Setting up a new machine - what a blast!

So I got lucky enough to get a new 64-bit windows machine last week. I swear this is the most amazing thing! The silly screen is bigger than my 21" TV at home in the back bedroom! I was shocked! I so didn't expect anything like that nice!!! Wow. And I sit here setting this machine up and continue to be amazed. I have to say I *really* like this. It's fast (dual core 64-bit), beautiful monitor with so many card reading ports for digital cards I nearly fell over. 2 250 gig drives. It's positively amazing!

I sit here setting up the IM's and getting VMWare reinstalled and getting outlook setup and and and and and :D Can you tell I am having a blast? So something useful out of this blog? OK. What about tools? I am the tools freak of the world. These are Free BTW :)

7-Zip: open source zip extraction etc.

Trillian: IM that handles yahoo, IRC, ICQ, MSN, and AIM. I love this but doesn't have the bells and whistles of the original IM systems. But also not the memory hog like they are.

sync toy: a way to synchronize my folders of one machine onto an external drive or to another HD

ccleaner: great clean up of all the left over temp files and pretty good registry cleaner tool.
command prompt here: powertoy tool from Microsoft.

DeskLite: If your system has a dual monitor and you remote desktop in with a single monitor, what happens to those apps sitting on the 2nd monitor? This is your answer!

XanaNews: newgroup news reader made with Delphi.

There are loads more, but I should get back to doing the good stuff. :)
cheers!

Toy Story 3!!! In 3-D???

Well this was a cool little blurb. I am skeptical..and extremely curious to see this actually work. In all honesty, I have never found that 3-D has ever worked for me, no matter how hard I try. I seem to remember when we went to Disneyland (pre-Irene) that I actually saw it work with the Honey I Shrunk the kids stuff..but it's a fuzzy memory now. So I can't honestly remember anymore.

Anyway...here..see what you think:

http://www.movieweb.com/news/97/25997.php

Firefox - How to uninstall Stylefeeder junk from your toolbar

Man, I have to post about this because I found it annoying and got no response back from the people that create Stylefeeder - which I found through an applet in Facebook. When Iwent to install Stylefeeder I found I didn't find anything useful with it, so I wanted to uninstall it. Do you think I could figure out how to get rid of the toolbar it added to firefox? I sent email to their customer service site after much digging - no news. I would have blogged kindly saying YAY!! They helped me out. But noooo. So for anyone out there like me who hunted to try to find a way to get rid of StyleFeeder.com and their junk, do the following

1) Click Tools | Add-Ons
2) Click the Extensions button at the top
3) Find StyleFeeder
4) Click uninstall button
Restart Firefox and your issue is gone.

HTH's others. I know I was happy to get rid of it.

Nastalgia

Well, I am yet again, fixing a VM that got lost. I am having to create a Virtual Machine with Windows 98 on it. Can you believe it? It took me forever to remember the fact that I have fdisk a hard drive and then format it. I am spoiled!!! :)

Anyway, things are moving along. I am learning ActiveX OLE and COM these days. Been interesting. Still not too sure of myself. But at least the terms are coming a bit easier than before. Ok..back to reading!

Happy New Year - Welcome to 2008

Well we've gone through another year. This last one was calm and collected. It was happy for the most part with a few trials and tribulations that have worked out fine in the end. I've learned a few things in this year:
1) take the 2 weeks Christmas vacation - you'll need it to make it through the next year with a fresh mind.

2) Never try to do dry rot repair on the roof and around the house in November - no matter how much you don't think it's invasive to the house - you might just have to end up replacing the entire roof by January (like we're doing).

3) Cross Stitch is a necessary thing to remove stress

4) Music is a necessary importance in your life. It's relaxing, it's motivating, it's distracting, and focusing all at the same time.

That being said, we're moving to 2008. Resolutions you ask? Nah. I find I break them most of the time. We're working on the downstairs and getting it cleaned up and usable. We're cleaning out the garage to make it more usable. We're getting rid of crap that we no longer need. We're spending more time with family. All of these? These were goals for 2007... see what I mean? Hehe. Anyway, I wish you all a happy New Year.

hmmm note to self: finish postings about Disneyland in November before I completely forget :)

OH! the other change that is coming for this year! I've moved from QA in the IDE world to QA in the Activex world. I couldn't be happier. It's a completely new genre. I've started my reading and hope to prove more useful and goal oriented as the year progresses. I think I was burned. Glad Chris saw the need and made the change.

Anyway...Happy New Year to all! PS: those of you with Facebook add me to your list of friends :) I have been having a great deal of fun in that realm.