Observations at a four way stop

Arm Update

I went to the hand doctor and got the latest diagnosis. He confirmed what my other doctor had stated. My radius healed a bit crooked, so I have lost some range of motion. It is a result of this that he speculates the pain I am having on the other side of my wrist. He believes that the fact that the bone is now crooked, it leaves less space by the ulna where the TFCC is. He believes that there is a tear in the TFCC. What are my options:

Live with the pain. It may get a bit better as the tear may smooth itself out a bit over time.

Let the surgeon go in and scrape the tear smooth.

Let the surgeon take a piece of the ulna bone out, shortening it up, so that it is the same length as the radius, thus hoping that there will be enough room in the TFCC area that it won't rub an hurt.

The last option is similar to the one above except instead of shortening the ulna it entails lengthening the radius. Breaking the radius and then taking a graft from the hip to lengthen the radius, thus once again giving more room to TFCC.

No I am not joking.

We are starting out with an anti-inflammatory twice a day for a month and then go back in to see how things are going. I will definitely stay away from the last two options.

When the first doctor said the break was clean and that everything would be fine, just cast it and it will be good. I would tell someone in a similar situation to ask more questions. He said after getting the cast off and having a shortened range of motion that it was better than having cut into the hand and wrist in a couple of places. That may be true, but having known more up front might have had me think about it more.

Windows Live Mail Beta via Firefox

Message when viewing Windows Live Mail Beta via Firefox

New Web Mail Clients

Mediacom (and evidently per the copyright AT&T's) new mail client.



Beta Windows Live Mail



And an address for the fun of it.

Gateway Portable

My portable went back to Gateway for like the third time in two months. This time they say it is some kind of power issue. It simply comes up with the swap module light on and stays there.

I reported the problem the weekend before last. Gateway was shipping out a box to return it, as it is still under warranty. I expected the box in a couple of days, but it never showed. I checked with the Support Center and Tech that they have shipped things to before and neither had seen it. Well after a week I got back online and chatted with a rep telling him the story and asking if it had been delivered and if so, if he could tell me who signed for it. He was able to tell me who signed for it. I did not recognize the name, but brought up Outlook and looked in the address book to track down the person. Yes, it was a person in our Department and she works a floor above and across the atrium. I was guessing she might be the receptionist in that area. My hunch was correct. I went up and as I walked in saw the namplace on the receptionist desk, which was the same as the individual I was told had signed for it. I asked if that is who they were and it wasn't, the normal receptionist had already left for the day. As I was asking I noticed a box from Gateway behind the receptionist desk and explained that I was there for the box, giving my name, showing my id badge and showing them my name on the label. So I finally got the box and sent the portable back today. The part that bothered me a bit is that there was a fellow employee that signed for something and evidently did nothing to try to track me down as they could have easily looked my name up in Outlook and dropped me a note or called (my work, home and cell numbers are all listed in the address book). Oh well, I tracked it down.

My Final 6 on American Idol

Per their performances so far, here are my picks for the top 6.

Elliot
Chris
Taylor
Katharine
Paris
Lisa

A couple that could be wildcards depending on future performances.

Ace
Ayla

American Idol

As far as American Idol contestants, my wife likes is Taylor Hicks. I didn't disagree and stated the other day that he moved and sang a bit like Joe Cocker. Tonight I said he looks a bit like Michael McDonald and she said that she saw somewhere else where they said he looked like Michael McDonald, but she said that I said he looked like Joe Cocker. I said that I didn't say that he looked like him, I said he moved and sang like him. I asked if she had ever heard Joe Cocker sing "With a Little Help From My Friends"RealAudio file, and she said the Beatles sang that. I said the Beatles weren't the only ones.

Software Explorer

I do like the added info under Software Explorer in Windows Defender.



You might want to check it out yourself.

GMail Chat is Live

Defender - the upgrade to MS Anti-Spyware

I was a bit surprised when Defender came out that one was not alerted to this when checking for update to MS Anti-Spyware. Oh well. If you are still running the old one, you might want to update.

Microsoft AntiSpyware Upgrade

I had the AntiSpyware Beta 1 set to:

Notify me when updates, patches, or new versions of
Microsoft AntiSpyware are available.

but even so...



...it did not notify me that Defender Beta 2 was available, which is the upgrade to AntiSpyware.



Oh well.

Winding Road

Who can argue with a free magazine about Automobiles? You can even get the back issues.

Winding Road™ is a new digital magazine for car enthusiasts. In each issue, we review the latest cars and worthy classics, cover news about upcoming cars, and check out interesting automotive events.

It was an easy prediction

Was there a transfer of funds from Jay Leno, David Letterman, and Jon Stewart to Dick Cheney? It will probably require a Congressional Committee to investigate.

Maybe even a bit kicked in by Trivial Pursuit and a few game shows, for some trivia material.

MSN Video

Virtual Machine Issues

I would imagine one of the big issues with Virtual PCs in Microsoft shops is licensing. Unless you have some special licensing, I believe you have to have a license for each copy of the operating system you have installed, as well as any other Microsoft software you have installed on each machine. The next issue would be trying to track this. Tracking software inventory of physical machines is enough work, let alone having virtual machines. If you are using a software tool to track your software inventory, then you may have to figure out the licensing of your inventory product. Is it per user, per physical machine, per OS, etc..

Advice

If Vice President of the United States, Dick Cheney, invites you to go hunting, you may want to politely decline the invitation.

Did the comedians of the world pay him for some comedic material?

I am sure that some are wondering if the shot came from the grassy knoll?

Watson Question

I do wonder what kind of performance issues Watson could have on browsing. I haven't used it that much, but right off I have not seen a perceptible decrease in performance.

I like setting it on autohide on the left side of the screen.

New Head Coach for the University of Missouri Basketball Program

That is right, it looks like Quinn Snyder is out as the head coach of the Mizzou Tigers. Details are sketchy at this point, but it looks like they'll be looking for a new head coach. Let's hope they can get a good one.

VW GTI

I could probably live with a new Volkswagen GTI.


Click the picture for a larger image from the VW site.

Car and Driver Article

Watson

Watson is kind of a proactive search.



Kind of interesting. Watson by Intellext.

OneCare Live

Have you seen OneCare Live? I mentioned not trying it before, but have it running on a virtual machine.


It has Virus Protection, Performance Tune Up, and Backup.


If you follow the Purchase Now link at this point it simply tells you that the product is in Beta and you can disregard this option.


You need a backup device to take advantage of the backup and restore capability.


As I don't have a backup device I simply turned it off.

Downsizing middle management means larger work groups

CNet's Site

CNet's site looks like it is having some problems.


Update 2/10/06: Looks like they finally got it fixed. It was messed up for at least a couple of days. You would have thought they would have gotten it fixed quicker.

GMail Chat

GMail Chat is coming soon. That means that I probably won't be able to get to GMail from work anymore as the site will likely be filtered.

Stop Badware

Did you see that Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society and Oxford University's Oxford Internet Institute have launched StopBadware.org. Follow the link to find out more.

Consumer Reports WebWatch is on board as a special advisor.

Sprint's Customer Serviceless - Bait and Switch

Another great program brought to you by Sprint. I think Sprint figured out that people were leaving their plans for carriers that offer new phones whenever you start a new service contract, not simply if you are a new customer only. Sprint has often been behind the curve on what phones they offer and they did not offer new phones of any kind to loyal customers that would renew contracts. They would not give you a new phone as they would an average Joe coming in off the street and signing up for a new phone. I would say with enough customers leaving they decided to offer a new program. I think they first promoted it as a free phone every 18 months. It was actually $150 towards the retail price of one of their phones, which basically came out such that you could get the free phone that someone off the street could get when coming in to start a new account.

We made it through this program once and the last time we simply went with the free phones. We were started into the next 18 months and at some point they decided to switch this program from 18 months to 24 month. Here is where I have a problem. They did not make it a program from this point forward, they just decided that is how it would be for everyone. Now if I went in and said I wanted to drop my service 6 months early, I am sure they would not let me out of paying an early termination fee.

My wife has spoken to Customer Service about this and they don't seem to see a problem with it. We were in our local Sprint Store yesterday and my wife mentioned this to the local representative and he agreed with my wife, but said there was nothing he could do about it.

The worst part is looking online now it states that this program is only good through the end of March. Our contracts don't expire until after that point, so who knows if they will have anything to replace it or if they will stick it to us again.

Hmm do we take advantage of the $75 offer that we already qualify for or wait to see what happens after March?




We have been with Sprint since AmeriTech stopped offering service in the area and Sprint came in. This is not the only problem Sprint has with their customer service. We currently have 4 phones with Sprint.

Sprint/Nextel get a clue and treat your customers right.

Blog is back

I tried to check the status page last night to see what kind of maintenance or issues might be taking place, but I was unable to get to that page too. It now shows that they were having some big issues. Glad to see it is going again. Thanks Jason, Eric, Peter and the crew.

Blog unavailable.

Hopefully the maintenance will be done soon.

Results from Doctor's Appointment

Worst Case Scenarios

How about some of Popular Mechanic's Worst Case Scenarios.

Solar Home

Interesting. It looks like the University and Tech School from my home town made it into Popular Mechanics with a Solar Home they built.

Crown

Today it was time to get fitted for a crown for the tooth I had a root canal on. It seemed liked they were grinding forever. Next, will actually be getting the crown put on. They have me scheduled for that on Valentine's Day. Isn't that what everyone is planning.

I go to the doctor tomorrow morning to have my wrist looked at. Fourteen weeks out from the broken wrist and I still have pain. It is not in the radius area where it was actually broken, but it is on the outer side of the ulna area along the wrist. We'll see if the doctor says anything different than he has at the last two visits, which was, you broke your arm, it is going to hurt, and it will never be the same.

Have you seen the Terry Tate Office Linebacker Series?

Office Linebacker

Sensitivity Training.

Draft Day.

Vacation

Athlete of the Century

Have you seen the System Administrator Song?

Click here to see the System Administrator song.

Live Bookmarks

Firefox's new Live Bookmarks feature isn't to bad, but you probably wouldn't want to have to many of them.

The Year of the Virtual Machine

I believe this will be "The Year of the Virtual Machine".

Group Policies

It seems like there is always a new group policy being rolled out at work. I can't say that I agree with the latest one, disabling the Windows Firewall.

Oh well, not my call.

Want to find out what policies have been pushed to your machine. Then run rsop.msc, that is, if you have the rights to run it.

You can find out more about the Group Policy Editor and Tools here.

Here you can find a spreadsheet that:

..lists Group Policy settings described in Administrative Template (.adm) files and Security Settings that shipped with Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1.