I have a solution

News Headline:
Chinese Gymnasts' Ages Under Review

(Click here for a link to the article)

The first line of the article:
Two Chinese gymnasts suspected of being underage at the 2000 Olympics aren't off the hook yet.

Keep in mind, this is 2000 they are still talking about...

Easy answer... cut them open and count their rings. That will tell how old they are.

Grocery Shopping at Meijer

Surprisingly, I couldn't find the melted ice cream isle for some reason... I guess they were out of stock.

The Impressive Sights of Midland

I spent much of last weekend riding all over Midland on my bike. I know, I know... Midland's pretty boring... but I like to get out on my bike and explore. One of the places I checked out was Overlook Park on Poseyville Road. Someone had the great idea to build a park that gives a great scenic view of one of Midland's most beautiful landscapes... No, not the Chippewa Nature Center or the Tridge or even the Rail Trail. This park gives a "breathtaking" view of the Dow Chemical Company.

http://www.midlandonline.com/wwwroot/moladmin/articles/articledisplay.cfm?art_id=80

The park overlooks pretty much all of Dow's Midland production facilities as well as what I think was supposed to be the cooling pond for the nuclear power plant that was never completed. It was eventually converted over to natural gas.

No, I didn't see any three eyed fish, but I was looking. Anyways, this park has several little informational signs giving details about Dow and the park and the local environment.

As I was reading one of these signs I spotted a part of the text that my beautiful grammar ninja would love:

Nice proofreading job guys. It only takes one click to run that spell checker. And no, "amd" is NOT referring to the microprocessor company. I had to chuckle just a little...

An Example of Why I Can't Support The Death Penalty

"A Forensics Charlatan Gets Caught in the Act" as posted on Reason.com

http://reason.com/news/show/132574.html

The idea that things like this actually occur is seriously scary. This "Forensics Expert" should be prosecuted. People being stupid is one thing, but when stupid people cause this much damage it just pisses me off...

Too many blows to the head...

I know the Lions suck but they are still my team. It's pretty obvious they don't get the smartest players. A prime example is running back Kevin Smith, who writes on his blog:

"I won’t make a prediction about how many games we’re going to win, but I will say this: We will definitely make the playoffs this season."

He goes on to say:

"Believe it or not we weren’t far off last year. Almost every game we could have won, we were one play or one player short."

Was I watching the same games he was watching???

Knock Knock...

Who's there?

Owen...

Owen who?

Owen Sixteen...

I can't describe how much I'd LOVE to see a playoff run this year, but Kevin, Captain Obvious needs to point out how stupid you look saying stuff like this. How 'bout you guys start by winning a game this year before you start getting cocky.

Here's a link to Kevin Smith's entire blog entry:

http://smith34.com/blog.html

Today's Quote

I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.

~Bill Cosby

How the HELL can this be legal????

The following is part of an article published on www.journalgazette.net from Fort Wayne, Indiana...

"Going 62 in a 50-mph zone, a Jeep barreled west on a slippery, snow-covered Airport Expressway on Valentine’s Day and blew past an Allen County sheriff’s squad car. One traffic stop later, two men inside the Jeep were outside being patted down by officers. They acted nervous, according to a police report. At one point they looked as if they wanted to fight; at another they looked as if they wanted to flee. In the Jeep’s back seat, police found more than $26,000 in cash wrapped in a stocking cap. Though officers held the two men for a short time in squad cars, they were eventually released without charges, save for the driver receiving a citation for driving with a suspended license. And the money? The police kept it. Having that much cash is not a crime, but police have the right to seize it if they suspect it has been used or procured through criminal means. Most of the money seized comes from drug cases and can then be used by various law enforcement agencies."

A little father along in the article it states "How often money is confiscated from people not charged with crimes is hard to determine, Barile said, but his best guess for his department is that it happens “maybe 10 percent of the time” his department performs a seizure."

Maybe 10 percent of the time??? Am I the only one concerned that the government can seize personal property when no laws have been broken and no charges filed, just because someone decided that it "looks suspicious"? I don't care if these guys did look suspicious. If there is not enough evidence to arrest these guys or file charges, how can the cops just sieze their property? Is there no such thing as personal rights anymore? If I get pulled over carrying a couple hundred bucks and the cops think that's more than I should have in my wallet is it ok for them to just take it??? Wow this is a slippery slope...

Here's a link to the full article...

http://www.journalgazette.net/article/20090322/LOCAL/303229940/-1/LOCAL11

Luigi Sampson, You're a ...

I'm currently helping a very, VERY, good friend look for a job, so I've been scanning a few sites... Craigslist included. Now I know Craigslist is filled with scams and crap, but I'll admit even as skeptical as I am in general, I was caught off guard with this one. I came across several postings that looked very legit, but upon closer inspection, they turned out to be very nasty. Here is one example...

http://saginaw.craigslist.org/hea/1061521324.html

I guess there are a couple of small details that are out of place here, but for people looking for jobs, these are easily overlooked.

1) The actual name of the company is not listed
2) The starting salary is probably higher than what would be expected for this position

Everything else looks very authentic. However, after googling luigi.sampson@gmail.com I found that he has listed this same ad or a similar version to it in several other communities throughout the U.S.

I decided to respond to this ad with the following email...

Mr. Sampson,

What do I need to do or what information do I need to send in order to apply to the job posting that I found on Craigslist?

Thank you,

Tony Mills


I immediately got this reply from Luigi..

Thank you for your interest in the Patient Registrar we have posted
through Craigslist. To complete the application process please click
on the link below.

To apply for this job click here
http://thecareercenteronline.com/joboffer/register.cfm?jobpositionid=99270

Thank you,

Luigi Sampson


I didn't highlight the link because I really don't want anyone going there. It still looks legit, but IT'S A SCAM!!!

Here's someone else that figured that out as well...

http://jacksonville.craigslist.org/etc/1042770523.html

Unfortunately, ads of this type almost always end up telling their respondents that they need to go to a special web site to begin the application process. Once there, the respondent is hit with several sales pitches, free offers that they are encouraged to sign up for and give their credit card info, and even worse... many of these sites have "drive by" viruses that get dropped onto the respondents computer (yeah, that's always fun to try to fix).

So, in a nutshell, be very careful when dealing with anything on Craigslist, even something as innocent as a job search. A few simple tips...

1) Be skeptical if the company doesn't list its name in the ad
2) Be skeptical if the pay rate is higher than what should be expected for the job (too good to be true)
3) Don't send personal information like an address, phone number or a social security number until you are sure who you are dealing with. In fact, don't give anyone your social security number until you actually have a job with that company.
4) If the "Reply to:" email is an actual email address, and not just a response that goes to a Craigslist account, be sure to Google the address and see if anything suspicious comes up
5) If you are ever told that you need to pay money or give a credit card number, or have to sign up for free offers in order to apply for a job... run like the wind!!!

All of you Craigslist predators... I sure hope Google finds this post...

Updated 3/9/09

I wonder about the Wonderlic...

In honor of the NFL combine, which I was a stone's throw away from watching in person, here is a link to a mini-version of the Wonderlic test

http://www.angelfire.com/fl3/existence/wonderlic.html

The results listed on the main page aren't spaced out properly, at least not for my version of Firefox, so I'll add them here for reference...

9 correct= 50
8 correct= 44
7 correct= 39
6 correct= 33
5 correct= 28
4 correct= 22
3 correct= 17
2 correct= 11
1 correct= 6
0 correct= 0

Quick quiz: Which would be larger, Matt Millen's Wonderlic score, or the Lions win total last season???

magicJack Phone Number

I just read the following reviews about magicJack from PC Magazine...

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2340423,00.asp

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2340417,00.asp

They didn't give it a bad review, but were critical of the tech support and the difficulty in finding a phone number for customers to call when needing help. So I figured I'd help out magicJack and give their customers another Google source for their phone number as listed in PC Magazine's article...

561-594-2140

I'm sure this is just an oversight on magicJack's part and they will get that phone number listed on their website very soon ;-)

I can post from my

I can post from my phone... how cool is that?!?!

I couldn't help butt laugh...

I use Google News to keep up with daily stories, and one of the sections is Health. I lost it when this listing came up...

Outlook Gets My Goat

Since yesterday's blog was such a smashing hit, let's do another exciting tech entry...

Last week I get a call from our packaging manager telling me his email is bombing out so I go out to have a look. The basics: Windows XP Pro, MS Outlook 2003 pulling email from an ISP through POP3... pretty basic...

So, I check out the computer. Sure enough, Outlook starts up, downloads a few emails, then bombs out. My first thought is the PST file. I run the repair routine on it and check it to make sure it hasn't gotten too big. That all checks out. Maybe there is something corrupted in one of the emails causing Outlook to crash, which I've seen before. I download the emails to a different computer with no problems, so the emails themselves aren't causing it. Time to check Outlook itself...

It's kinda cheesy, but I figured I'd try Outlook's 'Detect and Repair' function, because its actually worked for me (once). That resulted in the following message...

No valid sequence could be found for the set of patches

Ugh... This kinda tells me that fixing this problem is gonna take a while, and I didn't have time right then to dig into it. So, I set up our packaging manager with a Gmail account for him to use temporarily which would access his work emails (Gmail is awesome by the way).

Fast forward to today. Packaging is closed up for the day so I get undisturbed access to the computer. The last error message referred to patches, so my next guess is to try updating the MS Office patches. (Yes, most of my job, and my life by the way, revolves around guessing). I was hoping that would at least clear the error and let 'Detect and Repair' run. That's when I get this little gem from Microsoft...


You can't really see it, but it says...

Windows Installer patch files (.MSP files) from previously applied Office updates are missing from the \Windows\Installer hidden directory on your computer.

Nice, so not only is there a problem, but Microsoft is also telling me I cant uninstall. In addition, they don't mention anywhere HOW TO FIX IT. They do give a link to their tech support though... which locked up my browser when I clicked on it. GRRRRR... Like tech support would have been of any help anyways. So of course the next step it to try and tempt fate and uninstall MS Office... but guess what, there's that familiar error message again...

No valid sequence could be found for the set of patches

So instead of uninstalling, I try reinstalling over the existing files. Same error message. Hey, they told me it wasn't gonna work, so they got that part right.

You've got to be kidding me. I'm not reformatting the hard drive just to fix this problem. I spent way too much time trying to figure out ways to fix this including messing with .NLS files, .MSP files in the hidden Installer directory, and even registry edits (which I hate to do). I'm GONNA find a way to get MS Office uninstalled. At this point I'm really kinda starting to get pissed...

Finally I stumbled across this link...

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;290301

Which leads to an installation clean up program called msicuu2.exe. I downloaded it and ran it, and I only selected MS Office to be repaired from the list. After that I tried to run 'Detect and Repair'. It actually ran through the process!!!... but it didn't fix the problem. I'm making progress though. At this point I decided to try running the uninstall one more time. Either it would work, or the computer would be launched into the nearest snow bank. Thankfully for all involved it uninstalled. Then I was able to reinstall successfully. Five hours later email works again and no computers went airborne in the process. You gotta love computers. I wonder if I could make a living as a goat herder...

Hard Drive Hard Times

As you've noticed, I haven't posted much here lately... Well, ok, since (almost) no one reads this blog, I'm sure no one has noticed ;-) There are a few entries here that I refer back to from time to time regarding tech info, so I'm gonna use this entry to record future reference information for myself. I'm sure it will be completely boring for everyone else, but oh well...

Yesterday a computer in the accounting department died. Blue Screen Of Death... Hard drive failure... Ugh. It's a Dell GX280 going on four years old. I've had hard drive problems with these systems before. I actually preemptively replaced all of these hard drives once and haven't had too many problems since. Anyways, I wanna record my repair procedure in case I have to do this again because I know I'll forget the little nuances...

1. Boot from the Dell Recovery (Blue) CD
2. Exit Setup and go to the Recovery Console
3. Run chkdsk /R at the prompt
4. Get lucky and have this actually fix the problem
5. Realize the problem is actually the hard drive failing so I'm not done
6. Do the rest of these steps to replace the hard drive
7. Boot to Windows (XP Pro for me)
8. Load Ghost 9.0
9. Shut Down
10. Install 2nd (Blank) hard drive
11. Turn on machine and go into BIOS
12. Enable new hard drive so the system recognizes it
12.5 Log in as Admin
14. Run Ghost to duplicate hard drive
15. Set the following switches in Ghost...
- Check Source for file system errors
- Resize drive to fill
- Set drive active
- Copy MBR
16. Run it, wait for it to finish
17. Try to boot from new hard drive
18. It doesn't work... probably get something like...
"windows could not start because of a computer disk hardware configuration problem"
19. Boot to old hard drive with new hard drive hooked up as 2nd drive
20. Log in as Admin
21. Start Menu - Control Panel - Administrative Tools - Computer Management - Disk Management
22. Right click new drive
23. Change Drive Letter & Paths
24. Add - F:
25. Shut down computer
26. Set up system with new hard drive as the only hard drive
27. Boot from the Dell Recovery (Blue) CD
28. Exit Setup and go to the Recovery Console
29. Run bootcfg /rebuild at prompt
30. It will ask a few questions after it rebuilds for a while
- Add installation to boot list?... Answer Y
- Enter Load Identifier... Answer Windows XP Professional
- Enter Load Options... Leave blank, just hit Enter
31. Reboot
32. The option of two installs to boot from comes up
33. Select the top one... Windows XP Professional
34. Log in as Admin
35. Right click My Computer and select Properties
36. Go into Advanced, Startup & Recovery, Settings, System Startup
37. Click the Edit button
38. Delete the bottom line to get rid of the faulty boot option
39. Save and exit
40. Reboot - Login as Admin - Unload Ghost

This same procedure has actually worked on two separate machines for me. I still have to reload the accounting software on the pc that I fixed yesterday, but other than that... so far so good (knock on wood)

A quiet return with a promising Outlook...

Well, it's been a while since I've posted anything, but I guess now is as good a time as any. I'm not gonna go into the details of the past half year... we'll save that for the upcoming novel ;-) We'll just jump back into my normal inane, pointless rambling...

I've noticed several people searching my blog for help with Microsoft Outlook and the auto fill option so I'd like to add to that a little. I noticed a search from someone that DIDN'T want to use the auto fill option. I think they were looking for the way to turn it off. Here's a quick overview on how to disable that feature (at least in MS Outlook 2003, the version I'm using... and yes, I know it's getting old)

Select "Tools" from the pull down menu and click on "Options..."

Click on the button labeled "E-mail Options..." at the top in the E-mail section



Click on the button labeled "Advanced E-mail Options..." in the middle of the window


Remove the check mark in the box next to the line "Suggest names while completing To, Cc, and Bcc fields" toward the bottom of the window


Click on the "OK" button on all of the windows until you are back to your Outlook window

The auto fill option is now turned off... YAY!!!!


PS... Snowman... East bound and down... Have a good trip

I'd never be smarter than a 5th grader...

I need to figure out how I can be a contestant on the show "5th Grader." For the record, I'd be a millionaire right now... I even got the Chuck Yeager question. However, in reality, I actually wouldn't be a millionaire right now, I'd have a half a mil, and I would have announced to the world that I'm not smarter than a 5th grader (which I'm sure is glaringly obvious anyways). I'd never bet that $500,000 without knowing the question... no matter what the subject was. For anyone that hasn't seen the show, contestants can walk away with their winnings at any time until they get to the million dollar question. Once they get to that question, they have to decide if they want to go for it before they see the question. All they get to see is the subject area the question will be in. Last night, the subject was US History, and the woman on the show felt that she knew that subject really well, so she went for it. The question was: Who was the first American to break the sound barrier. You could see this woman go pale and then turn green as she became nauseas because she realized the colossal mistake she made. At first I felt sorry for her... but only for a minute. Isn't there some "Bird in the hand" cliche that comes to mind here?


On a much more serious note...

My heart goes out to everyone affected by the tornadoes that went through the south... For everyone else that is safe and sound, be thankful, and give your children an extra hug tonight.

News Notes

Just a short entry today... a few news articles that caught my eye...

------------------
Young journalist sentenced to death in Afghanistan for reading about women's rights on the internet
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=511423&in_page_id=1770

Isn't nice to know that our troops are over there helping to protect these people

------------------
And here's a prime example of the government having their head up their ass...

Pennsylvania takes on online auctions
http://www.philly.com/philly/business/homepage/20080130_Bidding_goodbye.html

Of course, I could fill an encyclopedia with examples of this kind of stupidity

------------------
On a lighter note, too bad this isn't true... it would actually be kinda cool
http://www.serioussportsnewsnetwork.com/2008/01/petty-to-just-play-guitar-hero-iii-for-super-bowl-halftime.html

------------------

More Random Randomness

Temperature yesterday, 50 degrees. Temperature today, 5 degrees, -15 wind chill. Like the cliche goes... Michigan weather... if you don't like it, wait for a few minutes... and you still probably won't like it.

Johan Santana to the Mets... YAY!!! He's out of the Tigers division and even out of the American League. All the better for us :-) Now if we can just manage to keep Brandon Inge happy, things will be looking good for the Tig's

I saw Untraceable a few days ago. It reminded me of a movie version of an episode of CSI or NCIS or something like that. It was ok, not one I would add to my collection though. There's my movie review for the day.

Speaking of TV shows, House was new last night, and it was good, but what's up with it being new and a Christmas show at the end of January? Fox's December scheduling must have gotten messed up a little I'm guessing.

A Couple Of Random Pointless Questions

1. Super Bowl Saturday

Why isn't the Super Bowl on Saturday? Is it such a big deal that the game has to be on Sunday? If it was on Saturday night, people could stay out at Super Bowl parties all night and not worry about having to get up early and going to work hung over. I bet they are just afraid to mess with a formula that has been working, but I doubt it would hurt the Super Bowl's popularity or ratings if it was held on Saturday.

2. Hello, Newman

Why didn't Newman get a his own show after Seinfeld went off the air? Am I the only on that thinks it would have been a good spin-off? In fact, what ever happened to the spin-off in general? (Besides "Joey", but I was never much for "Friends" anyways). Maybe someday I'll hop into Mr.Peabody's Wayback machine and look at all the cool spin-offs from the 70's and 80's.

Ok, that's enough pointless stupidity... for now, anyways

Brrrr...

The weather that was in Green Bay last weekend seems to have made it's way here finally. It was -4 this morning... Mmmm, good old fashioned winter, the way it should be, and the way it used to be before we screwed up our environment. Just think how much better off we'd be, and ultimately how much better off our environment would be, if we took all of the money we are spending right now to send troops to the Middle East (to effectively protect our oil supply) and invested that money into developing alternative energy sources. Oh, wait... we were protecting everyone from those weapons of mass destruction... that's right... that's why we are over there... nothing to do with oil... or big fat governmental contracts with Haliburton...

I guess I kinda hopped up on my liberal soap box there for a minute... I was just planning on talking about the weather, that's all.

Anyways, a few other little notes...

Am I the only one that noticed that Brett Favre kinda gave away that game to the Giants. No one seems to be talking about it much, but he didn't have his best game (It still would have been nice if he were a Lion though). I guess the Packers weren't as destined as I thought. As a result, it turns out that Manning will be playing in the Super Bowl... not the Manning everyone expected before the season started, but Eli has played well. It doesn't really matter though. I expect the Patriots to crush the Giants, so here's an early congrats to all my friends in the Boston area... It was an amazing season. Patriots, Red Sox... even the Celtics are looking good... Hopefully this year the Tigers, Red Wings and Pistons can steal some of the attention the New England area has been getting ;-)... (The Lions aren't in any danger of stealing attention from anyone)

The Winter X-Games 12 start tonight. This is the highest profile snowmobiling event of the season. It's kinda a big deal here at work, so I figured I should at least mention it. The TV schedule, for reference:

http://expn.go.com/expn/story?id=3163738

Update...

T.J. Gulla is my guy... He's my racer from the office pool, so go T.J.!!!... I know, kinda weird... We don't have a Super Bowl board, but we have a Winter X-Games Sno-Cross pool... just for fun, of course ;-)