Omar Shahine, who works for Microsoft, points out something that has been bothering me for a long time: software is expensive.

The other day I decided I needed Photoshop CS. So I figured I’ll buy it. However at $600 or so dollars I have a hard time justifying that purchase since I’m only going to use it to edit digital photos...

Companies like Adobe want to sell Photoshop to the professional graphics designers. If I was a professional graphics designer, I would gladly pay the money for a tool I would use all day, every day. (More likely, I would get my employer to purchase it.)

But what about us amateur photographers? Am I going to shell out $600 US for software, when my Canon PowerShot A60 cost less than $300 US? Software that costs twice as much as the camera itself?

It's outrageous.

A trillion here, a trillion there... pretty soon we could be talking about real money!

The U.S. Federal debt officially exceeded $7 trillion for the first time this month. As of yesterday, That number was $57 billion higher than that. The debt has increased by $1.4 trillion in the last four years, and the OMB predicts an additional $5 billion shortfall over the next 10 years.

This could become an election-year issue, from CNN:

The government debt ceiling stands only a few hundred billion dollars ahead at $7.384 trillion, and Treasury would need Congress's blessing to borrow beyond that. Treasury officials say they expect the limit to be hit sometime between June and October.

Yesterday, my home computer (Windows XP Pro) lost its ability to connect to the Internet.

This happened once I plugged both my Hauppage WinTV USB box and my digital camera into the computer for the first time. The symptoms were:

• Internet Explorer was telling me the “Server could not be found”
• I had a new Network Adapter is installed on my system (Microsoft LAN/TV Network)
• “ping 127.0.0.1” had bad characters in the results
• nslookup was returning an error message
• upon rebooting, my dhcp ip configuration was all screwed up

It could quite a bit of digging, but I finally found the problem. My Winsock key was corrupted. Here is a link to the exact way to diagnose this and solve it. It's under “Accepted Answer“ on this page:

http://www.experts-exchange.com/Operating_Systems/WinXP/Q_20786932.html

It's amazing to me sometimes the amount of effort people will go through to help each other, for free.

How to determine whether the Winsock2 key is corrupted:
==============================================

To determine if the symptoms are caused by a problem with the Winsock2 key:

Method 1: Use Netdiag

To use Netdiag the Support Tools must be installed. Use a retail XP CD and follow the following steps to install the Support Tools
 A) Insert the CD and browse to the Support\Tools folder
 B) Double-click on the setup file
 C) Go through the prompts until you get to the "Select An Installation Type" screen
 D) Select Complete and click Next

Once setup completes or if the Support Tools are already installed:
A) Open a command prompt.
B) Type "netdiag /test:winsock" (without the quotes) and press Enter

It will return the test results for several network components including the Winsock. For more details on the test, use /v at the end of the command.

Despite how bad the movie Zoolander was, one of the funniest lines has got to be:

“The files are inside the computer.”

“The files are INSIDE? The COMPUTER?”

Well, I just opened up my old Dell laptop. I can honestly report that the files aren't in there.

Just before Christmas, my 5-year-old Dell Laptop (Inspiron 7000) stopped working normally. It appears the computer can't get power from the AC Adapter any more, which means the battery won't recharge and the computer can't be powered up... I held off buying a replacement laptop right away, since I held out hope (and still do hold out hope) of fixing it.

I really did miss having a laptop for a couple of months, because I like to use the computer and watch TV at the same time, so that I can be entertained and also somewhat productive.

Last month, I bought a really nice big, 32-inch flat-screen television. That gave me a reason to watch more TV. The Super Bowl (two words) looked extra sharp this year. And I feel like I can almost reach out and touch Donald Trump's toupee on the Apprentice.

Last week, I bought a really nice new laptop. Ahhh... I can finally watch TV and use the computer at the same time again. I'm teaching myself .NET every night, while watching The Leafs blow another huge lead.

Today, the new TV died a sudden and painful death. My wife tells me it made lots of noise and started giving off the smell of burning plastic. Mmmm...

Just my luck. (It's covered under warranty, given that it's less than 2 months old. But still, what a hassle.)

Upgrading from Windows XP Home to Windows XP Professional was a difficult task. But once I got through the install procedure, and downloaded all the updates, it's been nice. I finally have IIS running local on the machine for testing ASP.NET application development. And I have checked one more task off my “Things to do if I ever have time” list.

By the way, I notice a lot of people have found this blog by searching for help installing Windows XP - from Yahoo, MSN and Google. Welcome to all, and please see my previous posts on XP for more information.

Even though I make my living writing code, I have also quite a bit of experience working “inside the beige box” as well. In fact, my home computer is in a constant state of being upgraded. A new CD burner every few months, a new hard drive whenever they go on sale, a new video card every year or so, etc. etc. I have quite a few “spare parts” laying that I am tempted to put up on eBay.

A couple of months ago, my Dell Inspiron 7000 laptop stopped working rather mysteriously. Everything seemed fine, except the battery would no longer charge. And the laptop would not even power up when running on AC power. This leads me to believe it's not the battery's fault. It's either the AC Adapter (plugging into the wall) or something inside the laptop.

Well, since I've purchased a new laptop anyways, I've decided to spend a little bit of time investigating what happened. A couple of Dell forum posts link the problem to a cracked motherboard. Replacing the motherboard is the only solution. A quick search on eBay confirms used motherboards for the Inspiron 7000 can be bought for less than $100. It might be worth my time to make an effort to replace the motherboard myself.

I'll post any interesting finds here, of course.

It's days like this, where I'm looking over specifications for system board assemblies, that I feel like such a geek...