New computer

Just bought a new computer - dual 1.6 GHz processors, 1 Gig memory, 160 Gig hard drive, with one of those sweet 19" flat monitors ... all for $449. Incredible ... when I think about my first PC, a 7.16 MHz machine with 640K memory and a 10 Meg hard drive (might have been a 20 Meg) that I paid over $1000 for.

Of course, the downside is that Windows Vista sucks. It crashed within a couple of hours of me booting it up b/c I tried to format a CD-RW to store pictures on. After a couple of more attempts, I still have not been able to format a CD-RW correctly on it; I'm using my old PC for that. I would gladly trade in Vista for the reliability of the DOS 3.0 that came on that first machine.

What's with dry cleaners?

I had just dropped off some dry cleaning, including some shirts to be laundered when I noticed that my claim ticket was for $9 or so too much. I went back in, and the dry cleaner tells me that the last three shirts needed to be dry cleaned (something he did not mention when he took the shirts). The first shirt in fact did NOT need to be dry-cleaned although I can see why somebody might have made the mistake (although of course checking the label before deciding to do this w/o informing me might have been a good idea). The other two shirts could not have been mistaken as needing dry cleaning by anybody. I hope his attempt to steal $9 was worth losing my business because I will never be back (I had just picked up $48 worth of cleaning and was dropping off another $44). Bad move on his part, I think.

If I had a dollar for every dry cleaner who has tried this particular con on me, I would not be rich but I would definitely have enough for my wife and me to have a nice dinner at Ruth's Chris.

From the "No S--t Sherlock" Files

CNN just reported that in Iran, blogs critical of the government are censored.

Visual Studio Express

Microsoft recently released Visual Studio Express 2008, which consists of downscaled freeware versions of Visual Basic, Visual C++, Visual C#, Visual Web Developer and SQL Server.

http://www.microsoft.com/express/product/default.aspx

Visual Studio is a shell of its former self

Back in 1995, when I bought my first copy of Microsoft Visual Developer Studio, it contained Visual Basic, Visual C++, Visual J++, Fortran PowerStation and Visual FoxPro (although this last one wasn't fully integrated yet). Soon after, Visual InterDev was added to the product line.

Fortran was the first to go; through a truly Byzantine series of corporate transactions that product is owned by Intel now. At least it still integrates with Visual Studio 2008.

Then InterDev was dropped. Good riddance; that was a truly crappy product.

Then on January 10, 2007, Microsoft announced it was retiring the Visual J# product (Visual J++'s new face after the Sun lawsuit). Not much of a loss. Since it was not actually an implementation of Java (or even close), I never really saw any reason for it to exist at all.

But today ... HORROR (gasp) !! ... Microsoft announced that they were not going to release another version of FoxPro!!

So that leaves Visual Studio with just Visual Basic, Visual C++ and the new (I guess not so new anymore) Visual C#.

North Korea

A disarmament pact that the US and four other nations struck with North Korea requires the communist nation to halt its nuclear programs in exchange for oil.

Why does everybody think this is such a great deal? Didn't we already have a deal like this, brokered by President Clinton? Didn't NK ignore that one? What makes anybody think they will pay any more attention to this one? What am I missing here?