mcbeen.com

Well, this stint was short lived. The iPod photo, with it’s lovely features and wonderful screen… is once again going back to it’s creator to work out some serious stamina issues. I was hopefull when it first came back in the mail that it was working better, but a few days with it has shown the same bizzare battery drain issues as before. I called Apple to work things out with them, and they feel it could possibly be a defect in the unit, rather than the battery. That would explain the constant drain problem, and while the playtime is not what it should be. I can’t even get through an 8-hour work day. It looks like the unit will be replaced this time through. I wish they would have spent more time with the unit, or called me when they could not find a problem when they had it last time. They did offer to replace it at a local Apple store, but unfortunately, there are no local stores. 🙁

“gallery most viewed pole dancing”

That’s what I found today on a refering link from a search engine in the site stats. Not sure what to make of that.

I had quite a little scare here that I forgot to write about. I bought an iPod photo last month for my trip to china in august. Unfortunately for me… the battery started acting up two weeks after I got it… I started to freak out thinking that maybe my car adaptor was frying batteries or something. It would charge ok, but the charge would only last for 6-8 hours, and if I left it over night it would be deadthe next day. I sent it off to Apple to see what they could come up with. I was quite concerned when the dispatch showed up as returning the original item. But the pack arrived today, and my ipod was inside, fully charged. Yea! Maybe I messed up the charging profile or something. I’m just happy to have my iPod back!

I discovered today, and confirmed with Symantec tech support, that there is a problem running Symantec Client Security (antivirus) on windows XP. Starting a week ago, we began to notice here that random machines were showing up with 20 or more “disconnected” drive letters. I’m not talking about the normal disconnected drives we have had since Windows 95. These phantom drives go no where, and cannot be disconnected or remapped. And they are not nice enough to stay off “normal” drive mappings. If a mapped drive letter is “taken” by this bug, you cannot get it back. And If all driver letters are taken, then you are truly screwed. Attempting to “net use /delete” results in an error telling you the resource cannot be found. Trying “net use \\server_name\drive” results in an error telling you the resource is in use. Fun fun fun.

We tried service packs, hot fixes, deleting profile, and creating new users. No luck what so ever. Luckily, after some brainstorming, I decided to try removing Symantec Client Security v10. This corrected the issue.

Symantec at this point does not know why this problem is occurring, or when a fix may be found. The current estimate is for MR1 in 4-8 weeks.

DPReview has an interesting article today about a news lens tech. I still don’t fully understand what they are doing, but it looks like an active/dynamic lens. Their description leads me to believe it’s transmition rate is not wonderful.

Well. My iPod looks as though it lost it’s battery. Not so good. It’s almost exactly 60 days old. Luckily I’m within warentee. We’ll see how the process goes. A box is on the way for warentee service.

While I have been absolutely drowned in jargon at Veritas:Vision this week… I think this takes the cake:

lithium tantalate (LiTaO3) pyroelectric crystal

» An important concession: MGM says ripping MP3s is OK | Open Source | ZDNet.com

So… Does this mean that all this copy protection crap Sony and other are putting on CDs is illegal? Seems like that would go for CSS on DVDs as well. Rather interesting since MGM and others as part of the MPAA and RIAA have spent the past 5 years villifying the people sustaining our fairuse rights. In fact, they went nuts over Apple’s emphatic claims of Ripping’s legality. I look forward to seeing how this plays out.

Found this interesting link over on Beccary’s blog. It calculates your typing speed in a little javascript. I run at about 50-60 a minute. How about you?

‘Intelligent design’ comes to science class

Here is a quote from the article:

Biology teacher Jennifer Miller said although she was able to make a smooth transition to her evolution lesson after the statement was read, some students were upset that administrators would not entertain any questions about intelligent design.

“They were told that if you have any questions, to take it home,” Miller said.

Seems like they already understand that this should be discussed in the home and in the church, so why play the games? Interesting isn’t it. What I find truly amusing is the footing people put creation on without understanding the scientific method. It isn’t like you can go “interview” God to ask him how he did it and why.