2007 April

I was at a client’s site today and had to change the computer name on a Vista PC to clear up a conflict. I found what is either a “feature” of Vista or a bona fide bug in the OS. When I tried to change the computer name from “Xyz” to “XYZ,” the OK button [...]

My wife always tells me I’m a little kid in a man’s body. She’s right, and I want to tell you about a fun toy for geeks that’s on sale right now at Staples: PNY Technologies’ Attache 2GB USB flash drive with U3 launcher. With $40 instant rebate, it’ll only set you back $24.98. I [...]

Over the last couple of months, Ask the Geek has gotten a spate of questions regarding XP problems that weren’t catastrophic, but which caused shutdown problems, CD ejection errors, and a myriad of other annoyances. Back in the Windows 95/98/ME days, when users would see “This program has performed an illegal operation…,” I would always scandisk/defrag first, [...]

I may be a Geek, but I’m also an artist (and what better combination could there be?) with a special affinity for abstract graphics. Back in the 1980’s, I was really into a program called FRACTINT (now up to version 20.0–I was using 2.0!) that generated fractals based on your numeric input. I would spend [...]