How To…

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Need to know how to…

How To: By You looks like the place to go. Fun little idea someone’s come up with:

Every now and then, a new topic will be posted. It could be anything from ‘How to eat peas.’ to ‘How to build an areoplane.’ No answer is wrong and it’s up to you, the player, to explain how to do it. Eventually a voting system will be implimented and the answer with the most votes will win. Right now, HTBY is in beta testing and there is no such system. Just have fun. Try to keep it on topic and check back for more updates.

(via Anil)

JetBlue and CAPPS II

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I don’t know anything about what area of the country they serve, as I’ve never heard of them before, but it seems like the JetBlue airline is going to be the testbed for the blatantly invasive CAPPS II program.

In a secret, off-the-record meeting held recently at TSA headquarters, TSA chief James M. Loy informed an elite audience of conservative opinion-makers that JetBlue Airways is replacing Delta Airlines as the “testing platform” for the CAPPS II internal border control system.  The meeting was attended by former US Representative Bob Barr as well as leaders from several conservative public policy groups.

Don’t fly JetBlue.

(via Kottke)

PCs are Voodoo

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Well, that was entertaining. In roughly the same way that playing rugby against a team of rabid hyenas is entertaining, but entertaining none the less.

I just spent most of the past hour deciphering IDE cables, master/slave jumper settings, and USB vs. serial keyboards in order to get my PC configured the way I wanted it. The end result is good (the 6GB drive is C:, a 4GB drive I had in my closet from when my iMac died is D:, and the 2GB drive is E:, which should make the CD-ROM F:, I suppose), and I’m in the process of getting Windows 2000 installed (for the third time in three days) on the 6GB drive. Success — but quite a few headaches in the process. And people keep trying to convince me that Wintel PCs are “as easy as” Macs these days?

Puh-leeeze.

However, in the midst of all this, I did figure out my issue with the 2GB drive from yesterday. It turns out that if you boot off the Windows 2000 CD-ROM, the setup utility will let you wipe a system partition. The problem I was having was that since the DOS level didn’t have USB drivers, I couldn’t “hit any key” to tell the BIOS boot menu to boot from the CD, so it was always booting off the drive — which explains why it then refused to nuke the drive. Once I found and plugged in my “old-school” serial keyboard, I was able to hit the “any” key, boot from the CD, and proceed with everything I wanted to do in the first place.

Once I did that, while I was poking around in the BIOS menus, I found an option to “enable USB in DOS” (or some such wording) that may allow me to use the USB keyboard at the DOS-level menus…but I discovered it too late in the process to know for sure. Still, it might help in the future if I have to go through all this again.

But for now, Windows 2000 is installing, and I’ve got one Meat Lovers’ and one Hawaiian pizza sitting on my bed calling my name.

Update: Things I learned that I want to record here for future use…

  • Special IDE cables are needed to use the ‘cable select’ jumper setting on IDE devices. I don’t have those cables. ‘Cable select’ doesn’t work.
  • When two devices are on an IDE bus, the master device should be at the far end of the cable, and the slave device should be at the middle of the cable.
  • Windows 2000 (and, presumably, other versions of Windows) needs to write some boot information to the first available drive — usually the master drive on the first IDE bus (drive 0 on bus 0 in my BIOS screen) — even if you’re trying to install Windows on a different drive. It’s best to make sure that you’re installing the OS on that first drive. If you install the OS on a different drive, then when you use fdisk to format the first drive on the first IDE bus, then Windows will fail to boot as you’ve just nuked those boot files. This is a bad thing™.

Notable me

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TypadistasNifty — I just got picked as a ‘Notable’ site on the Typadistas directory!

And while it’s really, really geeky, I love the fact that she complimented me on my source code (hey, like I said, it’s really geeky). I actually put a bit of effort into making sure that my code is clean, well-structured, and easily readable — not only does it help me when coding and debugging, but I figure it might also help others looking for examples (which is a large part of how I learned in the first place). Always nice to know that someone appreciates that!

Cauliflower of love

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Things like this really do make the ‘net worthwhile some days. Only NSFW if you (or your employer) take things way too seriously.

sexysusan: Thats ok. Ok I’m a japanese schoolgirl, what are you.

J-Dogg: A Rhinocerus. Well, hung like one, thats for sure.

sexysusan: Haha, ok lets go. sexysusan: I put my hand through your hair, and kiss you on the neck.

J-Dogg: I stomp the ground, and snort, to alert you that you are in my breeding territory.

sexysusan: Haha, ok, you know that turns me on. sexysusan: I start unbuttoning your shirt.

J-Dogg: Rhinoceruses don’t were shirts.

sexysusan: No, your not really a Rhinocerus silly, it’s just part of the game.

J-Dogg: Rhinoceruses don’t play games. They fuking charge your ass.

sexysusan: Stop, c’mon be serious.

J-Dogg: It doesn’t get any more serious than a Rhinocerus about to charge your ass.

(via MeFi)

New PowerBooks!

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Well, it finally happened — Apple has finally updated their PowerBook line (Apple’s page isn’t updated yet, though — Steve’s still onstage giving the keynote speech at the Europe Apple Expo).

~~Since the keynote is still in progress, details are a bit sketchy, but~~

Here’s some key points of what MacRumors has posted so far:

  • The G5 will hit 3Ghz by the end of summer ’04.
  • iChat is based on standards and should be compatible with Windows software soon.
  • New 17\” PowerBook: 1.33GHz, 2GB RAM Max, \$2999. Mobility Radeon 9600. 2x Superdrive.
  • New 12\” PowerBook: 1GHz with 512k Cache, \$1599. GeForce FX GO, USB 2.0. Both available today. \$1799 12\”/Superdrive.
  • New 15\” PowerBook: Aluminum. Slot Loading Drive. Backlit Keyboard. 15.2\” TFT. 1.25GHz, G4. Up to 2GB DDR RAM 333MHz. Radeon Mobility, DVI, FW800, 2 USB, Airport Extreme. \$1999 Combodrive model. Superdrive for \$2599. One config has 1GHz, 60GB, 256MB. 1.25GHz has 512MB RAM and 80GB HD.
  • A New mouse and keyboard. No wire, but bluetooth. adaptive frequency hopping – a new technology to keep a better connection. 128-bit encryption.

Update:

Added links to Apple official product info pages and replaced Euro pricing with USD pricing.

Hurricane Isabel

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Hurricane Isabel from the ISS

Wow.

This picture of Hurricane Isabel was taken from the International Space Station. Just incredible.

Seems like every time the human race starts to get a little egotistical, good ol’ Mother Nature comes along to show us who’s really in charge around here. Good for her. Though, I have to admit to being glad I’m on the west coast right now — and it looks like it won’t be hitting Florida too hard, which is good news for my grandparents.

(from Yahoo! News, via MeFi [lots more good links for both info and pics on that MeFi link, too]).

Just another day of lies

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The Powers That Be that run this country (into the ground, apparently) don’t seem to be physically or psychologically capable of telling the truth anymore. The Nation’s David Corn takes a look at “The Latest Bush Gang Whoppers” today, including this from our Dear Leader…

September is back-to-school time, and Bush hit the road to promote his education policies. During a speech at a Nashville elementary school, he hailed his education record by noting that “the budget for next year boosts funding for elementary and secondary education to \$53.1 billion. That’s a 26-percent increase since I took office. In other words, we understand that resources need to flow to help solve the problems.” A few things were untrue in these remarks. Bush’s proposed elementary and secondary education budget for next year is \$34.9 billion, not \$53.1 billion, according to his own Department of Education. It’s his total proposed education budget that is \$53.1 billion. More importantly, there is no next-year “boost” in this budget. Elementary and secondary education received \$35.8 billion in 2003. Bush’s 2004 budget cuts that back nearly a billion dollars, and the overall education spending in his budget is the same as the 2003 level. Instead of a “boost,” there is the opposite–a decrease. Perhaps like Rumsfeld–and Cheney and Wolfowitz–the president merely was overstating.

(via Tom Tomorrow)

A question for Windows experts

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Or at least, people who are more familiar with the intricacies of Windows 2000 than I am.

Here’s the short version: Why can’t I delete a partition from within the Windows 2000 setup utility?

Here’s the long version:

I’m in the midst of nuking and paving (wiping and reinstalling) my Windows box, running Windows 2000. The machine has two physical hard drives in it — a 2GB drive and a 6GB drive. Under my previous setup, I had the 2GB drive mapped to C:, and the 6GB drive partitioned into 4GB for D: (for documents and downloads), 1.5GB for E: (for applications), and 500MB for F: (for a scratch/temp disk). The thinking at the time (since I’m far more used to the Mac) was that I’d be able to reinstall Windows on the C: partition if it had issues, and I wouldn’t risk either losing my documents or having to reinstall my applications, as they were on seperate partitions. Of course, on Windows, it’s not that easy, as so many applications tie into the registry, so over time, I decided to ditch that scheme.

So now I’m working on the reinstall. While in the Windows 2000 setup utility, I’m given the option of deleting and recreating partitions on my drives. My plan was to essentially flip-flop things around — use the 6GB drive as my Windows 2000 system and application partition, and the 2GB drive for documents and downloads. So, I happily nuked all the partitions on the 6GB drive and created one single large partition across the entire drive. However, for some reason, the 2GB drive seems to be locked down — I can’t delete that partition at all.

Okay, so I figured maybe that was because I’d started the reinstall process by booting off that drive, and since the installer copied a few files onto the drive for the install before restarting and dumping me into the DOS-based setup utility, it couldn’t wipe that drive as it would end up wiping those files. So, once Windows was installed and I rebooted from the new installation, I tried reformatting the 2GB drive from within Windows, and it still won’t do it. The 2GB drive (still C:, but not booting from it) has the designation ‘System’ visible in the Drive Manager (or whatever that window is called — I’m going from memory on that right now), and the 6GB drive (D:, booting Windows 2000) is designated ‘Startup’. Obviously, the Startup drive shouldn’t be nukeable, but I’m not too sure why the 2GB drive has the ‘System’ label, or why it’s still locked down.

In one final guess, I went back into the Windows 2000 setup utility, this time starting the process after booting from the new install on the 6GB (D:) drive. I wasn’t sure this would work, but I figured it was worth a shot, guessing that the lower-level system hooks of the setup utility would be better able to muck with the drives, and this time it wouldn’t be copying any setup files onto the drive I intended to nuke. Unfortunately, that didn’t make a difference — the setup utility still stubbornly refuses to let me reformat the 2GB drive. And, once I’d started the setup process, I couldn’t get out of it, so now I’m starting over from scratch (which is why I was going from memory in the previous paragraph).

So, now I’ve got a 2GB drive which is essentially useless to me, as I can’t remove the installation of Windows 2000 from the drive to either just put the new install of Windows 2000 on that drive (which I’d rather avoid, as these days 2GB is fairly limiting for both the system and applications) or to use it for my documents and downloads.

Anybody out there know how I can reclaim those 2GB of space?

Updates, updates, updates

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As it’s been having issues for a while, I started the process of nuking and rebuilding my PC last night. I just managed to get it online (after having to search out the drivers for the motherboard’s on-board ethernet port, since it wasn’t auto-detected), and Windows Update has just notified me that I have 33 “critical updates” to install to my copy of Windows 2000 SP 2.

Oh, joy. I’m so glad I have broadband — but even so, there are enough of them that have to be installed on their own so that they can trigger restarts that this is still likely to take all night.

Update:

After the first update was installed and the computer restarted, the next trip to Windows Update actually increased the count to 34. If this keeps up, I’ll have the computer up to date round about the time Longhorn is released to the public in…oh, 2007 or so.