Just installed the beta 2 release of Home Server and I moved all my web junk up to it and off my desktop.  Seems to be working perfectly so far...

I went down to the Ice House Microsoft built for their Vista launch event in Toronto today to check things out.  First of all the ice house was pretty impressive with lots of details, but damn cold.  They had some simple yet impressive demos going on all over the 'house' with even more MVPs and other 'experts' wandering around answering questions for the masses.  The one thing that almost all the machines had was DreamScene, this is a new (in beta) Ultra Extra that lets you set a movie as your desktop wallpaper.  Now you could set anything if you wanted, but it ships with a couple of small subtle looping videos.  The one I was looking at was a shot of a rainforest (I think) and a waterfall.  Looked amazing.  Going to look into getting a copy of the beta.  I've been running Vista Ultimate since mid-December and finally got a legit license for it now.  The initial 'wow factor' has worn off, and I still love it.  It's fast, it's sleek, and they fixed a lot of little things that really pissed me off in XP.  I think it is a big step forward for my tech support customer (ie, my family). It will be a learning curve in certain spots, but it should keep their machines nice and clean (hopefully).

 

The event seemed like a success to me just wandering around, I heard lots of people talking about all the cool things, like DreamScene and Media Centre slideshows.  Not sure how many of those 'oh I want that' will translate into a bought copy of Vista but hopefully a few of them at least. <Rant> I did of course hear 'dude, just download it off bittorrent you do know the url for bittorrent right?', so many things wrong with this statement, BitTorrent is a protocol, a site that hosts BitTorrent files is just that, a site that hosts BitTorrent files, not BitTorrent itself.  </Rant>

 

Anyways, I snapped a couple of pics with my new phone.  Turns out I should have looked into the Camera capabilities before I left.  I had the thing set on the low quality setting, so I apologize for the lower quality pics, next ones will be better I promise.

 

Vista Ice House (PicasaWeb)

Finally got around to buying a new phone which I have been talking about for months.  My old was just old, sometimes wouldn't answer calls, other times after I hung up it would just ring and ring and ring even though no one was calling, the only solution was to yank the battery.  The camera was useless because I scratched off all the silver coating protecting the lens. 

 

So I finally broke down and got myself a nice Motorola Krzr, so far I love it.  Gets better reception than my old phone down in my nuclear fallout shelter that doubles as my basement.  Comes with built in MP3 support with a microSD slot so I can stash a whack of MP3s on it (yes, 'stash a whack' is a technical term meaning 1 gig capacity)  So far I've been nothing but impressed with it, the only draw back has been the battery life, which doesn't last as long as the nearly 2 weeks my old phone lasted.

Well it has been almost a month of fighting with IBM I finally got my laptop back.  I had a problem with the machine locking up and then when I rebooted it, the LCD refused to turn on.  Before I get started, I love my Lenovo laptop.   But I hate Lenovo.   Such unbelievably terrible service.  The story is long, and boring, and not appropriate for children.  If anyone wants to hear it let me know I don't mind telling it.

 

Now that it is back, I'll start blogging again more.

 

Update: I think IBM broke my SD card reader.

Well I decided to spoil myself a little, and I bought myself an Xbox 360.  After I recently played EA Sports NHL 07 for the PC and was totally disgusted, I pretty much gave up on PC gaming.  I'd heard so many good things about the Xbox 360, not just its gaming, but all of its entertainment centre functions as well. 

Ever since I was a kid, I had a gaming console, Sega MasterSystem, NES, SNES, N64, and then I skipped a generation.  They have made some serious improvements since our N64.  Obviously the games are bigger, and prettier, but it is the little things that impress me about the Xbox 360.  The controllers are wireless, I can turn the console on and off from the controllers, and it can display pictures, play music and videos all found on my computer.  

 

Needless to say I love the 360, Steph was a little unsure at first, but a Harry Potter game went a long way to changing her mind :)  Oh, and there was that time she chainsawed Graham in Gears Of War, that helped too.