Diazepam - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Diazepam - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Couple of things I'd like to touch on.
1) I still haven't retooled my website yet
2) I still haven't gone back and spell checked or fixed grammatical errors on my blog
3) I'm still a liitle dopey from the Valium and Vicodin my doc gave me (see above link) for more info on Wikipedia
4) I fucking love free open source software and websites.
I still love this whole blogging thing. I guess it's getting bigger and bigger everyday. I keep running into more and more people that blog. Maybe one day everyone will do it but I'm gonna keep it going as long as I can.
I just finished reading one of my friends blogs which I won't like to until he gives me permission but damn he loves to write this long ass essay type posts!
I've been spending a lot of time "backing" up my personal DVD collection. I've probably backed up around 30 or so DVD's and I'll be a mother fucker if I can't find enought hard drive place to put all of them. Rough figures put most DVD's around 9 gigs for dual layer DVD's and god forbid if it's a two-disc set. I only have a dual layer burner and dual layer discs so that gives me roughly 4 and half gigs per DVD. Do the math and you quickly fill up all your available hard drive space. Price shop most Hard drives and you run into the rough dollar per Gig figure. So if one DVD takes 9 gigs uncompressed that's nine bucks per DVD times how ever many DVD's you "own" and bam. It's more expensive than meth, and probably just as addictive.
Now I have some friends that also "backup" their own collections and this other "Bulgarian" friend of mine swears by VCD's and we argue back and forth about compression vs quality arguments. I'm more of a purists that wants a bit by bit copy (minus copy protection and ecryption) of course so my backups take up a whole more space than his do but I think VCD's or DIVX copies just suck.
I want the previews, the trailers, the closed captioning, the directors audio tracks, and all the extra's (minus the french, spanish, swahili shit). I've given my backup copies to people and they'd swear they came straight from Blockbuster. Now of course if they did come from Blockbuster that would be illegal and I am by no means a "pirate".
On a side not I've been using DVD Decrypter and DVD shrink almost exclusively and to date I've only run into one DVD that i coulden't "backup". I'm evaluating alternative DVD backup software but I can't seem to beat this one DVD. (the latest Bourne movie).
Speaking of DVD Decrypter and DVD Shrink I just love open source and GNU liscense and freeware stuff. Doing tech support as long as I have I've found that most people just don't want to fork over money for software. Period.
Think about it almost everybody uses Winzip but do you know anyone that actually forked over 20 spot for it? How about products that we all use that ask for a donation like VNC but I can't name one person that has ever donated money to the author. Does that make me a bad person?
I swear that If I ever win the lottery I'll pay for every piece of freeware, trialware, or beerware that I've every used but in the meantime if it doesn't come with the OS or come as freeware I'm not using it.
So I thought I'd use todays post to point out a couple of software programs that I use on almost a daily basis that I think every user should check out/download/try to learn how to use.
Utility Software
Winzip
RealVNC
DVD Decrypter
DVD Shrink
DetachOL
NTBackup
MSpaint
Browsers
Internet Explorer (of course) for work related shit that you're forced to use
Firefox for everything else
Office Productivity Apps
MS Office (if you're forced to)
Open Office works great but a little slow due to XML parsing
AbiWord (as a Word replacement)
Notepad (for really simple stuff or wordpad for more markup options)
Corel's office suite (new version is rock solid)
Thunderbird is probably going to be my new Outlook replacement
KeePass or RoboForm (still evaluating)
Cloudmark (Spam Filter)
I'm a real strong proponent of using what your OS provides first (it's already there and you or your OEM already paid for it).
If you don't like what your OS provides then look into the alternatives because they are out there and a lot of them work really well.
As the Windows OS grows (bloats) I'm actually finding myself using it more and more and replacing some other apps that I've sworn by for years. For example Winzip and Nero and VNC were two products you'd never find me not using and now I'm using the built in burning properties and compression/decompression built into the system.
Before someone gets all bitchy on me i need to say that yea Winzip does so much more than the Windows zipping offers and Nero does so much more than just burn cd's but for most end users in the tech support world the basics are all that most people need. I'd be the first one to tell you that I hate NTBackup but you know what it works and it's free and its on every Windows OS you're going to find in Best Buy so why spend money on a third party backup program. Do you you really need the built in SMTP mailing enging of a pricey backup software program to email you the backup log files?
In my Helpdesk world the truth of the matter is that when someone calls you for help they are desperate, they need it like ten minutes ago, they have zero authority to go out and purchase a third party program and their internet doesn't work so you're stuck with what Windows had to offer, so I say bite down, quite bitching and learn how to use Windows to it's fullest potential.
On a side note.......
Heidi (my domestic partner or the last nine years or so) had one of those computer games and movies are evil kind of stances and as you can imagine this had been kind of hard for me to reconcile since I consider myself an IMDB addict and a hard core gamer. Lately she's kind of shifting on the gaming stance but she hasn't moved an inch on movies yet.
We actually spend some time watching my three year old play tribes vengance and he was actually owning people in online play. This game isn't easy but he's fragging people left and right and I'm thinking okay, Mozart was writing concertoes at like five so Is my kid the next "Fatal1ty". Could I sign him up as a CPL (cyberathlete professional league) player?
Might he one day be on ESPN talking smack to Bob Costas? I don't know he could be pulling down six figures and giving out props to his dad for showing him how to "camp" with style.
We'll see how it all pans out but if you find yourself playing online against a "Iamakid" or "scoolio" then watch out. You might just get "powned" by a toddler.
If I didn't already mention it...the above link at the top of this post is to wikipedia which is my current homepage. It's the best place on the internet to look shit up. I mean any company that throws out links to disambiguate an entry has got to be top notch, right?
Couple of things I'd like to touch on.
1) I still haven't retooled my website yet
2) I still haven't gone back and spell checked or fixed grammatical errors on my blog
3) I'm still a liitle dopey from the Valium and Vicodin my doc gave me (see above link) for more info on Wikipedia
4) I fucking love free open source software and websites.
I still love this whole blogging thing. I guess it's getting bigger and bigger everyday. I keep running into more and more people that blog. Maybe one day everyone will do it but I'm gonna keep it going as long as I can.
I just finished reading one of my friends blogs which I won't like to until he gives me permission but damn he loves to write this long ass essay type posts!
I've been spending a lot of time "backing" up my personal DVD collection. I've probably backed up around 30 or so DVD's and I'll be a mother fucker if I can't find enought hard drive place to put all of them. Rough figures put most DVD's around 9 gigs for dual layer DVD's and god forbid if it's a two-disc set. I only have a dual layer burner and dual layer discs so that gives me roughly 4 and half gigs per DVD. Do the math and you quickly fill up all your available hard drive space. Price shop most Hard drives and you run into the rough dollar per Gig figure. So if one DVD takes 9 gigs uncompressed that's nine bucks per DVD times how ever many DVD's you "own" and bam. It's more expensive than meth, and probably just as addictive.
Now I have some friends that also "backup" their own collections and this other "Bulgarian" friend of mine swears by VCD's and we argue back and forth about compression vs quality arguments. I'm more of a purists that wants a bit by bit copy (minus copy protection and ecryption) of course so my backups take up a whole more space than his do but I think VCD's or DIVX copies just suck.
I want the previews, the trailers, the closed captioning, the directors audio tracks, and all the extra's (minus the french, spanish, swahili shit). I've given my backup copies to people and they'd swear they came straight from Blockbuster. Now of course if they did come from Blockbuster that would be illegal and I am by no means a "pirate".
On a side not I've been using DVD Decrypter and DVD shrink almost exclusively and to date I've only run into one DVD that i coulden't "backup". I'm evaluating alternative DVD backup software but I can't seem to beat this one DVD. (the latest Bourne movie).
Speaking of DVD Decrypter and DVD Shrink I just love open source and GNU liscense and freeware stuff. Doing tech support as long as I have I've found that most people just don't want to fork over money for software. Period.
Think about it almost everybody uses Winzip but do you know anyone that actually forked over 20 spot for it? How about products that we all use that ask for a donation like VNC but I can't name one person that has ever donated money to the author. Does that make me a bad person?
I swear that If I ever win the lottery I'll pay for every piece of freeware, trialware, or beerware that I've every used but in the meantime if it doesn't come with the OS or come as freeware I'm not using it.
So I thought I'd use todays post to point out a couple of software programs that I use on almost a daily basis that I think every user should check out/download/try to learn how to use.
Utility Software
Winzip
RealVNC
DVD Decrypter
DVD Shrink
DetachOL
NTBackup
MSpaint
Browsers
Internet Explorer (of course) for work related shit that you're forced to use
Firefox for everything else
Office Productivity Apps
MS Office (if you're forced to)
Open Office works great but a little slow due to XML parsing
AbiWord (as a Word replacement)
Notepad (for really simple stuff or wordpad for more markup options)
Corel's office suite (new version is rock solid)
Thunderbird is probably going to be my new Outlook replacement
KeePass or RoboForm (still evaluating)
Cloudmark (Spam Filter)
I'm a real strong proponent of using what your OS provides first (it's already there and you or your OEM already paid for it).
If you don't like what your OS provides then look into the alternatives because they are out there and a lot of them work really well.
As the Windows OS grows (bloats) I'm actually finding myself using it more and more and replacing some other apps that I've sworn by for years. For example Winzip and Nero and VNC were two products you'd never find me not using and now I'm using the built in burning properties and compression/decompression built into the system.
Before someone gets all bitchy on me i need to say that yea Winzip does so much more than the Windows zipping offers and Nero does so much more than just burn cd's but for most end users in the tech support world the basics are all that most people need. I'd be the first one to tell you that I hate NTBackup but you know what it works and it's free and its on every Windows OS you're going to find in Best Buy so why spend money on a third party backup program. Do you you really need the built in SMTP mailing enging of a pricey backup software program to email you the backup log files?
In my Helpdesk world the truth of the matter is that when someone calls you for help they are desperate, they need it like ten minutes ago, they have zero authority to go out and purchase a third party program and their internet doesn't work so you're stuck with what Windows had to offer, so I say bite down, quite bitching and learn how to use Windows to it's fullest potential.
On a side note.......
Heidi (my domestic partner or the last nine years or so) had one of those computer games and movies are evil kind of stances and as you can imagine this had been kind of hard for me to reconcile since I consider myself an IMDB addict and a hard core gamer. Lately she's kind of shifting on the gaming stance but she hasn't moved an inch on movies yet.
We actually spend some time watching my three year old play tribes vengance and he was actually owning people in online play. This game isn't easy but he's fragging people left and right and I'm thinking okay, Mozart was writing concertoes at like five so Is my kid the next "Fatal1ty". Could I sign him up as a CPL (cyberathlete professional league) player?
Might he one day be on ESPN talking smack to Bob Costas? I don't know he could be pulling down six figures and giving out props to his dad for showing him how to "camp" with style.
We'll see how it all pans out but if you find yourself playing online against a "Iamakid" or "scoolio" then watch out. You might just get "powned" by a toddler.
If I didn't already mention it...the above link at the top of this post is to wikipedia which is my current homepage. It's the best place on the internet to look shit up. I mean any company that throws out links to disambiguate an entry has got to be top notch, right?
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