Better Late Than Never - Windows 7 Party Wrap

Well it's better late than never, it's a wrap, the Windows 7 Launch Party is over. If I say so myself - and since it's my blog I do - it was successful. The food was good - I got to cook with another party attendee, the company was good, and surprisingly to some the product - Windows 7 - was great. I have some pictures I'll post along with some screen shots of Windows 7, as well as further comentary on it's features as I do my best to explore the most intriguing operating system from Microsoft in quite some time.

Windows 7 at a glance:

Interesting features include; wiggle mode (well that's what I call it), the ability to throttle the UAC (I turn mine off), snapping windows into place, new keyboard shortcuts to facilitate easier movement of windows, improved performance and the quickest install of a Windows OS (for me anyways) to date.

Windows 7 Launch Party

With my Windows 7 launch party fast approaching - October 24, 2009 - I decided I would take a different tact with my blog. This post will mark the first of the tech/video game posts for my blog. I'm a gamer and a nerd at heart, so I knew that when I ran out of stuff to write about - which took all of four posts - I would inevitably fall back on the video gaming and technology posts, stuff I know, stuff I love and stuff that I am sure takes up a little too much space in my life.

Any how, onto the Windows 7 launch party. The main reason for me hosting one is, that on a daily basis I hear how much 'Vista sucks'. I want to use the party to highlight Windows 7 and what it can do for the PC. The party will be a game themed party focusing on how to install and then customize Windows 7 to get the most out of the OS. I will also experiment with legacy games to see how well the compatibility mode works.

I have started planning a menu - as in addition to technology, cooking is a passion - and planning the party games. The menu will consist of dishes themed on video games, an example of this will be a dish of black and white elements, which coincides with the game Black and White. Guessing the dishes will be one of the party games. As well there be a party game based on something that I saw in the movie Inglorious Basterds (yes it's spelled correctly.)

This is all for now but rest assured there will be more to come!

Dusk Till Dawn

For me it's hard to believe that I haven't seen Dusk Till Dawn. I have seen almost every other Quentin Terentino film ever made (that I know of anyways) but still had not seen this one. Much like his others it's full of gore - well the film isn't his really, he only wrote the screen play - but it was still great.

From Sex Machine to the renegade preacher each character was cleverly written and it made the movie fun to watch. All I have to say is "All right, vampire killers... let's kill some fucking vampires."

Technological Singularity

Well this is one of the most interesting subjects there is. Now you might think that this is complex but it's really simple. Technological Singularity is defined by WIKIPEDIA as

The technological singularity is a theoretical future point of unprecedented technological progress—typically associated with advancements in computer hardware or the ability of machines to improve themselves using artificial intelligence.

Vernor Vinge (I recommend you read anything and everything by him) writes quite extensively about this in many of his works. I find it fascinating and quite scary to even postulate that we as humans are greedy enough and stupid enough to invent something that could conceivably be our downfall. I welcome comments on this and would encourage feed back and any more information you want to provide. I may actually sit down and outline my opinions on technological singularity but right now don't have the time or energy.

Frustrations

Ah laptops convenient and yet so very inconvenient at the same time. The laptop that I am speaking about has a bad motherboard (more specifically a bad LAN port). It's a COMPAQ that is still under warranty so it's no problem to get fixed...or is it.

I really appreciate that HP puts a technical level of expertise on their "Contact HP" page.

After you have filled the form out and are able to tell them exactly what the problem is (because you do this for a living) they ask that you send in a laptop. I'm like sure, no problem, they send me the box, I send them the laptop and they fix it...or so they say.

The problem description that I sent for them said that I had covered all the bases and they had recovered them with me when they did the technical support session to arrange for the repair. The LAN card had failed, they knew it, I knew it, and the person that I was fixing the laptop for knew it.

Reading the information they enclosed with the laptop it states that the Problem Description is the wireless failed...I found that odd since the wireless is the only way I could connect to the internet. The repair information states that they replaced the WALN card. First of all it's hand written so it's not a typo second of all WTF is a WALN card and why was it replaced. I tested the laptop myself and found that alas, the problem still exists...

I am currently contacting HP and they are arranging to replace the part (the broken one this time) free of charge. I do appreciate them doing it and hopefully it will be fixed correctly this time.