Why I Hate Microsoft...and I DO!

So many reasons; so few cusswords. Almost from Day One of the Windows era I have disliked then hated Microsoft. Opening the box to get out 40 3.5" diskettes for Windows 98 was hard; then there were 20 CD's with OS2 which was IBM but I blame Microsoft for! Nothing with Windows Anything was EVER easy either and if you made a mistake on anything you paid for it 10X over. Support was marginal in the beginning and downright hideous now. Intuitive? They don't know they meaning of the word.
I had to buy a group license for 3 machines for Win 7 because I wanted to be legal on the two I need it on...at 159 USD! The PRICE for One lousy copy of Windows 7 is absurd, that's why I opted for the license for 3. If I wanted a license for 4 I would have had to pay full price for at least ONE of them. It's enough to make you go into the world of cracks and Torrents for your Windows 7 "purchase". They just behave like a bad bully whose house you HAVE to go by just to leave your house.
And then there's the different 'versions" ie: Stunted, Almost an OS, Sort of OS, OS.
It just pisses me off to be so much out of control, they ARE the original Grinch That Stole Christmas and Scrouge mushed together. Got sued in Europe for the same shenanigans they do and get away with here in the US. FTC hardly takes a look at them these days though they used to. Rich company keeping Intel and AMD rich as well. It's a bitch.

Some moments of mirth have come our way lately, Audrey in Love is one of them...her boyfriend-the-drummer and the 5 pieces of chicken experience. You can make it up. Let's just say he has an appetite that is "Growing Boy" while being 39 years of age and 300 lbs of male human being. He is a hungry sort to say the least. She had 1 piece and He: 5. 2nds anyone? 3rds? "Yes", he says..."Please".

Then more: We have been and ARE among the notorious "Mystery Shoppers" of current lore...checking on the quality of the services you get at various retail establishments in our local area. It's NOT lucrative, pay is shit to be sure but often enough it is a fun experience that takes us out of the worksite (oops...house) and we explore what, for us, is largely unexplored. Today it was a restaurant, which one will remain unsaid, and was a very thorough examination of food, servers, managers, gardeners (yes!) and the space itself. Fun and worth the price of admission as the amount received was sufficient to pay for lunch-for-two. A free lunch followed by an hour of writing about it in trivial detail. Great fun! Tonight...well we do it again! Yes, again we go out to eat. We will report on it by iNet tomorrow and so it goes with our little lives in Suisun City. It's NOT France but we're making the most of our small miseries.

Bye for now kiddies! Burp!

Demolition Proceeds ReBuilding...sometimes.

Not around here, we demo in the middle of rebuilding too, like working on the flooring for the Master bedroom, 200 sq. feet of old carpet, been down on that floor since we replaced the original 1978 stuff some 20 years ago. It is ready to go. I have worked on this floor over the years, adding boards as I finished them, softwood floors, #2 knotty pine sort and they look great but the floor has been half finished for at least the past 5 years. So yesterday K and I moved the bed to a new location against the north wall and moved the desk against the wall by the bedroom door and that prepares the room for more flooring. So off to Home Depot to look over the stock of #2 Pine for ones that are ok for the job, knots in tight and only a few, no scars or edge damage allowed...minimum work that way and they can be usedas-is plus sanding and finishing with 5 coats of clear, semi-gloss lacquer. They look wonderful down though I haven't fastened any of the new stuff, drill with countersink, screw down in corners and mid-length and plug with matching (or nearly so) dowels. Only 90 bd feet to go. I sanded two this morning and applied the first coat, with luck and a bit of effort I'll get two coats on today, two coats tomorrow and the final on Monday. They will be laid in place Tuesday. One slow process in a garage that is so full I can hardly move around in it. AND a dryer is coming tomorrow to be packed therein as well. Ah the joys of moving.

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I've installed Windows 7, Microsoft's latest and greatest version of the oh so common operating system. I had installed the Beta pre-release version on Kelly's machine last winter and had to change the date the machine told the software so that it would continue to run while I purchased and had delivered a "Family Pack" 3 license package. One to her machine, one to mine and one held out for the main machine in France when we go back...whenever that will be. So far Kelly likes it a lot, the interface is somehow easier to deal with and it is quite a bit faster in everything it does, especially online activities. I did a clean install for her machine as most of her activities are online...no...ALL of hers are. Mine I had to use an old 160GB drawer dog that I had from some time ago, reformatted it, set up the new partition and loaded the Windows 7 32 bit version (hers the same) as I need the compatibility for my older on-client software like Photoshop and FTP Pro etc. I had problems that seemed inexplicable at first, it took forever to boot...5 minutes! Her's was up in about 50 seconds. No useful error messages were noted and I hunted and hunted for the log entries but could not locate them...alas, I even tried reinstalling and that failed as well. The Recovery Process, while easier than with XP which this machine had before, still would not complete properly and said so.
I reformatted the 160 GB drive, placed the old drive on the system in the 2nd IDE port and the new one on the 1st IDE port, made them both masters and reinstalled Windows 7. That seemed to do it, it finally booted as quickly as Kelly's though a tad slower but this machine has the older IDE interface for the hard drives and had some startup errors in the BIOS that Microsoft references in the Windows 7 support site. I'mm happy with it too, I like the quickness and the look...we'll see how we both feel about it in the next few months.

Well Win 7 Is Still Running

Actually it's boring, no hangs, no delays, nothing shocking as far as system stability goes, it just runs. It's been a few days now, I'm annoyed by the transparent gooble-d-gook a lot, I know you can turn it off or vary the degree of transparency but I wanted to try this install with the factory defaults and so far...
it all works for me except the transparent windows layers bullshit. It's there for a reason but I cannot fathom what the reason is. If I wanted to actually SEE the semit-transparent hidden background I'd close this window, instead I see a blurred reminder that there is something under what I'm actually looking at. Huh? Why? I will eventually turn the feature off if I'm allowed. What I plan to do is take you on a tour of it feature by feature, of course you don't have the thing actually installed but that's the point, maybe I can save you the bother!
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I've discussed the openning screen, the sign on thingie and the rays of light fbeaming down to a Japanese Fighting Fish in mid screen. Excited? Hmmmm, something wrong there. So you click on the funny round thing with the Windows Banner inside...the un-named Start Button. Oh it's ok, a little bubble will show the name when you place the cursor over it. Click on it and a large dialog box appears with
the following listed:
Getting Started
Windows Media Center
Sticky Notes
Snipping Tool
Calculator
Paint
Windows Live Mail
Windows Live Writer (Here because I set it up allong the way somehow, don't ask!)
All Programs
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That's it, not fancy, not all inclusive, sorta a huh moment while you try to figure out what you are going to do with this thing.
I'll take you thru each one as I experience them.
Getting Started...seems like a place to start don't you think? I did, so I clicked it...
l'viola! A dialog box appears

Windows 7 Continued

The download completed, all 3.18 Gigs of code and bulk about 4.5 hrs later at 6:15am today.  I  had success negotiating thru the maelstrom of sign in activities and email checking and the download was finally on it’s way.  Then to sleep.   I awake about 7am and found that the iso file had indeed been downloaded.  I burned it to a DVD using Active Iso-Burner, a free utility from http://www.ntfs.com/iso-burning.htm .  A handy little gem.   The burn took off and I left the house for 907 where we are renovating a small rental house.  We returned at 4:30pm and I found Windows 7 properly burned and ready to install.  The install took about an hour on this machine, your mileage may/will vary.  After the usual raz-ma-taz of entering names and various passwords I had Windows 7 up and running at about 6:30pm.  It looks like Vista on steroids.  It’s actually named Windows 7 Ultimate.  The first noticeable thing is how much faster it is to power on and get to work, yes there’s a sign on but that can be bypassed easily enough with the settings…but it easily is the fastest booting Windows in recent memory.  The screen was the eerie blue of the sea with, of all things, a Fighting Fish in mid-screen, no kidding.  It’s the default theme. The start button is where it has been for the last bunch of versions, the lower right corner.  That’s where the fun begins.

Windows 7 Beta...Ohhhh No!!!

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/beta-installation-instructions.aspx

There it is up for the offing, a real Microsoft Windows 7 Beta Download URL and good luck to all those who venture forth. I've seen and used many of the Beta software from good ol' Microsoft and have to say that with the singular exception of Microsoft Bob...yes! they all worked until I pulled them off to mount the Real Deal.
I also always took the precaution of using a bare, new hard drive as my installation disk. I always do a Clean Install not wanting to drag old issues into the new OS environment. Given that here we are once again crowding Microsoft's ever busy server farm with millions of downloads of this not small Beta Release. It's 3.15 GB worth of software, fat brothers, fat! And it's an ISO file so you must burn it to to a DVD to make it function at all. Not for mere mortals this thing. You must sign in too to Windows Live. Verify your email address too past all those spam filters. And it'll die on 1 August so says Microsoft. Nice. You see it's for free alright but it is a Beta and they want you to buy it at the end of the Beta test. Fair enough. Now it only has to impress me more than my 64 bit Vista install (1 machine) or my XP Pro Installs (3 machines) and have a reasonable price for complete functionality not the goofy model offered by Vista of so many versions before you get the Real Deal. Awful that was, just awful. And...when you got thru with the Vista install often times it was slower than your old XP install. Makes one crazy doesn't it. So as Vista was a near bomb and many are still doing fine with XP and the 2nd Great Depression seems upon us how is MS going to get us to buy this puppy in numbers big enough to justify it's dvelopment cost? Therin lies the problem gentlemen and gentlewomen. Will it sell this time around?