I hate false advertising. So-called “Girl Scout Cookies” are NOT made from real Girl Scouts.
I do these silly things…
…so you don’t have to.
*heh*
So, I needed to test a Vista MIG (Windows Easy Transfer) file. I sure didn’t want to overwrite any other Windows installation I had on any RWM (“real world machine”, although some would argue that excludes both Windows and Mac OSX machines *heh*) or VM. So…
Installed Vista in a “barebones” VM. Barebones? Yeh, less than a gig of memory allocated for it and just 20GB of hard drive space. Barebones indeed.
Yes, it is painfully slow and threatens to bork if I have too many things running at once, but now that I have Windows Live Mesh installed on it and its host machine, I can sync/share files between them more easily than via the VM software’s folder sharing facility (not so much a problem of the folder sharing as it is a problem with Windows Easy Transfer).
Barely.
And that, dear reader, is how I gained decent access to the 12.5GB MIG file I needed to test…
What a PITA. *heh*
At least it’s not as silly as the time I installed a WinXP VM on an Ubuntu Host… and then installed an Ubuntu VM with the WinXP VM hosting it. Now, that was silly.
But it worked.
For non-techies who’d like to give VMs a try, here’s a video tutorial for installing a VM using Oracle’s VIrtualbox (recorded before Oracle bought Sun):
Win7 SP1? *Yawn* No Hurries, No Worries
Of interest to Windows 7 users only; ‘nix users have a wide variety of other issues to deal with, and other Windows version users, well, they probably need to deal with updating their computers to something better for an OS. 🙂
I can recall when folks were anxious to get their hands on the service packs for Windows XP and Vista–both OSes from M$ had some serious issues right out of the gate that needed to be addressed. And I can also recall many users who had some serious problems caused by service packs on those M$ OSes. (Note: I mostly skipped XP and Vista, except for a reference XP VM and XP on my Wonder Woman’s notebook. My experiences with XP and Vista were almost entirely fixing problems folks had encountered with those OSes.)
Well, I had my hands on the Win7 SP1 last week via my Technet subscription, but I’ve been in no hurry to install it on my own computers. Oh, not because previous M$ service packs have caused problems. No, I’m in no hurry to install it because there’s mostly nothing there. The one “biggie” in Win7’s SP1 might be the graphics improvements to Remote Desktop Management, but since I use other products for that, I saw no need to install SP1 for that very minor non-benefit.
OTOH, all reports so far are that SP1 isn’t breaking anything, so these minor updates, fixes and improvements (that almost no one will even notice) aren’t coming at the cost of a lot of problems introduced into users’ computers.
That’s nice, I suppose. 🙂
So, Win7 users, when M$ offers the SP1 update via your regularly scheduled Windows Update*, feel no hurry to imbibe, but no worries if you do.
*For most users, “automagic” updates are probably OK, but for intermediate to advanced users, I suggest Windows Update settings that call for downloading the updates but allowing the user to choose when and which ones to install.
A Few Questions
I think there were originally 33 from some unknown asker, but my archive of an archive of an archive only lists 14.
1. Were the American Indians really environmentalists?
2. Is the U.S. government too stingy with foreign aid – or not stingy enough?
3. Was the U.S. Constitution meant to be a “living, breathing” document that changes with the times?
4. What really happened in the Whiskey Rebellion, and why will neither your textbook nor George Washington tell you?
5. What made American wages rise? (Hint: it wasn’t unions or the government.)
6. Did the Iroquois Indians influence the United States Constitution?
7. Did school desegregation narrow the black-white achievement gap?
8. Did the Founding Fathers support immigration? If so, what forms of immigration did they support?
9. What was “the biggest unknown scandal of the Clinton years”?
10. The three constitutional clauses that have caused the most mischief – what are they, and what did the Founders and Framers say they were supposed to mean?
11. Did capitalism cause the Great Depression? If not, what did?
12. Does the Constitution really contain an “elastic clause”?
13. Did the Founding Fathers believe in jury nullification – that juries could refuse to enforce unjust laws?
14. Was George Washington Carver (who supposedly developed 300 products out of the peanut) really one of America’s greatest scientific geniuses, as Henry Ford claimed?
Anyone with the grasp of American history and civics my eighth grade American History teacher expected of us would be able to discuss all but two of these, supporting all discussion with clear and unequivocal historical facts, and the two that we would not have been expected to be able to discuss meaningfully at the time depend on history that’s occurred since that time.
Once again, may I commend to your attention the ISI’s Civics Literacy Quiz? The link’s to one of the “Findings” pages on the site, but the quiz itself, as well as a wealth of other information, is available from there. The quiz doesn’t require as muc or as detailed an American History knowledge base as the 14 questions above, but is, IMO, a fairly decent gauge of someone’s basic civics literacy.
The Cobbler’s Own Shoes…
*heh* Confession’s good for the soul but bad for the reputation… 😉
OK, so my last backup on this particular Win7 machine was a week ago. (Bad, cobbler! :-)) I know better. Windows is very fragile, and so many software publishers take liberties with their code that sometimes software installs/uninstalls just break Windows. It’s a fact of life, and one i know very, very well.
Got in a rush (always a mistake) and didn’t take a snapshot or even create a new System Restore Point before uninstalling an app I knew had its hooks pretty deep in the system.
Uninstall “required” a reboot (why?!? Because the authors were too stupid to make it uninstall cleanly, of course).
Toast.
No boot. The Windows installation had “disappeared” as far as Windows 7 and its repair tools (available on the installation disk) could tell. Oh, I could “see” it from the command line, but none of the command line tools could repair the startup elements (far more than just the MBR–numerous Windows system files as well) that had been corrupted.
So, disaster, right? Nah. Just moderately time-consuming, and not even all that big a distraction. I had the time today, and, after addressing the primary problem, I’ve been getting plenty of other things done while my data’s restored.
Key? A custom install of Win7. The custom install saved all my old data in a Windows.old folder–including ALL the data that had changed since my last real backup. Nothing lost whatsoever.
Next, I went to Ninite and selected all the free softwares the site had available that I had previously had installed. Saved the installer, invoked it and just let it run during dinner.
Then I had only to install a few specialty programs I had bought and archived. I could have dug out the disk they’re all archived on (or pulled the installation files from a backup), but since I also had the installation files and registration keys saved in that Windows.Old folder, I just reinstalled them from there.
Bob’s your uncle.
Oh, a couple of lil niggling things: resetting my Win7 startup background required editing a Registry Key and creating two folders in my Windows folder, but that’s the kind of thing I can almost do in my sleep, so no biggie. Getting rid of the stupid default image file for my account picture (I have a nice pic of an American Bison that I prefer to use for that–and yes, I pulled it from that same Windows.Old folder :-)) : check.
OK, done. And the only thing I “lost” (for now) is my Freecell score of 1,923 wins, no losses. No biggie, as I’m at 1,735-0 on another computer… *heh* (I play it a lot while on the phone as a kind of “Freecell Zen” relaxation thing.)
Heck, even my VMs survived the new install of Windows. Just reinstalled VirtualBox, copied over the pertinent folder, a lil fiddling and… done.
Funny thing: the app that caused all the problems with the uninstall was an older–too much older–version of Acronis True Image. *heh* I had a full version to install (not as an upgrade) and needed to ditch the older version (too old to upgrade, you see *sigh*). Oh, I certainly could have just used an image snapshot from last week, using the (old) Acronis boot CD, but this way I
have all my data
do NOT have that OLD version of True Image I had uninstalled
have a fresh Win7 install, that’s already updated in the background (Note to self: turn off automagic updates as soon as this round is through *heh*).
All in all, a pretty good thing. I just wish Windows weren’t so fragile. Oh, well, at least it’s easy-peasy to repair, even when its own repair tools fail.
About Those So-Called “Contributions to Civilization”
The Islamic world is credited with slightly more than a few contributions to civilization: algebra, so-called”Arabic” numerals, the sphericity of the Earth, etc.
Let’s take a look at these and then ask a more pertinent question. Algebra–invented by Muslims? Not. Stolen from Hindu mathematicians and used by Islamic “scholars” mostly for asstrology. Heck, not just stolen, crippled by the removal of the concept of negative numbers as being inconsistent with Islam.
“Arabic” numerals? Again, stolen from Hindus.
The sphericity of the Earth? Propounded by Pythagoras in the fifth century B.C. and, quite contrary to the myth passed around today, commonly accepted by scholars throughout the West from his day until now.
And so it goes with Muslim “contributions” to civilization. Heck, Averoes, the single “greatest” Muslim “scientist” had as his magnum opus not anything discovered by him but a commentary on… Aristotle (an “unbeliever”–well, he had to be, since he predated that mass murdering, savage con man, Mohamed, by centuries).
More, what has Islam “contributed” (read for “contributed” “stolen, hoarded and parceled out abstemiously at great price or had hornswaggled from the greedy grasp of barbaric Muslims”) since its first few hundred years of conquest and pillage?
Zip. Nothing that could not be found elsewhere first and better for not having passed through Muslim hands.
Of course, this is why Muslims feel the need to make exorbitant and unwarranted claims about Muslim “contributions” to civilization. They ave essentially made none, and deep, deep down justly feel inferior. Their entire world view is to blame, of course. Any world view that can revere the sayings of a mass murdering piece of dog vomit like Mohamed is a world view of savages.
But all this begs the question asked by Stanislaw Lec,
“Is it progress if a cannibal uses a knife and fork?”
Or, more applicable to today,
“Is it progress if a follower of the mass murderer, rapist, slaver, torturer and serial liar, Mohammed, steals the technology to build his own atomic bomb?”
Ruminations on the Passing Scene
“Too much”=”just enough syrup for a plate of pancakes”. *heh* Juuuust about right, I’d say.
A world turned upside down: was pushing my 4-wheeled walker (with the insanely large basket attached) around WallyWorld the other day, looking at stuff and playing with customers and “associates”, when I happened to spot the price of a gallon of milk. Fifty cents less than a gallon of gas. WTF?!? Does Walmart get its milk from lactating Chinese slaves?
Another thing: MSRP (Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price). What’s this good for? Does anyone actually pay “MSRP” at the end user level? If so, I wanna meet these suckers, cos I have some great ocean front property in AZ they’d love. Example: a very nice 12″ frying pan we bought not long back for about $50 has a MSRP of $200–and I’ve seen it in stores all over for about $100. Who pays these outrageous prices? Beats me.
Well, my mechanic took my hint and bought the better replacement part for my dead fuel pump. Sure, it was a little more than twice as much, but it also included an end-to-end replacement of my fuel lines, a Very Good Thing on a car with almost 200,000 miles and a failed fuel pump, IMO. See? Save enough NOT paying MSRP when you don’t have to and have the $$ to maintain things right. *heh*
I can’t believe that someone–in a forum far, far removed from twc–had the timerity to ask the question, “Is Obama a Patriot”? I could only wonder what rock the loon had been living under after his lobotomy.
Hey, next time you’re at the grocery store or someplace like Target or WallyWorld and you see a parent(s) with a child in their cart, stop them with, “Well, that’s encouraging! It’s so nice to see folks with such confidence that they’d buy a child in today’s economy!” *heh* I get such looks… 😉
Fascinating
I’ve long known of the air rifle taken on the Lewis and Clark expedition, but this video adds some interesting information. I do think the guy takes his thesis to unsupportable lengths, but even that is intriguing.
For further information, note this about the “Lewis and Clark ‘Assault Rifle'”
Why Didn’t They Think of This?
Or maybe they did.
NASCAR could just as easily have been named AASCAR, couldn’t it? I mean, who really cares how it would’ve sounded… 😉
For The Zero
…and his ilk. From Sir Walter Scott’s “The Lay of the Last Minstrel”
Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne’er within him burn’d,
As home his footsteps he hath turn’d,
From wandering on a foreign strand!
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no Minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonor’d, and unsung.
Amen.