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The Disappointment that is Red Alert 3

By on Aug 13, 2008 in Blog Posts, Games | 0 comments

After spending some time with the Beta of Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3, I can say that it’s the worst in a long line of flops in the venerable C&C series.Let’s get this out of the way up front – I don’t care that this is a Beta. I’m judging it, period. I don’t feel that anything will be significantly improved or altered for release.Path finding is terrible, the unit abilities are a joke and you hardly have time to use them in battle because everything is over before you even realize it. The inability to zoom out to any level further than you could in the 90’s is a sad development choice by Electronic Arts. You can’t queue up buildings, meaning each has to be built and placed one at a time. Units often get stuck on each other or buildings, and the unit AI chooses targets extremely poorly. Your troops won’t fire on nearby...

Star Trek Online Back On Track

By on Jul 28, 2008 in Blog Posts, Games | 0 comments

Cryptic Studios formally announced today that Star Trek Online is back on track for release. I formally piddled my pants.

What Crabtree & Evelyn Doesn’t Want You to Know!

By on Jul 15, 2008 in Blog Posts | 0 comments

Delving deeper into my shaving experiments, I recently purchased a shaving brush upgrade from Crabtree & Evelyn. I was terribly disappointed with my Art of Shaving brush from the “Elements” kit. The brush is poorly made, has a rough texture and just generally feels cheap. The hairs were falling out before I even began using it. Stroking it is akin to brushing a long haired cat. Very disappointing, but I suppose that’s what you get for the money.The Crabtree & Evelyn Best Badger brush was highly rated and is generally considered a great starter brush. I was very excited when it arrived and used it that same day with great results. At first it was not much softer than the Art of Shaving brush, but after a few uses it relaxed and several weeks later the brush is considerably softer. There has been minimal hair loss on the brush as well. Overall I’ve been...

SpongeBob & Coldplay, together at last!

By on Jul 7, 2008 in Blog Posts | 0 comments

My wife was watching SpongeBob SquarePants while I was working on my computer and listening to Coldplay’s latest album. I looked up at the cartoon action and realized that the music matched the visuals! This is the result:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbxuWE_5QWw

How to Resolve Error 1310

By on Jun 17, 2008 in Blog Posts, Software | 0 comments

After months of spending a half hour here and a half hour there, I’ve finally resolved a problem that’s really been bugging me. I recently installed the beta of OpenOffice.org 3.0 and when I tried to uninstall it I kept getting “Error 1310 Error Writing to file C:Config.msi*.rbf” There didn’t seem to be any further troubleshooting information available, and I was having the same issue trying to remove some other programs. I tried a number of different things before finally coming across the easy, simple fix: rename the C:Config.msi folder. After I renamed Config.msi to Config.msi.old and restarted the uninstallation, everything worked normally.The files in Config.msi are roll back files, used by the Windows Installer. More details on what they do can be found here.

Known Issues: 239 – Microsoft “PRS”: 0

By on Jun 15, 2008 in Blog Posts, Software | 0 comments

One tool Windows Vista offers to help troubleshoot issues is Microsoft’s Problem Reports and Solutions (PRS). This tool diagnoses the issues tracked by Windows Error Reporting and goes online to find solutions.Today my Vista Ultimate machine reported that I had 239 problems and asked if I wanted to see solutions. Sure, I clicked. A few minutes later Microsoft came back with its findings. Zero solutions. Zero out of 239. Not surprised? Me neither.What did surprise me was the numerous items listed under “Information about other problems”. I saw a listing telling me to download the latest service pack, which I already have installed. Another item told me to update to the the latest version of Firefox, which I am already running. Microsoft told me to update Quicktime, Acrobat Reader, Skype and a half dozen other programs that I already have the latest versions of as well....