Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Bacon haiku

Jim Gaffigan says
"My greasy lover bacon."
Is he right, or what?

Saturday, May 31, 2008

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Orcas

Some tree-hugger, eco-vacationing in Argentina, got a thrill seeing some Orcas. Wait'll he gets a load of the real thing, courtesy Microsoft! It'll make those silly sea creatures look like so many big fish!

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

The What What Journal?

Most people I've talked to realize what perfection Windows Vista has achieved, but there are some cranks out there that insist they know better than Microsoft. Here's one guy, Walter Mossberg:

It has taken the giant software maker more than five years to replace Windows XP with this new version, called Windows Vista – an eternity by computer-industry reckoning. Many of the boldest plans for Vista were discarded in that lengthy process . What’s left is a worthy, but largely unexciting, product.

No, I've never heard of Mossberg, either. He must be some young pup just getting his start. He writes for some paper called the "Wall Street Journal."

Hey, Walter! Most papers cover more than just one street. Whole cities, most of them, like the Chicago Tribune, for instance. Some papers cover whole states, like the New York Times, or even whole countries, like the best example of fine journalism in the world, USA Today. If you have any doubt that USA Today is the best, ask yourself this question: how many newspapers are good enough to have Larry King write for them?

Anyway, I suppose if young Mossberg works hard and, more importantly, gets a clue about the greatness that is Windows Vista, he just might have a future in the newspaper biz.

Monday, February 12, 2007

Windows Experience Index

I have this really boss computer that I'm going to put Vista on. I ran Windows NT 4.0 on it for a long time, then I loaned it out to my crazy brother-in-law, who finally gave it back. I'm not sure what he did with it, but it boots up to something called FreeBSD, which I think is for running pirated arcade games, or something.

My brother-in-law's kind of a pinko freak. Listens to a lot of Joan Baez records.

Anyway, like I said, it's a really boss computer, but it's not the newest one you've ever seen. Luckily, Microsoft has thought of everything. Vista has this cool feature called the Windows Experience Index, which tells you exactly what to expect on any given computer once you've made the move to the world's greatest OS.

The scores run from 1.0 to 5.9, as follows:

A computer with a base score of 1.0 or 2.0 usually has sufficient performance to do most general computing tasks, such as run office productivity applications and search the Internet. However, a computer with this base score is generally not powerful enough to run Windows Aero, or the advanced multimedia experiences that are available with Windows Vista.

A computer with a base score of 3.0 is able to run Windows Aero and many new features of Windows Vista at a basic level. Some of the new Windows Vista advanced features might not have all of their functionality available. For example, a machine with a base score of 3.0 can display the Windows Vista theme at a resolution of 1280 × 1024, but might struggle to run the theme on multiple monitors. Or, it can play digital TV content but might struggle to play High Definition Television (HDTV) content.

A computer with a base score of 4.0 or 5.0 is able to run all new features of Windows Vista with full functionality, and it is able to support high-end, graphics-intensive experiences, such as multiplayer and 3 D gaming and recording and playback of HDTV content. Computers with a base score of 5.0 were the highest performing computers available when Windows Vista was released.


Anyway, I think this FreeBSD thing must've broken something on my computer, because it's not getting the scores it should. I mean, 1.0 is supposed to be the lowest score. For Pete's sake, this thing has dual Pentium II Overdrive 333 MHz CPUs (Socket 8, no less! You could use 'em as surfboards!)! That's not a minus 2.3 CPU score. And the video card is a state-of-the-art, dual-VGA Matrox Millenium G200. Windows Experience Index graphics score? 0.25. Cripes!

Well, I'm going to go ahead and put Vista Ultimate on it, and see what happens. I can't wait to fire up Mahjong Titans!

Sunday, February 11, 2007

Zunetastic!

I've had my Zune for a week now, and it's way cool.

Naturally, I got the brown one. The color reminds me of something, but I can't quite put my finger on it. For some reason, it's cheaper than the black one. I ask you -- who'd pay more for the ugly one? Some people are just dumb, I guess.

I previously had a Creative Zen, but I wasn't happy with the color -- not brown!

I think the Zen was broken in some way, because all of the PlaysForSure music I had on it won't play on my new brown Zune. I called Creative for support, and I guess I got some brain-dead trainee, or something, because he laughed at me and then tried to blame Microsoft! Whatever!

So until I buy all of that music again, I guess I'll have to hang on to the non-brown Zen for a while. Luckily, I found a brown case for it.