After getting ready to be very mad at D-Link for selling me hope 
(only to have that hope dashed against the rocks of not-working-ness) I am happy with my new sexy little D-Link DWL-122 Wireless 802.11 USB adapter. Isn’t it just the cutest thing you ever did see? You see, I’m all excited because this is pretty much the first thing that I bought outright for Computer Guy. And hey, how often do you get to use so many buzzwords in the name of a thing… “D-Link DWL-122 Wireless 802.11 USB adapter”. Oh yeah.
I was about to send the darn thing back when I figured out what was going on… It’s really very simple. The channel I was on had too much static. I switched the router to channel 2 and it worked just peachy. Before that, I’d get terribly sporadic service… on for 5 seconds, off for 5 minutes.
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. No, that wasn’t it. I moved 200 meg of data with it, now I can’t get a connection again. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
GRRR2. Maybe it IS it. I changed the channel to 3 and BOOM, it works ok now… GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.
OK, now I upgraded that laptop (a Gateway Solo 3100) computer to XP and when I reboot, the adapter works right away. So it LOOKS like if I have Win98 SE on the laptop and I change the channel on the router while the laptop is turned on, the laptop will get a connection. If I have XP, the connection will work right when I turn it on. Of course, I can’t test the Win98 hypothesis on this computer any more because I’m not going back just for a silly test.
We are at that most peaceful moment
between sleep and waking
when even the most fearsome beast looks as a cherub.
It’s skin smells like a baby’s
It’s eyelids are beginning to flutter
Soon it will stand up as the giant that it is.
——————-
That is a thought I had while walking outside today on this calm autumn day.
Friday night: Saw my good friend Marian Heller at Don’t Tell Mama. I (of course) got there a few minutes late AGAIN. I videotaped most of her show. Afterward, Marian, her friend Lisa, her new friend Don K. and myself went out to a very nice meal a few blocks north. NYC restaurants all try so hard to impress… and I’m so easily impressed. :-) Then we went off to Deutch’s Halloween party on 27th and 3rd. The party wasn’t to my liking. I went back to Marian’s after the party. Parking was (miraculously) not a problem near her apartment. Good sleepy-time conversation and a good night’s rest later, Saturday began.
Saturday: Back home for a breather and a nap. Then off to pick up my tuxedo in Woodbridge (see below). Off to pick up PPG. We were off to her company’s owner’s Halloween masquerade party. Wow. The place was wow. I felt like we were in a James Bond movie or at the new Bellagio hotel. One thing I’ll remember is the aquarium (10′ long x 6′ high x 5′ deep) with all manner of fish. For the first time, it didn’t look like “animals in a cage”. The sheer opulence of the whole place, the small section of wall in the dining room that wasn’t painted (oop! I -am- after all a QA guy at heart), The secluded walk around the back of the house. The most delicate chocolate mousse I’ve ever had in my life. I could go on listing… food, band, dancing, easy laughing, enticing the waitstaff, pewter glasses, cosmopolitans…
Sunday: After coming home from the party and sleeping in Edison, we packed up her itty bitty room and moved it all to her new place in Metro 2409! The place is terrific. It doesn’t have a movie theater, pool room, and bowling alley, but it -does- have wonderful country lines and angles, entirely new everything, a white picket fence, a warm homey feeling, a lovely backyard, and a short walk to Everything! We had dinner at Down to Earth in Metro 2409. I hope I never forget the powerful warm “everything is going to be alright” feeling we shared while sitting in the corner in the candle-light, eating chocolate cake.
A few weeks ago, I rented a tux for my sister’s wedding. Final cost: $150 and 3 visits to the bridal shop (fitting, pickup, drop-off). For the Saturday night event, I wanted a tux so I went to Syms, picked one out that I liked from their pretty good selection, got a pre-done bow-tie, cummerbund, a tie-yourself bowtie (I vowed to learn but ran out of time for this event), and a nice shirt for… get this $210 total, tax included. If I wear it TWICE, it will have paid for itself. And most importantly, it’s exactly what I wanted. Oh, I suppose I should include in this cost the $20 extra I spent on the silk white handkerchief and the $50 I will likely spend on cufflinks and those shirt button-hole things. I’m very happy with the look of the hanky (my wedding rental tux didn’t have a hanky). I didn’t want to spend the money on the cufflinks but when I noticed that most everyone except for the caterer had them at the masquerade, I knew that I had to get them.
The Evolution Control Committee’s Plagiarythm Nation ROCKS.
Went into the city to see my good friend Marian Heller perform at Don’t Tell Mama. Afterward, we went out with her friends Lisa and Don to a fabulous NYC restaurant (aren’t they all fabulous? dining in NYC is always such a fantastic adventure!). Then it was off to the party with Deutch. Then crash-time at Marian’s. I’ve got a peaceful, easy feelin’. :-)
Tonight is the big black-tie costume event with PPG! I -must- nap before it so I’m 100%!
It’s like junking your car because it’s June and you’re tired of driving around with your old Christmas tree on the roof. But you tied that thing on there so good that it’s, like… it’s never coming off.
But no, you just need a friend with a good knife. That’s me, The Computer Guy.
A month or so ago I did an upgrade installation from Windows 2000 to Windows XP. It sucked. Windows ran slow, there was this persistent hesitation problem where the machine would lock up for 5 seconds out of every 10 minutes… My computer wasn’t happy. So when I got the 200 gig hard drive, I decided to do an install from scratch. You know, ever since Windows 95, it’s been “a good idea” to reinstall Windows every 2 years or so. What’s with that??
The only problem I’ve had so far is that Maxtor insisted that I use their Maxblast3 formatting software and not the XP formatting tool. That’s kind of funny because I banged my head against a wall of “Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt | \system32\hal.dll | Please reinstall a copy of the above file” BECAUSE of the Maxblast3 software” for 4 hours because of that bad suggestion. To get around this problem, I booted to my old XP and formatted the 200 gig drive with Windows and Partition Magic 7. After that, I installed WinXP on the new drive just fine. Patting myself on the back, I figured that one out all by myself.
My Windows XP install is now snazzy-fast :-)
I had misplaced my CD key and I wasn’t about to pay Microsoft for the privilege of getting my key back so I used “XP KeY ReCoVeRER AND DiSCOVErER 5.12”, XPkey.exe (findable on Kazaa). It’s a 49,152 byte long executable. I had to try about 10 “valid” keys before one worked. Many of the keys generated were deemed invalid by Windows. See “Checking the Product ID” to see why.
- Log in as the local Administrator
- Click Start > Run > and type in Regedit
- Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\wpaevents
- In the right pane, right-click OOBETimer, and then click Modify
- Change at least one digit of this value to deactivate Windows
- Click Start > Run and type in: “%systemroot%\system32\oobe\msoobe.exe /a”
- Click Yes, I want to telephone a customer service representative to activate Windows, and then click Next
- Click Change Product Key (at the bottom)
- Enter your valid Corporate Product Key
- Press Update and close the window.
- If you are returned to the previous window, click Remind me later
- Restart your computer
“Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder v1.41”, keyfinder.exe, weighing 262,727 bytes was also helpful. I don’t think it actually changed my keys though.. I used the Microsoft method, which is next.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q328874 was kind of helpful.
http://www.labmice.net/WindowsXP/articles/changeID.htm was quite useful. Here’s the most useful bit of that page:
Checking the Product ID
During the installation of Windows XP Professional, you are prompted to enter a 25 digit Windows XP Product Key, which Windows XP promptly converts it into the system’s product ID. Because of security concerns about piracy, Microsoft does not provide a tool that allows you to view the Product Key (or CD Key) that was used to install the operating system. However, Windows XP Service Pack 1 ships with a list of the two product IDs that are created by the pirated product volume license product keys. (The Product ID can be found by right clicking My Computer and choosing Properties) To determine eligibility for the update, Service Pack 1 compares the Windows XP product ID on the system to this list. The comparison and the list reside locally on the users PC and no information is sent to Microsoft as part of this process. Service Pack 1 for Windows XP will fail to install on installations of Windows with one of the following product IDs: XXXXX-640-0000356-23XXX and XXXXX-640-2001765-23XXX
2 weeks ago (jeez the time flies!) I went to see Siobhan in Boston. It was fun! She had to do some work for her Usability class. That entailed us going to iRobot in Burlington and planning out a usability study of their Packbot. How cool is that? I’ve got to make one derogatory comment… usability graduate students are, by and large, pretty dumb. Ok, I’m done being mean.
I got a little tour of the office space. One of the high-points was getting a look at the boss’ office. He’s got -all- the good toys and robots and models and magazines and stuff hanging from the ceiling and everything! Wee! I grinned when I realized that I was familiar with almost every item in the place except for some of the anime characters. There was one character I recognized instantly for a different reason. Koumori rocks.
