Vista Ultimate Complete PC Backup not working for you?

We got a new laptop at work that we need to develop for. Its a fun new Vista with a tablet touch screen. Now i fancy new tech as much as the next geek, but tablet PCs and the handwriting recognition software is wacky cool. Along with the pen and tablet stuff its the next best thing to Surface or those other crazy touch screen comps.

But anyways, back to the story. We needed to do a complete backup of the PC before going balls deep on it so we can save a good image in case we fuck it up. Common sense here for anyone in IT.

Well this Vista system got wacky by NOT letting you do a complete PC backup. Sure you can do shadow backups with partial files, but i needed the whole image saved... but Vista was having none of that.

Perusing the vista forums for the last 30 minutes got me NOTHING. Mostly responses from support asking about FAT32 partitions... because FAT32 doesnt work with Vista. While i know some OS's still use FAT32 and some people still use those OS's... but if yer still using those OS's theres a good chance you know that XP and Vista arent using FAT32 and telling us otherwise is trivial.

So after scouring and scouring i finally came across a forum post that had the correct answer. And considering it was brutal to find it, i thought id prolly just start posting such random computer answers like this here for anyone that needs it.

The answer? Using Intel's Turbo Memory Console: disable ReadyBoost and ReadyDrive. Thats it. Thats whats stopping the total PC backup. This is what kept me from saving 30 gigs of vista fattiness onto a stupid backup drive. Oh and heres a kicker, you cant just uncheck both boxes, if you uncheck one it immediatly tries to restart. Weak eh? I had to actually uncheck one, agree and then quickly uncheck the other one and agree before vista closed. Reminiscent of XP registries but at least there they gave you the option to reboot later.

Legend has passed

Its been a while since ive updated, been busy playing WoW (yes... im addicted... but not enough to lose my wife :P)
Just read this morning that legendary crooner Robert "The 'Stache" Goulet has passed. Stay fresh young man... stay fresh.

Nutty Goulet

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Day 119: Just plain tired...

After a horrible weekend of sadness and over adbundance... this is all i have to make me smile. Enjoy Losers

Let me tell you of the Town Tavern...

So in NYC and Doug take us to this place called the Town Tavern. Its a bar in Washington Square. If you are in NY and need to go to a Gator game, this is the place to be.

This nice lil 2 story bar offers a special for the Gator games and I think its recognized by the Gator Club. This place rules.
For $20, you get UNLIMITED domestic drafts, UNLIMITED wings, and UNLIMITED fries. And if you wear gator gear, you get a ticket for 1 free drink.
EDIT: and Doug reminded me, after every score the Gators get, the WHOLE BAR GETS JAGERBOMB SHOTS.
Not only this, but the crowd there is great. The food starts coming out on platters at kick off and gets placed on random tables. No one gets their own thing, everyone pretty much just walks over and grabs what they want.
The waitresses there are great too, very friendly and quick. Plus, they walk around in referee costumes. You know how women's costumes are, its an everyday outfit plus the word "sexy" in front of it. So our waitresses were "sexy" referees.

There's one more thing that will make your Town Tavern experience even better: bring a good baby wearing gator gear. Audrey was the hit of the pub and was handing out high 5's to everyone there.

Thank you Town Tavern, not only did we have a great time, but we became so overly drunk that we stood up our friends later in the night.
w00t.

AFK: NY

Going to Manhattan this weekend to hang with Doug and the gang up north as well as spread the Gator love in the city that never sleeps.
If you need me, call me.
Otherwise get bent.








Also, cocks.

Day 98: Pink Sock

Read Guts by Chuck Palahniuk.
Look up Pink Sock on urbandictionary.com.

Discuss.

TF2 Part 3: Revenge of the Beta

So I got my hands on the Beta when I got home from work (FINALLY). I will say this... Valve has a winner on its hands.
This game is just tons of fun. I've only tried a couple of classes, and while they are similar to the old TFC and TF, there are definate changes made and many hardcore TFC and TF players are gonna be disappointed. But if they just want a port of TFC, they can always download Fortress Forever which is just as fun, sans a few bugs, as the original. FF is a port to Source and a good one.
But back to the topic at hand, monkey paws and vanilla wafers in a succulent... mmm, I'll save that for later.

This game has a great feel and style to it with the... well I'd like to call it cel-shaded graphics. The art designer on this game should be fucking ear to ear with this one because its spot on. It breathes atmospehere as much as Bioshock did. Every character just looks and feels right. The taunts are not bad, and the voice acting and kill cam shots are priceless.
Being a beta, it does have its share of bugs. I've had to restart Steam or TF2 2-3 times now from crashes, but thats expected.
And some of the bigger characters like the Soldier or Heavy do seem to run like they belong in a Halo multiplayer game but that gets alleviated when you have a good engineer placing teleports at spawn for ya.
My main class was the medic, supporting all the characters for the capture the intelligence (CTF variant but the same idea). Theres just something so fun of keeping a Heavy alive, running behind him while he mows down the opposition. Its just... groovy.
And while I suck at the spy... there are already really good people doing it up good and getting me perturbed multiple times. If I could count the number of times you heard on my mic "Fucking spys...", heh, it would totally be like 3.

Get this game. Its bad ass and the first thing to actually look promising enough to pull me away from CSS for once... at least till UT3 comes out...

TF2 Part 2: The Wrath of the InterWeb

From seeing some posts on other sites including the steampowered forums (after all this rick-diculousness, they are finally not being bombarded) and others, there are some people out there curious about the woes and pains a lot of us gamers feel from this Sept 17th event.

"Stop crying, its a beta, its a privelage"
"BETA get used to it"
"My daddy touches me in naughty places"

Look, I can understand the idea behind the BETA. I realize its an extra gift for doing the pre-purchase. I see it as the the icing on the cake. What I dont final amusing is that some people made the decision to buy the Orange Box early because of touted features like "Beta on Sept 17th". My money could easily be used elsewhere until the game officially came out, but I chose to go the way of Valve and pre-order so I could have my taste of the game early.
Then after screaming from the mountains "Dont plan your vacation, TF2 BETA ON MONDAY SEPT 17 OMGWTFBBQSAUCE" and ads and posts saying, "YOU, YES YOU DINGLEBERRRY! YOU GET TO PLAY TF2 ON MONDAY BECAUSE YOU GAVE THEM YOUR MONEY", you kinda expect something... Maybe its not the same as buying a chick a drink and expecting a little toss the salad but you expect something.

Now im not gonna go as far as staying home just to play it, but i can understand what those people who did it feel like.
I come home and nothing... i wait a few hours and nothing. I go to sleep and nothing.

All valve had to do, and nothing more, was post updates. Tell the customers what is going on. Let them know that they are having issues and wont make their promises. And NOT just mention these things in IRC chatrooms and forums that obviously did not live up to their usage.
Send a message to major blogging and tech and forums sites. LET PEOPLE KNOW WHY THEY ARENT PLAYING. Thats all we ask. Sure we'll be a little miffed, but at least we can go "Hey, i guess i can just go outside and do things that require physical exertion and social prowess"

PPS DESTRUCTOID.COM is the bomb shizzie. Go there and learn and absorb gaming goodness. And make sure to marry their daughter at http://marryourdaughter.net/

Team Fortress 2 WTF??

So you tout this selling point of a product, buy the Orange Box and get into the TF2 beta on Monday, Sept 17th!!!!!
So what should i expect after i pre-order and download said product? i should expect to play a fucking beta on Monday Sept 17th. Instead i am going to sleep and annoyed with Valve.
As a gamer, especially a PC gamer, we are used to delays in games and betas to said games. But, we are also used to INFORMATION. Seriously, if you cant finish the game for the beta, TELL YOUR CONSUMER BASE WHO BOUGHT THE GAME WITH THE INTENT ON JOINING THE BETA ON MONDAY SEPT17!!!
Even a fucking letter to one of the gaming blogs like Kotaku or Destructoid because obviously there is enough issues that the steam forums are bogged down like a hooker at taco bell.
I have no issue with these people if they can admit their faults. "Sorry, we fucked up, we cant give you the beta today, we'll give it to you ASAP" or "Buy the Orange Box and Get into the TF2 Beta... when we get it working".
Dont fucking come out balls deep saying "YOU BUY THIS BOX, YOU PLAY THIS GAME ON SEPT 17!!!"
Guess what Valve? theres 44 minutes left of Sept 17th.
Great fucking work.

GATOR GAME

this saturday, brus room. gator game. be there.

Bioshock for the PC

Ok, this game is amazing. Believe the hype and believe the reviews. The story, crazily good. The setting is perfect. The graphics are top notch. The action is top notch. The choices are difficult. The next best thing to Half Life 2.

Now that I got that out of the way... people need to stop the self-serving bitching and whining about the whole launch debacle.
Yes, its a new game, yes its going to have issues.

For those that can't install it properly or getting crashes, much like every PC release, wait for a patch to come out.

For those who cry about the widescreen, oh noes, you are missing an extra inch of monitor space. YOU HAVE A FUCKING WIDESCREEN. YOU HAVE MORE MONITOR SPACE. The game isnt stretched out to fit widescreen, ITS MADE FOR WIDESCREEN.

For those who complain about the install/uninstall problem. Why do people keep saying they have been lied too? 2k stated you can have 2 installations at any one time. You install once, you lose an installation, you uninstall it, you gain it back. "It didnt work at launch" you say? It worked for some people but only those who didnt get it to work are the vocal ones. Its a bug, it will get fixed. Now they've raised it to 5 installs and people are still bitching.

For those who complain about Securom. It may be a shitty way of handling piracy, but its not intrusive and its not part of some conspiracy to take over your computer and steal your information. "OMG IT INSTALLS HIDDEN FILES AND WRITES REGISTRY KEYS" yea no shit, its fucking Windows, what doesnt fucking install registry keys? Why dont you turn on hidden files and folders and see how much other hidden shit is on your computer. "ROOTKIT ROOTKIT ROOTKIT" until someone shows INDISCERNABLE EVIDENCE that the files that secruom copied onto your computer are taking information of you and your computer and running hidden processes to take control of your kernal, then dont fucking complain.

I got the game on Steam. I walked into my house at 5:30pm EST on August 21st and unlocked my game. I went to dinner and came back and played Bioshock and have been for the last week with no problems. With no crashes. With no complaining.

Chill out. PC gamers should be accustomed to knowing patches come out for games.

Day 67: Success!!

I finally got off my ass and lapped my heatsink and cpu. It was pretty daunting considering how top heavy a Tuniq Tower 120 is. However i was pretty nervous and probably sweating while i was lapping the cpu. But it seems to be worth something. After the laps and resetting of the heatsink, i knocked off around 7 degrees Celsius off my temps. And thats before the breakin period. Im pretty happy with the result even though i spilt a little blood in the process.
So for you computer savvy people out there, dont be afraid to try some lapping. You will be amazed how uneven the surface of that IHS and heatsink are.
I would have taken pictures but im pretty impatient and wanted to see the fruits of my labour ASAP. If i ever re-seat the heatsink ill post some.

Sick

Been sick for a bit. my fever broke yesterday afternoon but still the sinuses are fucking horrible. I dont think i could sees straight out of my left eye yesterday. Sinus medicine + advil = not bad.

and if the Gallers are reading, congrats on the new kid. Id call and stuff but im busy shoving a nail into my forehead to relieve the pain.

LOLCAT EMUTATE LIFEZ

nuff said.

Best Futurama Project, EVAH!

So while surfing the ole Digg.com, I ran across this tasty nugget : http://www.asciimation.co.nz/bender/
This guy has been building a life-size Bender with working gizmos and hoo-ha's that make funny sounds and twinkly lights and funny sensations in the naughty bits. Not only that, but it brews beers too. Simon Jansen, truly you are the king of kings.
Im not gonna try posting any of his pics here so hit the title or any of the other jumps to see his progress.

Day 55: Commemoration

Well after a weekend of angst and letdowns, Ive moved forward and look toward my 3 year marriage anniversary tonight. No stress, no problems, no nothing. Just peace and quiet with the wife.

By the way... Gator football is coming... we will be at Bru's room for the games so make sure to meet up with us.

UPDATE

They called at 5pm today and told Nicole that the windows WERENT EVEN IN YET.
When I scheduled the Aug 3rd date, I was told they wouldnt schedule an install date unless they had the invoice for the materials in their hands. They didnt have them when I called back in April. They called back and said they had them and they can schedule a date. NOW they tell me they never came in?????????
What is going on here?
If you tell me that you wont schedule a date UNLESS you have the invoice in your hand that says THE MATERIALS ARE IN, then WHY would you schedule a date that FORCES us to take time off... not only that, they WAITED UNTIL 5PM ON A FRIDAY to let us know. (They dont work weekends).

Day 51: Fucking pissed off

If anyone can give me any idea on how I can go about making MARATHON CONSTRUCTION IN BOCA RATON finish my job correctly and on time please enlighten me. Here is my situation so far:


JUNE 2006: we ordered hurricane shutters and impact windows and a slider from MARATHON CONSTRUCTION IN BOCA RATON for around $12k. Since shutters were highly in demand from the busy season the year before they wanted $5k down payment. We were given a timeframe of 10-40 weeks. Take a day off so they can come in and measure the windows and such for ordering the shutters and windows.
10-40 weeks passed and we were still on backorder.

DECEMBER 2006: we get a call for shutter installation. I take another day off for installation. Sure enough they show up. With installation, we have to pay $3k for intial installation, before they do anything. Guess what? they measured 1 shutter wrong and ordered another one with the length and width reversed. Since they dont know what they should do they just leave until the next day. Now my wife has to take a day off for them to come again and figre something out. They install one shutter and then decide its best not to install more since we are also going to replace a slider and some windows. So they leave the extra shutters in my patio.
We are told we should see something in a month, late January.
MONTHS go by and calls back and forth and still nothing.

JUNE 2007: Finally get a date back from them saying the windows are in and they can schedule an install on August 3rd. WE ARE FUCKING ECSTATIC.

AUGUST 2nd 2007: Get a call from MARATHON CONSTRUCTION OF BOCA RATON at 6:30pm, they say that the current job they are working on is going to rollover to our install date. So they tell my wife that they will be there in the afternoon. My wife takes another day off to meet them.

AUGUST 3rd 2007: Wife calls and now we get a different story. Going through the secretary or whoever we find out the guy who installs windows DIDNT WORK THAT DAY. So either they knew he wasnt going to be there or this is a surprise to them. Either way they say because of that they probably wont get to the install today. WTF. When the secretary questioned him on this he said he talked to our daughter about it (you mean my wife). So now they are just dropping off the materials for a Monday install. So now I have to take ANOTHER DAY OFF. And this is before we even get more shutters and have them installed.
So all in all, combined my wife and I have lost a week of work. MARATON CONSTRUCTION OF BOCA RATON has 2/3 of the money we owe them for the work. I have 1 shutter on my house. And I've waited 57 weeks for shutters and windows that were supposed to be done 10-40 weeks after signing the contract. If anyone has any ideas on how to get things accomplished please let me know or let MARATHON CONSTRUCTION OF BOCA RATON know.

Day 47: Comedic Relief

If you are like me, you wished you liked the Simpsons TV show a lot more than you used too. I jumped the bandwagon and left for Family Guy a while ago after the show started heading towards irreverance. Now, not to be totally hypocritical, Family Guy definately is a show with ADD when it comes to plot and overall continuity, but looking at it through the years, its always been like that... plus what more can you expect from a show written by manatees in a think tank?
So as Homer started hurting himself more and more and Family Guy and South Park stayed witty and nostalgic, I left my once loved Simpsons. And so far I haven't missed them... until now.

With much anticipation and high expectations, me and the wives saw the Simpsons movie on Saturday. I have to say, it was nice to see them back in good form.
Overall it was just a good, funny movie. It has a few weak jokes here and there, but the spirit and fun was reminicesnt of the old days. I was satisfied with the outing and hope that the TV series will take something away from this experience.

if i had to some up the movie in 2 words? SPIDER PIG
Go see this movie.

Quad Core FTW

Fuck yea quad core





Yea even though i have 32bit XP, i still got 4gigs of mem

Crazy ass eVGA board. lots of lil fun bits, almost comparable to DFI' s Lanparty series

My huge fucking Tuniq Tower 120. Biggest thing EVER

Comparing the Tuniq to my old PSU.

The Tuniq on the mobo, tell me thats not ass-mastering. Go ahead, tell me.

Compared to the ole DFI with the SLK.

Installed and ready to go.

Vacation Pics

Just a few things of what we saw over on the West side...


Sea otters like to clean them whiskers

This is what you fall into if you veer off of the PCH

Elephant seals and harbor seals at peace

Nic on the set of ER

Me petting sharks

Sea lions doing what they do best... in 59 degree wheather

Even on the smelly, cold island of Alcatraz, flowers still bloom

San Fran from Alcatraz.... I fucking hate walking up inclines

Me vs Alcatraz

Inside the Rock



Wine country

Day 28: Celebration

Thank god Gears of War is coming to the PC. I have found a new reason NOT to spend another $400 on a gaming system... but the PS3 does look tempting...

Day 23: Perplexity

So after much hoopla, it turns out my PSU died during the storms while we were in Cali. You would think that a computer plugged into a surge protector, plugged into a UPS unit would be ok... not in the least bit so. Apparently those $100 plus items are merely just large paperweights... Meanwhile the ugly and misshapen win2k3 server thats plugged directly into the wall with a PSU thats close to 5 years old merely just shut off and has been running like a champ since. Oh the irony of it all.

Day 19: The Return

back from vacation... to tired and crappy to add more... but more will be added. The biggest news? i think my motherboard is fried... yay for crappy APCs!!!!

Hello from San Francisco

Its been a wild week thus far... Lotsa babies and beer and Jager shots in NC for hive (pictures pending) and then a shitty plane ride we almost missed to San Fran. Yesterday was a LONG day drinking tons of wine of the Napa Valley. Today: Alcatraz. more to come

Day 8: VACATION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sweet... last day of work for 10 long days. Ill see some of you out in NC and over on the west side. I can't WAIT for wine time in Napa and seafood in SF. And of course guitar hero at pumpkin's... the Source mod is on hold since after me and Jones couldn't get shit working the other night, it looks like im gonna have to go in and make my own models for the mod after all. AND the stupid server plugin source code aint working either... so much for expectations... Boobies...

for those that care

i am on the fast track to creating the new robogibs mod for our server... testing begins tonight and i have nothing but high expectations of this. if it works well, porting it to a server plugin will be trivial. all that leaves is packaging of said plugin and releasing it to the world.

Day 6: Speechless

going over to digg today, i saw this little tidbit about countries that HAVEN'T adopted the metric system yet... wow... and I thought I was being open-minded on the fact. Yet here we are... on the outside looking out some more. But then again, how ironic is it that I live in one of those countries, but herald from another (goddammit Burma!)

Day 5: Anticipation

only 4 more days till sweet sweet vacation time. Heading to North Carolina this weekend for Hive, then its off to California and wine country along with a long drive down PCH to LA to meet up with Ariel and Pumpkin... tough times ahead it seems

Day 3: Regret

ugh... don't ever forget to drink at least SOMETHING non alcoholic when drinking 2 bottles of wine. It definiately bites you in the ass the next morning at 4am. The headaches begin... the mouth dryness begins... and the zombie nightmares begin... plus, Abbie is a fat, hot cat that has no business taking up space on my bed

HL2 Episode 2 gets a date!!!

about fucking time!

Day 2: Common sense

There seems to be a trend lately about blaming media and such for the miscreant acts of kids and those that commit heinous deeds. So and so killed 32 people in VT, there must be some connection to the video games he played or the movies he watched. This kid killed his friend because the songs he listens to told him it was ok. Jack Thompson even tried to thwart Microsoft's attempt at terrorism by trying to stop the release of Flight Simulator X since its a realistic flight trainer that a terrorist or misguided youth can use to fly planes into buildings. WTF is wrong with people? What happened to personal responsibility for their actions? What happened to kids being taught right from wrong by their PARENTS?
I've played video games since i could prolly walk (thanks to my brother and my parents for buying him his first commodore). I've watched hundreds of violent movies and just plain wrong cartoons (i'm sure some of you remember those Tom and Jerry cartoons and the "Big black mama" character running about), and you know what? Amazingly i have never killed a single person. I dont plan on shooting my co-workers for being disgruntled with my job. I wonder why this is? Oh wait i do know... BECAUSE I WAS RAISED BY MY PARENTS TO BE A GOOD PERSON. Sure im an asshole in general, but only to a point. Sure i want to shoot everyone on the fucking roads for being shitty drivers, BUT I DONT. Why? because i freaking know better. So when i get to read these great stories about Jack Thompson suing every violent video game out there or articles on parents taking their fucking 4 year old children to freaking Hostel 2 or see another goddamn idiot parent walk into Gamestop and buy their 8 year old GTA San Andreas, i get perturbed... Raise your kids right and let them take responsibility for their actions. If some kid shoots up a school, maybe it wasn't the video games or the hippity hop, maybe their parents did try to raise them right... maybe they were just fucking psycho so let them deal with the consequences.

Day 1: Conception

just like many of the fads out there, i have once again caved in and joined another. more to come...