Are there a lot of small things that bug you about Windows? Do you hate the little arrow in the corner of shortcuts? Do you wish you could remove some of the crap you don’t use in the “New” menu when you right click on the desktop? This is all stuff that can be easily changed using Microsoft’s free Power Toy Tweak UI for Windows XP. (UI stands for user interface.) The things this utility allows you to change should have been automatically included with Windows XP, but Bill G. in his infinite wisdom decided that it adds too many options for users. As with all Power Toys, Microsoft provides no support (like we ever call them up anyway). In addition to Tweak UI for Windows XP, there is also an Tweak UI 1.33, an older version that works with all versions of Windows (XP, 2000, Me, 98, 95, & NT). Tweak UI 1.33 actually has some features that the newest version does not.

Installation Notes: To install Tweak UI for Windows XP, simply double-click on the downloaded file. A regular Windows install routine walks you through the process. A shortcut to the program is placed on the Start Menu.

To install Tweak UI 1.33:

1. extract the files
2. go to the folder where you extracted the files
3. right-click on the file tweakui.inf
4. choose install from the pop-up menu
5. close the help box that opens up once the install is complete

To launch Tweak UI 1.33, go to the Control Panel, and double click on the Tweak UI icon.

In my neverending quest for the perfect website, I’m once again reworking the innards of this beast. I have a server and database running locally on my PC, so none of my readers (all 3 of you) will have to witness the constant test messages and crashes. When I’m done, running my site will be more about the content and less about technical kludges. It may be a few weeks before I post again. Until next time…

I remember going to school one day when I was about eleven, wearing two of my favorite things: A pair of faded overalls and a fuschia t-shirt Mom had bought for me. I loved that shirt, not because of its brilliant color but because of its texture: It was so soft and smooth. And, as I recall, it was not ordinary shirt. It was a pocket t-shirt.

I walked into my 5^th grade class about 20 minutes before the bell as I did every morning. All the cliques were present, neatly separated from one another by a row or two of empty desks. I took my seat at the front and sat there all alone as I usually did without anyone noticing (or caring to notice). My thoughts and I shared some interesting conversation until we were rudely interrupted by a hand upon the shoulder.

I turned slowly and looked up to see that the hand was attatched to Jimmy Turner. I had garnered the attention of him and his cronies. Jimmy was a bully of the oddest sort. He was tall, lanky and fairly weak, for I had seen him serve as the mop in one too many fights. Yet, he somehow managed to command between three or four guys to do his bidding. I guess they thought he was cool. I had my own opinion. When I won the Language Arts award in 4^th grade, he looks at me with all seriousness and says “That’s crap. I can draw better than you!” This is not the kind of guy I would follow to the ends of the earth.

Before I could say anything, he tightens his grip on my shoulder and sneers, “Only fags wear pink shirts.” (I had no real idea what a fag was, because I had lived a very sheltered life. From the way everybody used it, I just knew it was something derogatory.) I winced in pain, even though it was Jimmy’s weak grip, since I was probably the weakest kid in class at that time. (If the same scenario would have happened three years later, this story would end much differently.)

I replied with the only response that seemed logical to me: “It’s not pink. It’s fuchsia.” This was a great idea…

Jimmy and his minions exchanged a look that probably hasn’t been seen since Cro-Magnon man. “What the hell is fuchsia?” spat his lieutenant.

“It’s gay! That’s what it is!” came Jimmy’s response. “Get him.” With that, my fate was sealed. I don’t remember putting up much of a fight or exactly what happened. All I know is that when they were done punishing me and my shirt, I was lying on the ground with several brusies to my ribs and a knot on the head.

While my little thumping was nowhere near as gruesome as the curb biting in American History X, it had a profound effect on me. I think it was the root of my homophobia (which I finally gave up in college). When I found out what fag meant, I guess I figured it must be a horrible thing if it inspired others to wail on me. I ignorantly passed on the persecution throughtout high school, delivering a nice slap to the back of the head to anybody who I suspected was gay. I wish I could appologize to the people who I wronged, but I never actually knew their names. This is all a prime example of how hate breeds hate. And to think all that hate started because somebody didn’t like my fuchsia shirt.

I’ve been playing Castlevania: Lament of Innocence again, which I have not done since January. I love the game. The music, graphic, and atmosphere are absolutely awesome. The one problem, however, is that the game is 3D and suffers from some horrible camera angles. It’s not Leon Bellmont’s fault, though. The truth is, I just don’t fair well in 3D games, particuarily those in 3^rd person (like Castlevania). I don’t know what it is about 3D that gives me fits. Adding the third dimension has certainly made games much more realistic and immersive, but for the most part, I just get frustrated. Jumping puzzles were so much easier when all I had to worry about was x and y. I have literally spent and extra hour and a half in my latest Castlevania quest doing nothing but trying to make jumps. It takes a lot of the fun out of it.

I long for the days of 2D Mario, where controlling him meant nothing more than pressing 2 buttons and a D-Pad. Hardcore gamers of today love the analog stick because they say it gives them control. All it gives me is a headache. Modern games are impressive, but for those of us with the hand-eye coordination of a 10 year old, they have taken the game out of it. I thank God for my Game Boy Advance. They haven’t figured out a way to make portable games analog…yet.

Even while living in Eastern Kentucky, it is rare to see six, full-blown mullets sitting in a row. I managed to see such a sight while visiting the local theater to watch Shrek 2. I have seen a family of five mullets before, but not six. What makes this sighting even more special is that the mulllets were in an extended family configuration. There was the grandpa with the long, silver mullet extending to the top of the buttocks. Then there was the granny, with a gray mullet that barely came past her collar. This would indicate that she probably converted to a mullet only a short time ago. The third mullet was that of the new alpha male, presumably the son of the the grandpa. The alpha male had a curly nest that extended half-way down his back, and he proudly displayed his huge belly, a definite sign that he is able to obtain the most food stamps to support his brood. Next to him sat his prize, the mother of the brood, whose mullet was long and greasy, resembling a rat tail due to its matted state. Beside her were the children mullets (aka ‘chullets’). It was clear that the brood wanted their chullets to have the longest mullets in the world by the age of 18. The chullets’ rear locks had never been touched with a cutting device, yet the front locks were neatly styled in a flat-top. I only wish I would have had one of those phones that takes digital pictures, since I may never see an extended family, six-figured mullet configuration ever again.

Harry Potter and I share a very distinctive quality: A scar that burns when certain events are close. Harry’s scar is shaped like a lightning bolt, located on his forehead, and burns whenever he gets close to his arch-nemesis, Lord Voldemort. Mine, on the other hand, is shaped like a smiling mouth, is on my butt, and burns only when I hear others talk about things that make them happy. I could potentially make a lot of money, charging depressed people to talk to me for an hour, and then telling them what I think they should do to achieve happiness. All I’d have to do is pay attention to what they were saying when my butt scar starting burning. It’d be a win-win situation. Luckily for me, I don’t have the happiest friends in the world. Otherwise, it’d be hard to sit down and have a good chat. :) I guess you could call my scar my Hairy Potter.

Everybody knows I’m a TV junkie. If I had to give up TV or the Internet, I honestly think I could part with the Information Superhighway first. My newest TV viewing pleasure is CBS’s Joan of Arcadia. For those who aren’t familiar, the show follows a 16 year old girl named Joan who is visited by God taking for several times an episode. The interesting part is that God takes many forms, from a Frenchman who could have easily appeared on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy to a homeless person. God gives Joan some sort of mission each episode, which it seems can only be resolved if Joan figures something out about human nature. The characters surrounding Joan seem well written and play off Joan well. (I have only seen about 3 episodes, so I’m not entirely sure of her relationship with them all.) I highly recommend the show: It tastefully tears down many of the religious crap that has been attributed to the nature of God over the years.

This is as good a place as any to post a list of my favorite shows:

• Friends
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer
• Angel
• The Simpsons [note: not so much the new episodes, but the early ones will live in my heart forever
• King of the Hill
• Everybody Loves Raymond
• Nip/Tuck
• South Park
• The Real World
• The Screen Savers
• Still Standing
• Two and a Half Men
• and of course…Joan of Arcadia

For the record, this is definately the most unfocused post ever, but I have a lot on my mind:

Topic #1: Employment – Thursday, I went to get a data entry job at this little shop in town. I filled out about 5 different forms, waited for 20 minutes for the guy to come back, and then left after being told that it was lunchtime. So, for an hour, I sat in the local Dairy Queen and enjoyed a double cheeseburger and a HUGE cone. (I hadn’t had any of that soft serve in several years. Good stuff!) After my hour of waiting, I head back to take the typing test portion of the job interview, and just as I was warming up, some dummy knocked over a power pole near the building. After some smoke and flame, the power goes out. I was instructed to come back Tuesday. So much for getting a job in a timely fashion.

Topic #2: Formatting – I formatted my Dell rig for the first time since I got it. I have done this so many times in the last 8 years that I have it down to a science. It had been over a year since I have done the procedure to one of my own machines. I had this one up and going at full speed in about 6 hours (which would have been about 2.5 hours had it not been for dial-up Internet access). I’m certainly glad to have 2 hard drives. I used to have to do all my backup on a parallel port Zip Drive…I didn’t lose one piece of important data and it only took about an hour to transfer all my keepables (including tons of video and MP3s). I decided to go with a crazy partitioning schemes that involves setting up different partitions for different stuff. It makes defragging so much faster and more efficient. My roomate set his rig up like this awhile back and it does prove handy if you need to wipe the OS clean.

Topic #3: The Wonders of NOD32 – Since my Norton anti-virus subscription is about to run out anyway, I decided to forego Norton with this clean Windows install and instead opted for NOD32 Anti-Virus. Norton is notorious for slowing down a system: One benchmark indicated a 10% performance hit, and I know from personal experience that the memory footprint is about 30 megs or so. NOD32 has, for years, been considered the best performing anti-virus program; however, it has also been regarded as not very user friendly and complicated. Maybe it’s because I’m a CIS guy, but I found nothing to be further from the truth. It updates fast and there’s nothing confusing about it. The NOD32 Control Center controls 3 or 4 modules that control different aspects of virus detection. Modular is a very smart design if you ask me. Anyway, my system is hammering and very responsive. I believe part of this is due to NOD32. I highly recommend it. By the way, it has already caught 3 email viruses for me, so I know it works.

Topic #4: Win32 Programming – Today, I started fooling around with Win32 programming in C++ again. Data structures has really helped me, because I think it’s not so scary now. If the summer doesn’t get too hectic, I’m going to finish that journaling program I’ve been threatening to write for the better part of 2 years.

Topic #5: Website Fun – I’ll probably have the control center to my website finished by the weekend. I haven’t had this much fun programming in a long time. My readers (all 2 of you) won’t notice much of a difference in the site, but administering it will be a blast for moi…I sometimes forget how much I love this computer crap even though I decided to teach.

I’ve settled (at least partially) back into my parents’ home once again. It’s very odd coming back. I kinda figured I’d be getting my own place and getting a good job. Making a decision to teach has thrown all of that out the window. For at least another couple years, I’ll be very poor and probably living here in the same ol’ room I grew up in. Does this make me a failure? The more I think about it, the more I think no. This arrangement is the road less traveled. Life would have been easier at first had I went for a corporate job. But instead, I’m going to take the position of a servant, hellbent on trying to change a culture that has frustrated me for a long time, for a lot less money. If that’s failure, nothing challenging would ever be worth doing.

When my Mom wants to change something about herself, more often than not the first place she goes is for the hair. Well, unlike her, I like my hair: it’s short, easy to manage, and keeps me relatively cool. Most importantly, my hair has never been a cited reason for rejection by the chicas.

Since I did want to change something but really dig my hair, I decided to change a few things about my website. There wasn’t anything wrong with the old layout: I just wanted to do something different. And unlike a few times before, I didn’t do a total change. I just wooled around in my stylesheet and shifted some colors and positions here and there. If any of my readers (all 1 of you) really don’t like these changes, I’ll fix everything back. If you are only slightly annoyed by any of this, just deal with it :) Anyway, when graduation finally gets here, I’ll probably be doing a lot of stuff to the backend of my site. Who knows, it may even become useful to somebody besides me.