The Disingenuous Drifter – Arkansas’s new coach
I’ve seen scathing articles before. But Pat Forde’s column today is one of the most strongly worded I have seen in a while. Forde’s column on ESPN.com is about Bobby Petrino dumping the Atlanta Falcons to go to the University of Arkansas. He is replacing Houston Nutt who just left Arkansas and was hired by Ole Miss.
The article highlights Petrino’s apparent propensity to be always on the lookout for the next step “up” in coaching jobs. A couple of quotes from the article:
“this is the fifth straight year Bobby Petrino has tried to get another job. Every single season he’s been a head coach, he’s ended it by pursuing something else…Follow the grease stain that is the disingenuous drifter’s career path…” [the article goes on to trace his string of coaching jobs]
“The good news for Arkansas is that it might be the last school willing to give this guy anything more than what he deserves: a one-year contract and a monitoring device on his ankle.”
I know very little about the man other than what I read in this article…which refreshed my memory of Petrino’s involvement in a few coaching job stories over the last few years. But based on what I’ve read…I’m glad he’s not coach of any team that I care about following.
I’ll also say…don’t get on Pat Forde’s bad side.
Window Media Player 11 and DRM
Last week, I mentioned a security issue in Leopard (and got a lot of response). This week I take Microsoft to task over something less severe, but a lot more annoying to me. Windows Media Player 11 and DRM (Digital Rights Management). In previous versions of WMP, there was an option to back up the licenses for any music you had bought and then restore on a new computer or after a rebuild.
For some reason that defies logic, Microsoft quietly removed the ability to back up licenses in WMP 11. That’s right…no ability to back up the licenses. So…you’ve bought 100 songs online. The licenses are safely locked away on your computer. Your hard drive crashes…or you get a new computer…or you decide to rebuild your computer. You can copy the music files over…but they won’t play without the licenses. Not exactly customer friendly. Microsoft’s “solution” to this problem? You can find it at this link. Basic gist is to re-download the licenses from where you bought the music…but oh yeah…not all stores allow you to re-download the licenses…you’re just out of luck.
I’ve got a few words for Microsoft.
DRM – Dumb. Rotten. Move.
I have been happy to see that Wal-Mart and Amazon have started to sell DRM free music…256K MP3 in Wal-Mart’s case. Not sure what level of MP3 Amazon is selling. I’ll be going there from now on. Both of them are limited to music put out by EMI or Universal. (Was going to buy some Toby Keith songs the other night, but backed off for now because they weren’t available as MP3s.) Ars Technica had a good article on this recently.
Running a CMD prompt as System (XP/Vista/Win7/Win8)
From time to time I have had a need to run a program in the context of the Local System account instead of my user account. Typically this is in troubleshooting a program…a program that runs as Local System. It doesn’t do me much good to troubleshoot that program if the program is running under my user account’s security context. I need it to run as System…which has more rights…most of the time. I have had to use this a few times while working with SMS 2003 and SCCM 2007. Both of them run as the local system account.
So…how do we do that? In XP, 2000, Server 2003…you can do this very simply. You will need to be logged in with an account that has administrator privileges. Open a command prompt (Start, Run, CMD). At the command prompt type the following line. Replace 01:23 with the current time in 24 hour format + one minute. i.e. if it is 3:42 in the afternoon, enter it as 15:43.
at 01:23 /interactive cmd.exe
This schedules a task to run cmd.exe at the time you specify. When the CMD prompt pops up, it will be running as Local System. Be very careful. Note: you will only see this if you are at the console of the computer…so if you are connected to a server via Remote Desktop, you will not see the prompt come up unless you are connected to the console. I’ve been bit by that more than once…today as a matter of fact.
Now…what about Vista? I was bummed to see that this did not work in Vista. Good for security…bummer for me. So tonight I set out to find a way to do this. Cool thing is that the answer was actually pretty easy…and can be found on Microsoft’s site. Download PSTools from SysInternals. Microsoft bought SysInternals in 2006. Extract the files. You will use the file named PSexec.exe.
You still need a CMD prompt, but there’s an extra step… You will need to find the shortcut to the CMD prompt (Start, type CMD in the search box and wait for it to locate it…should be pretty fast). Once it locates it, right click it and choose to “Run as administrator”. (Do this even if your user account is an admin.) Once this opens, change directory til you get to the folder that contains PSexec (unless psexec is in a folder in your PATH already). This is where the magic happens…type the following line. (-i is for interactive, -s is to run as system)
psexec -i -s cmd.exe
The command prompt will look like:
Once you hit enter, another command prompt will open that will be running as the system account (NT Authority\System).
NOTE: you can use these instructions to run any program as System. If you had a dire need to run Calculator or Solitaire as Local System…you could do that…just replace cmd.exe with the executable file for the program you want to run. I will also say again…be careful. Don’t do this unless you really need to…and unless you are prepared to take responsibility for anything you might mess up by doing so!
Have fun! Actually…who am I kidding? This isn’t meant to be fun…it’s meant to be useful. Now…go get some work done. ;-)
Shoes from Auschwitz
Just saw this page. It’s a picture that represents a day’s worth of shoes collected during the gassing of the Jewish people at Auschwitz…25,000 pairs of shoes.
I started to get physically sick looking at the picture…realizing that each of the people wearing them were murdered. In particular note the two whitish colored shoes toward the top right…the matching pair. It’s one thing to read about the atrocities of the holocaust. That photo brings it home.
Ham for Chanukah?
It’s hard for me to believe that people aren’t aware that pork products are forbiden by Judaism. But apparently so…how about a nice spiral cut ham for Chanukah?
“More successful by being nice”
Just received a comment from Jon at Geek Stuff referencing my Why I Do Not Want a Mac post as well as the comments left by “max”. It prompted me to read the post on Jon’s blog that the comment came from. Wow…what a well written post. Thanks Jon.
Response to my Mac posts
Definitely saw a spike in hits and comments from my two Mac posts yesterday. In particular I apparently got under the skin of “max”. He first responded to the post on Why I Do Not Want a Mac…a post where my reasoning was because of how some Mac fanatics treat PC users with disdain. It wasn’t an attack on the technology or on Mac users…it simply stated a truth about the way that some Mac people treat PC users. Max then proceeded to comment on quite a few other posts…
Well, max, you did a great job of being an example of the Mac fanatic. You attacked PC Users, the fact that I go to church, my sofa, my gun ownership, my Peyton Manning post, the fact that I desire to protect my wife, my sense of humor, my sense of humor again, the fact that I enjoy hunting, and you defended a guy who cared more about his DVD player than his child. You did such a great job, that I have to wonder if you are just trying to bait me into attacking back. Sorry bud…even if you treat me with disdain, I will treat you with respect. I’m not perfect in this regard, but my desire is to treat people in a loving manner regardless of how they treat me. Why? Short answer…because you are worth being treated with respect. Long answer…I’ll refer you again to the C.S. Lewis essay from my original post.
I’m not really sure why you felt the need to post so many comments on my blog, but honestly I welcome your comments. I’m more than willing to have a dialog with you…just use my contact page with a real email address. Somehow I doubt you’ll take me up on that, but the invitation stands. Regardless…I hope you have a really good day today.
Why I Do Not Want a Mac
A bit of background…I’m an IT professional. My expertise is in the arena of enterprise level systems management. I have been working with Microsoft systems for approximately thirteen years. Occasionally I’ll get asked something similar to “why don’t you want a Mac”, “don’t you wish you had a Mac”, etc. Normally I just politely answer that, no…I don’t want a Mac…and go about my business.
I’ve been considering this blog post for a while and finally decided to write out the primary reason that I do not now…or any time soon…want a Mac.
Primarily…the reason I do not want a Mac…certain Mac users…not all of them…just the arrogant ones. Everyone knows the ones I’m talking about. They aren’t just Mac users…they have joined the Cult of Apple. They proselytize on behalf of a computer. (To paraphrase “Fake Steve“.) And…way too often…they treat non-Mac fanatics like they are idiots…people who simply aren’t bright enough to see that Apple is in all ways superior.
It can’t possibly be that some people actually prefer a PC. It can’t possibly be that Microsoft has ever done anything right. Can’t possibly be that there are valid reasons for a user to want a Windows system instead. And heaven forbid…don’t dare say that Windows might actually be better at something than a Mac…that’s heresy punishable by a flogging with iPod earbuds. No…the simple answer for Mac Cultists is that Windows users are just stupid. Give them a condescending pat on the head and send them away…maybe they will get a real computer someday.
And as for Apple…the company seems to want to foster that mindset. Their “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” commercials certainly lend themselves to this.
Now I have to say…not all Mac users are like this. I am referring to the Mac cultists. Those who are snobby about their computer choice. Those who treat non-Mac people with disdain. Those who can’t speak of a PC except with a condescending tone of voice. Perhaps they don’t realize that they are treating people this way. Perhaps they simply don’t realize what they sound like. It might do them good to read this essay by C.S. Lewis on how we should treat those around us. (It would do all of us good to read that article…I know I need to be reminded often…even as I write this post.) And honestly…when people act like that…they just aren’t a lot of fun to be around. I’m not an idiot…I just have a different computer preference.
If you want to win people over to using a Mac…you’d be more successful by being nice.
So…with all that said…do I want a Mac? Simply…no.
Mac Leopard Firewall Holes
Mac’s new Leopard operating system included an “upgraded” firewall. However, according to security researchers (Leopard Has More Holes Than Spots), it’s not exactly an upgrade. Matter of fact it had some serious issues. Such as shutting off by default (even if you had the firewall turned on before upgrading). Such as having fewer options than the previous version for what to allow or block. Such as the “block all” firewall option not actually blocking everything.
Apple has since released a flury of patches to fix many of the issues, but it begs the question…why on earth did they think it was a good idea to turn OFF the firewall by default? Again…going back to a statement I made in my iPhone vulnerabilities post…didn’t they learn anything from mistakes Microsoft made in the past and fixed years ago…going back to XPSP2?
Another note: the patches that Apple released on November 14-15. There were 41 (yes, forty-one) patches released on the 14th to fix issues in OS X and Safari. Another three patches on the 15th to address firewall issues. [Note: in the comments below, nak mentioned that these numbers may be incorrect. I got the numbers from the article linked to above. I honestly don’t know who is right…nak or the article.] Never heard any uproar about that. Now…if Microsoft released 43 patches over a period of two days to fix a single OS…I am positive that there would have been all kinds of bad press about the “demon software giant” that keeps releasing shoddy software and has to release 43 patches in two days to fix it. In particular, I am confident that Mac users would have been gloating about the “idiots” running Microsoft software.
However…Apple gets a pass. No uproar. Nothing. Heck…I didn’t even know that there had been that many patches until an hour ago. For certain my Mac friends weren’t about to say anything to me!
Anyway, thinking about all of this finally got me motivated to write a post I’ve been contemplating for a while now…Why I do not want a Mac. And my reasoning has absolutely nothing to do with the technology…
World’s Best Speed Bump
Just saw this and laughed hysterically. The special effects are pretty good. Having been frustrated at times with the people racing down my street endangering my kids, I have to admit that there is a certain part of me that wishes for more effective ways to slow them down… Hmmm…
Note: It’s in German…I have no idea what the guy is saying.
Google online storage? Gdrive anyone?
Just saw an article stating that Google is looking to enter the online file storage market. That could be very interesting. I’ve previously written about online data backup (here and here), and this could be another option for that depending on what it looks like when/if it is actually released. I’m very curious as to what the price point will look like with Gdrive or whatever they end up calling it. When my Gmail account currently has over 5GB of free space…I’m very intrigued about what this will look like.
You can read more about it in the Wall Street Journal article that I saw.
Bible Memory
Every night, my wife and I read a portion of the Bible to our daughters. Typically, Julie reads to our eight year old, and I read to our four year old. Marybeth and I are going through a Children’s Daily Devotional Bible that my wife found in a used book store. It is in the Contemporary English Version. It covers a year and has five reading sections per week. In each section you read a portion of the Bible, and at the bottom of the page it has a portion of a sentence (Bible verse) for the child to memorize. Over the course of five days, the child memorizes a verse. Two days a week are “review night”…going back over previous verses that she has memorized to solidify them. Over the course of the year, the kid memorizes 52 verses.
Marybeth just finished memorizing her 37th verse. Keep in mind…she is four years old. Last night was review night, so we were going back over previous verses. We walked backwards from the verse we had just finished (Luke 24:46) to the last one that she could remember last night (Psalm 103:1). She was tired and basically quit trying at that point. Anyway…she went back through 16 verses pretty much on her own. On several I had to give her the first word or two, but she nailed the rest.
Now as for me…in hindsight I should have been memorizing the verses along with her, but I didn’t. I’m starting now to memorize the verses with her. I have also posted a page on my blog that highlights the verse that we are currently working on. If you want to, you could memorize it along with us. I’ll update the Bible Memory Verse of the Week page at least weekly. I haven’t decided yet if it would be best to update it daily with the current portion, or weekly with the whole verse of the week. I also put the verses that she has already memorized on the page as well.
Funny Restaurant Name
I saw this restaurant this week. The name struck me as funny.
A place where you can dine to the sound of calypso music and the smell of death and sweat. Oh yeah…that’s appealing.
Amazing sports videos
I will continue to edit this post with more videos over time. [Most recent edit was: 11-21-2007.]
Over time I have seen a bunch of “did that really happen” sports videos. Below is a short list of some of the best that I have seen. Note: if any of these links go dead, please let me know, and I’ll hunt down an updated link. If you have other favorites that I haven’t listed, send me links and maybe I’ll list them.
October 2007. Trinity University (Division III) beating Millsaps College on the final play of the game. A total of fifteen laterals. Really wild finish. You can also read the story.
Plano East vs. John Tyler. 1994 high school football game in Texas. Plano East is losing 41-17 with 2:42 left in the game. But the game was far from over. Three onside kicks and a few touchdowns were to follow. Pay special attention to the announcers. They are hilarious. In particular listen for the phrase, “I done wet my britches.” :-) And be sure to watch all the way to the end of the video.
Travis Pastrana hitting a double backflip in XGames 12. Dude…are you crazy?
Ole Miss vs. Mississippi State. The Egg Bowl 1983. This play is known to Ole Miss fans as “The Immaculate Deflection“. The wind had been gusting a lot during the game. Last play of the game, State is attempting a field goal that was kicked dead center and plenty strong enough on a normal day. A big gust stopped the ball’s forward motion before it crossed the plane of the uprights. It actually blew backwards and fell into the endzone. Video is really grainy, but it is the only version of it that I have ever seen.
Tony Hawk landing The 900 at the X-Games on June 27, 1999.
The Immaculate Reception. December 1972. Pittsburgh Steelers. Franco Harris catching a deflected ball.
Jason McElwain hitting 6 three pointers in the last four minutes of a high school basketball game. Jason is autistic, and this was the only game he ever played in.
2007 Daytona 500. Clint Bowyer crossing the finish line sliding on his roof.
LSU fake field goal vs South Carolina, Sept 22, 2007. I include this one in the list at the risk of catching flack from my fellow Ole Miss alumni friends. Sorry guys…this is possibly the best execution of a fake that I’ve ever seen.
Diego Maradona in the 1986 World Cup. Argentina vs England. Note that this game occurred just a few years after the Falklands War. The Goal of the Century. Interesting quote from one of England’s players, “[it was] probably the one and only time in my whole career I felt like applauding the opposition scoring a goal.”
Pele. This is a compilation video of a bunch of Pele’s games. His footwork was simply amazing. It’s amazing how he made professional soccer players look like they weren’t even trying.
Peyton Manning Priceless Pep Talk Commercials
The first time I saw the Priceless Pep Talks from Peyton Manning Commercials I cracked up laughing. They are Peyton Manning giving a “pep talk” on some of the stuff that comes up in life. My favorites are the haircut and “I’ve got a gut” ones…although the “I can’t stop eating” is really good also. You can even personalize them and send to a friend.
Probably only your guy friends…unless you really don’t want the girl to call you back.
Seriously…she won’t.
Loved enough to fight for
Last Friday night Julie and I were out at an outdoor mall area in Orlando. On one of our stops I stayed in the car while Julie went into a store. I was people watching while she was inside. In particular I was noting a bunch of teenage kids who were all over the sidewalk. A bunch of them were being goofy and acting weird. A few were intentionally getting in people’s way…harassing them. At that point it occurred to me that Julie was going to have to walk through the middle of them to get back to the car. I had no sooner thought that, when I saw Julie coming my direction. I turned the key off and had my hand on the door handle watching to see what was going to happen…ready to jump out to her rescue if needed. Thankfully they ignored her as she walked by.
When she got in the car, I let her know what had been going on, and what I had been prepared to do. She told me that her whole life before meeting me she had always wanted the guys she dated to be willing to defend her…to fight for her if necessary. She didn’t want them to have to fight…she just wanted to know that they would. She wanted to know that she was valuable enough to be fought for.
Julie…you are very deeply loved. Yes, you are very valuable to me. Yes, I will defend you. Yes, I will fight for you if necessary. I’m glad it wasn’t necessary last week. But know this…your husband was and is ready to do battle for you.
Men’s Fraternity
My church has a men’s group that meets at 6am once a week. We are going through Men’s Fraternity material. We have a thousand men that show up every week. Today was our last meeting til January, so I took my camera. First pic is taken from up front. The guy standing to the right is our pastor. The second pic is of my table…Table 41. I forgot to take it before the meeting started, so one guy who has to leave early ever week isn’t in the shot. Maybe I’ll photoshop him in later.
As a group we have been growing and helping each other process the next steps that we need to take to be the men that God has called us to be.
A verse that some of us have been quoting to each other is 1 Corinthians 16:13-14: “Be watchful. Stand firm in the faith. Act like men. Be strong. Let all that you do be done in love.” This verse has a great combination of wariness of the temptation to sin around us, exhortations to be the man God has called us to be, along with the reminder that in the midst of being that man…it is to be done in the context of love. Watchfulness, firmness, manhood, strength…all noble goals…but not complete without a backdrop of love. We have come to refer to that verse as the “Maximus Verse”. Picture Maximus from the movie Gladiator quoting that verse…specifically when he is on the floor of the coliseum confronting Commodus…strength under control defined.
Counting to 100
Last night my four year old was counting her fingers and toes. She was skipping fifteen and nineteen and ending with twenty-four. She’s been skipping fifteen for months. So…I sat down with her and worked on teaching her to not skip fifteen. My goal was to get her to twenty…enough to get her fingers and toes.
I wrote out number 1-10 in a vertical column. Next to them I wrote 11-20 in another vertical column such that 1 was next to 11, 2 was next to 12, and so on. I got her to twenty that way. Then we kept going. I went into Excel and filled out a 1-10 in a column then used formulas to fill out a chart with 1-100 in ten columns. (i.e. cell B1 had “=10+A1”, cell C1 had “=10+B1”, etc.) Doing that I was able to get the columns nailed in about a minute and a half…short enough to not lose my four year old’s excitement.
Using that chart, my four year old counted all the way to 100. Very cool. And she was really really excited. Jumping up and down, cheering, dancing. So much so that I had to take a picture.
School Event – Why bother?
Tonight I went to an event at my daughter’s school. I can’t say it was the highlight of my week, but it was pretty funny. They had a local guy named Mr. Richard there. Mr. Richard is pretty popular around Orlando. He reads to kids, plays guitar, sings. He is pretty amusing. It was really amazing to see the kids and parents responding to him. My wife refers to them as “Mr. Richard groupies.” He has several videos on YouTube. That will give you an idea of what he is like. Honestly…the kids love him.
Well…sitting a few rows in front of us was the dad of one of the other kids. He was sitting next to his wife and had brought his portable DVD player to watch what appeared to be a stand up comic. Why did he even bother coming?
Locked Antlers
I was having a hunting conversation with a co-worker and was showing him the pictures below. My dad found these when I was about three years old. These two very mature bucks had been fighting and got their antlers locked together, and because they couldn’t get their antlers separated, they ended up dying or killing each other. They were found on private property in Mississippi back in November 1974. Somewhere out there is a picture of a very small verbal processor sitting in the center of the antlers.
Just a note: the antlers were locked together hard. Before they were mounted, my dad and someone else tried unsuccessfully to pull them apart. Another note is that both of these deer were large enough to make the Boone and Crockett record book. Clicking on either picture will take you to the higher res version on my Flickr site.
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The Realm of the Verbal Processor 