Rinsefirst

I could go on and on about all the work in the last week. It\’s been crazy with all the pre-school activity, that seems to be when most the people need help with their computers, whether it\’s MSA and their 90+ machines, or the at home family getting their computer in working order before the start of the school year. It\’s been crazy, to say the least.

Derek was (and as far as I\’m aware still is) in New Orleans. Not the best place to be right now. With the hurricane tearing up just about everything in the south, you wonder why we live there. Of course, this could be why it\’s cheaper to live down there (to some degree, depending on where you are of course). It could also be why I don\’t live down there.

In either case, I do recommend that if you have the means to help out there, you probably should. Reports are showing that what they need isn\’t clothes, food, help rebuilding, or anything of the sort. In fact, what they need at the moment is money more than anything. I have a feeling that there won\’t be many deaths (Andrew was basically as big and only had 9). Gotta love the US alert system and the amount of warning a hurricane gives you. In either case, check google if you want to know more about how you can help.

Oh, one last note. If you want a monitor, stop by MSA in the next few days, we have 17\" CRTs (not flat) that we need to get rid of. If you want one, come get one (or two) quickly. Otherwise, they will probably be sent to the dumpster.

Well, I best get back to the craziness around here. Later all.

The last week or so has been full of fun and new things. I can\’t explain why it feels like so much has gotten done in the last week compared to the other weeks this summer, it just feels like perhaps this has been some of the most filling time I\’ve had. I\’ll perhaps get to reasons why… For now, let\’s go topic based.

Math and Science Academy Update

We are at about 80% ready to launch next week for a new school year. We had a small problem with the image for Thielman\’s lab that will require a little work, and we have quite a few computers that need to see Dell, but I\’m not worried. We will be ready for day 1. Printers also need to be installed, but that\’s also not a huge deal.

Overall, my biggest concern is what to do with the 60 17\" monitors I have sitting in the great hall, not to mention the 15 Nobilis machines. I can use the Nob\’s pretty easily or sell them pretty quick, but 17\" CRT\’s just dont sell like they used to, and everyone seems to have plenty of monitors lying around. Perhaps I should ebay them. Perhaps I should dump them.

JR Computer Associates Update

Things seem to be flying here as well. Blarney\’s is more or less done pending training the the OK from the boss. You can check it out at oxwaf.blarneypubandgrill.com if you want a preview. There are some content issues, but they will be resolved quickly when we train the owner.

WLC\’s registration system for the first time seems to be working really well. I don\’t know if it\’s because I have new motivation or if because we made it so simple this time that it would be hard to do wrong. It includes student accounts as well as the ability to pay with a credit card. I\’m sure we\’ll have some issues with forms, but I hope to take care of that soon as well. We\’ve also added a style switcher to WLC that allows you to change from the black design to some other design that has been added to the system, currently that means a half working orange design, but still, it leaves room for lots of design freedom. If you want to submit a design, let me know and I can help get you started. Also, I hope to bring that style switcher here in the future. That way I can be like Shattered Cube and allow users to pick their own designs.

Touch of Countree has been locked in more or less. We have got their domain and will hopefully begin design in the next week.

Our vows is moving slowly, I\’m waiting on a design from Jon.

We\’ve picked up a few new bloggers that we are hosting. These include Kyle (TuneMelodic), Jonatan (we\’ve always hosted him, but now he has a site), and Brandon who at the time of writing this wasn\’t quite live. As soon as he is, I will be sure to move him into the hosted section of the links to the right.

Also in regard to this site: I\’ve taken rinsemarks out of beta because no one has told me it doesn\’t work. Go figure.

For what it\’s worth, I would again like to thank the bloggers who have paid the monthly bill, it really does help alot towards growing the services we can provide as well as keep us running. Now if only we can get to the point where it puts food on the table more than once a month ;-).

Richards also got us a client on dock, so we\’ll see what comes of that in the near future.

As for services, I installed Gollem into Horde yesterday. This means that if you have a JR email account and a JR ftp account, you should be able to gain access to your file system from the same tool that allows you to check your email. Just look into the filemanger section in the webmail and use your ftp username and password to log into it. It\’s pretty nifty, although because it\’s buried in the webmail system, I\’m not sure how often it will get used.

In other news, I\’ve been doing a lot of home repair work as well for people. A couple hundred in the last week, as if some big before school bang has hit. I think I will try to keep track of when people call me about computer problems, because it does seem to be somewhat seasonal (end of summer, winter break, etc).

Friends and Family News

Amber was sick a few days this week. She\’s all better now, but it\’s good to record that she was. This lead to her having time to read Harry Potter, and like me, she has become addicted to it. I finished the 6th book sometime in the last 2 weeks, also another big accomplishment for me. I don\’t really make time to read normally, and suddenly, I found myself reading more than I should. Hats off to J.K. for making it something that I litterally could not put down.

The other thing I\’ve picked up in the last week or so is Video Games. I don\’t normally find time to play them. In fact, the most I would ever find is the chance to pop into Ultima Online for 5 minutes and then decide I would be better playing poker or coding something. Instead, I\’ve been playing hours with Richard, Amber, John, Ashley, Sam, and anyone else who would want to of an older game called Gauntlets: Dark Legacy. It\’s a pretty simple game, as challenging as you make it, but all in all… fun. Richard and I have played enough in the last week that we have characters that are getting to the point where they are probably a couple more hours away from beating the game.

It\’s very cool to have people coming over to my house to play video games… That used to be something that happened at least once a week (of course at the time I was like 8).

Perhaps this refreshment is what is keeping me strangely motivated to do things. Perhaps I need to play more. Perhaps it has more to do with I\’ve been waking up earlier on account that I haven\’t been sleeping as well (or perhaps, I\’m sleeping better because I\’ve been getting to bed earlier.) That\’s not so true tonight, but oh well.

My first video team meeting is tomorrow afternoon. I think I might have something going on tomorrow morning, but I think it got moved, so now I\’m second guessing myself. Dumb PDA not always being in my pocket.

OK, we\’ll I think that sums up my life in an update. I sometimes wonder if I shouldn\’t try to be more topic based. Maybe I should talk about things other than myself. Maybe I should blog about computers or blog about nintendo, but then this wouldn\’t be Rinsefirst would it… It would be the SMRC or JR (well, maybe not JR). In either case, pleasure talking to you today world. Fair Winds.

This is a post to help all of those people on the internet that have had or are having the same problem I did. Simply this: I went to install windows and could not get past the \"Setup is Detecting Hardware\" screen. This is frustrating because the only way to reinstall windows is if you can get past this screen (in theory).

I started with what could be the possible causes of the problem:

1) Bad cable to hard disk (I had changed the one in the computer I had now) or a bad hard disk.

2) Possibly caused by Fedora Core 2 being installed on the same drive.

3) Possibly bad windows XP disk.

4) Something else.

I\’m a try the easiest thing first kind of guy, and for me that was testing the windows XP disk. It turned out the disk was fine. Next Test.

The cable was next, so I tried swapping cables. Same problem. Tried putting the hard drive in an identical computer. Same problem. So we do know it\’s something to do with the hard drive, which we had suspected anyway based on our next guess that it would be 2, the fedora install.

Well, thats just no good. The only thing i could think of doing to try to get past this was to remove the linux partitions using a linux recovery disk. To do this I got a copy of this ISO cd image:

www.tux.org

Once in there, I ran fdisk, and deleted all the partitions. Actually to tell you the truth, I tried deleting just the linux ones, but ran into problems when I went to run FIXBOOT and FIXMBR. Turns out that they still couldn\’t fix it quite right, and I wanted to be working again at 100%. I guess you could say I kind of gave up.

Needless to say, I now believe I have windows working on this box again, and that I shouldn\’t have anymore problems. Let me leave a few more notes to myself so I never try this again at MSA:

1) Drive Image Doesn\’t Support EXT3 (at least not the version we have).

2) RIS Doesn\’t support multiple partitions (go figure)

3) Life it seems doesn\’t want MSA to run linux.

Please remember these things Justin, otherwise your going to go down the same path you know you\’ve been down time and time again. Each time you get closer. Each time ends in heart break.

Maybe I should get Norton Ghost ;-).

I\’m in the mood to start a flame war on the site, thats what seems to be happening now adays when you mention the word Nintendo, Sony, or Microsoft. As many of you know, I\’m a Nintendo fan. I\’m not always about the best, nor have I always been about the latest. For the most part, I stand for consistancy. The debate about what video game system is the best has existed since the days of Sega.

In fact, that\’s why I am a Nintendo supporter. I remember the day that my best friend at the time traded in his Nintendo (with punch out and ice hockey) for the latest and greatest Sega Genesis. It must have been 1989/1990, because I knew the SNES wasn\’t out yet. I have to admit his sega provided us some fun on the release of Sonic (which was in 1991) but until then, I didn\’t understand why he switched. Some of the games seemed to have better graphics, but hey, when we both had nintendos we could share games.

Well, turns out Nintendo pulled a Sony and just about killed Sega right there. They waited until 1991 to release a system with similiar hardware to the Genesis. The difference was, they had Super Mario World. This game in my mind is the game that took Sony out. They had sonic, but he couldn\’t hold up. Add on Mario Kart, Zelda, Star Fox, Super Metroid, Final Fantasy 2 and 3, Chrono Trigger, Mega Man X as well as some fun things like Mario Paint, and suddenly you wonder if anyone can name as many smash hits on the Sega (I can\’t).

Of course, this is where Sony stepped in with a product that Nintendo had been developing with them. This is where I vowed not to buy a sony system. For those of you who dont know, the Sony Playstation started off as a the Super Nintendo CD. Nintendo Backed out, changed companies, backed out again, changed companies again, and then decided it was the wrong move at the time. This is what I believe let Sony get to market. Nintendo also screwed up with the release of the Nintendo 64. I wonder to some degree if they had released on time, if Sony would have stood a chance against games like Mario 64 and Goldeneye. No way to tell though.

In my mind, Microsoft doesn\’t really compete against Nintendo. They are targetting 2 different markets entirely. Nintendo targets kids to adults, where as Microsoft tends to focus mainly on adults. There just aren\’t that many KA games on Xbox… But thats neither here nor there. If anyone is going to stop Xbox, it won\’t be nintendo, it will be Sony. If anyone is going to damage Nintendo, it will be Sony. But I think there is something to be said for what Nintendo is about to do.

Nintendo is stick to the small and fun model as opposed to the latest hardware. They have said that Revolution is fully backwards compatable with the Gamecubes discs and memory cards. It even sounded to some degree that the controllers were also going to work, but I\’m kind of doubting that. The other thing that Nintendo has said is that Revolution will play ALL nintendo games from previous systems. That means N64, SNES, and NES should all work from the Revolution. Now, to some people that doesn\’t mean much, but there are games on the N64 I know I never got to play either because I couldn\’t find them or because I couldn\’t afford them.

Let me interject here: This does not mean I plan to stop collecting Nintendo games on the release of Rev. I still plan on somehow getting every single Nintendo game.

Now, Sony has a lot of new hardware technologies as well as Microsoft, but there has always been one thing Nintendo trys to beat them both at, and that\’s price. I fear with Nintendos late release date, they might not have this advantage, but we shall see.

I think MS will be in trouble though if Sony is going to do the same thing they did to Nintendo in the handheld market. Xbox is rumored not to be backward compatible. I\’m not sure if Sony is or not. In either case, I just hope Nintendo makes it to market alive. It took awhile for Sega to die, and I fear that without Mario, Pokemon, Smash Brothers, etc. Nintendo would have gone as well.

It\’s only a matter of time before we get back to 8bit gaming anyway isn\’t it ;-).

Oh and for what it\’s worth: I think the Gameboy Mini idea is silly. especially at the price its at.

There\’s my flame for the day. Here\’s some more reading if you would like:

www.engadget.com

www.engadget.com

www.engadget.com

www.g4tv.com

biz.gamedaily.com

Oh, one more note: If you haven\’t seen the Dobly Digital DVD of Zelda: Twilight Princess, ask me the next time your over. The game is going to kick it.

I\’ve been wondering lately if I should be excerising the power of censorship with Amber\’s blog. Someone thinks it\’s funny to post comments on her blog that although in the right context might be funny, turn out to be in very poor taste. I do of course have the power to censor them. I could block them from all JR sites. I could just remove their posts.

Of course, this post alone will probably just cause more posting. Maybe even cause the person to post on more than one site about this. Not sure why… They just might… In either case…. Lets talk about something cool.

Alex\’s site went live last night sometime between midnight and 3 am. It was fun to watch it go up and see it being developed. I hope he continues the wonderful designs and innovation over at his site. I think some of his featuers are ones we shall be seeing on blogs on other JR sites pretty soon.

MSA and JR are going fine. I got my nice 15db antenna on Friday. I had to order an additional cable to connect it though, so I won\’t really be able to test it\’s full ability until later this week (relatively slow shipping.)

I feel like writing more, but really, I\’ve been sitting in front of computers most of this week doing one thing or another. Nothing new. Nothing Creative. Amber did get a new car. It\’s pretty cool and I love the stereo for one of it\’s features. Perhaps I will have to get another new car stereo soon. Of course, I\’m broke, but eh.

JR is doing great money wise. We are on our second month of billing, and so far so good.