2006

Personal Updates

Smart Aleck Shirt Collection & My Thoughts on Stupidity

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A neat little collection I started in the summer of 2002 is shirts with smart aleck sayings on them. My mom and mother-in-law expanded my collection by three shirts. The following is a list of the awesome sayings (in no particular order):

  • Your village called. Their idiot is missing.
  • Stupidity is not a crime, so you’re free to go.
  • I see your problem. You’re stupid.
  • You’re an inspiration to stupid people everywhere.
  • If stupidity were a crime, you’d be on America’s Most Wanted.
  • I’ll try to be nicer if you try to be smarter.
  • I’d put something clever here, but you wouldn’t get it.

Now, I’m honestly not that arrogant, and no, I don’t think everyone is stupid. There are, however, enough idiots in the world so that these shirts provide me with a little subtle relief when there’s more stupidity than I can handle. Stupidity itself is strange in nature. Here are some of my observations about stupidity:

  • Stupidity is normally distributed. I’ve been to quite a few places in the United States, and so far, I’ve encountered stupidity everywhere.
  • Stupidity has nothing to do with intelligence. This is hard for a lot of people to accept, but I have met many brilliant people who were very stupid. I suppose this duality can exist because stupidity doesn’t always have to affect every aspect of a stupid person’s life. The one type of stupidity that sticks out the most is the one that involves someone not knowing when to refrain from speaking. Knowing when to clam up is the #1 most important social skill, but I’ve found that the lack of this knowledge breeds stupidity.
  • To augment the preceding point, some people are Stupid All-Stars. Stupidity can affect some people so bad that they, as a whole, are truly stupid. If you don’t believe me, got to any local festival or state fair and walk around for about an hour. Stupid All-Stars somehow survive even though nothing they do makes sense.
  • Stupidity can be funny. Stupidity should not always be hated. Some of the funniest things you will ever witness are a result of stupidity. America’s Funniest Home Videos was successful because it was a full-on parade of people doing stupid things.
  • Everyone is stupid sometimes. If you have ever had a moment when you’ve asked yourself, "Why did I just do that?" after doing something that obviously had a much alternative, then you have been stupid. I have exhibited so much stupidity looking for a shorter way of doing something when in fact the old way I had always done it was much better.

I”ll probably expand on this list after I have reflected some more, and I’ll repost it up top if I do. Stay tuned!

Microsoft Windows, Tech Tips

Show Extended Boot Information when Windows Vista Boots

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Note: This article applies to Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Vista.

I stumbled across an interesting Windows feature that you can enable with N-Lite that will show extra boot messages when you login to Windows. I didn’t want to format my computer and do a fresh Windows install just to be able to see a message that says "Playing Logon Sound," so I searched around on Google and found that enabling this feature is an extremely easy registry hack. Do the following:

  1. Go to the Start Menu and click Run…
  2. Type regedit in the box and press Enter. This will open the Registry Editor.
  3. Click on the folder structures on the left (which are known as hives and keys) in the following sequence.

    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\policies\system

  4. In the right hand side of the window, look for a value called named VerboseStatus.
  5. If it exists, double-click on it, type a 1 in the box, and click ok. Once you reboot, you will see extra boot messages.
  6. If it does not exist, right click on white space in the right-hand pane, choose New, then choose DWORD Value. You’ll see a key that says New Value #1. Type VerboseStatus and press Enter.
  7. Double-click on your new VerboseStatus value, type a 1 in the box, and click OK.
  8. Reboot, and you should see new boot status messages.

For some reason, I get a great deal of satisfaction out of seeing Playing Logon Sound before it happens. On a more practical note, these messages can allow you to see at what point your Windows logon becomes slow (if it ever becomes a problem).

Personal Updates

Just Plain Wierd

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The other night, I dreamed that I was sitting in a college psychology class. The setting was much like that of my Intro to Psych class: A small auditorium with stadium style seating. The professor was standing up front wearing a corduroy blazer with patches on the elbows holding a cup of coffee.  He takes a big gulp of coffee, looks at the class, and poses the question, "Did you ever consider that when a Carebear farts, it probably smells like cupcakes?"

I was perplexed…Very perplexed. When I woke up, I was still perplexed, but a bit curious. The only thing I could think was, "What flavor of cupcakes would they smell like." Who needs carpe diem when you dream like that…

Microsoft Windows, Tech Tips, Web Development/Programming

What to do if XAMPP for Windows won’t load anything under localhost

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I’ve used XAMPP for Windows on my laptop as a testing server for over a year with no problems. Today, though, I started the Apache and MySQL services as I have many times in the past only to find that both localhost and 127.0.0.1 did not work in my browser. Here’s some of the things I tried that did no good and some notable facts:

  1. I tried localhost:80 and 127.0.0.1:80 with no effect
  2. I disabled the Windows firewall. No dice.
  3. I uninstalled the Apache service. No change.
  4. I uninstalled/reinstalled XAMPP multiple times with multiple versions. No change.
  5. When I would put localhost in the browser, I did not receive a "Page cannot be found" error. Instead, the status bar would indicate "Waiting for localhost." I waited more than ten minutes to see if anything would happen at one point. Nothing did: The screen remained white.
  6. It didn’t matter what browser I used. IE, Firefox, and Opera all sat there and waited while nothing happened.
  7. I have made no system changes since the last time I ran XAMPP except for the regular barrage of Windows Updates.

While I don’t know exactly what broke my XAMPP installation, I can almost guarantee that a Windows Update killed it. I know Microsoft can’t keep every program under the sun from breaking with its updates, it could do a better job of telling you exactly what each update does without having to dig through 500 lines of the KB articles. Anyway…

I managed to fix the problem, as per this article posted in the Apache Friends forums. In the C:\program files\xampp\apache\bin\httpd.conf file, I added the following line:

Win32DisableAcceptEx

From the best I can tell, this has something to do with Apache’s interaction with Windows’ WinSock 2 API. I’d say some security update managed to fix a problem in WinSock but break Apache. It makes me feel really stupid that I don’t know exactly what caused the problem or exactly how the solution actually fixed it. I’m just glad everything is working now. I can actually get to work on the project I needed the server for in the first place.

Personal Updates

The Best Desktop Wallpapers on the Internet

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One of my favorite places on the Internet is Digital Blasphemy.com. This site is by far the place to get desktop wallpaper. I’ve been a fan for about 4 years and with each update, I am more and more impressed with Ryan Bliss’ work. He is an amazing digital artist.

One of the coolest things to do is go look at the 2001 work and compare it to the current offerings. With every new version of software (Truespace 3D, Lightwave, etc), Ryan manages to push the envelope and get the most out of new features. This goes to show you that a true artist can get the most out of his tools.

Digital Blasphemy has free section, but I would recommend that anyone pay $20 and sign up for a 1 year subscription. The paid wallpapers are well worth it, especially if you spend as much time on the computer as I do.

Personal Updates

Superman Ice Cream is so hard

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One of the simple pleasures in life goes all the way back to my youth: Superman Ice Cream. We bought a gallon a little over a month ago at Save-a-Lot and I’ve been slowly chipping away at it. This evening, I decided I needed a bowl but I was having a horrible time trying to scoop it out. Thanks, Becca, for lending a hand. If the world was about to end, as long as I had you to scoop my Superman Ice Cream, everything will be ok. I love you babe.

Personal Updates

My Little Wife

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Today has been awful. Program Assessment is looming around the corner and it’s always very stressful because no matter how hard I try, I can never seem to do the thing well enough to satisfy the people who call the shots.  Because of this Program Assessment stress, I have been less than cheery today. I want to thank my pretty little wife for putting up with me and being supportive as always.

I love you Becca. Always and forever my love you will be.

Linux, Tech Tips, Ubuntu

Finally, easily enable WPA in Ubuntu 6.06

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The following was taken from http://www.debianadmin.com/enable-wpa-wireless-access-point-in-ubuntu-linux.html Normally, I would never repost content from some else’s site, but I’m afraid that it may disappear at some point. So, I’ll post it here. Again, I DID NOT author this content, but I’m puting it here for archival purposes just in case it disappears.

Procedure to enable WPA Wireless in Ubuntu

To update the source list run the following command

sudo apt-get

sudo apt-get install wpasupplicant

sudo apt-get install network-manager-gnome network-manager

sudo gedit /etc/network/interfaces

Comment out everything other than “lo” entries in that file and save the file

Create a file called /etc/default/wpasupplicant, add entry ENABLED=0 and save the file

sudo touch /etc/default/wpasupplicant

Reboot your system or use the following command

sudo /etc/init.d/dbus restart

Once you login back in to your machine you need to left-click the network manager icon in Gnome and select your wireless network It should prompts for password, type, etc and It will ask you to choose a password for your new “keyring”.

After enterring all the details my wireless network was connected and working fine you can see in the follwoing screen

Again, special thanks to the folks at DebianAdmin.com for providing us with this elegant solution.

Personal Updates

Switching Hosts

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So far, switching hosts hasn’t been too bad. Transferring stuff around has took awhile, but it hasn’t been near as taxing as I thought. If you find a broken link shoot me an email with Broken Link as the subject.

Update: I updated the DNS stuff last night before I went to bed, and bingo, the new server is live.

Personal Updates

Just Words, but So Much More

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For the first time ever today, I actually listed to the words of the Rascal Flatts song Bless the Broken Road. I didn’t write these words, but they say almost everything I feel about Beck.

Bless the Broken Road
Rascal Flatts

I set out on a narrow way many years ago
Hoping I would find true love along the broken road
But I got lost a time or two
Wiped my brow and kept pushing through
I couldn’t see how every sign pointed straight to you
Every long lost dream led me to where you are
Others who broke my heart they were like northern stars
Pointing me on my way into your loving arms
This much I know is true
That God blessed the broken road
That led me straight to you

I think about the years I spent just passing through
I’d like to have the time I lost and give it back to you
But you just smile and take my hand
You’ve been there you understand
It’s all part of a grander plan that is coming true

Every long lost dream led me to where you are
Others who broke my heart they were like northern stars
Pointing me on my way into your loving arms
This much I know is true
That God blessed the broken road
That led me straight to you

Now I’m just rolling home
Into my lover’s arms
This much I know is true
That God blessed the broken road
That led me straight to you

That God blessed the broken road
That led me straight to you.

I love you Beck, for forever and a day.

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