To Err is Vista

No, this isn't the full rant, because I haven't gotten my head around all of the issues with Vista yet. Short version - just like everyone else is saying, don't upgrade until the first service pack. Unless you're buying a new computer, then go ahead and get the whole shebang all together.

I just wanted to provide you with my favorite of all the errors I've gotten go far:



I want to give it out to students.

I'm Sorry Dave. I Can't Do That.

Now, I was going to write a lot about the troubles of Vista, however I found a new toy that I want to play with first. Vista comes prepackaged with a voice recognition software, and naturally that’s geeky enough that I would want to play with it. So I’m writing this blog post solely using my voice. It’s actually a lot of fun especially telling my computer to open and close windows, to open and close programs, etc. I have to say I like being able to command my poor little desktop, ‘open firefox’ and have firefox open with a whoosh. Parenthetically, I had to teach my computer how to write firefox as one word and how to spell whoosh just now.

Granted, it still isn’t entirely natural. The corrections take quite a bit of time, and punctuation is a bitch, (it also didn’t want to understand “bitch”) but the documentation says that the software will slowly get to know my voice better and better. For example, when I taught the computer to say firefox as one word, it suggested that if firefox was a proper noun that the software would learn to work better if it had a recording of life away saying quote firefox quote. I’m leaving that quote firefox quote in there just because I’m having a hard time convincing it to print out a quotation mark.

So all in all the system is certainly not good enough yet to be used on a day to day basis. That is unless it learns very quickly. Anyway it’s fun to play I guess.

The University is Gone! Long Live the University!

I finally made it to New to You U. That's not going to be the name, by the way. As proof of my move, I give you a photo of my new neighbor:



Look at those teeth! Big sharp pointy teeth! But, he (she?) could probably use some of those whitening strips. I thought about photoshopping them white so that they poor dude wouldn't be embarrassed, but in the end I didn't.

The move went surprisingly well considering all the trip-ups and silly mistakes I made. That's a story for another day. On the completely cool upside of things, there was a massive blogger meeting (which also happened to be a family gathering) and much fun was had by all. Again, I'll post more about the move itself later

The campus here is very nice. We've got the 'old and ivy-covered' niche pretty well taken care of with a healthy dose of 'holy crap where do they get the money to buy the new buildings' sprinkled in to taste. There was a mild aggravation when I tried to access the internet from my new place. It seems that they need you to install a piece of spyware that monitors your computer to make sure your anti-virus software is up-to-date. That's evil, but understandable. problem is that their spyware doesn't support Windows Vista. hehe advanced spyware protection, wot?

Aside from that hiccup, things have gone pretty smoothly. I've wondered around quite a bit and taken a few pictures. I think I need to block out a good long photo-tour though. Of course, most of you folks wont get to see that 'cause you'd figure out where I am and come stalk me. :)

So now I'm off to try and get some grading done. I've escaped the old place, but not the old place's work. Sigh.

Pheer My Leet OS

There was a brief window of opportunity (window! har har! I kill me) to download a beta test of the new Vista OS, so, since I was screening documentaries and films last night and would have plenty of time, I figured I'd give it a shot.

First impressions are fairly good. The install was relatively painless. The only big issue was that it didn't like the Norton Utilities I had and asked to uninstall them, which took a long time. Other than that, I was able to keep all of my programs installed and so far, they've all worked just peachy. In fact, Firefox seems much more peppy than it ever did under XP. I'm not sure what that's all about, but I welcome it.

I'm also beta testing the new Office suite, and all of those programs work much faster under Vista. All in all, things move along quite quickly, and this is on a laptop, not a big desktop brimming with high-tech digital goodness.

I think what I like most so far is the customization of Windows Explorer. You can change a lot there - how you see files, sorting and how you navigate folders and such. Very nice. The graphics do look nice too, although the flipdy-dip window thingie that I screenshot isn't particularly needed, even if it is kinda cute. The Gadget/Widget things are completely unnecessary too, but again, kinda cute.

Negatives - I did have one lockup after class. I closed the laptop after the slideshow, and maybe because I didn't unplug the projector first it wasn't happy. I've plugged and unplugged a scad of peripherals other than that, though, and no worries yet.

I let you know if it blows up or anything