Open Waves

Now, when you buy a new PC, you don’t have to spend MORE time getting rid of all the “crapware” that comes pre-installed on your machine as you do actually setting it up in the first place (of course you could have just bought a Mac).

pcdecrapifier.com

They also feature a blog of recent stories that are pretty interesting. For instance, I just saw that Sony wants you to pay them $50 to “pre-uninstall” all the crapware they put on your computer in the first place. How is this not a joke?  Apparently, some people got mad and Sony took care of it.  By that I mean, they no longer offer this service.

Well, unfortunately I did not get to as many things on my list as I had wanted. I did get my uncle’s computer fixed, which simply involved restoring Windows completely. I’ve done drive wipes and clean installs, but never a restore so it’s good to have some experience with that. I was amazed yet not surprised how many times Windows needed to restart during the entire process.

Also, if you recall my first post about getting Windows XP back on my laptop, I had everything back to normal except for sound. I was not able to hear any sound whatsoever and was dreading it was a hardware problem, because I had installed the sound card driver from HP. But as I found out yesterday, I still needed Microsoft’s UAA bus driver. Once installed, and of course restarted, I heard the familiar Windows start up music. It was probably the happiest I’d ever been to hear that music. So while not on the list, it was definitely a nice accomplishment.

To top off my break, I did solve Question #1 on Project Euler. I wrote the loop to get all the multiples of 3 & 5 up to 1000, but kept getting the wrong answer. I was confused for awhile because when setting the limit to 10, I would get 23 just like the example showed. What I stupidly failed to realize was that I was counting the numbers twice where they were the same. For instance, a multiple of 3 & 5 is 15. In my loop I was counting it twice. Once I corrected that flaw, by writing an if statement inside the loop, the solution popped out ever so easily. I’ll track my progress here, as it will probably take the rest of my life to do all these problems. Except, they keep adding more. I think if I get to 100 I’ll be extremely proud of myself.

While I am off from school the next few weeks, I do have to work all but holidays and their respective Eve’s. So if I am to get anything done, here it is:

• Fix my uncle’s computer
• Create a professional quality web site template in XHTML and CSS
• Write a Firefox theme
• Solve the first problem on Project Euler
• Become more familiar with Netbeans.

I’ll check back next Wednesday to see if anything is completed. Enjoy your eggnog.

In a switch to a new email provider at work, we are transitioning to a web-based client and leaving our Outlook/Entourage software out by the curb to be picked up this Friday in the late afternoon. Unfortunately, I came to the sad realization that my Hotmail account that I was able to set up in Entourage and check regularly and seamlessly is not, as I refer to it, “poppable” with the new system. At least, not for the cost of zero dollars and zero cents. Apparently there are some third party applications that would like you to believe they are the actual POP settings, when in fact they are not. I will not support any of these by mentioning them by name, but to be fair it is worth mentioning they exist.

Thus, the pros of web-mail are overshadowed by the cons, even though the switch was necessary and worthwhile. I have found in life people do not like change; in technology they like it much less. Needless to say, I have been extremely busy the past few days explaining the steps involved in the move which I adequately described in a detailed, 4-page tutorial that was printed, collated, stapled, and placed in every mailbox on the vicinity. But I’m not bitter. It is a learning and, much more importantly, growing experience. I actual enjoy being busy, and needed. Other than this, the season of holidays has been slower than the average arbitrary frame of time.

The nice thing is, if your email provider offers IMAP services, you can ignore this post, log back into Outlook/Entourage, set up your new account, continue to check your Hotmail or other free web-based email service, write run-on sentences, and be filled with blissful ignorance once again.

For the longest time, Apple has been able to proudly proclaim that their Mac’s are “safer” because they are less vulnerable to malicious attacks. However, with their popularity growing, they are starting to become more of a target. This article goes into more detail about what is happening and how Apple is responding. It will be interesting to see how people/users respond from both camps in the near future.

Feel free to post any links of articles relating to this story.