Archive for July, 2009

Fun day at the beach

Posted: July 23, 2009 by datechguy in personal
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This Sunday our parish priest talked about the importance of taking time to relax and rest, so this week we spend a large chunk of the day on Salisbury beach.

We got there fairly early and I had a wonderful time, a bit of a dip followed by a combination of a good book and audio doctor who’s on my temporary Ipod.

Once done after a quick bite we went to Joe Playland where we absolutely demolished the Family Guy Pinball machine and had our first look at the new Indiana Jones Pinball that includes all four movies. The original game is one of the single best pinball machines I’ve ever played.

This new machine was expensive (75 cents a game) but was very creative. Here is a brief film I found on the machine elsewhere:

Is it superior to the old game, I’m not ready to say that but it is pretty good.

We then drove north toward Hampton beach and the strip there, then further up the coast for a bit and saw some of the most expensive houses you’ve ever seen. They were a sight almost as beautiful and incredible as the coast itself.

From there the next stop was Kimball’s farm for ice cream in Westford Mass. I remember when it was just an ice cream stand with a few farm animals. After a time a gift show was added. The last time I visited they had mini golf, bumper boats and a driving range. Monday when we went down a new BBQ grill area serving all kinds of fried grilled and BBQ meats and fish, an exotic animal area, a midway/arcade (no pinball how barbaric) and finally hot air balloon rides where for $15 bucks you get 8 minutes at 300 feet.

If you are looking for an excellent first date to take a girl, this place is it.

So in the end it was a fun and relaxing day, I haven’t gotten in a lot of blogging and a lot of it hasn’t been political, but you know what, I’m not going to let my problems or this president keep me from living and enjoying the one life I have. All these things are important and I’ve expressed my opinion on them and will continue to do so, but not at the expense of my life.

Presidents and supreme court justices come and go, but real life is always there.

Why Matthews is focusing on the Birther stuff…

Posted: July 22, 2009 by datechguy in opinion/news
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There is a simple reason why Matthews is focusing on the Birther stuff. It’s a variation of the reason why MSNBC spends all its time focusing on the minority republicans.

If they fail to focus on Republicans they have to focus on Democrats as the people in charge and thus the people who are at fault for the current situation.

The end result of focusing on attacks on Rush etc have created an additional demand for Rush and the arguments against Obama’s programs. Since public opinion is starting to turn they want to avoid featuring what is basically a series of successful republican arguments.

So if you won’t focus on what the democrats are doing and you don’t want to focus on republican arguments that have resonance what do you do?

You focus on the one argument that is off the wall, the argument that has the least credible supporters and are the easiest to be used to make their supporters look like fools, the “birther” argument.

The ultimate goal is to paint the tea party people with the same brush as the birthers so they will attempt to forge a link. I suspect the Ron Paul supporters will be an excellent tool for this.

Paul is mostly awful but his is correct on two significant issues, abortion and spending, many of his supports were at the Boston Tea Party that I attended. If I was Matthews et/al I would not miss a chance to paint all tea parties as an extension of this.

Update: Even worse it forces people like Charles Johnson to agree with Matthews. If the GOP chooses to embrace this then we are shooting ourselves in the foot.

Fun (bug) with netgear wireless G

Posted: July 22, 2009 by datechguy in tech
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Well the new B system is in the Dining room (yes you read that right) but since it’s in the dining room it can’t reach the router. So the time came to get a wireless for the system. (This predated the download of video drivers).

Since I didn’t want to spend a lot on a “B” system I picked up the least expensive product. A Netgear Wg111 wireless G adapter. This is the low end product in terms of speed but this is meant as a “B” machine so speed isn’t a vital consideration at this time.

The install was fairly routine, I disabled the netgear manager to use the standard windows one and after a few false starts connected without issue, that’s when I got my surprise.

After reboot the standard friendly interface for XP logon was gone and the enterprise style logon replaced it.

When I went to switch it back (I don’t mind that version but it can be a pain for the non-pc people) I got a grey screen and the following error:

A recently installed program has disabled the Welcome screen and Fast User Switching. To restore these features, you must install the program. The following file name might help you identify the program that made the change: RtlGina2.dll.

Lucky for me a simple fix was written by a fellow named Doug Knox. Simply click here and download the fix file, and run. Reboot and Viola! You have your screen back without losing your internet!

The new “B” system

Posted: July 22, 2009 by datechguy in tech
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Have just finished getting a new “b” machine all ship shape and Bristol fashion.

It’s an old P4 2.40 with a gig of ram that I’ve threw xp home onto, to replace the old Dell laptop that has finally bit the dust for the last time.

It’s amazing what you can do with leftover parts. The machine was a cast off from my nephew that wouldn’t boot. The Monitor was a gift from a friend who had an extra, the monitor cable came from a neighbor.

I of course since I buy dells had the xp cd’s and simply added my spare mouse and a new keyboard and presto, a worthwhile system to use as a B machine in the other room!

the only other thing necessary was a few drivers. Sound video and LAN drivers were not functioning so I popped open the box and discovered we were using the Intel D865GBF. All the drivers were available online here.

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