Rinsefirst

As always, I\’m looking for new ways to make money with JR Computer Associates. One such way hit me today as being quite a good idea for blogs to make money with and I\’m curious what the world thinks about it.

Many people who own blogs, take lots and lots of pictures. Some are cool enough to have photo gallerys where you can see the photos in some websafe format. Very rarely do people give access to raw images (for bandwidth reasons) and therefore, very few people would be able to use them to get decent prints if they wanted one.

So my question is… Would there be a market for blog photo albums where you can order prints from them at say… 15 cents a print (plus shipping). It\’s just an idea… Let me know what you think…

Since we are continuing on the topic of mistakes (often stupid), let\’s talk about pirating software. I will admit, that in my day (like 6th grade) I did copy a few games for friends, and friends copied a few games for me. I will admit that at one point in my life, I pirated some rather expensive software so I could learn how to use it. I will admit that this is often very easy to do.

I will also admit that it\’s wrong and for the most part, now that I run a company, try to avoid with a passion.

By now, we are all realize that some products have gotten insanely hard to pirate, like for example Microsoft Windows XP. Windows XP uses a technology called product activation to verify the software is legal. This often takes only seconds to do correctly and isn\’t all that much of a hassel for those of us running legal copies of windows.

It turns out though, that there were a good number of product keys that were taken illegally from other computers. These keys are now being stored in some form by Microsoft. They are now using a new form of activation called Genuine Advantage. I haven\’t read up on any of it yet or exactly what\’s different, but it\’s worth noting that if you have an illegal version of windows, it will probably come back to haunt you.

That said, I\’m working on a computer right now that fell into such a case. Their family member had given them an illegal copy of Windows, probably not mentioned it, and as of Tuesday, windows would no longer let them in. What\’s worse, is that the only way I knew of changing the product key to a legal one (they went out and bought a legal copy of windows very quickly) required being logged into windows. Well turns out, there is away around this using safe mode, so I thought I would document it here even though it can be found on the web other places. This way, if I run into anymore of these computers, I know exactly how to fix the problem without having to reformat:

Taken from Microsoft.com:

1. Click Start, and then click Run.

2. In the Open box, type regedit, and then click OK.

3. In the left pane, locate and then click the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\Software\\Microsoft\\Wi- ndowsNT\\Current Version\\WPAEvents

4. In the right pane, right-click OOBETimer, and then click Modify.

5. Change at least one digit of this value to deactivate Windows.

6. Click Start, and then click Run.

7. In the Open box, type the following command, and then click OK.

%systemroot%\\system32\\oobe\\msoobe.exe /a

8. Click Yes, I want to telephone a customer service representative to activate Windows, and then click Next.

9. Click Change Product key.

10. Type the new product key in the New key boxes, and then click Update.

If you are returned to the previous window, click Remind me later, and then restart the computer.

Good to know stuff… For now, I\’m out

Let me start off by saying this: what I\’m about to write is a little out of character for me, and therefore, I ask you to take it with a grain of salt. I\’m a firm believer that if you have a problem with something, or someone, you take it up with that person. If the person refuses to fix it, you take it up with people around that person, and if they group refuses to fix it (and you\’re still right) you take it to the public. That is afterall, the right thing to do. However, in this particular case, I\’m going to leave the names out and vent at the parent companies for their poor decisions.

In other words: Today was a day of stupid people doing stupid things making my life more difficult. My mistake was both letting them get away with it, and reacting in a very negative way after the events, when in fact being compassionate is the way to go. In either case, I\’m going to vent about one of them.

We all know that there are people in life that are not as smart as others. We all know (and like to joke about) that they will end up working at McDonald\’s. I\’m ok with that. In reality, we are all suited to work somewhere, and wherever we work, we should do the best job we can at it. So if your a astronaut, football player, computer nerd… You might be smarter or dumber than other people, but at least try to be good at what you do, if you don\’t, your likely to get fired. That said, there should be no one that does a poor job at McDonalds.

Today proved that wrong… There are people in this world that should not be allowed to work at McDonalds, and perhaps, not work at all.

I went in to place an order during one of their more active times of day (dinner time). The lines were starting to get long, but really that doesn\’t bother me. We finally get up to the woman behind the counter (who\’s name I clearly remember but will leave out) and place our order. It\’s a simple order that goes like this:

1 #10 5 peice supersized

1 #2 with the cheeseburgers plain supersized

1 #4? supersized.

Simple enough. We didn\’t say it that fast. We waited and repeated each one. We then waited as she entered what she thought was corrections. I was a little frustrated at the delay here, but I\’m ok with that as long as she gets it right. The next words out of her mouth were that will be 20 dollars….

Brain clicks in.. Assuming all super value meals are less than 5 dollars (which is a pretty good assumption) at most our order should have been 15, but I decided to wait to see the receipt and if it turned out to be wrong, probably let it slide… It\’s not worth the time to get the chargeback and a little extra food never hurt anyone.

So she sets down the receipt and I flip it over to look at it. Sure enough she had managed to screw it up. All the value meals were there, but the cheeseburgers on my value meal were not marked plain. There were 4 additional drinks tacked on to the order, as well as two additional cheeseburgers plain. Oh well, what can you do besides complain, and although I was getting more and more frustrated by the amount of inability this woman seemed to have with taking orders, I am still passive and find my time overly valuable to complain and chargeback my card.

So I watch as they bring the food… 4 fries come out (1 more than we ordered, but all were on the receipt I believe). 4 Cheeseburgers came out, 2 of which were plain, again 2 more than we ordered, but they were on the receipt. The chicken and the other burger came out. And then it stopped. We were getting this to go, and we were stuck waiting for our drinks.

The first woman gives us 2, not even looking at the receipt. I\’m like uh… As she walks away. We continue to stand there… Another woman walks up. Amber kindly informs her we were waiting on our supersized drinks. She gets them, and of course they don\’t have the monopoly peices, so she has to dig them up as well.

Overall, what is supposed to be \"fast food\" probably took us 15 minutes, 8 more dollars than we were supposed to be paying, and provided us with mistakes by at least 2 if not more people.

I know these people are not supposed to be the brightest humans in the world, but my statement above stands.. If your going to do something in life, at least do it right, even if it is just asking if you\’d like frys with that.

That said, if I have anymore monopoly at McDonalds this month, it will be from White Bear Ave. not Woodbury.

I also have another case of stupidity sitting next to me which will have to be dealt with in a kind and gentle matter tomorrow (because it involves a client), and I do not wish to speak negatively about any of my clients (and let it be said that it isn\’t any of my clients persay, more a client of a client.) In either case, people who cost me time because of their mistakes must be treated with compassion… Not hostility. But it doesn\’t mean I have to work with them.

It\’s redesign season for the JR Computer Associates Blogs. Alex finished his towards the end of summer. Richard is talking about doing it again. John is always in the process of giving us a new design, Amber has started to beg, and I personally have been itching for a new design as well.

That said, I think I\’m going to write a few notes down, much like sim did, with what I hope to gain this time around, as well as a few notes that I should remember this time around.

1) Columns: Let\’s go back to two very usable columns of content. It seems that two columns is in fact the way to go, although I must admit I like the comments being visible right away next to the post.

2) Content: I have never tried showing more than one blog post at once. Just about everyone but me does this in some way shape or form. My holdback is my lack of flowing posts. I considered abstracts, but really, there\’s nothing to abstract out of 99.9% of these things. I am not against trying to do this though.

3) Functionality: I would like to find a way to allow users to pick past designs. Oxwaf should allow for this in some way. Perhaps some other works of art for content as well.

4) Content: I would like to bring back every peice of content this site has had. That means: The graph (which I still keep updated), the ISMS (more of an archive of past ISMS stuff), the stories (as well as any other additional works of writing that were done outside of this blog), the photos (time to back these up somewhere other than my hard disks).

5) New Technologies: Rinsefirst has always grown with technology, moving from html, to php, to mysql, to xml, to xsl. I would like to give sIFR a run this time around.

6) Design: I think I want to get away from real life photos, but knowing me… I can\’t. The last 2 designs have incorprated a real image somehow.

7) Focused Posts: I know I\’ve considered doing this before and honestly I\’m not sure I can when in an open forum, but I would like to pick a topic, and run with it. I would like to say that the topic would be \"my life\" but really, that\’s stupid. the other option here is to start brining my websites together: IE, starting tieing my focused websites (SMRC, JR, etc).

Shared data: I want to provide ways to people to replicate everything and anything.

9) Money: I\’m looking to provide some sort of service through my blog. I\’m not sure what that is or even what it would look like, maybe it has to do with that shared data thing above… Who knows. If anyone has any ideas let me know. I\’ve also started looking into google ads. Not for the blog, but for sites like the SMRC.

10) Raise the Dead: Sites of the past should come back with this release. SMRC, that means you.

As you go down the list, the goals get more and more high end. Let me know what you think, we\’ll see what we can make happen.

Lots of people ask me lots of questions for what I use for lots of things. That\’s about as general as I can get. So basically, what I\’m about to do is list what I use for various taskes, and perhaps this will one day help you out with something or another.

Audio:

Audacity (MP3 Edit) - audacity.sourceforge.net

CDEX (CD Rip) - cdexos.sourceforge.net

Sound Editor (Various) - www.roxio.com

Video:

Final Cut Pro (Mac is a God) - store.apple.com

VideoWave (PC) - www.roxio.com

CD/DVD Creation:

Roxio EZ CD Creator 7 - www.roxio.com

DVD Studio Pro (Mac) - store.apple.com

DVD Decrypter - doom9.net

Images:

Adobe Photoshop CS - www.adobe.com

JASC Paintshop Pro - www.jasc.com

GIMP - www.gimp.org

3d Images:

Blender - www.blender3d.org

HTML Editting:

Macromedia Homesite 5 - www.macromedia.com

Macromedia Studio 8 (Not just yet) - www.macromedia.com

Notepad - Windows

File Transfer and SSH:

FileZilla - filezilla.sourceforge.net

SSH Secure Shell - www.ssh.com

WS_FTP (Old Version, Not Available anymore)

Web Page Programming:

OXWAF - www.jrcorps.com

PHP - www.php.net

MYSQL - www.mysql.com

Computer Purchases

Dell - www.dell.com

NewEgg - www.newegg.com

Equus - www.equuscs.com

DNS Management:

MyDNS - mydns.bboy.net

Bind - www.isc.org

Server Management:

Webmin - www.webmin.com

Banking:

Wells Fargo: www.wellsfargo.com

Authorize.net: www.authorize.net

Business Services:

ASAP To the Rescue: www.asaptotherescue.com

Hopefully some of those are useful for you. Ironically, many of them are also in my bookmarks.

Today has been a great day of relaxing and enjoyment. Church lead the way with a wonderful sermon on murder. It\’s nice that the sermon on murder came up today given the senseless murder that happened here in the twin cities this week.. Just crazy. I don\’t understand, and I don\’t think anyone every really will.

After church we headed up to McDonald\’s for what is sort of an annual play Monopoly at McDonalds kind of thing. When I say play monopoly, I don\’t mean collect the stamps, I mean, play monopoly. I guess the idea was pretty popular after the first year, because we actually grew to two boards, and might have more than one session. I hope to send some pictures to the paper too… McDonald\’s might love me then :). Oh, and just so we have reference… Nikki won.

Amber and I then headed to the Mall of America where we walked around the mall a few times, not really shopping, but having fun non the less. SRA was shortly there after and I had a great time. I got to race in every race, and I actually earned my way into the A main for once… That was nice. The last SRA of the season is 2 weeks away… Wish me luck ;-).

I feel like developing stuff but on 56k and on my laptop, I just can\’t seem to get up the motivation. So many ideas, so little time. There are also a good number of bugs in my room (dumb lady bugs). Either way.

Amy is home for the weekend. She has a new digital camera, as well as two friends with her. Her birthday is coming up fast, which is nice. She\’s getting old. I\’m getting old. Everyone\’s getting old.

I miss lunches with Richard.

I also updated my bookmarks today. Added a few more blogs as well as cleaned up a few links that aren\’t really useful. I really should clean up a few more things on this and a few other websites. Things that have been works in progress for some time now… Nah… I\’d rather go play Gameboy or get some sleep.