Windows Media Center Error in Windows 7

So, I got an error message yesterday from Windows Media center:

"a necessary component of windows media center did not start properly"

The error would occur if I tried to add folders to media center... and all my media folders were failing to show up in WMC.

I couldn't find anything on google to help me troubleshoot it, but I had just installed Nero 9 the day before.

When I would restart my computer, it would also take a long time to log in and would frequently load a temporary profile.

The problem was resolved by disabling Nero's background service called "Nero BackItUp Scheduler 4.0" which I have no need for anyway.

Hope this is helpful to someone.

Picasa 3.5

Face Recognition Tagging... Need I say more?

Seriously, this is the best thing to happen to photo organization ever!

Go get it now!

Grief doesn't begin to describe...

In the early hours today, we lost a great man. He was loved. He will be missed.

Thank you for everything, Robert Middleton. You will never be forgotten.

Drop it like it's hot

YouTube Video

Carbonite

I feel like it's time that I give Carbonite online data backup a quick review.

A few months ago, I decided that I want to have a secondary data backup measure. Right now, I have my computer setup with a Mirror RAID. This allows me to keep my data on two drives simultaneously. This is great for if one of the drives fails, but does nothing to protect me against fire, flood, theft, etc..

I had heard about Carbonite and thought I would give them a shot. The price was right and the service boasted unlimited storage, so I figured, why not?

I feel like I made the right choice. So far, my favorite thing is that Carbonite remembers your files locations... and this is important for restoring lost data, but even more important for resuming partial backups...

Allow me to explain:

Because I frequently upgrade/reinstall my operating system, I keep all my user profile data on a secondary hard drive. This allows me to restore the main hard drive without disrupting my important data. I have hundreds of Gigabytes of data and I wanted to backup a good chunk of it. This backup is taking about 2 months to complete. About half way through the backup, I decided to upgrade to Windows 7 64bit, which required me to wipe out all the data on my main drive. I was worried that when I reinstalled Carbonite, it would lose its place on my secondary drive backup. It did not.

Carbonite integrates easily into your GUI and works along side windows in a seamless manor. The backup is slow at first, but once it's complete, it only updates changes, so it is rather quick depending on the size of your modified files.

The only complaint I have about Carbonite is that it does not backup all files types by default and for large files (over a few gigabytes) you have to select them manually. For a video editor like myself, this is a bit annoying, but I can see where for the average user, this would never be an issue.

I want to be that guy...

I want to be the guy who is responsible for the following addendum to my apartment complex's lease agreement:

"You hereby acknowledge that anchoring a zip line from you balcony to the dumpster is a direct violation of your lease and will result in immediate eviction."

Fun

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lXh2n0aPyw&feature=youtube_gdata

7

I'm actually a little sad that windows 7 is coming out so soon... I don't feel like Vista has had its full run and I really have loved the Vista OS.

The worst thing is that I heard someone refer to Vista as the modern Windows ME... Ugh... I swear this person NEVER used ME... and probably never used Vista for that matter...

I do look forward to Windows 7 because I think Microsoft is making a lot of great improvements to the OS, but I feel like this is more of the windows 95 to 98 jump than 98 to XP or XP to Vista...

If you recall, the main difference between 95 and 98 (aside from a bunch of technical crap that the average Joe never noticed) was Internet Explorer 4.0 basically replacing Windows Explorer... Sure, that was a bad idea, but it did open a lot of new possibilities (mostly for hackers).

Well, that's my rant for the day...

Good music

I'm currently enjoying the hell out of Guster, particularly the song Happier... You should have a listen.

Fun with NSFW links...

So, I found this really disturbing video on the nets and decided it would be fun to ctrl+v it to several of my buddies on the gtalk.

The only person to respond, was my friend hank or, as his parents call him, Josue.

Here is how the conversation went down:

Mike:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrTiKP84kAA&feature=player_embedded

Josue:

I'm at work but I want to click on the link so bad.

Mike:

you shouldn't

....

but you do want to

Josue:

Knowing that I shouldn't makes it more tempting.

Mike:

it might get you in trouble...

you really should just close the window

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrTiKP84kAA&feature=player_embedded

just in case you closed the window.. there is the link again

... but don't click it

Josue:

I don't know what it is, I only know that whatever it is, I want it

Mike:

more than you could imagine

It's really the most amazing thing you'll ever see

you should hurry home and click the link

... but don't click it now...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrTiKP84kAA&feature=player_embedded

Josue:

I hate you

oh so much

Mike:

for giving you good advice.... I told you not to click on this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrTiKP84kAA&feature=player_embedded

It's not like I'm trying to trick you into clicking on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrTiKP84kAA&feature=player_embedded ...

... just don't forget ... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrTiKP84kAA&feature=player_embedded

At this point in the conversation, I see our mutual friend, Chris, has come online...

Conversation with Chris:

Mike:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrTiKP84kAA&feature=player_embedded

you should send josue that link I just sent you

Chris:

okay, why can't you do it?

Mike:

I did... and he was tempted to click it but can't

because hes at work

and I enjoy tempting the boy

and using you to do so makes it super funny to me

Chris:

okay, will do

Mike:

thanks chris, you're the best

Chris:

that's funny, when I linked it

it went and got a thumbnail of the video

and put it in the chat window

He says he is crying

Mike:

hahahahhaha

Back to conversation with Josue:

Josue:

I still hate you

Mike:

sure, here it is again: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrTiKP84kAA&feature=player_embedded

Josue:

now I'm crying

are you happy

Mike:

I am too... tears of joy

Much time passes... I head to work, I go to lunch, I get an IM on my phone...

Josue:

the link better be awesome. My day has gone at snail's pace because me looking at the clock thinking, in just a few more hours I'll see what the link is all about

He never let me know what he thought of the video, but I get the feeling he didn't enjoy it nearly as much as I enjoyed taunting him...

Bob your head!

YouTube Link

NASCAR + Vodka = Viewership!

I was thinking that in order to increase viewership, NASCAR should implement some new rules...

1. every time you make a lap, you take a shot of vodka.

2. every time someone passes you on the inside, you take a shot of vodka.

3. every time someone passes you on the outside, you take 2 shots of vodka.

4. if someone crashes into another car, you take a shot of vodka.

5. if someone crashes into a freestanding pillar, WATERFALL!

I'd watch that... Hell, I'd pay-per-view that!

Why stop there? Similar rules could be applied to any sport.

Your imagination is the limit... well, that and the players/participants blood alcohol level.

It's hip to be square...

Yoshimoto Cube


YouTube Link

...appropriate? no. funny? you be the judge...

http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1920944

Marriage Class

What I learned from the Catholic Marriage class I attended...

(Paraphrase from the lecture)
God so love the world that he gave his only begotten son to air up our tires. His name is Jesus and he works at the local service station.

I'm not joking... The guy said Jesus puts air in our tires so we can better handle the speed bumps and potholes...

And THAT was the most important thing he said the whole day...

The Guild Promo

Do You Wanna Date My Avatar?

Arnold Schwarzenegger in Japanese commercials

The title says it all...

YouTube Link 1
YouTube Link 2

How robots were meant to be used

YouTube Link

Laptop Bridge

Today, I was trying to update my friend's Blu-Ray player online but it was a couple rooms away from his router. The player had no wireless connection, only an ethernet jack on the back. My friend has wireless, but he doesn't have a wireless bridge...

I had my laptop with me and an extra cat-6 cable. The thought crossed my mind that I might be able to use my laptop as a wireless bridge. I turned to my good firend, Mr. Google, and 5 minutes later I had a solution.

It turns out it's quite easy to bridge your wirless and wired (or any) network connections together... Just highlight the two networks and right click then select bridge connections. Presto!

I hope this is helpful!

Megan Fox

This is fantastic:

YouTube Link

Alternative titles for Final Destination 12

Final Destination XII: This time it's final.
Final Destination XII: Are we there yet?

Are you yelling at me, or just having a conversation?

I got yelled at in German today.

Or... at least, I think I got yelled at. It's so hard to tell.

These two German women were talking to me. Really, they were talking AT me. I think they may have been angry. It's so hard to tell... because, as I mentioned - they were speaking in German.

I don't care how nice you try to speak the language, it still sounds like you're pissed off.

You can't even say "I think you're a great guy" in German without sounding angry... I mean, come on... just read it... "ICH GLAUBE, SIE SIND EIN GROßER KERL!!!"

Yeah. I know... I pissed myself just typing it.

Woah...

[Direct link to YouTube Video]

Ubuntu in Vista

Today, I installed Ubuntu on my computer again. this time, I'm running it through a virtual machine. I'm using Sun's xVM Virtual Box.

The setup was very quick and easy. This was the fastest lnux install I've ever done. I'm quite pleased with the idea of being able to use linux simultaniously with windows. The best part is it's completely free!

Oh, and the fun doesn't stop there. VirtualBox will also allow you to install XP in Vista. That's right. You can install and run XP inside Vista! Not that I have any crazy software that won't run in Vista, but I still find this to be a great idea for anyone who does.

The Time Traveler's Wife

It is a love story about a man with a genetic disorder that causes him to time travel unpredictably...

...did I mention his best friend is a talking pie?

Pre-fix

I'm about to get my fix... my Pre-fix.... I'm in line right now!

JUNE 6!!!

FINALLY A RELEASE DATE!!!

Dude, you got a Dell, and now you can't print!

Ok, so I had an issue with a dell laptop that would not print. Fresh restore, re-installed a known good printer... Still wouldn't print. It installed and recognized the printer just fine, but try as I may, I could not get the damned thing to print.

Searching Google was no help... No matter how I phrased the problem, "Unable to print to USB Printer from Dell laptop," I was unable to find a solution.

After talking to Dell tech support for 45 minutes and being transfered twice, I finally got to a technician who told me to uninstall the AMD USB Audio Driver Filter... Yeah... That's right the factory image includes software that conflicts with many USB printers.

So, I google the AMD USB Audio Driver Filter, and WHAM! there's my answer. So, it's a common problem, but not an easy solution to locate. That's annoying. Dell needs some SEO for problems like this...

I can only hope that someone stumbles across my post and it helps them fix their problem printing to USB printers from their dell laptop.

Breaking Bad

Watch it!

Facebook Notes

Ok, so Facebook has a feature that allows you to pull notes from an RSS feed.

So, this message is posted directly to Blogger, and that triggers Facebook to post a message automatically (within 2 hours).

Now I never have to log into Facebook again.

Just so you can be sure, you should get tested...

http://doihavepigflu.com/

Observation of the day...

The phrase "what do you have in your rss?" could be mistaken for a naughty typo.

The simplest solution is often the hardest to find.

I was once told a story, as I recall, it was about Isaac Newton (unproven creator of the doggy door). The story stated that he had a pet dog and a pet cat. The dog was much larger than the cat, and as such, he installed a door for each. A large one for the dog and a small one for the cat. It was only after he witnessed the kitty using the doggy door that he realized he only needed the one door.

I think it's funny how great minds tend to do things the hard way. Someone once told me they had a brilliant brother and a lazy cousin. Any time they needed something done efficiently, they would ask their cousin because he always had a quick easy solution where as his brother would spend hours explaining some convoluted plan that looked good on paper but wasn't practical.

I can't help but wonder if sloth, at least in this context, is a virtue.

There's no crying in baseball

Commentators for the first few years of baseball must have gotten really tired of the phrase "it's a new world record!"

Open in new window...

I think you'll thank me for posting this little tweak I found.

I hate that Vista doesn't let you Shift or Ctrl click on folders in Explorer to open them in a new window. (I should clearify that if you take off the navigation pane from the window, that this feature DOES work... but wtf?)

It would be fine, so long as I could right click and say "open in new window"... but that is another feature they simply left out. Well, I finally got sick of it and asked the gods at Google how to do it... and they gave me a quick and easy tweak that works great!

Check out the link and try it out! I've not tried it in XP, but I think it would work there too.

Hidden Files

So, my girlfriend has a CD with some files on it. Some of those files are set to hidden. Others are not. She said she couldn't read the files properly. I popped the disc into my Vista machine and voilà! There are all the files.

Thinking this is just a case of her computer isn't set to see hidden files, I take the disc over to her system and shove it in (triumphantly).

Moments pass by and I'm astonished... I change the settings to display hidden files... they're not showing up. I crack open the command prompt and I can see some files, but not all of them... All of the files set to hidden are... gone.

So, thinking it must be a fluke problem with her computer and permissions or something, I throw the disc back in my laptop and double click the drive...

...WTF... I can only see the files that are not set to hidden. I've made no changes to my computer between now and then. I have Kaspersky and it's up to date... no warnings of virus activity... Everything seems to be working, but those files are now gone!

I threw it into another system just to be sure, and it does the same thing... no hidden files on the disc.

So, I ask you this question... Where did they go?

Vista: Sync Center

I finally took the time to play around with Vista's built in sync capabilities. I've been working on a couple projects and moving files back and forth from my laptop to my desktop as I work both at and away from home. Moving thousands of tiny files back and forth over the network can take ages and frankly, I'm sick of it. I keep the files in the same place all the time (I'm very organized when it comes to long term projects), so it is only natural to set up a network share between the two computers, and I knew I wanted to sync my files, but I had no idea how easy it actually is.

In Vista, all you have to do is navigate to your shared folder, right click on it, and select "Always available offline". 

That's it. Simple. 

You have a few other options in the Sync Center... you can setup the folder(s) to sync on a schedule and what not. It's rather fancy. I recommend mapping a drive to the folder you want to sync so that you can easily pull it up from 'Computer' when you're away from home or the office.

There are lots of great resources both within Windows Vista and on the inter-tubes that go into more depth on the subject, but I think it's worth checking out!

(By the way, there is a similar option available within OneNote that allows you to sync your notebooks over the network... it's really easy to use and makes OneNote even more powerful. I now have all the same notebooks available on both my laptop and my desktop... Neat!)

MC Nikola

This makes me want to fire up Command and Conqueror and zap some infantry units...

Enjoy!

I think I just twit myself...

For all you twits out there...

Neat new wireless platform!!!

This great new product will change the world!

I wish I had a pair...

...of these.

Red Alert 3: Uprising

Seriously? No multiplayer?!

I mean, first off... Isn't that half the reason for playing a C&C game? The multiplayer...

Getting together with your friends online or at a LAN and playing a massive skirmish...

And in RA3, you could even do a 2 player co-op through the storyline itself... This was the greatest feature the franchise has yet to offer... and they left it out?!

Three words... What The Fuck?

The music is good and the rest of the game looks promising, but I was looking forward to playing the co-op missions tonight and I am unable to do so...

*sigh*

Actionscript 3.Oh no...

Ok, so .. Actionscript 1/2.0 ... to get a website to pop up, you used a simple command called getURL... 

The context was roughly:

getURL("http://www.google.com");

Now, in Actionscript 3.0, you just use:

var getGoogle:URLRequest = new URLRequest("http://www.google.com");

navigateToURL(getGoogle);

See, it's simple now...

Ok, so it's not hard, but it is just one example of the major changes between AVM1 and AVM+

I feel like I have to completely relearn Actionscript... *sigh*

If you want more information, you should check out:

This fantstic overview

This page directly related to navigateToUrl's replacement of getURL

XKCD IS IN MY HEAD!

The fucked up thing is that I had this dream about a month ago... This exact dream.

History in the making...

Holy crap. Andrew just introduced me to one of Google Chrome's greatest and most powerful features. I had no idea about this feature until moments ago, and I think its quite noteworthy.

Chrome has a hotkey to re-open closed tabs. That's right. Ever close a tab and wish you hadn't? I sure have. Ctrl+shift+T, my friend. Oops, you closed 3/5 tabs and you wanted all of them open?! No sweat! Just hold ctrl+shift and tap T 3 times... No worries!

Seriously, this is a powerful little trick that might save your ass some day.

And you thought that tab was history...

JTK3.X

I love Joomla, but I love JTK3.X even more!

If you've ever wanted to create your own Joomla template and realized how much time and effort it takes to do it, you will be delighted to know that there is an affordable solution out there that takes most of the hurt out of the process.

Check it out, I'm seriously impressed with the package!

Learn more about the Joomla Template Kit.

Crisis of Credit

this is pretty much spot on:

http://www.crisisofcredit.com/

Which do I use for sad?

"All you have in your briefcase is a happy face button and a revolver"

"One's for if I get sad, the other is for if i get really sad."

Handy TV Guide page...

I've been using this handy TV Guide page for a few weeks and I'm very pleased with it. I actually filter out all the shows I don't watch and it always lets me know when there will be a new episode of something I want to see!

You should give it a go.

[Note: Updated link on 03-21-2009]

I HATE ITUNES!

Holycrap, I hate iTunes...

So, I keep all my music files in the Music folder under vista (which I cleverly have relocated onto a mirrored raid drive for backup purposes). The problem is that I only want to sync the music in a sub folder called "MP3s"... I don't want to sync all the songs I've downloaded from Amazon, because I don't like all of them... some are downloaded for other people or for projects that I am working on and want a particular song, so I still want to store them, but not sync them to my iPod.

So, I open iTuens and it kindly creates a library with all the music I don't want as well as all the music I do... It's infuriating how simple and easy it is to do this process, and yet I don't want to do it at all!

I wish you could just go into settings and tell it to build the library from a particular folder...

No standard windows interactions work... this program was made for people who have NO CLUE what they're doing and it seems as if it's specifically engendered to piss off people who DO know what they're doing... I think that's why I've never owned a Mac... other than the fact that they're 2x the price of a PC of equal power (and that's with new lower prices).

Everything Mac is counter-intuitive. OSX loves to hide the power user controls from the masses - I guess so that the people who take the time to learn how to do elevated commands and change powerful settings can act like elitist pricks.

God, I hate Mac...

They're really pretty though...

Possibly the most amazing thing I've ever seen:

Maker Profile - Kinetic Wave Sculptures on MAKE: television from make magazine on Vimeo.

Film Bouquet

Ok, so I've been working hard to revamp the Film Bouquet website! you should check it out if you get a chance. This is the website for the company I'm starting up with some friends.

We're specializing in Wedding Video and Photography work - there are some samples up there, but I'll be adding more as time goes on.

Let me know what you think, I'd love to get some feedback.

www.filmbouquet.com

So tired!

I think I'll go to bed.

Yes. Bed. That would be best.

But first, a word from our sponsor:

Do you have lice?

Do the children on the playground make fun of you?

Does your breath smell like kitty litter?

If you answered yes to any of the above questions, you may be interested in participating in a clinical study...

That's all folks....

Medical Footwear

Cardiovascular shoe repair - We take care of your heart and sole.

It's so shiny....

Ok, so I've talked to you about Chrome before, but now, I think is the time to make the switch... and that's a lot sooner than I expected. There are few things to complain about, and I can't think of any off the top of my head. I recommend you take the plunge into the most amazing web browsing experience you've ever had.

PS - It's out of Beta.