Russell & Kimmy

So I was working a little tech magic on the side and I had the chance to preview Office 2007. There were two versions that I had to choose from the Student/Home Edition and the Standard Edition; the only difference was One Note, Outlook and $250.00.  The Student/Home Edition was $149.99 and contained Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and One Note; the Standard Edition possessed Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and outlook … it weighed in at a hefty $399.99.  Evidently Outlook was valuable enough to be worth $250.00.  Bizarre pricing practices aside; it took 45 minutes to install the Student/Home Edition and required a hefty 1.5 GB.  The install itself was fairly easy, first you had to enter the product key and verify it before even installing the software; then you choose between an upgrade or fresh install.  We opted for an update, you clicked next and 45 minutes later it asked if you would like to update the software from Microsoft.com.  We told it no and that was that.  I only got about 5 minutes of play time with it before having to move on to something else, but from my brief exposure with it was intense.  It was heavy on the GUI and was visually beautiful; and was hogging the processor like Britney at a buffet.  Despite its piggish appetite, it was beautiful.

Now on the uglier side of Microsoft, MSN Messenger.  I hate MSN Messenger and refuse to use it.  The only problem is that it still takes up valuable harddrive space and that just pisses me off.  Normally you could jaunt over to the Control Panel and just un-install the stupid thing.  MSN Messenger is anything but normal.  To get rid of the wretched thing you need to go Start and then Run.  Enter the following into the Run box:

RunDll32 advpack.dll,LaunchINFSection %windir%\inf\msmsgs.inf,BLC.Remove

Classical music boomed into the bedroom this morning like 76 trombones blaring out a Sousa march. And like I do everymorning, I hit snooze and rolled out of bed; I forgot to turn of the alarm. 30 minutes later I was back in the bedroom with a very sleepy Kimmy griping about the alarm going off. Evidently the “Rainforest” setting woke her up; just then our resident bird warbled out a loud string of chirps. Smiling, I asked her if that was the “Rainforest” setting she was talking about. The first words out of her mouth this morning; “Damn that bird is back.”

Despite the bird singing the morning in; the day still managed to suck. Left at 5:00 and had 90 emails from today still chirping for my attention. 89 of them were like little annoying piccolos, but one made me happy. Inventory, which is not my job, which has been sucking up my time like an alcoholic in Twin Liquors, which blows worse than a spazzmatic trumpet player, which I hate, is finally finished. I got a confirmation email that the damn, stupid inventory is finally finished. Rejoice, inventory is finished.

By the way, if you ever hate people at work and want to lock their background and screensaver go start -> run -> gpedit.msc. Under user configuration you need to select the folder administrative templates. Then select the desktop folder, followed by the active desktop folder. To the left you will see an option for Active Desktop Wallpaper, right click and select properties. Enable the setting, fill out the path for the background picture and select the Wall Paper Style that you want. Click Ok and your done. Have fun tormenting your employees/spouse/coworkers/love sheep and remember don’t tell them how you did it.

So the IAEA has decided that the old fashioned tri-foil radiation warning sign just won’t accuratly convey that yes this is radioactive and if you eat it your face will melt off. In order to save those poor wretches that are dumb enough to take apart a nuclear bomb with a screwdriver they have created the new and/or improved radiaton warning sign; personally I think it sucks. I wonder if they will be shipping off a few boxes of these to Iran?

At least there is one good thing about Iran being a nuclear power; interesting campaign commercials.

So while the world is going to hell in the express lane, Kimmy and I have been commuting to Georgetown in the slow lane (i.e. I-35). Georgetown is nice, but there really isn’t that much to do. So I spend most of my weekends growing fat and playing Darkstone. The weather is finally growing warmer and is encouraging me to spend more time outside. I am debating taking Kimmy paintballing but so far have not been drunk/stupid enough to do it. It would be fun right up to the point when I manage to actually shoot Kimmy; then it would be …. ugly.

Even uglier is trying to drag the office out of the dark ages and migrate them to Windows XP. The security settings are annoying, programs don’t work, and none of our ghost images work. Thank God we don’t have to switch to Vista yet. I have previewed Vista and read some reviews … the security settings are insane; as is Norton Antivirus. I am proud to say rather than whoring myself out to Norton again I have decided to give ClamWin a spin.  So far I like it and will eventually post a review about.

Happy Valentines Day, my wife is more sexy, loving, and awesome than your mother/girlfriend/fiancee/gay lover/sheep (if your an Aggie).

Get over it, sorry your Valentines day sucked when compared to mine.

So overheard at work….

[Ticket Request] Please reset password for XXX.

[Ticket Response] Password has been reset, have XXX log into the system, system will prompt XXX to change their password on a successful login.

[Response to Ticket Response] XXX refuses to login.  Please have her log in and reset her password.