A week or so ago, I was telling you about my frustration with license keys, and how difficult they were to keep track of. The Microsoft licensing system has gotten so complex, I must own 8 or 9 licenses for Windows but only have 3 computers.
So I finally was able to install Windows XP on my second machine (soon to be my primary PC). I installed Windows Media Center. Now I wasn't planning on having a "media center" and if it wasn't for the fact that the only license key that I could find with a matching CD was Media Center, then I wouldn't have. But I did. And I like it.
It connects to my XBox 360 nicely. Although I can't play DIVX movies on there, I guess if I really wanted to watch a movie on my XBox over the network, I could reencode it to uncompressed AVI... Or I can watch it straight off the PC fine.
But in the end, I did NOT have to purchase an extra license. Did you know Microsoft is asking for $400 for a copy of XP Professional that is not an upgrade edition. Holy smokes! If it was $150, I would have probably ended up buying another copy. But $400 is basically what I am sending to World Vision on a yearly basis. It's a lot of money for some software who's development costs have LONG LONG since been paid for. Microsoft makes $1 Billion per month (or something like that) off of Windows alone. I don't need to be part of that.
Anyways, things are now good here. No other reason not to completely switch to the new machine... We'll see how long that takes.
Happy anniversary to me. I've been blogging for four years. It all started August 1, 2002.
Looking back, it seems my blogging started because I had something funny/stupid to say, and noone to say it to.
You see, an American news reporter was talking about the Pope's visit to Mexico, and how he canonized the first "Native American" saint there. In actual fact, the canonized man was an aboriginal Mexican. An Indian. But TV reports can't say Indian or Aboriginal on TV, so the poor man becomes Native American. Even though he was Mexican.
Oh well, at the time it seemed like a witty insight into political correctness gone awry. Now it seems less poignant.
Anyways, blogging is just a word to describe the combination of a personal web site with a content management system. Imagine if I had to code this page by hand? Yuck!
A few years back (1997? 9 years ago?!?), Fast Company magazine had an issue devoted to The Brand Called You. In it, Tom Peters (yes, the THE Tom Peters) said:
"We are CEOs of our own companies: Me Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called You. ... Starting today, you are a brand. You're every bit as much of a brand as Nike, Coke, Pepsi and The Body Shop. ... What is it that my product or service does that makes it different? ... What do I want to be famous for?"
I recommend you read that article. Here, I'll link to it again just in case.
Basically, Peters is saying that everyone who is a consultant today (and this applies even to employees who want to get ahead in business) should look at themselves as the client/employer looks at them. What image do you want to project? What image are you currently projecting?
Yes, images are superficial. And yes, people who are more concerned with their image than their reality can sometimes be compared to a sailor rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. But don't fool yourself: image is important, so having a good image gives you a head start on the less organized competition. Having a good image gets you the job, and then the image goes away and you have to deliver the goods! But being able to deliver the goods is useless without getting the job!
So I need to sit down sometime soon and examine my own professional image. That includes this web site, other web sites I am associated with, my books, business cards, the emails I send out, and anything else public that can be said to represent me.
Sure the trailer looks funny, but is the movie going to be as funny as the trailer? Did they give away all the good parts in the trailer?
Thankfully, the answers are yes and no. Yes, the movie is funny too, and no, the trailer doesn't ruin it.
After having my tastebuds nearly ruined by Lord of the Rings last night, I needed a sorbet tonight: something to cleanse my pallet. Some mindless fun.
Owen Wilson plays Dupree. Dupree is both a best friend to Carl, and is also constantly messing up. Wilson played the exact same character in Wedding Crashers, Shanghai Nights, and Zoolander. So I am glad to see he isn't stereotyping himself.
Matt Damon plays Carl. While Dupree is 30 years old and partying like he's 18, Carl has grown up and now has a wife, house and job. He's working hard to make a living, sometimes working late nights to impress his boss (who also happens to be his father-in-law).
Anyways, this movie does a pretty good job following the formula in other buddy pictures (Saving Silverman and Envy both come to mind). One friend is too serious, and the other is too laid back. Not to ruin it, but as the formula goes, at the end of the movie the serious one has learned to loosen up and the laid back one finally gets off his lazy ass and does something.
Good movie. Funny. Cute. Love Kate Hudson.
We went to see Lord of the Rings last night. No no, not the movie. The musical.
Critics have not been kind to it. The production reportedly cost $27 million to put on, but the show is closing after less than 1 year. A normal show like this in Toronto lasts around 3 years or so (ie: Les Miserables, Lion King, Miss Saigon, Phantom of the Opera, Mamma Mia...). So this production has been a disaster for the Mirvish Brothers (David and Ed Mirvish who own several theaters in this city).
So I went in with low expectations, but secretly hoping the show would be good. Perhaps the critics have been overly harsh. It was worth giving the show a chance. So we went.
The show started at 7:30. At around the 7:45 mark I wanted to leave. The evening was still young, and I could have done something more productive with my time, like dusting the top of my kitchen cabinets.
Overall, the show had some good moments. The actor that played Gollum has been getting good reviews, and is one of the few (or perhaps only) Toronto actors chosen to be in the London cast. He was ok. But the weak spots definitely overshadowing the few good ones.
But it's hard to put a finger on what went wrong. The concept certainly sounded strange when I first read about it - turn the Lord of the Rings movies into a stage production... There were of course going to be obstacles to climb. The movie is filled with special effects, and so how could that be translated onto the stage? Plus the three LOTR movies are 12 hours combined. How are they going to cram the story into 2 hours without losing important bits?
Neither of those obstacles were completely overcome. Where in the movie you had huge special effects battles between hundreds of thousands of virtual characters, in the musical you have 20 people running around on a stage. The fight scenes just didn't work. And in terms of length, it felt too long in some places and too short in others.
I'll tell you what I did like, however. The fight between Gandalf and the Balrog. The orcs - on springy stilts no less. The black horsemen (Nazgul). The evil spider Shelob. Some of the characters were great (particularly the evil ones). But since the wizards, elves and hobbits carry the play, we don't get enough of those good parts.
What would have been interesting is if they did something similar to The Lion King - not try to remake the story for the stage, but instead do a new story based on the original one. I guess J.R.R. Tolkein did such a good job detailing Middle Earth that there is not much of the story left to be told. What if Frodo kept the ring? What if Sam stole it from him and went off on his own? I don' know - I'm not a playright.
It needed something... But I don't know what.
I attended my second IT Consultant meetup, and once again I came away happy and excited to be working in the field of IT consulting.
This week's topic was on marketing. And various tips for marketing yourself as a consultant and getting clients.
If you're in Toronto and are all interested in IT consulting, I recommend coming to the next meeting.
Tonight was going to be an extremely productive night, or so I thought.
1) I planned to upgrade this blog from dasBlog version 1.6 to 1.8.
2) I planned to install Windows on a new PC, and start using that as my primary machine.
Ah well, 1 out of 2 ain't bad.
The upgrade to dasBlog went fairly smoothly. For some reason my web server's FTP server is extremely flaky, and I lose the connection every few minutes. So upgrading was tedious, but I blame FTP. So here I am on 1.8. I might try a new theme in a few minutes too!
The install of Windows is currently on pause. And I may be screwed - well, I may have to pony up $200 for a new license for Windows. Damn.
OK, here's the story so far. I am currently running an old Pentium 4 1GHz (1.5GB ram 400GB hdd) as my main home machine. Yes, I know - 1 lousy GHz. But I don't do much with it other than Office, Outlook and IE, so it suits my purposes at home.
I have been accumulating parts for a new computer, and finally have it together. An AMD Sempron 2800+ (512MB ram 300GB hdd). I will of course have to buy some more RAM later. But last night I was doing some speed tests, and it turns out the Sempron is 3 times faster than the Pentium 4 I have. So what the hell - I figured I would switch over permanently.
And so here I sit. Having done the Windows install on the new machine. And it's asking for my license key. I have a box full of official Microsoft CD's and keys, so no problem. Or so I thought. I must have 20 official copies of Windows around, and 20 keys, but none of them work. I have keys for XP Home, Windows Server 2003, Windows 2000, Enterprise, Advanced, this, that and everything. But no XP Pro. I have an official CD for XP Pro. But I can't find the license key anywhere.
This is crazy. There should be a better way to manage these keys. They are slips of paper and they can be easily lost. So what can I do? Call Microsoft and say I lost my key, and I would like to transfer my copy of Windows XP to a new system??? Hey... maybe I can do that. It's worth a try at least. Right?
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