reflections in the rain about a dream
The Helix Nebula in the Aquarius constellation, located some 700 light-years away from Earth, was just observed by the piercing infrared gaze of the VISTA telescope at the Paranal Observatory in Chile. Some have referred to the images as the Eye of Sauron, from JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.
Read more @ SciTechDaily
There’s a young man from a family on the ground floor who used to drive a Honda CRV. It was slightly pimped out and new. Recently, he exchanged the CRV for a Mercedes-Benz C class with Brabus decals and wheels, as well as another Merc, a CLK. Both cars are from a few years ago. The man is in his twenties and I haven’t figured out what he does. His house is the Cat Factory. The man and his family are quite nice, always saying hello and responding to me.
I still wonder what he does.
You may wonder why I have computer problems. At a certain point in my life, I sold a few computers and assembled my own rigs. The initial problem was that I wasn’t in Taiwan to take care of my desktop for a few semesters.
This meant that the virus definitions weren’t being updated, which left it open to attack. When I arrived in June, I knew that I had to do something, but I was just lazy. Formatting a C:\ drive takes time and HD space, two things that I didn’t have much of.
I’ve counted that I need to backup at least another 75GB from my C:\ before I can format. Then, I’m pretty sure that my virus problems will be solved. Actually, it’s looking pretty good. Kaspersky is on its fourth sweep today and only found 1 threat.
I have to say that I like Kaspersky better than AVG and Avast. I like how it deals with viruses and trojans right away, instead of waiting to finish a scan. It’s a lot better.
I don’t use Norton, after Norton almost ruined an HD a few years back. This is kind of like why I don’t trust any HD manufacturers except Western Digital. The warranty and the service I got on a Western Digital HD was miles above anything else I got from Maxtor. In fact, after 3 years, I got a replacement HD free of charge from WD.
This is why I only run WD HDs.
Other than that, my main rig is still running XP. I wanted to upgrade, but couldn’t bear the though of Vista. Vista was crappy-ish. Not so bad, but it’s good that I waited until Win 7 was out before I decided that I might upgrade.
My rig went haywire when I tried to connect to the internet. My guess is that the viruses were trying to link up or talk with other programs or botnets. I got the blue screen of death a few times. Services.exe caused that.
The last thing that I want to do right now is spend money on a laptop, but it looks like I might have to, depending on how things go. The other thing that I haven’t done is purchase a Drobo. I’ve been thinking about this for months, but haven’t done so. I should just get it over with.
We bought our computer in October 2006, a month or so after we arrived. This was somewhat after my other laptop crashed. We got it fixed, and we got a desktop. At the time, I wasn’t really thinking about it, but the desktop served us well. With the 22″ Viewsonic LCD, we spent $1,300 on it.
The laptop has still been used on and off. My wife bought a MacBook Pro last year and she’s been using it happily. The old Compaq laptop served as my downloading machine while I was in Canada. The HD fried when I came back last year. I haven’t replaced it yet.
Anyway, we’ll see how things go this week. If it doesn’t improve, I don’t really know what will happen. I might have a new MacBook. I might not. I might just have a new HD.
This has been linked to a lot today. It’s really bad. It’s an internal motivational “music clip” extolling the virtues of M$ Vista and SP1. That’s a load of crap. We all know it sucks ass. (via DF)
I'm Range, your host. On the menu, photos, art, stories, entertainment and reviews. Links, maths, education and social issues. I'm in Quebec (Canada) or Taiwan (R.O.C.). Follow me on Twitter. 
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