Here is Germany

I actually survived my first plane trip! It was perfectly fine going up but coming down was pretty brutal. I got the worst headache of my life and was pretty nauseous, but I was fine once I got to the ground. I didn't really sleep on the plane so I had terrible jet lag. Fortunately I just had a 12 hour sleep so I feel much better now.

Its a beautiful day here in Germany. We're supposed to be going for a walk into town today. Not too sure what we'll be doing but I'm sure it will be rad.

An upgrade gone awry

So yesterday I got a Pentium 2.0A GHz Socket 478 CPU from eBay and I tried to install it in my system that had a Celeron 1.7 Ghz, but somehow I managed to break off part of the "retention mechanism", that is the square plastic thing that holds the heatsink to the motherboard. I also forgot that I'd need to add new thermal paste to the CPU for proper heat conduction. So I tried turning it on with a broken retention mechanism and barely any thermal paste for whatever reason and it instantly heated up to a nice 69 degrees celcius. Not exactly good for the processor. But thankfully a guy at a local computer shop had an extra rentention mechanism handy so I bought that from him, stuck on some new Artic Silver thermal paste and now it works very well :)

In other news, I'm going to Germany (as well as Switzerland and Austria) tomorrow for six weeks! Its going to be great especially since I'm going with Leanne and don't have to relive last summer. I'm very excited even though I probably won't be able to say more than "Where is the bathroom?". Leanne also payed for my plane ticket so I owe her big lol. I'll have to buy her some sweet German chocolate.

I'll try to post on here when I get internet access and hopefully some pictures too in my gallery.

Facing the MPAA

No this isn't going to be a post about how the Motion Picture Association of America is suing a single-parent family for downloading a movie. Its about a rating they have applied to a movie called Facing the Giants. This is a movie (which I have not yet seen) about a football coach that uses faith to motivate the players. This movie has been given a PG rating because some topics could be "unsuitable for children"!

When was it decided that faith and mentioning God would be considered equal with violence and brief nudity as some movies with an equal rating have received. I'm not saying that PG is a very severe rating, but it could stop a parent from taking their kids to see it, thinking there is something worse in it.

This is just more proof at how western culture is turning on the very values that founded it and stabbed it with many sharp knives. Oh sorry... I guess I should have warned you this post has a PG rating... because I said God.

Windows Vista: First Impressions

So here's my personal review of Windows Vista Beta 2 (Build 5384). I finally downloaded all 3GB of it yesterday and installed it. My first question is what could cause the installation files of Vista to be about four times larger than that of Windows XP. Is there a whole secret library of videos somewhere that I haven't found?

The interface is nice looking. Edges are all rounded and shading looks nice. One big thing I find missing is this supposedly revolutionary Windows Aero interface that is supposed to make windows look like glass and basically take advantage of the video card more. I'm not sure why I don't have this feature. My video card meets the system requirements. Very odd.

I tried out some of the software and came across this "Windows DVD maker" so I tried it out. But I couldn't get past the first screen because apparently my video card does not meet the minimum system requirements! Well this wasn't a cheap video card so are they expecting me to buy a video card that costs more than the whole computer? It could run Battlefield 2 in Windows XP without any problems so I'm not sure what they're expecting.

So far my hardware hasn't worked too well with Vista. Windows automatically installed video drivers but is missing many of the features of the drivers that came with the video card. I tried installing from the CD but was told the drivers could not be installed.

Wireless keyboard and mouse, and my flash drive worked fine as they should have. My Linksys USB wireless adapter was not even detected my Vista. Once I had installed the drivers off the cd it was found though I manually detected it and then it installed fine. Vista seems to support WPA2 encryption so that is one thing better than XP. Vista wouldn't let me install the Linksys connection manager though so I had no choice.

The biggest problem was the integrated sound. Vista installed drivers for it and it appeared to work properly but there is no sound in Windows Media Player and Winamp worked for a few songs, then lost all sound. Now I have no sound at all.

I think the best feature of Vista is the new version of solitare :)

In conclusion, I will be keeping Windows XP as long as I can. Either until I buy a new computer with Vista pre-loaded on it, or Firefox is no longer supported on XP :)

It begins

Well I've somehow managed to graduate with actual decent marks! I'd say at 78% average is pretty good. Better than failing anyway. I'm one of only about 5 people from my original group of 160 people that graduated. Mind you, many of them went into co-op but its still nice to know that I made it through without failing a single course.

So now begins the job hunting... I actually have an interview at Research in Motion next Tuesday for a job that I think would work out great for me! The only problem is that the Germany trip might conflict with it. It will be worth it even if I lose the job because of the trip. This is a once in a lifetime oppertunity and I will have the rest of my life to work :) If I got the job though and started working right after the trip that would be the most perfectest of all!

A Good Friday to remember

Well this past Easter weekend I was in Port Elgin to visit my relatives and Good Friday brought on a freak hail storm the likes of which no one had ever seen. There was at least golf ball size hail and no one's car escaped its wrath. I won't go into too much detail about it because some of my family already posted quite lengthy posts about it. But I have a video! Hurrah!

Make sure you have sound on before watching. You get the best effect that way.

THE END (of school) IS NEAR!!!!

I figured since its been a couple of weeks since the strike was over I figured that I better update this thing. Things are pretty much back to normal now. Not a big change in the schedule, just an exam or two pushed to the first week of may, but I can handle it. I really hope I won't have any issues passing all my courses. Every semester I'm convinced I'm going to fail something and I always end up getting through it so hopefully this will hold true this time.

Everyone should check out Leanne's new blog. Its really good!

The end of the school year and thus the end of my schooling will arrive very soon and therefore I must now being to look for a job. This is going to be a new thing for me since I have pretty much been given every other job I've had with very little effort. But I suppose it will build character so thats good.

Oh man I can't wait until I go to Germany. I'm going to take pictures and post them on here while I'm there hopefully.

Frustration sets in

Its now day 13 of the strike (if you don't count weekends) and the enjoyment of an extended reading week has long passed. I'm now getting worried that the school year might start to conflict with my summer trip to Germany with Leanne. I'm going on this trip no matter what because its an opportunity that probably won't come again for a very long time, and the plane ticket is already booked. But if I want to be rid of this school and all the politics that goes with it... I want to write my exams and pass the course and never look back. But with each passing day of the strike it looks more and more like I'm not going to be able to finish my year. I'm praying I will but I've had my plans messed up by unions so much that I feel that its inevitable. But I won't lose hope.

Attack of the unions

Well here I am at 11:34 pm hearing that I am now part of the third strike I've been a part of in my 22 years on this earth. First one: high school teachers went on strike. Second: BF Goodrich where I was forced into a strike as a summer student. Third: The Ontario college teachers union! Wow! Is this a fluke or is this common for people?

This particular time around it isn't a huge deal for me because I could use a few more days off to catch up and work on projects. I also had a midterm scheduled for tomrrow which is now postponed. Oh well... as long as this doesn't turn out to be another BF Goodrich then I'll be fine.

It finally came

Well the rebate actually came a couple days ago... $20 in the bank. Its not a lot but at least I showed some people at D-link's rebate center that they can't promise to send money and never do it. I'd say it was worth the effort.

I hate insomnia

I've never experienced it myself directly, quite the opposite actually. I usually can fall asleep in about 5 minutes if I'm really tired. But I might as well be experiencing it myself.

Leanne has insomnia and it tears me apart. Not the lack of sleep itself but what it does to her when she's awake. It takes a huge toll on her both mentally and physically. She wants to sleep so badly but she can't... and both of us feel completely helpless to fix the problem. I long for a day when I can say "How did you sleep last night?" and she'd say "I slept great!". I think that's only happened once or twice since I've known her.

Lack of sleep really takes a bite out of your immune system, so she always gets sick when she gets a run of insomnia. That just makes things worse because she can't sleep even more if she's sneezing or coughing.

She's tried many different things to help her sleep like the tips found here. But nothing works. Its like her body is revolting against her. Even with sleep medications they work for about 2 weeks then her body becomes immune to them. It's frustrating beyond anything I've ever experienced. I feel so helpless.

Why I hate rebates

This isn't meant to be directed towards one company in particular. Its more for the whole rebate system. But here's my story:

I bought a D-Link DI-524 wireless router from Futureshop. It was on sale and had a $20 rebate, so I bought it. The employee who sold me it said something along the lines of "Have you had much luck with these rebates? Because mine usually take months and sometimes I never get them!". I should have taken that as a sign.

I waited 2 weeks to make sure the router was working properly before I cut out the UPC bar code and mailed it in with my properly filled out rebate form in early September 2005. October and November pass with no activity. Finally in mid December I get a post card from D-link telling me that I bought my router outside of the offer date! I'm thinking, "How could Futureshop have printed me a rebate form when the offer had already expired?". So I came storming into Futureshop (or at least thats how I felt in my mind). And explained my problem to a very nice employee at the Courtesy Desk. She called D-link personally and, after about 45 minutes of talking, determined that my rebate receipt was dated 12/09/05. Futureshop prints their dates in the form of Day/Month/Year. D-link read it as Month/Day/Year. So they thought I purchased the router on December 9th 2005 instead of September 12 2005! So they reissued the rebate claim (or so I'm told).

So now its the end of January and I'm still waiting for any indication that I will get my rebate. I'll keep you posted.

Changed my mind

Ok well Geoff convinced me to not give up on this blog. I may change over to my website at some point but for now I will leave this here. You win this round Geoff!

Blog moved!

I have moved my blog to my official website. This will be my last post here.

Rootkit follow up

Just a follow up to that last post… Sony has released a program to remove the cloaking technology that hides their files (the rootkit) so if you have installed the software that comes with one of these CDs then be sure to remove it this way. Here’s a nice program to scan your computer for rootkits. It doesn’t remove them but it lets your know if your security has been compromised. Often the only way to get rid of them for sure is to format your hard drive.

The CD that (could have) killed my computer

I recently bought a new CD from Switchfoot called “Nothing is Sound”. Its my new favourite CD but it has a dark side to it… not the music but what is physically on the CD. It contains Sony’s shady anti-priacy software on it. What’s so bad about this software? Well it uses something called a “rootkit” to hide itself from detection by any other software. Sony’s software can’t be uninstalled without contacting Sony and going through some hoops. See this Washington Post article for more on that. Now, I don’t pirate music and I have a legitimate CD for every MP3 on my computer (no file sharing either), but the problem is that this rootkit leaves computers open to attack by hackers and viruses because all a hacker needs to do is make a virus that starts in $sys$ and its undetectable by any anti-virus software. Fortunately, the day before I bought the cd I saw an article on Slashdot about this problem so I had a heads up. When the CD is inserted a window comes up with the license agreement. If you agree then it installs its DRM software on your computer... locking the songs to your computer and not allowing you to play them on other computers if they’re ripped from the CD. The ironic thing is that if someone did want to pirate the CD, there is nothing stopping them at all. All it took to prevent the software from being installed was to press Ctrl + Alt + Delete and close the program from the task manager and I was free to copy all the songs as MP3s onto my hard drive using Musicmatch Jukebox. Record companies need to learn that stuff like this is just going to make your legitimate customers hate them even more when people computers suddenly fill with viruses after listening to the latest CD, while doing nothing to stop piracy at all.

Gas Gambling

Yeah yeah I know…. Its been a while but I’m a busy guy. I’ve been thinking about something that’s on the minds of most people these days: gas prices. Its really quite a strange thing… the more I think about it, the more buying gas seems to have become a form of gambling. Gas prices gradually go down and down until they reach a certain point. As its going down you have to guess how low you want to go before you buy gas, because at any given point the price could jump anywhere from 10 cents to 30 cents (this is in Canada for those of you who don’t know). I feel like I’m on a game of The Price is Right or something. I also don’t understand how gas in our area right now is about 75 cents per liter while in the Toronto area its 15 cents more expensive. Why is our area so special right now? Not that I’m complaining, but I’d still like to know.

UPDATE OF DOOM!!!!

Hello my reader(s?)

Just thought i'd give a little update as to what new and crazy things have been happening with me...

Well my official youth responsibilities are now over. Its a strange feeling knowing that I will have saturdays off now. I'm so used to saturday being youth night now that it kinda makes me sad that I left. But everyone has to move on as some point. I feel like I didn't get my total alloted youth time because I joined so late. It was the middle of grade 11 before I started coming regularly. I had so many good times there and they people I met changed my life forever... heck if it wasn't for the youth I would never have met Leanne! That in itself is more than worth the time and effort I put into leading the past 2 years. I've been blessed so much by the youth group. Its so sad that so many people never get to experience anything like a youth group. Its a time of your life when you need people around you your age and with your beliefs to build you up. When you're stuck around people that constantly swear and talk about revolting things all day at school you need that time to just have good clean fun.

The current youth group is FAR less clique-ish than the young adults group. I'm sorry to any of the YA's reading this but thats just how I see it... I don't feel like I fit in there. Talking to them one on one or in small groups is great, they're really nice people, but as a group its just so different. Which is why I really don't intend to attend YA regularly... maybe once in a while... we'll see. Don't me wrong though, I'm not bitter or angry at any of them. It just doesn't feel like a family to me.

Word publisher

I’m just trying out the new publishing from word thing for the blogger.

Another Year Begins

Well i'm starting school again now... this will hopefully be my last year of school ever. Its going to be pretty crazy but I can safely say its the least stressful beginning of school i've ever had. Probably because I know everyone in my classes and all my teachers and I don't have any stupid elective courses that I don't want to take. It can't possibly be worse than last year... I hope