A New Year, A New Computer Working Well

Haopy new Year! It's 2006 and I just reloaded the new PC. After some serious browinsg difficulties, I realized that the first install was corrupted by spyware and trojan horse virii that existed on my previous Windows 98 computer. I never ran a firewall or anti-virus program on it, and it had always workd fine. This new one got corrupted in about 1 hour I think. I resolved most of my problems:

• Uninstalled the AVI TV Card and got the right ATI Radeon 7000 Video Drivers loaded up. The PC played Unreal Tournament at high graphics at 1024x768 with no problem. Next I'll see how well it runs Civilization IV.
• Found the drivers online for the built in AC'97 audio card. Now I have sound.
• Downloaded a new scanner driver driver for my crappy Parallel attached scanner. When it scans it sounds like its grinding coffee, but as I say at work "That's a hardware problem." Sandy and I will get a better scanner when we can scrounge up some money and a $20 coupon at OfficeMax.
• Got our Mozilla Thunderbird email program running. Took about 3 hours for me to realize that certain key folders were HIDDEN (duh!!!) so I had a hell of a time importing my old mail folders into my new ones. Now it works fine. Note to self: Always go into folder properties and make sure that "hidden files and folders" and "hide file extensions" are unchecked.
• Sandy wanted me to find and install and old Toy Story background image as the Windows background. Gladly. It's the first movie we ever saw together.
• I installed a firewall (Zone Alarm Free Version) and Virus Scanner (AVG Free, recommended by Alex Marquis). AVG is what found all those trojans on my old hard drive. The firewall is nice, but it seems to slow down my dial-up Internet connection. That's right kids. Dad has dial-up in 2006. I am kicking it old skool.
• Oh, and I got the Hibernate function working automatically. Now if I hit the power button, it hibernates instead of shutting off. Much cleaner, as I don't like a complete reboot if I don't need one.
  

Some of things I have to figure out yet are:

• I want to install the ATI TV Card and see how well it can import video from my video camera. I would think it would have to be better than my CameraMate USB box, but who knows. We shall see.
• I still have to drill holes in the case and fully install the CPU into the desk.
• Mike will be sending me the DVD Burning software. I told him that's fine because I don;t have anything burn worthy, and I don't even know what kinds of DVD media I need to buy.
• I booted up the PC into Linux (dyne:bolic live cd) and it worked fine. The video was great. The audio was great. The mouse worked. But the keyboard didn't work. Weird. I am thinking that I would like to maybe do all my media production in Linux. If I'm just starting, why learn Windows tools when I could learn Linux ones.
  

Sandy actually asked me why I didn't just install Linux in the first place. What a sweet girl. I told her that basically Windows was a Linux install killer, so it's best to install Windows first and then have Linux manage the boot process later. But in truth, I think that Linux is a little to tricky to keep updated, and it would be easier for me to use a Live CD like dyne:bolic. I have been using Linux for over 8 years, and I have never gotten that good at upgrading and recompiling the kernel. Maybe now is the time.

Well, that's about it. Today was a good day. The Packers and Vikings won. Brett Favre threw a TD pass, and poor Mike Tice was fired. The Bears lost, which was bad for Mike, but they were saving their first string for the playoffs. I think they will need them.

Finally, I have only a few resolutions for 2006:

• Keep a cleaner e-mail inbox at work.
• Work smarter.
• Be a better father and husband,
  
• Go to bed earlier.
• Drink more water and trying to eat breakfast everyday.
• Make a DVD movie of Annika.
• Blog more. I started a blog at work: wrksplf.blogspot.com. I am going to try and get IBM iSeries Support blogs setup and running this year.

That's it. It's 12:55 am and I work at 7:00 so I gotta go to bed. Good night!