
Started: Cien Años de Soledad del Gabriel García Márquez

Conclusions and other things of note:

Idlewild's Warnings/Promises is the best thing since the last thing. Superbad and Bee Movie were much more entertaining than I expected. The new Futurama movie was kinda disappointing. I've now spent more on components for my bike than I spent on the bike itself. Aftermarket chainguards are virtually non-existent. My family bought me bees and other assorted creatures for Chanuki. I will be working over Xmas and New Years. I won't be back in Minneapolis until April, so in the meantime feel free to come visit. Red wine makes me sleepy. Sarah will be in Minneapolis (without me) very soon.

Work is goin' great, but I'm waking up at 6am, tryin' to get to bed by 10pm, and pretty busy at work... all of which adds up to very little time for LJ/Facebook/IM/email/etc. I'm starting to feel an odd withdrawl because I can't keep up with what's happening in my friends' lives. I think I need to learn to let go of current events, friends-wise. :|

Soundtrack to My Life

2007-11-11T20:28:52Z

(meme borrowed from rannyrooster)

I'd also like to thank Joe, Rick, "Sav", Phil, Steve,and Pete for their many years of hard work that went into this soundtrack.

Opening: Def Leppard - Rock of Ages
Waking Up Scene: Def Leppard - Let's Get Rocked
Car Driving Scene: Def Leppard - On Through The Night
High School Flashback Scene: Def Leppard - Rock Brigade
College Flashback Scene: Def Leppard - Rock Rock (Till You Drop)
Nostalgic Scene: Def Leppard - Foolin'
Bitter, Angry Scene: Def Leppard - Armageddon It
Break-up Scene: Def Leppard - Love Bites
Regret Scene: Def Leppard - Bringin' On The Heartbreak
Nightclub/Bar Scene: Def Leppard - Women
Fight/Action Scene: Def Leppard - Gods Of War
Lawn Mowing Scene: Def Leppard - Heaven Is
Sad, breakdown scene: Def Leppard - Too Late For Love
Death Scene: Def Leppard - When The Walls Came Tumbling Down
Funeral Scene: Def Leppard - Two Steps Behind
Mellow/Pot-smoking Scene: Def Leppard - Turn To Dust
Dreaming About Someone Scene: Def Leppard - Photograph
Sex Scene: Def Leppard - Pour Some Sugar On Me
Contemplation Scene: Def Leppard - Animal
Chase Scene: Def Leppard - Rocket
Happy Love Scene: Def Leppard - Hysteria
Happy Friend Scene: Def Leppard - It Don't Matter
Closing Credits: Def Leppard - Rock of Ages (Reprise)

I'd just like to add that this was done with only a hint of irony.

space potato!

2007-11-07T07:10:28Z

chookbobberki got me thinkin' about putting a potato into space. I think it had something to do with a quote some guy said about there being many nations that can't even put a potato into space. Why a potato? I don't know. Why space? I don't know that either. I do know that it should not be nearly as expensive as it is to put random garden veggies outside of the Earth's atmosphere.

overbo says my plan of using a weather balloon + big model rocket + potato won't work. I'm disappointed. I will now announce my version of the X prize:

The P Prize! (P is for potato)

First person to put a potato 50+ miles above the Earth's surface (space) for less than $100 will win...

1) my undying admiration
2) dinner at the restaurant of their choice
3) the satisfaction of a job well done