Last week I was lucky enough to find and purchase the new Zune HD (ZHD) 16GB. For the past year my wife and I have been fighting over sharing our Zune 8GB, and it was about time we each got our own.

One of my favorite online communities, 9rules has gone through yet another transformation. I believe this makes three major changes since I became a member in 2006. And since then, and through all their changes, this most recent update (Vol. 3, Edition 1) is the best so far. So, be sure to head over there and check it out.

I'm sure most of you are aware of the nice relationship between Creative's Sound Blaster drivers and Windows Vista - there is none. Unless you want to count a lame company with lame software writers who cannot properly write software for an OS that's been on the market for over a year now a relationship. More simply, for whatever reason Creative cannot create any decent drivers that will get their sound cards working properly on Windows Vista.

Last month about half of my visitors used some version of Internet Explorer (IE) while the other half used a version of Firefox. Looking more closely about half of my IE users are using version 6. Stop it! Because of you people I have to constantly make sure that any little change I make works in IE6. And if it doesn't, which is 90 percent of the time, then I have to find a way to fix it or hack it to get it to work. It's a pain in the ass. My admin panel that I use to run this site uses lots of CSS and javascript to make it pretty and do cool things. I always used either Firefox or IE7 to view my admin panel. Well, the other day I made the mistake of opening it with IE6. Virtually nothing worked or looked right. I seriously laughed at how lame it looked in IE6.

I finally got rid of the giant 50 lb. 21" beast of a CRT monitor and got a nice, sharp 22" widescreen LCD monitor. It's a Samsung SyncMaster 226BW to be exact, with 2ms response time and 3000:1 contrast ratio. It is sleek and sexy and matches my computer case (both colors and lights) which is a definite plus. One of the best things about this is now I have a lot more desk space, and when I say desk space, I phyically mean with my desk. My old monitor was a couple feet thick and barely allowed my keyboard to sit in front of it without pushing it off the desk. Because of that setup I couldn't write on anything plus I ended up sitting really close to the monitor. With my new LCD I obviously have a lot more room and I no longer have to sit real close. This make working on my web sites and playing video games a lot easier on the eyes.

It's been a long time coming, but after years of impatient waiting I finally got a TV I always wanted. A big screen, high-def, rear-projection to be exact. Finally, I can watch TV, movies, and play video games the way they are meant to be played, in high-def. I rarely buy things on a whim, especially with big items like this, but it was too good to give up.

Upgrading from Windows XP to Windows Vista has been a great experience for me so far. Some of my primary concerns included compatibility with my favorite video games and applications. I'm happy to say those concerns faded away when everything installed and worked great. But this last weekend I ran into an issue that I didn't even think of while installing Vista: playing OGM files.

The guys (or should I say guy) over at Gravatar.com has finally released Gravatar 2.0 upon the world. For those who don't know, Gravatar stands for Globally recognized avatar. In other words, you create an avatar for yourself that will follow you around and display when ever you post on a Gravatar enabled site. I've just re-enabled Gravatars on my site, so if you have one, feel free to comment here and show it off.

UPDATE: If you are having issues with Media Center freezing while connecting to your Xbox 360 try this fix:

Alternatively, if you are having problems with your Xbox 360 crashing with an error, try to remove the Hard Drive from the 360. If this fixes the problem, then try it again with the hard drive attached. If you get an error again, then there may be an issue with your 360 hardware in which case you'll need to contact Microsoft to get the unit repaired/replaced.

You can read more about this issue here.

Well I got Windows Vista installed this past week, and let me tell you it's been fun. Seriously, so far so good. I had Windows XP Professional on my PC, and recently upgraded to Vista Home Premium. Actually, I didn't upgrade to Home Premium. Rather I backed up all my shit and did a clean install of the new Vista operating system. You see I did a fresh install of XP Pro only a month or two ago and was planing on just doing a upgrade to Vista, not a full fresh install. Well it turns out you cannot do a upgrade from XP Pro to Vista Home Premium, so I had to backup everything and do a clean install.

2007 is right around the corner, and with it comes a shit load of cool games for the PC. In my previous post I talked about the PC games I wanted to get. Some of these games are next-gen and of course will require next-gen hardware to get the full effects (I'm looking at you Crysis). So it makes my wallet (and Jenny) cry when it comes time to upgrade my computer.

So I work for a rather large company.  Or I should say, I work on the Technical Support side of a rather large company.  Everyone in this company uses Outlook to send and receive corporate emails.  Of course all these emails are backed by Exchange servers.  We also have a company wide distribution list (DL) that when you send an email to it, the email goes to EVERY SINGLE PERSON IN THE COMPANY.

Yea!  Finally after several months I finally got another camera.  It's a  Canon PowerShot SD630.  My older digital camera (Nikon CoolPix) died on me a few months ago.  I don't know what happened.  Just one day the camera wouldn't turn on.  This was an older camera that we had for 3 or 4 years, so it was kind of out dated and I wanted a new one anyways.

Well I finally downloaded the newest version of Windows Vista titled RC1 (release candidate 1).  I must say right off the bat, this version of Vista is a lot better than the previous version, Beta2.  Installing this new version was a breeze.  I just downloaded the new ISO file from Microsoft, mounted it to a virtual drive and started a fresh installation over my previous Vista partition.

I just found this site today called Speedtest.net.  This site will test your bandwidth speed, including your download speed, upload speed, and latency.  There are a lot of web sites out there that already do this for you, but this is the coolest site I've seen yet.  So check it out if you're curious about your bandwidth.  When you're done you can even post your results for other people to see.  Here are my results from work:

Now I know Vista is supposed to be the next great thing but I try not to get into too much hype.  Now I've read lots of articles on how Vista will be so much better than any previous Windows versions and I was like, sure ok.  But I never really got excited reading about what it will do....until it does something that amazes me personally.

I've been hearing a lot people bitch about Dell computers lately.  I hear how they are lame, or crappy, or newbish.  But I still think they are great computers for a majority of PC users out there.  Sure they are not for everyone, but they come in handy for the technologically inexperienced end-user.  Plus, you just can't beat some of their prices.

Yesterday Microsoft released a new optional update for Windows Vista Beta 2.  It's an update I've been looking forward to since I installed Vista last week.  The update is Windows Mobile Device Center Beta.  In Windows XP and earlier it was known as Activesync.

Last Wednesday Microsoft finally released a public beta version of its next operating system, Windows Vista.  If you haven't heard or seen anything about Vista yet, then do yourself and favor and check it out!  Vista looks great!  It looks like all these fancy new Web 2.0 sites that a popping up on the net.  Rounded corners, drop shadows, transparacy effects, etc.

What type of Internet would you rather have?  A free and open Internet that harbors and nourishes technological innovations and communities, or an Internet controlled by cable and phone companies that regulate what you can and cannot see on the Internet?  For those who do not know, this is what we are fighting for right now - Net Neutrality.  In other words, a free and open Internet controlled by the producers and users and not big name, money grubbing companies.

This past weekend I helped my girlfriend's dad put together a new gaming PC.  We bought all the parts from our local Frys Electronics store.  We got a case, PSU, mother board, CPU, RAM, video card, sound card, hard drive, and LCD monitor.  We got nothing but premium, top of the line parts.  I said it should take us a few hours to put the system together and install the OS with additional software.

We've all known for awhile now that Apple's new Macs are going to contain Intel processors, instead of their usual, proprietary Motorola chips. Why Apple is doing this I don't really know. Maybe it's the speed increase they'll get with a normal processor like Intel, or maybe it's just the product recognition that comes with the most widely known CPU in the world.

OK, this has been bugging me a lot lately. Some people say there is no difference between the two, others say they are different. I've always just assumed that there were no differences other than price. Well to be sure of this, I decided to do some research and find out for myself.

Windows Vista is Microsoft's next operating system (OS) scheduled for release sometime in 2006. Hopefully we'll get some more info on this new OS at this years CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas. CES should be starting later this week. While I don't know a lot of technical aspects of Vista, all I do know is that is looks awesome - design wise. Vista has a more updated, modern design look than Windows XP did. It just looks more streamlined and smooth.

I just had my first experience with Microsoft's own anti-spyware program. Apparently it's still in beta form, though I don't know why...this program kicks ass! You can check it out and download it for free here >> Anti-Spyware Beta1.

For those who don't know, Sony has been going crazy with their DRM (Digital Rights Management) and copy-protection lately. There are two things here that really concern me. 

1. Recently it has been discovered that Sony CDs have been secretly installing rootkit trojans when you put the CD in your computer and autoplay kicks in. A rootkit is a cloaking type technology that hides files and other system objects from your view. Rootkits are commonly used by malware/spyware.

Ok, so it's not exactly a new PC. I built this PC a few months ago. This computer kicks ass, and should last me a couple of years before I have to upgrade again.

I bought all the parts from the horrible, HORRIBLE company TigerDirect (see why I hate them here). After their crappy service I finally got the PC put together and it has been running flawlessly ever since. Below are the basic specs: