Avatar 2009 (PG-13)
Avatar ***** Great movie. Very entertaining. Reminds me of when I first saw Jurassic Park.
My new 24-inch LCD Widescreen monitor
At work we have a high-end workstation that came with a very nice 22in monitor. The monitor had VGA, DVI AND composite video input jacks! I’ve borrowed it before for XBOX night. This Christmas, at the top of my wish list is a new LCD monitor for me to use when I work at home sitting on the couch with my Dell notebook and MacBook Pro. I’m currently using a 15in LCD with the VGA jack for the laptop or the DVI jack for the MacBook. I’ve really wanted a bigger monitor and have kept my eyes open for one under $200. Stores don’t carry LCD monitors with a composite video jack so today I decided to call Dell and they were able to hook me up. They recommended the E2210 22-inch Widescdreen for $199. They are able to customize it and add a composite connection! I let the sales guy upsale me a speaker bar for $35. I told him it was $40 on the Dell site for small business. Small business always gets you better prices then Home. Doesn’t seem right. Anyway monitor plus speakers plus tax came to $220.83 with free shipping. I’m excited!
Update: In general I’ve had good experiences shopping at Dell. Turns out this wasn’t one of them. The monitor arrived today and it did NOT have the composite connection. It also does not have a stand I can rotate into portrait mode, but then I don’t remember if I specified that. It took almost 2.5 hours online holding and speaking with multiple people but I’m sending this monitor back and I’ve ordered the S2409W 24-inch Widescreen monitor with VGI, DVI, and HDMI. It was on sale for $189. The sound bar should fit on it. The person I spoke with today said the monitor I ordered could not be altered to add a composite connection. Arggggh! We’ll see if round two works out.
Registry Reflection (WOW6432)
Supporting 32-bit & 64-bit applications can be a bit hairy. In regards to the Registry, Windows 7 washes it’s hands of the Registry Reflection business previously supported.
Toddlers & Pom Poms
I attended Cassidy’s first cheer competition. There were High School Teams all the way down to toddlers 5 years old. There is something fundamentally wrong with seeing a 7 year old with thick bright blue glittery eye shadow and thick bright red lipstick, a bow in her head, and no front teeth!
XCode and Static Libraries
I was having trouble adding a static library dependency to my Universal project in XCode. Here are a few articles on the subject.
Code Sharing Via Static Libraries And Cross-Project References
Fantastic place to catch movie trailers
Apple has trailers in HD up to 1080p. They are gorgeous. Watch them in 720p on your computer.
Other HD Trailer sites: MovieFone, Yahoo Movies,
Kristen does football too!
If you don’t see the embedded YouTube clip below then go here.
Malware from MP3 files
The Microsoft antivirus software I installed yesterday detected some malware in some MP3 files that I had on my computer. They came from a friend and were of spanish music.
Here is the warning I received:
Here are the details of the TrojanDownloader:ASX/Wimad.BD malware that was found. In Summary:
TrojanDownloader:ASX/Wimad.BD is a detection for malicious Windows media files that are used in order to encourage users to download and execute arbitrary files on an affected machine. When opened with Windows Media Player, these malicious files open a particular URL in a web browser. The sites contacted, and files downloaded by TrojanDownloader:ASX/Wimad are variable, and may change over time and from instance to instance of this trojan downloader.
It seems your computer can not be compromised unless you ignore warning messages that clearly state something is not right.
I use to use LimeWire but no longer do. You have to be very careful when you download MP3 files or anything else from untrusted sources.
Free antivirus software from Microsoft
I never understood why Microsoft would leave the job of securing their OS to 3rd parties. They recently made available a free antivirus program called Security Essentials. Not to be confused with their Defender program that has been out a while, and that only dealt with malware. I had been using and recommending the free and capable Avast program but I am now migrating to Microsoft’s offering. Not that I know it is better but I am hoping it is good and it is more convenient and integrates better than Avast.
Windows 7
I updated my work laptop from Vista Ultra to Windows 7 Ultra. I downloaded the install from MSDN. I first downloaded and tried upgrading to Windows 7 Pro but that didn’t work and I got some very unfriendly messages when I tried running the Setup program (something about a DLL not being made for this version of the OS). Trying to boot from the CD was simply ignored. I then tried with the Windows 7 Ultra image and it booted fine.
It took about 4 hours to upgrade. So far I like the performance and the look and feel. I couldn’t wait to leave Vista. The only gripe so far is that they turned off the Quick Launch toolbar where all my shortcuts were and which I depend on. Not cool at all. They’ve reworked the taskbar and the ability to “pin” any program to it. All that is fine and good and I’m sure I’ll like the new functionality, but that was really rude to not have a migration path for my quick launch shortcuts. They could have very easily created a new toolbar containing my quick launch items. As it were I had to search and find out how to get my quick launch shortcuts back.