I had an exciting night last night. I was sitting in my office writing an article when I heard police cars in the distance. Then they got closer and louder. Then even louder until they were right next to my apartment. I then heard somebody running up to the building and entering, then running up the stairs. Suddenly police were in the lot wondering where the suspect ran. I put 2 and 2 together and realized the dude they were after ran into my apartment building. I notified the officers of where the suspect was and they were able to apprehend him.

After this incident, I started thinking about the security in my building. Apparently this guy knew the code to the main door. He didn’t live in my building, but he knew it somehow. The code had been the same for over a year. I suppose many people know it by now since residents often provide the code to their friends. Not only that, if a person doesn’t know the code to get in, they just wait until another resident opens the door and they follow behind. The same thing happens with any ’secure’ building you go into. Unless there is a security guard there to stop a person, your building is not truly secure. People can pretty much get into your building if they really wanted to.

Having to punch in codes and use security cards just makes us feel more secure. Any of these security methods can be thwarted mainly because nobody takes security seriously. We are all too trusting and nice as a society. We don’t dare question anybody or cause confrontation. There is no reason to since most people have no ill intentions. But it only takes 1 time out of a million to result in somebody being endangered because a perpetrator wasn’t stopped when they should’ve been.

So from now on I’m making it my goal to confront people when they try to walk in behind me at any door. If I don’t know them, I’m turning them away. There’s nothing rude or wrong about making somebody show why they should be allowed access into a secure building. In fact, it’s rude to try to scoot by behind somebody. I challenge you to do the same.

This morning I was working with a company to try to get their software up and running. All we had to do was delete 1 file from the hard drive of their Windows laptop and all would’ve been jolly. When we looked on the C drive however, we couldn’t find the Program Files folder. It had been hidden from view. The Start > Run option was also not available. This laptop was locked down tight. We couldn’t do anything without administrator rights on the computer.

I understand why companies lock employees out of their computers. It prevents them from making changes that can damage the computer. However it also creates a situation where the employees can’t do some of the things they need to do such as running simple installations to update their software. They waste time having to call their helpdesk for help. This is a tremendous waste of time for the user. It also can cause more work for the company helpdesk. If the user isn’t able to perform certain tasks on their computer, that means the helpdesk has to waste time performing these simple tasks for the user.

In my experience this morning, a 2 minute call ended up taking 40 minutes. 40 minutes this employee could’ve been actually doing work, and about 20 minutes their company helpdesk could’ve been working on a real problem.

Support Rep: Looks like we have to reboot the computer.

Customer: You mean the whole thing?

Support Rep: Well, I don’t know how to reboot half of it do you?

Slipstreaming a service pack is the act of taking old Windows installation files and creating a new installation that is updated with the latest service pack. For years, I have been manually slipstreaming Windows service packs, but I recently discovered a new tool that takes all of the grunt work out of the process. nLite will walk you through the process of slipstreaming your Windows installation. It even has the ability to include later service packs in the installation, remove unneeded components, create a bootable CD image, and many more features.

The application is free and can be downloaded here. You may also want to check out a tutorial on how to Slipstream Windows XP SP3 CD.

I originally thought that the critics were just being hard on Windows Vista. All Microsoft products draw skepticism. After my experience with Windows Vista though, it became clear to me that it sucks bad. I thought I’d share some specific examples.

Options aren’t available unless you are on a specific screen

Many of the options for certain items just aren’t there anymore. You have to find the setting in the Control Panel instead of simply right-clicking the item and accessing them. A good example would be the dialup connections that are located under Start > Connect to… There used to be a Delete option when you right clicked on these items. This option, along with several others are no longer there. I liked being able to access options from several different screens.
You have to sift through tons of screens to find what you’re looking for

You know the 3 click rule? Everything should be within 3 clicks. Well, Vista shoves that aside. It can take up to 6 clicks to find some options. If you don’t know where a specific setting is, good luck!

Dialog boxes start minimized or in the background

When certain programs throw up a dialog box to notify you of an error or event, you might not know it’s there. You often have to look at the taskbar and notice the extra item down there. I’ve sat for many minutes staring at the screen not knowing what my programs are doing only to realize there is something else going on. Only by clicking on the entry for the dialog box on the Taskbar will allow to see what the message is.

Various video problems

I’ve tried 3 different systems running Vista, all with different video cards. They all exhibited some type of video freeze during the time I’ve used them. Not to mention, all the stupid video animations are too much for most systems to handle. Why do I need fancy video animations to get my work done?

These are just a handful of problems I’ve encountered with Vista, and I haven’t used the the operating system for more than 12 hours total yet. I can only imagine what people are going through that have to use it every day.

The Offspring and Coldplay made free song downloads available to in an effort to promote their albums. We see this strategy all the time from record companies. Those of you that are familiar with the iTunes Free Single of the Week will know what I’m talking about. This strategy confuses me though, since the RIAA continuously fights file sharing.

It’s a fact that free music downloads actually help album sales. I always buy albums that I think are good, because I actually want to own them. Recently a friend burned me a copy of a Green Day album. I had the copy and didn’t need to buy it, but I did. Why? Because the album was good and Green Day and the record company deserve my money.

Back in the days when tapes were traded, the same thing held true. A friend would give me a tape they made, and if I liked what I heard, I went out and bought the album. Shockingly, tape trading was mainly how Metallica rocketed to fame. Yet years ago they started the fight against file sharing.

If free music is the evil entity for record companies, why do they practice giving music away for free themselves? They must think by giving away their tunes it will help sales on albums, otherwise they wouldn’t make the files available for free. Why not just let people trade freely if it’s so positive for them? I know some people will abuse the system and not purchase the album when they should. This rule applies to anything, including the late, great days when tapes were passed around, but the record companies need to stop fighting against the listening public who embrace free downloads and instead embrace the system for what it is. The freedom and love of music.

The Chicago Bears are on their way to another victory over the Minnesota Vikings. I’m ahead 35 to 7 in the 3rd quarter. My opponent has resorted to talking about my mom and my sexual orientation since he is losing so bad. Suddenly he disconnects from the game. This is usually how all the games I play online end. I don’t think I’ve ever finished a game of Madden while in the lead.

It’s a fact that nobody ever finishes an online game if they are losing by a wide margin. Not only that, but they aren’t face to face with you, so that allows them to say things that would usually cause their skull to get knocked in. Instead, they can hide behind anonymity and disconnect whenever they like. Remember the days of the arcade? Where your opponent would playfully trash talk. Nothing ever got out of hand. When your opponent lost, they would either bow to you, shake your hand or just tell you ‘nice game’ and walk away with dignity. I miss those days. Unfortunately, those days are gone.

The shortcomings of online gaming will never replace the experience you can get with gaming with a friend in an arcade or your living room. For now, games like World of Warcraft will work because they don’t require opponents to be online. But I still wish I could get in a full head-to-head game against an online opponent once in awhile and be able to finish a game in its entirety.

It looks like the days of MySpace being king of the social networking hill are officially over. Many say it’s been over for about a year now, but for the first time, Facebook surpassed MySpace last month in audience reach according to Alexa traffic rankings. People are leaving MySpace for Facebook by the masses, and the number will only increase exponentially. Social networking sites are only fun if other people are on the site to interact with. Personally, my MySpace account has been dead for the most part because nobody ever checks their account anymore. They are all on Facebook or Twitter now.

Many people say that Facebook and Twitter are fads just like MySpace was, and that people are only on these sites now because they are the new, hip thing. They predict their audience will eventually move to other sites as well once a new thing comes out. I disagree. I believe MySpace was a rickety mess to begin with, and it only got worse when News Corp took over. They haven’t done much with the site to improve the performance. Bits and pieces of the site are constantly down at the most inconvenient times. Facebook on the other hand almost never has issues with their site.

As people flock to these other social networking sites, I predict a massive traffic loss for MySpace. I’m thinking that half the MySpace audience will be lost by the end of this year.

On April 7, 2008, I posted a blog called The Sims Online is Back, and it’s Free This Time. I was excited about this, because I loved The Sims Online. Unfortunately, EA executives weren’t behind EA Land to begin with, and the service will be closing. I guess they thought they’d let their developers play with it and bring it back online to see what they could do. It’s a great world to play in for gamers, but it’s obviously not the money generating monster EA wants it to be. God forbid they provide something that’s free.

When the Playstation was hot, I was poor. I couldn’t afford the system or the games. On weekends, me and the 3 guys I lived with would occasionally rent a Playstation from Blockbuster along with several sports titles and have a blast. Over the last few years though, Blockbuster has been lacking in their game offerings, and they haven’t offered console rentals at all.

Blockbuster is looking to change that now though, as they expand their game offerings. They are offering consoles and a wider variety of games for rental as they try to provide consumers with other options than movies, which Netflix is killing them on.

It’s nice to have other options for game rentals since the other video chains such as Hollywood suck at it. GameFly is an option, but it’s expensive and when I want to play a game, I want it now. I don’t want to have to wait 3 days to receive it. With the new options, it looks like I will have to give Blockbuster another chance to win my business back.