Archive for the 'Humor' Category
January 11th, 2011 by Michael
Mark Russinovich writes his blog posts for people who want to get REALLY deep into the causes of computer problems. But today, he posted something that is a little on the “fun” side as well.
“Blue Screens” in Designer Colors with One Click
markrussinovich
11 Jan 2011 12:15 PM
My last blog post described how to use local kernel debugging to change the colors of the Windows crash screen, also known as the “blue screen of death”. No doubt many of you thought that showing off a green screen of death or red screen of death to your friends and family would be fun, but the steps involved too complicated.
“Blue Screens” in Designer Colors with One Click – Mark’s Blog – Site Home – TechNet Blogs
June 29th, 2010 by Michael
So apparently, Windows 8 planning slides got leaked. A good discussion about what is contained in the slides can be found in this blog post:
Long story short, these slide decks are chock full of internal thinking on Windows 8 — everything from customer target audiences to the Windows 8 developer market to the Windows 8 product cycle and much, much more.
While I agree with the author of the post, in that I feel bad for the person who leaked this, I do think it is pretty interesting to get a look at what Microsoft is thinking. I always find it useful to know now where they think things are going to be in the future, in the hopes that I will make better decisions about how to position myself and the company I work for to take advantage of the “new stuff” when it gets here.
April 22nd, 2010 by Michael
So this week, I am at MMS 2010. I try to come to MMS every year, because it gives me a chance to get away from the office (if not really away from work), and allows me to get some time to look at, learn about, and hopefully gain insight into what Microsoft is thinking about when they design the products I use, and the systems I maintain. It is almost like a working vacation. Away from the daily grind of my work life, I get to really let the inner geek out and get excited about the things that I enjoy in my job.
The opportunity to have conversations with the people that work on creating these products and people that use them in various environments is also very refreshing and useful. This gets better over the years, because I have begun to recognize the people that have the answers I am looking for or the ideas that I can use.
Last year, when I was at MMS, I happened to be standing too close to an area where they were conducting interviews…
Today, while I was walking through the Expo, I saw someone that looked familiar, and he started talking to me before I even figured out where I recognized him. He started talking about a video and how it had been talked about, and I was thinking “he obviously has me confused with someone else”. Then I recognized who he was, and started getting nervous…
He opened up his laptop and showed me the a video called “What’s on your mind”. It was evidently the intro video to one of the keynotes at TechEd last year. I show up in a few spots, but mostly, I think, because they like my swimming pool analogy…
Find me at 25 seconds through 30 seconds…
http://nukeitmike.com/video/whats%20on%20your%20mind.wmv
Thanks to Stephen Rose from Microsoft for remembering me and allowing me to post the video on my blog.
March 5th, 2010 by Michael
For some reason this struck me as funny… Got it when I went to view the WordPress stats for my blog…
May 1st, 2009 by Michael
So yesterday, I got an email from Southwest Airlines that I thought was rather interesting:
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Hello Michael!
Your flight on May 1, 2009, is currently scheduled to be on one of our Wi-Fi enabled aircraft!* That’s right…you’ll be able to check e-mail, surf the Internet, and stay connected to the world below via your personal laptop or other Wi-Fi enabled device! (As a reminder, devices that exclusively use a cellular signal won’t work with this service.) Don’t forget to power up at the gate before you board!
Southwest is currently testing Wi-Fi on four of our planes. The service will be free of charge during this evaluation period; all that we ask is that you take a few minutes to tell us what you think! Your opinion will help shape the future of this exciting product. A link to a short survey will be available on the Southwest Airlines/Yahoo! Homepage once you log in inflight.
Don’t forget that you can check in beginning 24 hours prior to scheduled departure.
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And behold, this post is being made from the air!
April 16th, 2009 by Michael
You would think that a company like Microsoft could come up with a better answer for a search on an error than:
We’re sorry
There is no additional information about this issue in the Error and Event Log Messages or Knowledge Base databases at this time. You can use the links in the Support area to determine whether any additional information might be available elsewhere.
Thank you for searching on this message; your search helps us identify those areas for which we need to provide more information.
March 19th, 2009 by Michael
This came up in conversation with a friend of mine, and so I searched and found this answer. Maybe instead of purchasing physical disks, we just need to get everyone to practice using their brain to remember things… on second thought, we can’t get them to practice using their brains for much of anything so… never mind.
What is the memory capacity in GB of human brain?
Something like 2 Terabytes and you are still going to be very far from the truth. I don’t think that it is possible (yet) to evaluate the capacity of the human brain. The fact is that a person can remember hundreds of movies, songs, books, events from the past, pictures, faces, names, phone numbers, etc., that if all those memories had to be put on a hard drive, terabytes upon terabytes wouldn’t be enough.
A quote from some researchers.
“The human brain contains about 50 billion to 200 billion neurons
(nobody knows how many for sure), each of which interfaces with 1,000
to 100,000 other neurons through 100 trillion (10 14) to 10
quadrillion (10 16) synaptic junctions. Each synapse possesses a
variable firing threshold which is reduced as the neuron is repeatedly
activated. If we assume that the firing threshold at each synapse can
assume 256 distinguishable levels, and if we suppose that there are
20,000 shared synapses per neuron (10,000 per neuron), then the total
information storage capacity of the synapses in the cortex would be of
the order of 500 to 1,000 terabytes. (Of course, if the brain’s
storage of information takes place at a molecular level, then I would
be afraid to hazard a guess regarding how many bytes can be stored in
the brain. One estimate has placed it at about 3.6 X 10 19 bytes.)”
WikiAnswers – What is the memory capacity in GB of human brain
March 12th, 2009 by Michael
Like a lot of impatient people, I do buy things from Best Buy. I also happen to get e-mails from them from time to time. I don’t usually read them, but sometimes there is something that catches my eye.
Recycle Your Old Electronics
Did you know you can recycle electronics at your local Best Buy® store
? Bring in your old TVs, computers, DVD players and more and we’ll recycle them for you. There is a $10 recycling fee for each TV, CRT, monitor or laptop you bring in, but we’ll give you a $10 Best Buy Gift Card to offset the cost.
March 11th, 2009 by Michael
I have the unfortunate need to occasionally fix things in the registry, mostly related to applications running in a Citrix environment. I believe there are nice tools out there that are supposed to do this for you, if given the right information, but I haven’t bothered to figure out what those tools are or how to use them. Instead, I torture myself with trying to muddle through VBScript and make it do what I want.
In that spirit, I am going to show you one of my pitiful scripts (and this one is horrible, because I didn’t bother to clean it up after I worked out how to make it accomplish the desired goal. So… here you go:
‘==========================================================================
‘
‘ VBScript Source File — Created with SAPIEN Technologies PrimalScript 2007
‘
‘ NAME: BorlandDBPathFix.vbs
‘
‘ AUTHOR: Michael Phillips , Brasfield & Gorrie, LLC
‘ DATE : March 11, 2009
‘
‘ COMMENT: This script is to change the value of 2 registry keys on a per
‘ user basis. It should set the value to be the correct system
‘ drive (c: or u:).
‘ It should also be noted that this script isn’t very pretty.
‘==========================================================================
‘Registry stuff
Const HKCU = &H80000001 ‘This defines the Current User Hive
Const HKLM = &H80000002 ‘This defines the Local Machine Hive
Const REG_SZ = 1
Const REG_EXPAND_SZ = 2
Const REG_BINARY = 3
Const REG_DWORD = 4
Const REG_MULTI_SZ = 7
vDebug = 1
Dim strComputer
strComputer = “.” ‘This computer is the “.”. If you want another computer, replace the .
Set oReg=GetObject(“winmgmts:{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!\\” & _
strComputer & “\root\default:StdRegProv”)
sGetPath
Sub sGetPath
Set oShell = CreateObject( “WScript.Shell” )
strSystemDrive = oShell.ExpandEnvironmentStrings(“%systemdrive%”)
‘* wscript.echo strSystemDrive
fGetRegistryValues strSystemDrive
End Sub
‘*
‘* This is what we are looking for:
‘* [HKCU\Software\Borland\BDS\4.0\DBExpress]
‘* @=”"
‘* “Connection Registry File”=”C:\\Program Files\\Common Files\\Borland Shared\\DBExpress\\dbxconnections.ini”
‘* “Driver Registry File”=”C:\\Program Files\\Common Files\\Borland Shared\\DBExpress\\dbxdrivers.ini”
Function fGetRegistryValues (vSystemDrive)
‘* wscript.echo vSystemDrive & ” is being passed as vSystemDrive”
oReg.GetExpandedStringValue HKCU,”Software\Borland\BDS\4.0\DBExpress”,”Connection Registry File”,strValue1
oReg.GetExpandedStringValue HKCU,”Software\Borland\BDS\4.0\DBExpress”,”Driver Registry File”,strValue2
strDriveLetter1 = Left (strValue1,2)
‘* wscript.echo strDriveLetter1 & strValue1 & strSystemDrive
strDriveLetter2 = Left (strValue2,2)
If strDriveLetter1 = vSystemDrive Then
If strDriveLetter2 = vSystemDrive Then
Else
fSetRegistryValues strValue1,strValue2,vSystemDrive
End If
Else
fSetRegistryValues strValue1,strValue2,vSystemDrive
End If
End Function
Function fSetRegistryValues (fValue1,fValue2,fDriveLetter)
‘* wscript.echo “Bad Letter is being passed ” & fValue1 & fValue2 & fDriveLetter
vLength1 = (Len (fValue1))-2
vLength2 = (Len (fValue2))-2
‘* wscript.echo “–strValue1 & vLength1– >” & fValue1 & ” ” & vLength1
strPathNoLetter1 = Right (fValue1,vLength1)
strNewKeyValue1 = fDriveLetter & strPathNoLetter1
fWriteStringRegistryValues “Software\Borland\BDS\4.0\DBExpress”,”Connection Registry File”,strNewKeyValue1
‘* wscript.echo strNewKeyValue1
strPathNoLetter2 = Right (fValue2,vLength2)
strNewKeyValue2 = fDriveLetter & strPathNoLetter2
fWriteStringRegistryValues “Software\Borland\BDS\4.0\DBExpress”,”Driver Registry File”,strNewKeyValue2
‘* wscript.echo (fDriveLetter & (Right (fValue2,vLength2)))
End Function
Function fWriteStringRegistryValues (fvRegistryKeyPath,fvRegistryKeyName,fvRegistryKeyValue)
If vDebug = 1 Then
‘* wscript.echo “Begining Function -fWriteStringRegistryValues-.”
End If
‘ This function takes input to write string values to the registry. Key must already exist.
oReg.SetStringValue HKCU,fvRegistryKeyPath,fvRegistryKeyName,fvRegistryKeyValue
End Function
March 8th, 2009 by Michael
There are a lot of people who have personal websites that they use to keep track of family. I have seen a few different types, but it seems that most of them are setup to be mostly a replacement for the photo albums that were always laying around especially at my grand parents house.
I think this is actually a good thing, because it allows you to put more than just pictures. In a personal website, you can put descriptions or even stories with the pictures. And maybe in 25years when your now 3 year old is having his or her first child, you can show them the websites with all the stories of your sleepless nights and all the pictures of the sweet baby that you were so happy holding while you both caught a short nap…
This also makes it easier for families to keep up with each other. I live a good distance from all of my family except a few cousins. I am not good about visiting them, and am really bad about visiting with the rest of my family as well. I hope that by creating a personal site that my wife (and maybe I will help) can keep the rest of the family "in the loop" as to the happenings in our lives, and maybe that will encourage them to keep us in the loop as well.
Another good reason to do a personal website is that it gives me an opportunity to tinker with things that I don’t normally mess with too much. I am a Systems Engineer, not a programmer. Tinker with my website(s) lets me pretend I understand what it is that programmers do. (ha)
