http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/biztech/rotten-smell-raises-apple-toxin-fears/2008/10/02/1222651250932.html

Apparently using Apple’s computers will give you cancer and make you die.  I’m sure the Mac-apologists out there will say that the fumes coming from Macs are part of the new iSmell that Steve is pushing.  It is only a matter of time before it is revealed that iPhones make your genitals fall off.  I’ll be giving my iPod a serious checkup when I get home today. 

Obama:
Occidental College (Los Angeles) - 2 years studying Politics and Public Policy.
Columbia University (New York) - B.A. Political Science with a specialization in International Relations.
Harvard Law School - Juris Doctor (J.D.) Magna Cum Laude, Editor-in-Chief of the Harvard Law Review.

Biden:
University of Delaware - B.A. in History and a B.A. in Political Science.
Syracuse University College of Law - Juris Doctor (J.D.)

McCain:
United States Naval Academy - Class rank 894 of 899.

Palin:
Hawaii Pacific University - 1 semester - Business Administration.
North Idaho College - 2 semesters - General Studies.
University of Idaho - 2 semesters - Journalism.
Matanuska-Susitna College - 1 semester.
University of Idaho - 3 semesters - B.A. in Journalism.

What makes the above noteworthy is that a good percentage of Americans would view Obama/Biden as “elitist” for their impressive university work.  McCain may have graduated the bottom of his class at the US Naval Academy, but at least he learned something that would be useful as the Commander in Chief role (the ONLY thing he has going for him).  Palin on the other hand… for someone who is taking a beating for not being ready to be President and who is hiding from the press, her mucked up college transcript isn’t going to help allay any fears.  And Journalism?  Is there any correlation between her degree and her avoidance of journalists???

If you have a Costco membership, please contact me.

http://www.comedycentral.com/videos/index.jhtml?videoId=184114

I think this video says it all.

I read the blog of Neal Boortz several times a week.  It is part of my effort to keep up with the “other side’s” viewpoint. Most times he is so off base I am tempted to buy www.nealboortziswrong.com.   Today his blog had this small rant, which is prompting my response:

First guest was Florida Republican Senator Mel Martinez ... he has a book out called "A Sense of Belonging: From Castro's Cuba to the U.S. Senate, One man's Pursuit of the American Dream." Amazing, isn't it? He comes to America in 1962. His parents remain behind in Cuba. He moves in with a foster family that cannot pronounce his first name ... so he becomes "Mel." Then 40 or so years later he becomes a U.S. Senator! Think about this folks .. what other country in the world can this happen!

Over the last two weeks from both the Democratic and Republican conventions I have heard the “America is the greatest country in the world” rhetoric.  Especially that line “what other country in the world can this happen?”  As if the US is the only democracy and country of freedom on the planet where someone can make something of themselves. 

Just as an example I’d like to point out the story of Ayaan Hirsi Ali.  She was born in Somalia, then lived in Saudi Arabia, then Ethiopia and then Kenya.  All places where she was raised under strict Muslim law and extremely suppressed a woman.  She managed to escape an arranged marriage and moved to the Netherlands where she attained a college education and eventually was elected to the Dutch parliament.  Read her story and you’ll find it is hard to get much lower than she was.  But the Netherlands provided her (and many others) with the ability to grow as a citizen and to make more of themselves.  Now she is one of the most outspoken critics of the treatment of women by Islam.

Any sort of mild research on the Internet will reveal stories of other countries that have great people due to their freedom and democracy.  It isn’t something that the US has a monopoly on by any stretch.  Yes America is a good country overall, but I’m not even sure it can claim the title of Greatest Place on Earth.  Yes we have more McDonald’s and Starbucks and debt and nuclear missiles than anyone else, but I don’t think these things make a country great. 

I think it would have been great if Boortz had told about the accomplishment of Senator Martinez and left it at that.  Adding on the nationalism is just tired and untrue and takes away from what is a nice story. 

My trip to Vegas with Courtney and Jayson last month was smashingly fun. While one of the more expensive trips I have taken in awhile, it was worth each and every penny. Thanks to a fair amount of pre-planning there was hardly a dull moment. Eating, drinking, entertainment, dancing, gambling… we did just about everything you could do in Vegas. The only thing we managed to not do was attend a strip show or use a prostitute, but I am fine with that. ;-) (One morning on the way to breakfast, we were propositioned by three call girls. Kind of a weird way to start off the day.)

We arrived Wednesday afternoon and settled into our room at the Luxor. Seeing the huge pyramid from the outside is quite a sight, but the inside was not at all what I expected. It seems even bigger on the inside, and I was curious how the place stays standing. We enjoyed that fact that the Luxor does not have an elevator. Oh no. They have inclinators. It looks like an elevator from the inside, but it travels diagonally on the inside of the pyramid. It took me a couple rides to get used to it. Our room had a great view of the pool and the Nevada desert. The mountains in the distance made for a nice scenic view.

After leaving our room we immediately headed to the buffet at the Luxor appropriately named ‘More’. They offered a wide assortment of foods, most of which were pretty good. I think Courtney and I cleaned them out of all the shrimp they had (both the fried and cocktail varieties). Jayson made an impressive dent in the dessert bar. Adequately stuffed, we headed out to the strip to check out the other casinos. It really is pretty amazing how massive they all are, and they were all equally busy.

Thursday we got up early and went to the Valley of Fire state park. After driving for awhile in the desert with mostly bland colored rocks, the Valley of Fire has these great bright red rocks that just come up out of nowhere. The contrast is great to see. We hiked a couple of the trails and I managed to get only slightly burnt. Jayson went all paparazzi on the poor rocks and took at least a thousand pictures (I’ll post the top 100 at some point). ;-) On the way back we stopped by the famous burger joint, In and Out. The menu had three choices that made ordering easy. The burgers and fries were very good for a fast food joint. I definitely recommended it if you are out West.

That evening we went to see Penn and Teller. I’m a huge fan of their show on HBO, ‘Bullshit’. Our seats were in the fourth row which made for a great view of all their sleight of hand tricks. If you’ve seen their show before, you know that they will do a trick and then show you how they did it. They did this for their version of the cup and ball gig. After doing it the first time, they replace the cups with clear plastic cups. They work so fast it was still difficult to keep track of what was where. Pretty amazing.

We went to see Hoover Dam on Friday morning. It is a sight to behold, for sure. It is just this massive chunk of concrete in the middle of a gorge. But I was more enthralled with a bridge they were constructing a few hundred feet higher over the damn. It was still early in development, but it was apparent that it was going to be quite a project. Oddly enough there was not much information about it at all. Something I’ll have to look up later. The tour of the inside of the dam was just awe inspiring. The few areas you get to see only scratch the surface of the size of it all. Again, Jayson took enough pictures that we could probably construct a flip-book of our tour. I’ll post the best 20 later. (Love ya kid!) ;-)

Our entertainment for the night was Danny Gans. I had never heard of him before and a little research revealed he was in impressionist. I love impressionists! After we sat down I read on his booklet that he was a singer. Danny Gans sings? OK. As soon as his performance started I realized he was a singing impressionist. It was very enjoyable and he made it a lot of fun. He did some Johnny Carson/Karnack stuff that was spot on and timely to today’s issues in the news. Great guy. Aside from the show, this evening was one of the better events I had this trip. The radio in our car had Sirius and we spent a great deal of time listening to the 80’s channel. I really loved riding around enjoying the tunes with Courtney and Jayson. It was so great to reminisce with this great music we grew up with.

Saturday was time for the main event: Star Trek the Experience. (It closed September 1st after 11 years of operation.) We got there early and there was a small crowd of nerds gathered at the gates. While waiting for them to open, Jayson and I played the Star Trek slot machines. They were so loud and had all of the classic Star Trek sounds. Good fun.

Finally the gates opened and gave us access to the store. Most of the stuff had been cleared out, but they still had a good supply of trinkets. Not long after the rides finally opened up. There are two of them: The Klingon Experience and the Borg Experience. We opted to try the Klingon Experience first. The tour guide was this mega nerdy dude who just looked like he found the job of his dreams. He allowed about 20 of us to enter. There were four doors in a row which he had us create lines in front of. Above them were video monitors. He stated that we had to watch the safety videos before we could go in.

The video started but after about a minute there was a bit of static on the screen. Then the screen went really staticy and then black while instantaneously the entire room went pitch black dark. I then heard some weird noise follow by the sound of the transporter and a gust of wind. The lights came on and we were standing on the transporter pad of the Enterprise with the transporter room in front of us. There was a Starfleet Officer standing behind the transporter console. (This all happened in the space of about 10 seconds.) All of us were looking around in amazement and stupid grins on our faces. I was thinking, “Again! Again!”

The Starfleet Officer tapped her comm badge which chirrped and she stated, “Commander Riker, I have them.” We heard Riker over the comm speaker to debrief us and then bring us to the bridge. She said, “Welcome. You are on the starship USS Enterprise. You are no longer in the year 2008. It is the year 2138. You were caught in a temporal anomaly and we were able to save you. We are going to work to return you to your time. Right now I will take you to the bridge. Please follow me closely as we are under the threat of Klingon attack right now. Let’s go.”

The doors split open and we were in the Enterprise corridor. It was all so surreal. I checked the transporter panel the Starfleet officer was standing behind to see if it was blank. It looked just like the show with lots of blinking lights and sound. Oh. My. God! Great attention to detail.

So we go onto the bridge of the Enterprise. It was so big and looked exactly liked on the show. The viewscreen was huge and was much better quality than I expected. We lined up behind the weapons station while the Starfleet officer spoke to Riker on the viewscreen. There were Starfleet officers in the ops and conn stations at the front of the bridge. During the conversation one of them got up and walked to the weapons station, tapped some buttons and then returned to his station. I loved how in character they were. During part of this I was checking out the science and engineering stations in the rear. Everything was working and looked as it should. I noticed that sounds were coming from everywhere beeping like LCARS computers. They had speakers everywhere generating different sounds. It was very immersive.

I’ll spare any more details, but needless to say everything was great. I wish I had gone sooner.

That night we went to see Carrot Top. Everyone knows that prop comedy is his thing and he didn’t disappoint. He spent the first 15 minutes just going through his crates of stuff and it was so fast. He really has his routine down. I thought I would die laughing. He spent the rest of the show doing regular standup scattered with props. In the end he finished with the mega-rock number that had us all covered in streamers and bubbles and him in his underwear. I wasn’t expecting to leave so dirty. I’ll definitely be catching his show if he comes to Atlanta.

Lots of excitement for this year’s (unexpected) vacation. Next year I’ll need to do something more low key and relaxed. Pretty soon I’ll be too old for all of this high falutin entertainment. J

Vista Certified

This week I attained my Vista Certification.  I think the official title is Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist: Configuring Microsoft Windows Vista Client.  I’m not sure how I feel about the whole “Technology Specialist” part.  They have changed it from the old 2000/2003 Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP).  ‘Professional’ sounds much better than ‘Technology Specialist’ in my opinion.  I think it has something to do with the fact that many people in my company have the word ‘Specialist’ in their title, and they are anything but.  Overall, I’m pretty sure the last year I spent working with and deploying Vista at work has given me more experience than most with Microsoft’s latest and greatest.  It is just too bad that Vista has such a bad rep in the press.  I’m hoping Microsoft will be able to turn that perception around so I don’t have to bury my latest certification at the very bottom of my resume in small print.

iPhone

Alas… I think I am the only person in my immediate group of friends who does not have an iPhone.  I’m sure there are a couple of them that don’t have one, but I feel like the only one who doesn’t.  I must say congrats to Steve Jobs for inventing such a nice phone.  It really has set the bar in regards to most other phones out there.  That is kind of sad actually.  It is not that Apple has set the bar so high, but more that the rest of the cell phone industry let the bar stay so low for so long (Microsoft included).  Microsoft tried to shoehorn Windows into a mobile device for years when they should have trashed what they had and started over from scratch.  Granted they were trying to compete with Palm initially and the whole stylus thing (which was never cool).  But Windows Mobile 5 and 6 never did much to really up the bar.  They work alright, but have been in need of a UI overhaul for awhile.

One of the Windows Mobile Phone makers from Taiwan (HTC) has done more to experiment and develop new UI’s than MS has.  Pretty sad actually.  My T-Mobile Shadow phone had a pretty neat interface that T-mo made, and perhaps that is part of the problem.  Microsoft wanted to make the foundation OS and let the phone makers customize it.  I recently updated my Shadow to WM 6.1 which includes a really neat sliding panels UI made by one of the MS devs.  But it is clear this is just a stopgap until they can come up with something truly new (i.e. copy the iPhone).  I won’t go into all the reasons why I refuse to go iPhone since plenty of people have covered all of its inadequacies (go here).  What I am glad to see is that Apple has forced the rest of the industry to stop releasing such crappy hardware/software for mobile devices.  It is apparent that Apple is not going to let up on The Shiny®, so the rest of the industry will be playing catchup for awhile.  But this time, instead of a race to the bottom, it is a race to the top.

Ahhh… this is sweet.

Adobe’s Flash player is almost a requirement to view most web sites today.  My rant today is how much Adobe sucks.  For a long while now, some of us have been waiting for them to release a 64 bit compatible version for 64 bit browsers (i.e. Internet Explorer 64 bit).  When Flash 9 came out, they said they were working on it and it would be released when it was done.  Well, Adobe has begun releasing betas of the new Flash Player 10.  Yes!  Flash 10 for 2008.  Yea 64 bit!

Wrong!

Not only do they still not have a 64 bit version, I read that one of the developers said they aren’t releasing a 64 bit version AND, "we will evaluate that requirement, which has been requested before, for inclusion in possible future releases based on customer demand."

Based on customer demand?!?!?!?  I read an article on Slashdot from 2005 of people petitioning Macromedia (the original Flash developers) to release a 64 bit version of Flash.  3 years ago! GAH! WTF Adobe?  It’s not like this is some small developer.  This is Adobe.  Owners of fricken Photoshop, surely one of the biggest/complicated programs that exists.  How hard can this be?  Seriously.  I don’t code.  How hard is this?

I’m guessing it is hard.  Microsoft has their Flash competitor, Silverlight.  I was fully prepared to demand that all web developers switch to using Silverlight so we can move into the 64 bit age.  But upon checking… there is no 64 bit Silverlight support.  GAH!

Why does the Internet hate 64 bit?  :-(

Last week the FISA update bill passed Congress that grants immunity to the Telecom companies for any wrong doing their part for warrantless wiretapping.  I initially wanted to add Barrack Obama for voting for this bill after he specifically said he would not.  Then I wanted to add ‘Democrats’ because of how many of them voted for it.  But I thought it would be unfair to leave out the Republicans who really pushed for this in the first place at the behest of the Bush administration.  So to make things nice and simple, I’ll just add ‘Congress’ to the DIAF list.

Carl Rove will also be added this week.  He was subpoenaed before Congress to testify on the firing of Justice Department employees for purely political reasons.  He didn’t show up.  His lawyer did and told Congress that Rove will not be speaking to them.  WTF?  If this was you or me, our asses would be in jail.  But not only is Bush and his cronies above the law, apparently they can get away with ignoring it.  Continually.  Without consequence.

Last week was the last week of summer semester.  I’m so glad to be done with school for awhile.  The last project I had was group based and I was assigned two of the Chinese girls as my teammates.  The last few times I’ve had Chinese girls in my group, I ended up doing all the work.  I told them both this and that I just would not have time to do the entire project myself.  They assured me I would not have to.  To make a long story short, they completely dropped the ball.  In the end, I turned in the project without their names on it and then proceeded to throw them under the bus to the professor.  He completely understood.  I felt a bit bad for them, but I did all I could to help them.

I’m also reading daily stuff about the upcoming summer Olympic games.  China is having all sorts of issues ranging from bad air to limiting what can be said, etc.  It is all very un-Olympic in nature.  So I was going to add ‘Chinese girls’ to my DIAF list, but to make things fair, I think I’ll just add all of them.  The ‘Chinese’.

I haven’t been posting much the last few weeks because of all the writing I’ve been doing for school.  I know for awhile there it appeared this had turned into “Jarred Fehr’s Video Blog”.  Alas… it has not.  Now for the topic at hand.

Last night I went to see Ben Hur at the Fox.  Originally I had been invited by Robert who ended up not going due to being out of town.  After watching the movie, I can see now this was his insidious plan the entire time.  I didn't know anything about Ben Hur other than it was an older movie.  I think I knew there was something about a chariot race, but not much more.  Imagine my horror when the actuall title of the movie was posted on the screen:

Ben Hur: A tale of Jesus Christ.

Curses! Foiled again!  Just when you think you can trust someone, they go and trick you into large screen Christian indoctrination.  By the end of the movie, I was perplexed by the movie title.  It didn’t have much to do with Jesus at all.  He was in a few scenes, but didn’t say anything at all.  He was even faceless.  I thought the credits were funny.

Jueda Ben Hur:……  Charleston Heston

Water boy:……………  Jesus Christ

If I had to pick a better water boy performance, I think I’d go with Adam Sandler.

My favorite part was just being the in the Fox Theater.  I go there a few times a year to watch movies, shows and other performances.  It is really a great venue.  The crowds that attend tend to be much more behaved than at regular theaters.  However, last night the family behind us kept asking stupid questions during the movie.  “What’s a leper?  Huh?  What’s Leprosy?”  Dolts.

Wow… double geek find today.  This one is courtesy of Don.  There’s even a website!

http://www.challengeofthesuperduperfriends.com/

Oh yes.  I have died and gone to heaven.

George Carlin died.  What can I say?  I liked him.  A lot.  Here’s some of his death material.  It goes without saying it is NSFW.

www.wherethehellismatt.com

I sometimes reflect on how my life could have turned out differently that what it is now.  I found this video which accurately describes one version that I can say I’m happy didn’t (and won’t) happen.

A couple weekends ago I went up to Blue Ridge, Ga. with the guys (Ben, Robert, Courtney, Jayson and Brian).  We had rented a great log cabin in the mountains.  This is my second log cabin stay this year and I’m thinking it is going to turn into a regular thing.  It is so quiet up there and there are plenty of relaxing activities. 

The food during the trip was most excellent.  On the first night, Brian baked a lasagna that he brought.  To go with it, I made my Onii-chan salad.  We hung out in the hot tub the entire time the lasagna was baking.  By the time it was done, we were famished and gobbled it down.  Yumminess.  The next night we went to some restaurant located off the side of the road all by its lonesome.  We tried our best to ignore the huge flag of the Confederate States of America.  The waitress was kind and informed us that they had an awesome salad bar.  Wait, let me quote her directly.  “Have you seen our salad bar?  It is AWESOME.”  I did not take this comment lightly.  I felt that if you are at server and are going to indicate that a salad bar is “awesome”, it had darn well better be.  Well, it was pretty good.  But not Fogo de Chao good.  I judged that in the future, she should say, “Our salad bar is ADEQUATE.”  I ordered the crab stuffed mushrooms and crab stuffed trout.  Mushrooms were great, trout was ok.  Robert’s pecan encrusted trout was much better, IMO.  The last night, Robert grilled steak.  I can’t remember how much red meat I ate that night, but I loved every bite.

We had a few activities planned besides hanging out at the cabin.  The main event was Whitewater rafting.  All the other guys had all done it last year, but on much calmer waters.  This year we went down the Ocoee River which is rated at level 3 and 4 rapids (aka. exciting).  I was pretty nervous up until we got in the water.  I never felt in danger.  We had what had to be the best guide on the river.  It was apparent that there were a lot of trainee guides based on how many people we saw stuck at various points on the river.  Our guide also helped us perform a lot of cool maneuvers.  If you ever get to go, try to get a good guide.  It really helps to make for a better experience.  We even did this one maneuver where we had the whole boat full of water and somehow got it resurfaced.  I took a few shots with a waterproof disposable camera I bought, but most of the shots were grainy.  We were also lucky enough to catch a lady that fell out of her raft.  Her boat was performing a maneuver and she got flushed out.  We chased her down and got her back in.  After seeing her adventure, I was party sad it wasn’t meet.  Seemed a better (albeit more dangerous) way to experience the river.  Maybe next year?

On Saturday night we went to the local drive in theater to watch a double feature.  I’m pretty sure the whole town was there.  I didn’t know people really did the drive in thing anymore.  Courtney’s van was pretty useful for this.  I was laying in the back with Robert and Jayson.  I think I had had a few too many coconut rums and pineapple so I didn’t remember much about the movies.  The first one was Kung Fu panda.  The parts I remember were pretty cool.  Especially this one fight scene between five different animals and a tiger.  The other movie was Indiana Jones 4 which I had already scene.  The best part I remember is listening to Jayson.  Maybe it was the alcohol, but he kills me with his comments.  I remember laughing more than the first time I watched it. 

I also went on my first geocaching adventure.  Courtney got a new GPS device which we used to get to the cabin.  But he also looked up a geocache site for us to find.  I had heard about these be never done one before.  Essentially, someone hides a box with some stuff in it out in the middle of nowhere but lists the coordinates on a website.  You then use your handy dandy GPS device to find it.  We got close to where it was but it wasn't directly on the trail.  I ventured off into the woods a bit and found this big dead tree that had fallen over and it trunk.  Sure enough in the trunk was an army box full of little trinkets and a log of all the people that had been there and what they left.  I left my unused Marta card with two rides on it.  Eh... it's something.  Afterwards, we drove into town to get some fudge and candies.  However, Courtney and Jayson ended up buying this kickass wine decanter.  It has this glass ball filled with water and a spout and... well, it is hard to explain.  But it did a good job on the wine we tried with it.  (There are pics of the action along with everything else posted in the photo gallery.)

I had a lot of bonding time with the guys and learned a lot more about my friends.  I feel lucky to have fallen into such a great group.  I can only hope to get invited on any future trips. ;-)

For my Windows Vista deployment at work, I’ve been using Windows Deployment Services on Server 2003.  Overall it has been going pretty well.  The server allows for entire disk images to be uploaded and then sent back down to the clients.  Once the initial setup is done, it makes the work go pretty fast.  I did however run into an issue last week.  I had created an image of one of our developer’s machines that I wanted to use in the future.  They have so many programs it takes a few hours to setup.  The problem I ran into is that they use Adaptec SCSI controllers which is not supported by the default Win PE environment.

I found a method of injecting a driver into the image so that Win PE could see the drives (this could also be done for NIC, video, or pretty much anything else).  First I had to install the Windows Automated Installion Kit (WAIK) in order to get access to the imagex.exe program.  This allows you to mount the .wim image file and manipulate the files inside.  The command is

imagex /mountrw c:\path_to_image\imagename.wim X c:\temp\mount\

where X = the image number you want to manipulate in your .wim (you can store more than one image in a .wim).  The “c:\temp\mount” is the directory will the files will be mounted, so make sure that is already created.  I also recommend copying the image locally as well.

Next I need to inject the driver.  The command is

peimg.exe /inf:c:\drivers\*.inf /image=c:\temp\mount\

where c:\drivers\ is where your (hopefully Vista compliant) drivers are located.  You can point directly to a specific .inf or if you use the *.inf wildcard it will inject all of what you have in that folder. You will get a successful/unsuccessful message.  So if it doesn’t work check for what you did wrong.   So now I need to unmount the image using

imagex /unmount /commit c:\temp\mount\

The /commit one is pretty important otherwise any changes made will not be saved to the .wim.  I then copied my updated .wim to the WDS server and proceeded to PXE boot the image… only to find that it still didn’t detect the SCSI controller.  I found out that simply overwriting the image doesn’t update WDS. I still needed to go into the WDS console, right click the image and choose “Replace Image” and then choose my new image.  Voila!  Worked like a charm. Now I need to figure out any other drivers I need to add. 

Next step: Get the Windows SIM answer file to work.