Daniel Cody - “Left on the Lake”

The rumor mill is swirling with talk of a new release of Windows XP, code named ‘XP Reloaded’. Hopefully that is just an internal codename, because the last thing we need is Hollywood movie titles in software product names…. Do we really need software titles like “The Passion of the Quicken”, “Look Who’s Photoshopping!”, “The Flash and the Furious”, or “Winzip That!”.

Anyways, Microsoft has been promising for years that there would not be an interim release between Windows XP and the next version of their OS called “Longhorn” (”The LongHorn Kiss Goodnight” ?), but this could be a sure sign that Longhorn is going to be very much delayed, even by Microsoft standards.

Even if it did ship in 2005, that’s three years between Windows releases, which a lot of people think is much too long, especially since Windows is the MS cashcow.Many remember a version of Windows called “Windows ME” that was released in 2000 and is generally regarded as the worst version of Windows ever because of it’s poor performance and complete lack of features. The reason MS released WinME was because the release cycle betwen Windows 98 and Windows XP was originally only supposed to be 3 years, but when XP fell off schedule, they needed to release something to the public to keep the money train rolling and people in the upgrade mentality. So, they changed a few icons in Win98, made it run like ass, put a $99 price tag on it, and called it Windows ME.

If the rumors about XP ‘Reloaded’ are true and Longhorn really is way off schedule, we’ll see a 2004’s answer to Windows ME in stores this holiday season.

“Citing an “overwhelming consensus in our country” against same-sex marriage, President Bush on Tuesday called for a constitutional amendment banning gay wedlock.”Here’s my take on this.. “Citing an “overwhelming amount of bad press and sliding approval ratings lately”, the president attempted to get the focus off his poor performance and questions of honesty, and onto an issue the entire right-wing supports him on: keeping those gays as second class citizens where they belong..”

I mean come on! With all the crap our country has to deal with right now, we’re going to modify the constitution so we can keep a certain ‘class’ of American citizens at the bottom of the legal food chain?

The one thing that gets me about the right-wing, and this is a great example, is when things aren’t going their way, they try to change the rules. “What, judges are actually interpreting the law to say you can’t discriminate against people based on sexual orientation?! Then let’s change the law so it’s legal to discriminate!”“What do you mean the new popular right-wing poster boy can’t run for president just because the constitution says so?! Let’s change the law!“The common trend here is that when things don’t jive with the way the right-wing government thinks they should, it’s time to change the law. If Bush had won the popular vote in 2000, but lost the election, I guarantee we’d have a law that outlawed or changed the way the electoral college works so the real winner comes out ahead. That’s just one of many examples things would be different were the tables turned.Discrimination is what this whole gay marriage ban comes down to, and there’s no way to get around that. Expect the lawsuits to start flying(even more than they are now) if this ever get’s close to passing. Just like African-Americans had to use litigation for their fight against discrimination in the 50’s and 60’s, expect homosexuals to do the same in the 00’s.

I don’t know how or why, but over the past few weeks I’ve been the target of some serious Microsoft swag.

About 10 days ago I got a ‘compilmentary’ copy of MS Office 2003 professional edition out of the blue (Retail value: $499.00) sent to me in the mail. Of course, when I tried to install it on Jenny’s Win98 computer at home, an error dialog popped up and informed me, “You need to be running a newer version of Microsoft Windows to use this software.”.

Boy, it’s a good thing Microsoft isn’t abusing it’s monopoly position in any way shape or form there!

I felt like this new copy of Office 2003 was embarrassed to even have it’s installer be executed on such an old operating system. Sticking it’s nose up at me like it was one of the “Queer Eye for a Straight Guy” boys that was almost forced to !GASP! wear a turtleneck sweater out in public from last season’s Christian Dior collection. How embarassing.

So today I got another mailer, this time hawking a free copy of Microsoft Windows Server 2003. (Retail value: $1000.) I can’t for the life of me figure out why Microsoft is sending me all this expensive software for free. Maybe when I tried to install Office 2003, it detected the Windows 98 operating system and sent an S.O.S back to Microsoft headquarters. “ALERT ALERT! Customer #8s88s8991010001-98se is running a perfectly stable version of Windows that does everything they need! Send reinforcements and alert Microsoft Lackey #1000-Mike-Dell of pending hardware upgrades!”

Or maybe they’re trying to round up us un-ruley and happy penguins, like rodeo organizers prospecting broncos for the upcoming show, locking us in cages and riding our angry asses all the way to the bank.

A double kernel release today from the Penguin gods.. The linux kernel 2.6.3 was released today, and has numerous fixes for things like SCSI, PnP, USB, ACPI, ALSA, IRDA, i2c, hotplug-PCI, NFSv4 and everyone’s favorite filesystem, XFS.

The older 2.4 series kernel was also updated today to version 2.4.25.

Wow, lot’s on the political menu today.. We vote in todays primary for the Democratic presidential candidate, mayoral candidates for Milwaukee, and it’s also the primary for Milwaukee county executive.One cool thing about our new house is we live within a few blocks of two of the mayoral candidates, which means they’ll be having their election parties at bars in our neighborhood tonite and I’ll probably swing by one or two to say hi and good luck. :)

For those counting, Edwards and Barrett will be getting my vote today..

It was bound to happen sooner or later.. Terra Lycos has finally pulled the plug on Webmonkey.com. Terra Lycos will now be focusing on it’s “tight network of interconnected vertical sites”, whatever that means, although they didn’t say what would become of the sites like webmonkey.com they’ll be basically shutting down.

I’ve got a pretty sorted history with webmonkey/Lycos to say the least, and although I never really agreed with how they did things, I think everyone will agree the site is a part of Internet history, and will be missed. In it’s heyday, Webmonkey embodied a lot of the excitement and rebelous attitude that the Internet back in those days represented. In those days, it was about being different and being a bit goofy if you wanted to, where conversely, the current state of the Web is (for the most part) about rigid rules, corporate correctness, and above all else, profit.Webmonkey will be missed if for no other reason than as a symbol of a much different time on the Internet.

Even though we’ve been living in our new house for just over two months, the headaches with our old property management company Siegel-Gallagher continue, much to the stress of Jenny and I.

Siegel-Gallagher runs the Gallun Tannery lofts where we used to live, quite happily untill last summer, when they started treating their tenants more like serfs. In fact, the original weblog post I made about moving there is the #1 result in most the major search engines for Gallun Tannery, and because we used to like living there so much, the positive things I had to say about it led a lot of people searching for information about the Lofts to actually rent there. As you can see though, I was forced to stop recommending our lofts to people who came across that page because I didn’t want them to have to go through the same frustrations that we did. About 85-100 people a month looking for more information about Gallun Tannery Lofts read our experiences with Siegel-Gallagher, and if they’re smart, look somewhere else.

So, after nearly two months, I’m forced to complain yet again about our former management company.

We got a notice in the mail that we still owe a considerable amount of money to the Utility servcies company Siegel-Gallagher used to bill us. See, when we moved out, the expenses for our final month of Utilities was supposed to be taken out of our security deposit refund according to the manager we signed out with. Sure enough, in mid-January we got our security deposit back less the amount of the Utility Bill. All squared away, right?

Wrong. It turns out although Siegel-Gallagher took the money for the bill, they never actually paid it! COOL! So we get a collection notice that we haven’t paid our bill, all because Siegel-Gallagher either forgot to apply the money they took from us to the bill, or they just didn’t do it.

Either way, more reasons to stay away from not only the Lofts, but all Siegel-Gallagher properties in general.

Update: Well it turns out that the payment was just never applied to our balance. It took a letter from a collection agency to us, and us getting on Siegel-Gallagher to get this resolved. There’s a good chance that if we didn’t get on them about it, or didn’t know about the problem ourselves, the payment still wouldn’t be applied.

All is well now, but man, this just reinforces all the bad things I’ve ever said about them…

Hi Grant,

Sorry to send this to you directly, but we couldn’t find any other method of feedback on the nhl.com website. If you could, please pass this on to the appropriate parties..

My wife and I were looking to get highlights of the Wings vs. Av’s from Feb 5, 2004. Naturally, we hit the nhl.com website. We then chose the ‘Highlights’ link, and then the appropriate game, and that’s when our frustration, and the basis of our correspondence with you, began.

Upon choosing the link, we were prompted to ‘Sign Up’ for the Windows Media Player service, as that is the only video format NHL.com offers. Although we were at the nhl.com website to view highlights, and not fill out forms, we did so with the hope that we’d soon be watching our favorite team’s highlights. However, after completing the form, our windows computer locked up on us and we had to reboot. After the reboot, we again tried to view the highlight, but again, we were not successful because the Windows Media Player locked up on us again.

Obviously, not the result we were hoping for.

Still in search of the highlights, we used our secondary computer, a Macintosh running OS X to view the highlights, but since NHL.com only supports Windows Media Player, that didn’t work either.

It’s too bad the 10% of people who choose to use Mac’s and happen to be hockey fans are restricted from keeping up with their teams, or any hockey for that matter, on the Web.

When we tried to send our grievances via the NHL.com website, again, we were met with disappointment and failure to complete our ‘goal’. Although there is a ‘Feedback’ link on the bottom of most NHL.com webpages, all the information is about marketing, rules, and pretty much anything except giving ‘Feedback’ about the NHL.com website itself.

Obviously, this has left us a bit frustrated. So, here we are pulling an email address off the WHOIS record for the NHL.com domain name in hopes that we could get ahold of someone in the NHL organization to let them know the problems not only we, but more than likely thousands of other hockey fans from around the world are facing. Many of these people like ourselves are simply looking for content about their favorite game and/or favorite NHL teams.

We aren’t looking for forms to fill out, websites to navigate, or errors to decipher. We just want to enjoy some hockey. :)

So, here we are, emailing you, maybe a guy who doesn’t even have anything to do with the site. Hopefully you can pass this onto someone who may help remedy the situation, because what should be a great resource for hockey fans is only frustrating some of them while locking others out all-together from the content of the NHL.com site.

Thanks for your time, and if you’d like to respond to us, please use the email we sent from, or the address below!

Sincerely,

Daniel & Jennifer Cody

Avid Red Wings Fans

With seconds left in regulation, Colorado Avalanche goon Adam Foote (and I can say he’s a goon from personal experience) used his stick to whack Detroit Red Wings captain Steve Yzerman across the face after a faceoff causing Yzerman to lose a tooth and need stitches in his mouth.

The Colorado fans then proceed to throw beer bottles and trash onto the ice in protest.(?)

I tell ya, nothing but class all around from Colorado’s NHL team and it’s fans.Wings end up winning 3-2 in overtime. The rematch of the NHL’s most heated rivalry is coming up in March in Detroit, and as usual, I’ll be attending. I guarantee no matter what the outcome of the game though, the real hockey fans in Detroit would never act as classless as their Colorado counterparts. GO WINGS!

The ferry from Milwaukee to Muskegon Mich. across Lake Michigan that will start this summer announced it’s estimated prices yesterday at a groundbreaking ceremony in Bay View.. around $50 for each car and $40 to $45 for each adult passenger, with children riding for half price.

Although I’m not totally thrilled about the price, it could be a lot worse… They’re supposed to have a website set up for the service in the next few weeks, and will start taking reservations shortly after that.