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Well the phone guy came... around 8pm! So Verizon got lucky and didn't have to give me a credit. I wish they would though since he didn't fix anything.

The guy did the usual checks at the NID (Network Interface Device), and the boxes on both sides of the street. In the end he couldn't find anything. He did say the second line that is used for dialup was a bit worse quality, but nothing out of the ordinary.

Oh and get this... according the phone guy, who was nice and friendly and tried to be helpful, Verizon only guarantees a modem connection up to 14.4kilobits! Never mind that in this day and age 14.4 is completely useless they won't lift a finger to make the network run any faster!

So in the end I'm still at square one. I can't get a stable Internet connection and the phone company won't do anything. So I'm forced to play the redial game ever 5-10 minutes for the foreseeable future. Perhaps it's time to for a move?

Our phone lines have been junk the last week. Static, electrical hum in the background, crosstalk, etc. Short of no dialtone this is as bad as it gets.

Trying to keep a internet connection going is impossible. We used to get a solid 50.6k connection all the time. Now it bounces around from 28.8 to 50.6. Plus the connection drops every 10-15 minutes on average.

I’ve tested it using different phones and modems on the two lines that run into the house. Both produce the same results so it has to be with Verizon’s network.

So I got fed up and filed a repair request a bit ago. They did a line test and I talked to a nice lady. The test didn't show anything but she promised to have a guy out by tomorrow night to fix it.

This is the pre-report. Stay tuned to see how it turns out

If you're anything like me you probably hate Windows Messenger with a passion. It got even worse when XP was released. It seemed Microsoft integrated the stupid thing into everything! It loads when you log in, every time you use Internet Explorer, even Outlook Express. Here's the simplest way to disable it so it never runs again.

1) First run "gpedit.msc" by going to start menu and selecting Run...

2) Find the Windows Messenger policies at "Local Computer Policy/Computer Configuration/Administrative Templates/Windows Components/Windows Messenger".

3) Set both "Do not allow Windows Messenger to be run" and "Do not automatically start Windows Messenger initially" to the Enabled state.

4) Restart your machine.

If you use Outlook Express you will find that it now takes a very long time for Outlook Express to load. Here's how to fix that:

1) First run "regedit.exe" by going to start menu and selecting Run...

2) Find the Outlook Express key at "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/Microsoft/Outlook Express"

3) create a new DWORD value by right clicking in the right pane and selecting New.

4) Set this new DWORD name to "Hide Messenger" and the value to 2.

5) Exit all programs and restart the computer.

Outlook should now load quickly again and there's no Windows Messenger! Note that this will also stop the new versions of AIM from integrating into Outlook Express as well.

IGN's FilmForce is reporting of rumors that The Jim Henson Company is prepping for a 4 hour Farscape mini-series.

For the uninformed, Farscape was the critically acclaimed show on SciFi that was cancelled without warning. They has made big news about picking up Farscape for another 2 seasons (which would be the last as season 5 was the planned end of the show). However half way through the 4th season in a sci-fi chat room the announcement was leaked that sci-fi opted out of the season 5 and would cancel the show.

Well the show ended the season with the usual cliffhanger to get you excited about the next. However it was not to be.

Now these reports are in no way verified by anyone from Henson or SciFi so take it with a grain of salt. However, I do hope it turns out to be true. It's well known that Henson had the entire season 5 planned out so it's very possible that a rewrite for a short mini-series to clean up the loose end has been in the works since the cancellation announcement. It could be that a script has just been finalized and possibly passed onto SciFi for discussion.

For now it's just a rumor...

It appears that Matthew Dillon one of the FreeBSD kernel hackers has decided to start his own distribution of BSD. I saw the news posted over at BSDForums.Org. You can read the news post here.

Called DragonFly BSD it's Based off of the FreeBSD 4.x code line. According to Matthew the projects goal is:

"to move kernel development along an entirely new path towards SMP, and
to completely rewrite the packaging and distribution system."

I already made a post in the forum but let me reiterate and expand my point here.

Continue reading "DragonFly BSD - Attack of the Code Fork!"

It seems about every 6 months or so a new "study" comes out dealing with games and females. Well Wired News published an article about the latest study.

Game makers are not making games for women, blah, blah, blah.

MMmmm, yummy chocolate cake...

Sorry there, it's just that my snack is more interesting than the article! It's always the same stuff being reported. You would think people would learn by now. Gaming is a predominantly male activity. It doesn't matter how many studies you do, you will always get the same results. Girls don't play games or the ones they do are usual simple puzzle based type. Boys play games and like ones full of violence and scantly clad women.

Continue reading "Women and Games"