New Text Messaging Ban In Illinois

This cracks me up for so many reasons on so many levels. I am not sure I can be coherent in my explanation of why. I'm not sure where to start.

First, if you so desire, you can read the story from a reputable news source (I don't really know for sure that it's reputable).

I'm really opposed to laws to protect us from ourselves. I don't care how kind and thoughtful the politicians think they are being. It's not good.

In summary they want to write people tickets for $25 if they are walking across the street while texting. I admit that this is stupid, but to fine someone? I guess it's similar to jaywalking. Maybe it depends on how it's presented. It might be smarter for them to give the stupid people a ticket for impeding the flow of traffic.

Are the police in Illinois really so bored that they need something else to do? "Yeah, we've got a teen looks like they are about to cross the street and they just got a text message. Possible LOL in progress."

I kid you not, my beautiful wife was checking her text messages as we left the movie theater not too long ago and she ran head on into a pole. Then, she got mad at me for not warning her! Of course, I was giggling so maybe between the bump on the head and the sting of pride, it was my fault. And then I said, "Did you want me to warn you that you were being stupid for texting and walking or that there was a pole in your way?" The beatings are still in progress.

Bennigan's Closing?

Say it ain't so!

It may come as a shock to you that I drink beer.

I don't drink just any beer. Most of the beer many of you think of when you hear the word beer is barely beer at all.

I never much cared for beer until I spent time in Germany. I think it's because I was always fed the barely beer that is mass produced here.

In the neck of the woods where I live, it's hard to find a pub that serves good beer. Most of the time, you go out to eat and say, "What do you have on tap?" and the reply is, "Coors Light, Miller Light, and Michelob Ultra". Then, you say, "No, I was asking for a beer list." Then you see the deer in the headlights look as the last gleam of hope disappears from your beer aspirations for the evening.

I could always trust Bennigan's to have at least one and normally several good beer options. They always have Guiness on tap. They'll normally have Harp and Bass Ale as well. Sometimes they'll have Smithwicks (one of my favorite Irish brews).

Ok. Now, place your hat on your head backwards and read carefully. I suspect the government is responsible for the Bennigan's demise. I know in Texas and in some cities in Texas we have insane alcohol laws. In Irving, they have some kind of crazy thing about bars must make at least 50% of their money from food sales. Or maybe no more than 40% of their income through alcohol sales. I'm not really sure the verbiage, but it's something along those lines. It's nearly impossible to find a good bar in Irving. Not too long ago, Irving was the destination of Texas law enforcement for an experimental operation where they would arrest people at bars for drinking too much. Some kind of bastardization of the public intoxication laws. They'd stash undercover officers in bars and arrest people that had more drinks than what some law maker considered reasonable. This wasn't looked upon too favorably by the beer drinking public.

A few years ago, the government told bars and eateries that if they wanted to allow smoking they had to have a smoking section and have it ventilated properly. I don't know how many millions of dollars big chains may have spent to upgrade their establishments for meet these requirements. Then, in the last couple of years, cities around the state have started banning smoking in building all together (Dallas is one such place). So, now you just write off the money you already spent? I know people that smoke and they won't go to a bar where they can't. They'll travel to another city if necessary.

The government just spent millions, maybe billions bailing out the sub prime mortgage criminals. Give Bennigan's some help. Don't deny us our right to drink good beer!

CUIL

Rumor has it there is a new search engine in town that is going to directly compete with Google. CUIL.

I had to go and try it even though I don't see how it will ever survive. When I search for something on the Internet, I always tell people, "I Googled it". "I Cuiled it" just doesn't have the same ring. Before Google I was an altavista fan. I wonder if it still exists. It does!

Here are my results: Two posts below you will see something about Seagate and SATA and nvstor.sys. When I Google something along those lines on Google, my blog comes up first followed by 2 pages of related pages. When I Google this on CUIL, I get an error about the server being busy. When I Google this on AltaVista I get nothing, but suggestions about how to spell.

I like CUIL's ability to customize how the results are displayed, but Google is already one-upping this with their "experimental" version. I don't really know how anyone can compete with Google.

Immigration, Form 751 and Spouses

My wife's two years are up. I have the option of filling in form I-751 and sending it in to keep her here or not sending it in and the government has promised to send her back from whence she came. What to do?

Not really, I sent it in today. Those government forms are insane. I had to prove that we are actually married for love and not for convenience. Ever watch "Green Card"?

They also wanted $545. I had to make my check out to "US Department of Homeland Security". It felt kind of like bribe payout to a mobster. "If you don't give us the money, we'll bust you up real good." Because, they seriously say that if I don't pay up then they'll send her back to Germany.

I love our government. Then, we want them to amend the constitution to point out what marriage is. You can't get a friend into the country through a friendship VISA. It has to be a fiance VISA. I guess if you are gay and your lover is living in Spain, then you'll have to move to a state that recognizes gay marraige and bring them in on a fiance VISA. Will that work?

I figure they can cut down on immigrants by deeming marriages to certain nationalities unconstitutional. They'll make marriages between two men or two women unconstitutional and we all say, "Yeeehaaaa". Then, they'll say, well let's make it where we only recognize marriages between a woman born in America to a man born in America! It's not too much of a leap.

Of course, I kind of think they should loosen up on both. They could probably really cut income tax rates if they continue to extort globe trotting love birds. They should encourage gays to meet their mates overseas. It's cost me well over $1000 so far. They could finally balance the federal budget through the encouragement of gay foreign fiances (the GFF bill).

SATA, Western Digital, Seagate, nvstor.sys

So, as a hobby and for gaming, I put my own computers together. I think I'm pretty good at it.

In January of this year, I put together my first Vista system. Unlike most folks, I like Vista. It hasn't given me any problems.

The company I work for refuses to support Vista. So, if I want to work from home via VPN, I have to use XP. It's a travesty. I like working from home. I write/design software for a living and having a fast compiler is key. Each time I build a new computer it is about twice as fast as the last one. Without getting into the specifics, my new computer is very fast.

So, if I want to work from home I must use XP and I refuse to go back to my old computer running XP. So, I decide it won't be a problem installing XP and dual booting. People do it all the time, right?

For two products, from the same company, these guys don't play well together (XP & Vista). I finally managed to get it working. I put XP on an old hard drive and left Vista alone on my new hard drive. Everyone was happy for many months.

In July, I moved to a new house. The first thing I do is setup my computers because when Gar's Computer aren't working, Gar's not working and my wife wanted me to work (unload boxes of dishes and other useless stuff).

The old drive with XP started exhibiting problems that are normally indicitive of hardware failure (BOOT Drive not readable type things). It was an older drive so I just decided to order a new one. I order 98% of my computer supplies from Newegg. I trust them.

So, I went shopping at newegg. I just looked for the first 250 gig drive I could find that had a 5 egg rating. It was a Western Digital for $59. Not bad. I ordered it.

When it arrived, I took some time off of my busy dish unloading routine to install it and start the XP installation. I had done it once before so I knew the tricks. Since I was busy unloading dishes, I would let it do the installation while I was in the kitchen.

I returned to check on it and it had rebooted and XP was "checking drive C for errors" and was about 75% done destroying my original hard drive! I went into panic mode (read: I hit the main power switch). I turned on one of my old computers and did a Google. I think something like, "SATA Western Digital Seagate XP Vista". One of the first pages that came up talked about this little known problem with dual booting XP and Vista where XP will corrupt the Vista installation. It's only been documented using the WD 250 (the one I had), but they recommended hiding the Vista installation from XP. I wish someone had told me about 30 minutes sooner.

I start playing dramatic horror stories in my head about losing all my emails and tax statements and pictures and and and. I don't backup as often as I should. I've got good intentions. I just never get around to it. How can I get the data off of my Seagate drive without damaging it further? It's impossible for me to boot into Vista. XP hosed it real good. So, I think, I'll boot into XP (without letting it check drive C for errors) and just copy the files off of C onto something else.

XP really doesn't like drive C. It's can't read it at all. It can see the contents, but it won't let me copy the files. I can't remember all the different errors I was getting, but suffice it to say that I would have been there for 24 hours trying to get a few directories copied.

So, I think, I'll install Vista on the new drive and use it to copy the files off of drive C. Remember, drive C is the Seagate, the new drive is the Western Digital.

I kid you not, I tried for 8 hours to install Vista on the new drive. The best I can tell SATA has controllers and ports. So I have two controllers and 4 ports. I can disable controllers which disables 2 ports at a time. The initial setup was Controller 1 has Seagate on port 1 and DVD player on port 2. I have to have the DVD player to install (Vista comes on a DVD). Controller 2 has Western Digital on port 1 (they call it port 3), and port 4 is empty.

Every time Vista starts expanding the installation files on the Western Digital, it crashes about 20 minutes into it. You get the blues screen of death and the message about "if this is the first time..." which is ironic. Then, down at the bottom, it blames nvstor.sys.

Nvstor.sys is an nvidia driver used by Microsoft to read SATA drives that are on the nvidia SATA controller. My motherboard is an nvidia chipset so I can kind of see the pieces falling into place.

I don't know if I can tell you all the different things I tried. I went to nvidia's website and downloaded new drivers for Vista (if nvstor.sys is the cuplrit, then replace it with a newer model). This didn't work. I tried upgrading my BIOS on my motherboard. This didn't work. I tried removing all but one stick of memory. This didn't work. I tried resetting BIOS settings to their "safe" defaults. This didn't work. I tried removing the Seagate drive putting the Western Digital drive on port 1. This didn't work. I tried disabling controller 2. This didn't work.

After countless hours, I finally removed the Western Digital Drive all together and put the Seagate drive back where it was. Vista was installed and running 15 minutes later.

I went back to Newegg and requested an RMA. They are going to charge me a $9 restocking fee. I don't really know if they should restock it. Maybe the hard drive really is defective. I don't know if Western Digital has a problem with my motherboard or if they have a problem with NVidia's SATA controller or if I just got unlucky with a slightly bad hard drive. It's strange I was able to install XP on it to begin with. When I was looking up the RMA on newegg, I noticed that they had my Seagate drive on sell for $59. It's also a 250 gig hard drive and it has a 5 egg rating.

So, never pick the first one and stick with what you know.

Something different

I haven't been blogging as much as I should because I've been busier than I should. Moving is hard work.

I've got three things I need to report on, but they are all completely different topics. So, instead of putting them all in one entry, I think I'll make multiple entries.

Consider this this warning.

The first entry is going to be very technical and tell you about my weekend rebuilding my computer. I am going to write it up mainly to help any other poor saps who happen to have the same problem and try to Google for the answer. Maybe, mine will pop up. I should probably, at some point, start a technical blog to expound upon all of my computer woes.

Conspiracy Theories, Trust, Libertarians and Internet

Sometimes when I blog, I write the title first. It's a fun game to try and make some meaning of the title with the blog. Sometimes you write the blog first, but it's not as challenging to title the blog as it is to blog the title. I encourage you to try it.

I listen to a talk radio station most of the time on my commute to and from work. Recently I moved. My commute has shrunk from 40 minutes to 20 minutes which sounds good, but now I can't listen to the radio as much and my blogging material has likewise diminished. It's incredible how small changes can have unexpected and dramatic side affects. I believe in Chaos and common attractors.

I almost meandered off topic.

Last week my morning radio program was interviewing a comedian who had sold out shows in Dallas. I didn't like him to the point that I had to change the channel a few times. He was one of those people that believe that if he talked loud enough that it would make him right. It was very irritating. And not funny. He was all about the Kennedy cover up conspiracy single bullet thing and the fact that we never landed on the moon but simply had Hollywood make a film of it to fool the Russians.

I've heard about these conspiracies. I've never done any research one way or another. I find it very hard to care. Kennedy will remain dead and the Cold War will remain over. The next one will be called the Warming War. It's already started.

If I have to place myself in a political party, I lean Libertarian. I even ran for office once. It was enlightening. As a population we trust the government too much. I think for the Libertarian party to succeed, they have to replace that trust with something else. For some reason, unless we are conspiracy theory junkies, we believe that when we eat out, the food is good. It's not necessary to do too much research before we buy house insurance. The government regulates insurance companies and the government regulates eating establishments.

Libertarians believe that the free market will take care of itself. I'd like to see some good author write a fictional story about the result, if the government got out of our business. Would it be good? Would it be bad? I don't like laws protecting me from myself, but the government was created by the people for the people. The majority of people disagree with the way I think, so I'll never be 100% happy anywhere I go unless I can become the next dictator of Cuba or something.

If the government didn't regulate the airlines who would? It seems that you could end up with an Oligarchy of sorts. If the government doesn't regulate things for the majority, then who does?

Can we simply shrink the size and spending of the government, but still have a powerful voice in regulating the rich and powerful?

If you think back before the time of the Internet, this wasn't really possible. Now, ordinary citizens, for a few dollars can have a very loud voice. There is not much regulation of the Internet yet. We can write about the good, the bad and the ugly. As long as we have the Internet, we have the voice and the power to regulate. We don't need the government.