Windows Vista: first impressions

Yesterday I had the pleasure agony of using Microsoft's newest OS. I was making a house call for a delightful old lady who was having printer problems and I wanted to help get her set up with her brand new laptop purchased not even 2 months ago with Windows Vista pre-installed.

I must preface that my opinion of Windows Vista was influenced by my strong distrust for Best Buy tech support and sales staff. This poor woman, who is no computer whiz by any means, was not properly informed by the sales staff about the minimum hardware requirements for Vista or that her printer would need an updated driver to fully work on Vista. This is very disheartening and it makes me wonder if people at Best Buy care about anything except getting their commission or paycheck. I believe that this whole situation could have been avoided if the sales staff was properly educated about Windows Vista and current compatible hardware. The Geek Squad should have also known better when "fixing" her computer not to leave it in a half-fixed state.

Now when Microsoft took 6 years to release its latest version of it's software, you'd be inclined to assume that it would be so finely tuned that it would work wonderfully on a new computer with a "Designed for Windows Vista" sticker. I mean, Best Buy wouldn't sell hardware that was incompatible, or barely compatible with Vista now would they? Of course they would. First the minimum requirements for Vista Home Basic states that you should have 512 MB of RAM, however, every other version of Vista including Home Premium, Business, and Ultimate recommends a MINIMUM of 1GB. Home Basic may have less background processes running than Home Premium by default, which would explain the lower memory requirement. But honestly when you open one or two of your own applications such as Microsoft Word, or Microsoft Internet Explorer, almost 100% of your available 512MB is quickly used. This is seriously painful because when your physical memory is full, Windows uses a virtual paging file on the much slower hard drive. My biggest pet peeve is slow operation of every day applications and with a new computer, a user should never have to wait over a minute and a half for Microsoft Word to start.

The low memory situation made it painful to operate the PC and even more painful to install and uninstall applications and drivers. I do not wish anybody the absolute agony I experienced while trying to install simple printer drivers and having your mouse pointer freeze for 3 whole minutes. Don't even try to open up Windows' Task Manager to kill any offending processes causing the freeze, because that will take about 4 minutes!

I came to the PC and quickly learned that whoever at Best Buy installed Microsoft Word on her PC never entered in the product key. This poor old lady won't have a working word processor in 30 days. I couldn't find any Word installation CDs. I assume the Best Buy technician threw away the install CD for Office. Go Best Buy!

Lexmark X1270

Best Buy scored another point in my book when I found out that the printer they recommended isn't compatible with Vista if you use the included drivers. The printer is a multifunction printer, scanner, and copier. It's a Lexmark X1270, which is an entry-level model with a minimal amount of internal memory. So it depends on the computer's memory to make copies. That means it is heavily dependent upon the drivers installed. You can't even activate the external copy buttons if the PC isn't running. Well, you get what you pay for, but that's not my issue here.

When I first tested out this printer, I found that the bundled drivers that were installed by the Best Buy technician only enabled printing functionality; however, copying, scanning, and faxing would not work. I immediately went to Lexmark's website and I downloaded the latest drivers and installed them. To my dismay, this didn't fix the problem. Lexmark's installer detected a previous driver installation and the software stated that it would update the previous drivers. This was reassuring, and from that I assumed, improperly, that the old drivers would be completely removed and cleaned and all the newest functionality would be enabled. After a very long time of frustrating trial and error, I realized that I had to completely remove the old drivers and then re-install the new drivers in order to enable the all-in-one copier, fax, printer functionality. When I went to create the fresh driver install, I followed the on screen instructions from Lexmark and it detected the printer and installed the drivers, but Windows was nice enough to pop up its own "device detected" window and it required that you install the same drivers a second time before you could use the printer. I was able to print a test page in the Lexmark install, but after it exited and after I had wrongly exited the separate Windows driver installer, the printer magically stopped working! I had to go into Device Manager and have Windows re detect the printer again. After that everything magically worked. That was so painless.

Windows Vista is still as cumbersome as previous versions of Windows in my opinion. However it is a lot prettier and they did a good job making it look half as pretty as Mac OS X. If you read other reviews you'll see that they copied a lot of OS X's designs. But I don't blame them for copying good ideas. But besides looking better, I'd rather have an OS that didn't require so much memory just to run basic applications and wasn't so incompatible with legacy (hardware released only a year ago) printers out of the box. Windows will continue to have it's purpose and be the most used OS on the market, but with 6 years of development, I'd have expected more, a lot more.

Weekend Fun

Starting off with Six Flags on Thursday was just the beginning to a great weekend! I took the day off and went to the dentist and had all the bulbs replaced behind my instrument cluster. I can now tell what speed I am going at night again! After all that I headed to Six Flags for the evening and I had a great time because the lines were short and I got to spend time with my favorite buddy Kristin!

Friday was very laid back. Kristin and I just went to the store to buy our required gear for the motorcycle class and we watched The Manchurian Candidate.

calathea ornata

Saturday was great because I got free plants! Kristin gave me two gift certificates for a greenhouse that she'd gotten from work that were worth $40! So I bought two awesome plants! One was a calathea ornata, which has very dark leaves with beautiful pink stripes that look like they were painted on with a brush. The other plant was a Madagascar jasmine. This vine is supposed to grow several feet long and have fragrant white flowers.

Later that day the motorcycle fun began. We learned the basics of motorcycle operation and even had the chance to ride them. Everybody in the class caught on quickly and I was surprised at how easy they were to operate even though there practically 4 ways to kill the engine... Fuel cutoff switch, ignition key, engine kill button and lastly releasing the clutch when the bike is in gear and holding the front brake!

Sunday was much of the same thing. But first we went to church, then more motorcycle class. This time we made it all the way up to 3rd gear. Although I swear the guy in front of me wasn't shifting because at several times when we were supposed to be in 3rd gear, he was going about 15mph and my engine was about to bottom out so I had to engage the clutch and break several times! I was impressed with how well Kristin was doing especially since she doesn't know how to drive a manual transmission car! The instructor said that I was a fast driver, but I was only trying to see what the bike handled like around cones and on turns in a safe environment. I'd rather learn this in a parking lot than on the street when swerving around a pot hole can be life or death if a mistake is made.

I'd like to emphasize for all the people that may be fearing for my safety on a motorcycle that I do not currently plan to buy a bike, but if I do decide to within the next couple of months, it will have a small engine and I will be driving in places where there is little traffic and at low speeds for at least a year. I don't want to get hurt either folks! I talked to a couple people that ride bikes regularly, and one who has been doing it for 14 years. He even has a street bike (speed bike), and they have never been injured while riding. During one of the safety videos, a guy said that the only incidents he has ever been in (close calls or car crashes) were partially due to his inattention, or risky driving. And I do think that is true, if you are riding a bike with your full attention and at safe speeds and actively accessing potential risks all around you, you should be able to avoid 99.5% of accidents pro actively.

GEICO

The Gecko is really only half the reason I like the company so much!

When I was seventeen I was rear ended by a GEICO customer. I was really worried that somehow I'd get blamed for this since I was such a new driver and all. But funny thing is, when the GEICO field adjuster came to take pictures of my damaged truck, he actually reassured me that typically with rear-end cases, the person who rear-ends you is at fault 99% of the time. To myself I thought that was awfully nice of the guy to say, especially because that meant that his customer would have to pay for the accident. But the good feelings kept on going when he said he'd give me a check for the highest estimate I could find and on top of that, he'd throw in enough for a 2-day car rental! I wasn't even his customer, but he saw how concerned I was, and he did all this to make me feel more comfortable! In under 2 weeks I had my check from GEICO. It was a great experience

Fast forward to about a year ago. I got into an accident with a State Farm customer whose wife was a claim adjuster. I was still under my dad's Allstate policy at the time. The police officer immediately ticketed the other guy for failure to yield to oncoming traffic. I got no ticket. I'm assuming the guy's wife got angry about him being at fault so I find out that State Farm is claiming that I was majority at fault because my car was less than 50% in the left hand turning lane and mostly on the painted (non-raised) median. My Allstate claims adjuster thought this was bogus and she sent the case to arbitration. However, probably to cover her butt, she never would be specific on whether or not she thought I had a good chance in winning the case. This made me worry. My sister assured me that I would most likely win, but my adjuster's lack of enthusiasm worried me still. I felt that she wasn't going to push for me if she didn't believe that I truly wasn't at fault. Eventually she became slow at responding to my emails and calls if she did at all, and this made me worry even more.

I decided to switch to GEICO because I remembered feeling a lot more secure when working with them and I appreciated how friendly they seemed. Their rate quote was also much lower than Allstate's if I had gotten coverage on my own. This was while the arbitration was still occurring, so I had only my truck's damages reported as being paid for by Allstate. If I was found 50% or more liable, I'd also have 50-100% of the State Farm customer's damages to pay for.

Anyway. 7 months after the arbitration, I get a check for the amount of my deductible along with a very vague letter. I assumed this meant that I wasn't liable at all for the accident, and my sister reassured me again. Fast forward to 2 days ago, I decided to make sure that I was getting the best possible rate since I was found not liable for the accident. I called GEICO and they said they had already lowered my rate. Score 1 for GEICO. Then I asked if it was lowered due to the fact I was found 0% liable in arbitration. They said that they only check previous liability claims when you first open the policy, and if those change, you would have to provide proof that the surcharge should be removed from your rate. I was slightly worried about how hard it would be to prove that I wasn't liable, but I asked them exactly what I'd need, and it turned out to be just a print out of the arbitration results from Allstate and some sort of written proof that I was the driver involved in the accident. Since it was my dad's policy, his name was written in the arbitration file. So I attached my email conversation to my fax to GEICO showing that I was communicating with the Allstate adjuster and not my father. I figured this should be enough "proof" and it was! 2 hours later I got a call from GEICO stating that my rate would be lowered $170 for every 6 month period!

This is why GEICO impresses me. I did not fathom that GEICO would be so quick to lower my rate and even call me back and let me know as soon as the rate had changed. They always managed to make me feel like I was valued and they wanted my business, unlike how I ended up feeling with Allstate. I also found out that for people w/o home owner's insurance or multiple vehicles or policies with the same company GEICO's rates will be among the most competitive because they automatically offer the best rate possible and they don't rely on discounts to give you a good rate. So I highly recommend GEICO to anybody who doesn't have a home or multiple vehicles. I also recommend them for their great customer service. I also recommend American Family Insurance if you own a home, because their rates are competitive, and I know that at least one of their claim adjusters will be on my side if I need it ;)

Home Taxes

I'm even more excited about building a home now because I just found out that if I finish building my house in January 2008, I will not have to pay the full property taxes (accessed in January 2008) until June of 2009 for the 2009 tax year! I will have to pay taxes based on the lot value in June of 2008, but that will be closer to 25% of the taxes based on the home's value plus the lot!

So to summarize all the useful information I have learned so far:

• The tax you pay in 2008 is for the tax accrued in 2007
• Property tax is normally 2.25-3% of the accessed market value
• Primary Mortgage Insurance (PMI) will be charged if you pay any amount under 20% down payment. It will be less, the more you put down.
• Interest paid on your mortgage is tax deductible
  
  For example on a 200,000 property with 20% down, you'll pay $10,680 in interest, meaning you can deduct that amount from your taxable income for federal taxes. This means you'll get about $1560 back in taxes!
  
  

Bugatti Veyron

So today I found another reason to live. The Bugatti Veyron. This 1000+HP super car makes other super cars like the Audi R8 look like a, well, my pickup compared to a BMW M3. This car goes from zero to 150 mph in less time than it takes my truck to get to 60. (It goes from 0-60 in 2.5 seconds and 0-150 in 11.0) This car is the definition of amazing and I'd be honored just to ride in one. They're only producing 300 of these machines, and with a price tag of over $1.6mil after taxes, I won't be driving one any time soon. But it never hurts to dream, and that I will do.

Watch this video until about the middle to see the Veyron smoke the Audi R8 like it wasn't even moving. Excuse me, I have to find a towel to wipe up all this drool.

On an impulse

In the past few days, I have almost bought the following things on impulse:

Skil 18V Cordless Combo Power Tool Kit
Polaroid 46" 1080p Widescreen LCD HDTV
Marlton Stone Sofa

I decided against all of these purchases for one main reason. I still haven't bought my house ;) Other reasons that were also subsets of the main reason include: Where would I store my old TV/Furniture?, Throwing away non-broken things is dumb, Will I ever use 3/4 of the tools in my apartment?

I do this a lot, but luckily I talk myself out of buying any of these things 90% of the time. My most recent impulse buys were my Emerilware cookware set, Bosch compact multi-function kitchen tool, and my Apple MacBook Pro. The one thing in common about all the things I end up buying vs the ones I don't is that I tend to use the things I buy a lot, and the ones I don't I probably wouldn't use that much. However, I'd use the HDTV a lot, but I would not use the 1080p HD functionality, so it is a waste until I upgrade my cable :) And the MacBook really was only purchased because my old laptop's battery would no longer charge and there was no power button on it anymore!

100%

I am 100% out of it today. I've been mentally preoccupied (contemplating) all day and at the same time trying to keep my composure at work. Too many things are going on in my brain and I can't even verbalize what is going on up there!

I went to lunch with some co-workers today and one asked me what I was thinking on the ride over. And I was like "nothing, absolutely nothing, that sky sure is blue!!!!!" And then I continued the joke as if my mind was empty. They fell for it, but during lunch another coworker was like "you sure are quiet today" and I said "I'm just looking forward to the weekend." She asked what I was doing and I said "nothing." She asked why would I look forward to that and I said "it's not the week" but inside, I thought, am I really looking forward to the weekend? No, I'm not looking forward to anything.

If I can't get this house, I'm going to throw in the towel for a few years and go to grad school. This is what I've decided. I am better off when I am using my brain and I need to use my brain or else I will feel this way forever. So many things are not the way I'd like them to be, but I need to change the ones I can, and getting a Master's is one of those things.

There's nothing really wrong with my life. It's really going well, I just want to improve it. I am a perfectionist in a lot of ways. When it comes to my goals, if I don't do it right, then I might as well not do it at all. I'm not doing it right at this moment. So I'm going to change that.

Life is too complicated for words, too intricate to express, and too beautiful to realize it. I've just got to take things one step at a time and sit back and try to appreciate all the things I have going for me, no matter how bad it may seem temporarily, temporary is all that it is.

Meet the interns

So apparently I'm going to mentor one of the four interns for our team. Well that's great because I totally am bogged down with my 30 min of daily work. I swear I can't tell how old kids are these days because I could've sworn they looked my age. However, they are all high school graduates. So I think I am starting to get the old man syndrome where I think I look younger than I really do.

Another weird thing is that none of the interns look like computer-types. They look like the cooler crowd or at least non-geek crowd. I miss the good ol-days where I was surrounded by a bunch of nerds in high school. Also 2/4 of the interns are females, and there was definitely not a 50% male to female ratio in my school. Times are changing, and for an old dog like me, I think it's time to throw in the towel and start yelling at kids to get off my lawn.

Old Man Gripes:

1. Kids these days need to eat more
   
2. What ever happened to the good ol' nerd engineer?
   
3. Those interns are all making too much for their age
   
4. GET OFF MY LAWN
   

Myspace

I really don't think I like Myspace. I held out subscribing to it for the longest time, but since one of my ex-roommates had great success picking up high school girls with it, I figured I'd give it a try. I mean, who doesn't want high school girl friends with all their high pitched screaming and blabbing on about how billy in class looked at them and they think he is so dreamy and how they wish billy would just dump his 2 timing girlfriend who is complete trash and has a skin rash problem and steals from the church offering and hates puppies?????

No but seriously, my friend did end up meeting a few high school girls, but I figured I'd give it a try just to meet normal people in the area, maybe with similar interests. Well I gave it a few months and to my dismay, nobody wanted to be my friend. (Well I didn't make any friend requests) The world is a tough place. I kept considering deleting it, but then my best friend Brian jumped on the bandwagon and I decided to keep it for now, but still not encourage anybody to use it. Then a couple more people started flowing in, my sister found me, even though I told her to stay away from evil Myspace. Then a couple other people. And now I just can't get rid of it, because some people like Kristin have private profiles, so I can't see them if they're not my friend :( (Mine's private too, I don't want anybody to find me) I still don't like Myspace, but I'm stuck now. How can I e-stalk my closest friends without it?

But yesterday I had the biggest dilemma yet. One of the high school aged girls from my parent's church back home made a friend request. And I don't even remember her name. Did I ever even talk to her? You see, my dilemma was, I made a pact with myself never to add anybody that I didn't talk to in real life at some point. But then again, I recognized this person, and the good Christian in me says to accept people into the fold and not to shun people off. But I don't want to have other people from my parent's church find my profile, and to be honest, I'm not too fond with some of the people my age that are left there. This will probably open a door that I wanted closed, but I still accepted the friend request, just to be nice. Being nice is so overrated.

I don't know why, but I just get this weird feeling about Myspace every time I use it. I really dislike it, but I want to use it minimally at the same time. I used to love Facebook because it was clean (Nobody was allowed to put those ugly backgrounds and animated flashy stuff on their profiles. My eyes were saved!) and only college students could join. But now they've opened the doors to everybody and I've already started getting weird friend requests. Thankfully, you still can't mess up the clean look of Facebook. Maybe I should just close my Myspace down. I mean Facebook is now open to everybody. It would sure make me feel a lot better, and then it'd be harder for people to find me once again.... Nah, I'm too lazy to do that.

$100,000 sweepstakes from HGTV

So I've been signing up to every sweepstakes possible this spring, so here's the last one I found...

HGTV $100,000 Big Backyard Splash Sweepstakes - You can enter one per day until June 14, 2007

Blood Donation

Today I donated blood at Life Source. It was fun! They said because I was dehydrated, my blood was pumping really slowly, but that's OK because I got free cookies and juice. I hope somebody gets to enjoy my delicious blood! I mean... I hope it goes to a good medical cause.

I also went to Kristin's house for breakfast and I had huevos rancheros for the first time. They were so tasty. Kristin is a good cook and she always prepares her food like its art and it is always full of color! For example, the main dish had yellow and white eggs, with green cilantro, and red salsa! And There was a side of fruit which included a bowl of blueberries with a split apricot for a nice color contrast and a bowl of cantelope and strawberries!

post fest!

So since it's been so long since I've had a blog, I'm going crazy with the posts today.

I love my truck because it hasn't gotten me killed even with my crazy driving at times. So I've decided to write it a letter.

To My Truck,

We've had good times together. I drove you to prom. We went to college together. We even did donuts in the snow on the old baseball field. The times we've had together have been filled with joy, laughter, anger, tears, sadness, and just about any other emotion to be had. You were my first vehicle, and for that you will always have a special place on my key chain. But with all things, change is inevitable.

You're starting to grow old and you just don't drive like you used to. You make funny noises when turning, and you pull to the left randomly while driving. Your power steering whines like it's going to die at various times and it won't stop whining even if the wheels are not turned. Your shifter comes off when I change gears, and your clutch is just about worn. You even smell like must now since I left your back window open during the rain. My senses and my heart is sorry for making you smell so bad. But all this means that every day, I think about moving on. I need to get something new.

In 2001, your 20mpg was great because gas was only $1.20/gallon, but now that it's pushing $4, it's getting harder and harder to ignore how much you guzzle. And I know it's not your fault. That's just how you were made. Rusty tail pipes and all. I hope you can understand that it's not you, it's me. I don't deserve you anymore, it was a good run, but I think it would be better for us both if I moved on.

Yours Forever,

time doesnt fly

Work is boring. I love having a job and all and I wouldn't want to get laid off with all the layoffs going on now. but why does work have to be so repetitive? I mean, I went to college and challenged my brain on a daily basis, but it seems most entry-level jobs force you to do the same mind numbing tasks over and over. Why do you have to work so hard in college if you'll never use most of what you learned or your brain ever again? It's really a sad thought, and I wonder how many other people just do their jobs because it pays the bills, but they feel their brain dies a little every day they go to work.

I need to be challenged. I need to find a position that challenges me more often than not. I really don't care if it is what I studied in college. I could become a real-estate investor for all I cared. As long as I'd have to use my creativity and mental abilities to get the job done. That's all that I ask for. Let me use my brain!

Similar co-workers

?

There are these 2 ladies that work in my area that look very similar, and I swear both of them are marketing too. I work with one of them whose name I know. The other one I have never talked to, but accidentally I started smiling and saying "hi" in the halway to the other one because I didn't realize they were 2 different people... and today I ran into one of them and said "hi" and she asked how it was going.... and I said "good..." but I didnt know what else to say because I don't know if thats the one I work with or not!!!!! I was telling Kristin earlier that before I realized that they were both two different people, I had kept thinking that some days this one person I worked with looked slightly different. I couldn't put my finger on it. Thats when it all started. I really have no idea who the other person is.

Bundt cake

I wanted to make a bundt cake. So I drove to Dominick's and bought some sour cream, 7-up, muffin liners, 2 boxes of muffin mix and a box of yellow cake mix.... all of which were on sale.... I was estatic that I found a brand of everything I needed that was on sale.

I go to the check out aisle and give the lady my phone # cause my card is all worn off because they don't laminate them like Jewel does.

and she says "the number doesn't work"

and I say "you can try my card, but as you can see, it's worn off."

So she tries about 10 times... like that'll make the bar code reappear

and then I say, "can you just use the register copy of the card..."

and she says... "I don't have one"

So I tell her the dominicks in schaumburg has register copies. And I ended up just leaving the food there because my total came up to $15, which was about 2x as much as I was supposed to pay because almost everything I was buying was half off or more :(

Dominicks sucks