Really? They hate Soldiers and Fags, why not everything secular? It's no wonder they are not affiliated with any Baptist sect, no one will have them.

WBC to picket this public memorial to remind you who worship that old Serpent, Satan, that your time is very short. You know 67 year old, Satan-worshiping (or at least one of their enablers) Ronnie James Dio (of showing his devil horns to the world each time he goes in public) Black Sabbath fame is dead, right? We’ll be there!

Read the whole story here

There have bee a lot of rumors today about the death of rock legend Ronnie James Dio, but it appears to be true now according to the official web site http://www.ronniejamesdio.com/

Rest in peace, Ronnie, and may you always be our Rainbow in the Dark.  \m/

Sorry for such a delay, but things have gotten really hectic at work.

The surgery went fine, she emerged feeling instantly better. The physical mass she was feeling is now gone, the heartburn is 10% of what it was, her appetite is back to normal (and then some). She has been sore, still has some pain every now and again, and her system is starting to figure out how to process food sans one organ. She was back to work in 4 days and has been working ever since.

I am unsure if we should keep her appointment with the specialist our local doctor scheduled for her a month ago. It's in July. At the time we were told of the appointment in July, I told the doctor she would miss the appointment...that she would be dead by then. And I was deadly serious. She was failing that fast. The doctor did not like my comment, but was unsure how to respond.

Thank heaven for the one doctor we found that was not affraid of a lawsuit and went ahead and operated, doing what he knew was the right thing. I asked him if he was concerned about operating on a patient that had no visible stones. He said, "If I was worried about every little lawsuit, I chose the wrong profession." He got my vote immediately.

Pathology revealed that there were multiple stones. Either they were tiny, which was not indicated in the report, or they ran all the tests wrong, or they can't read them from shit. Either way you look at it, someone (just about all of them) is incompetent. Stones are calcified...they show up. A word to the wise: if you think your doctor is operating in his best interests rather than your own, find another doctor. YOU'RE FIRED!

I don't know if you have ever experienced the wicked machine of Man called Primary Care, but I can tell you of a recent experience that my wife and I had with a local group of physicians that are affiliated with a certain establishment [used loosely], and this establishment lately has made no effort to hide it's intentions. Make no mistake - this is a fleecing machine, blatantly taking money from trusting souls that think they are getting the best health care in the area. I know times are tight. Staffs (yes, its a word and correctly used) are light, and people are overworked, but bilking of this magnitude is just criminal.

I have finally secured quality care for my wife and she is scheduled for surgery first thing in the morning. Gall bladder suregery. I will be spending the rest of tonight preparing, easing her fears and sleeping. Tomorrow I will be attending her. But, in the rest of my time as she recovers, I will blog here with the whole saga. Including her fabulous employer, the complete incompetency in diagnosis, and the ride down the money trail. Like they say, Follow the Money. And that, we will. You will not want to miss a single episode, so tune in, or get updated via RSS.

In the mean time, wish us luck, pray for us, and watch your back. This is not your Granddad's America.

When asked about Win7, I find myself often speaking in the simplest terms to describe the product. I usually say "It has the eye-candy of Vista and the stability of XP". But really, it seems even more stable than XP ever was, except for Internet Explorer 8; that's just a dog. But I believe I have mentioned that here before.

Sometimes an even better part of something new is discovering some new trick that you can perform with it that you didn't know it would do when you bought it. Older Office users will know this as 'Easter Eggs', neat stuff embedded in the application that can only be accessed by special keystrokes or methods. That was Office: this is Win7. A little different concept, but cool none the less.

I have found two cool things that you can do in Win7 to gain extra functionality that MS did not advertise. I am hoping to find more, and if I do you will see it here, so stay tuned.

See attached files for God Mode and Restoring the Quick Launch Tool Bar from XP. Enjoy.

UPDATE: I have fixed the problem by adding the docs to a zip file.

Win7Goodies.zip (448.95 kb)

UPDATE 1/12/2010: Apparently, this is a developer tool that has been around for years. To see all their tricks, go here

About a month ago, Microsoft contacted me via email and asked me to take a survey giving feedback on their Partner Program, of which I am a member.
The benefit to me was that I would be entered into a drawing to win one of 5 HP Mini netbooks. As luck would have it, I won!

Congratulations! You’ve been selected as one of 5 winners in the Microsoft Partner Survey Sweepstakes!
Thank you for providing your valuable feedback about conducting business with Microsoft.
All partners who submitted feedback via the partner survey were entered to win a HP 5101 Netbook Computer
with Microsoft Windows 7 Professional and Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010 Beta and you’ve won!

That kinda made my day. I will let you all know how this machine performs once I receive it.

UPDATE 02/22/2010: The HP Mini is a fantastic machine. Runs Office 2010 great, runs Skype great, fits in your pocket...well, almost. Get one, you won't be disappointed.

I have been using Win7 now for a few weeks and I have really put it through it's paces. I have decided I like it so much that I have upgraded every workstation or laptop in my possession worth using to Win7. I also have a few little tweaks that will add some familiarity of XP and Vista to your Win7 installation...look for them here soon. (hint: Quick launch bar and disabled services)

If I had to give a simple answer on how Win7 stacks up, I would have to say the it has the eye candy of Vista and the performance and stability of XP. So far, and as I have mentioned before, the only Reservation I have is IE8...it's total crap. I work with Sharepoint A LOT, so the single sign-on afforded by IE is pretty much a must, but if it were not for that it would be Firefox or Chrome, without a doubt. IF you can deal with a non-native browser (and most people prefer to), then consider moving to Win7. It is much lighter weight than Vista, and before long XP will no longer be supported. You can actually use older machines to run Win7, ones that Vista ran like a dog on, provided they at least meet the Win7 minimum requirements.

All told Win7 is a hit. Microsoft needed to hit one out of the park after the Vista debacle, and this one is outta here. Users can finally be productive again, IT staff can quit fretting about an out of date OS and how they will keep it safe. CIOs can finally get on with the budget and focus on enterprise apps rather than on what they should do about desktop deployment (sit and stay or jump and gamble).

Yes, the verdict is in: Windows 7 is your next operating system. Get up on it.

Okay, so I updated my main workstation yesterday from x64 Vista to x64 Win7. Only one issue found so far. The connection entries in my terminal services applet got deleted. No worries, I rebuilt the 48 or so server connections for here at work and I am on my way. This OS is just too cool. It took almost 3 hours to do the upgrade as opposed to the 40 minutes or so for a clean install, but to be fair it does have a lot to do in an upgrade. And this is no lightweight PC. It is a dual quad core 2Ghz, with 8Gb of RAM and a RAID disk system.

I only have one other complaint and that is IE8 - absolutely lame. It looks like MS could make a browser. The only reason I have to use it is Sharepoint and SSRS. Other than that it looks like I will be getting Firefox very soon.

I guess not....

I like deli meat. Fresh sliced ham, pastrami, swiss cheese genoa, all very good to me. I went to Food Lion tonight and the first place I went in there was the deli counter. It was 7:PM. The lady was in there, in the cooler, so I waited. She came out and I asked if I could get some items. She said she was done for the night. I asked for sure if there was any way I could get something. She said she had broken the machines down and cleaned them. I understand all that. I have no idea what their schedule is for the deli.

I waited for a second, just to make sure she didn't want to go just one inch of the extra mile......nothing.

I went to the sandwich meat isle and got some sandwich fixins. I proceeded to the meat counter. All but empty. Is this a grocery store? Are they in business?

My point is, they wasted two perfectly good opportunities to excel at customer service....blew it. FAIL.

At a location where there are two print servers, Win 7 was asked to add a printer. XP compatible drivers were loaded on the W2K3 server, but no go. The printer in question was a Toshiba multifunction machine, so drivers are flaky at best.

After going to the support site and downloading Server 03/Vista drivers, everything worked as it should. All that I had heard about XP drivers working out of the box is now just a myth. But it seems that drivers that are/were Vista-ready work just fine.

Keep this in mind during your Win7 rollouts. The thought about printer drivers hit me as I was in the middle of placing this machine on the user's desk...what about printers? Be aware during your testing and make sure that you test any odd printers/faxes/scanner/weird peripherals that you may have, and update the drivers on the spot. So far this is the only thing I have seen that would delay a Win 7 rollout.