Dan Deacon

I’ll never forget the first time I found out about Dan Deacon.   It was a late night scrounging the internet for funny videos, memes and whatnot, and I happened upon Dan’s performance of  “Ohio” on a local news station.  The song was unconventional, the movements were bizarre, the fly was open, and I could only imagine the expressions of all the business men sitting at their early morning breakfast table, sipping their coffee, and watching the whole scene unfold in glorious disbelief.  In a sense, the entire scene was a triumph for weirdness.   See for yourself:

So, after seeing Dan in concert last night, I had to ask myself, “When was the last time I sang ‘When the Saints Go Marching In’ with a group of people at the top of my lungs, ran through a massive human tunnel, or even actually had a good time at a concert?”   I grew sick of going to shows a few years ago after coming to the quick realization that, no, I didn’t really care to pay $10 for mediocrity.  Or, I didn’t really care to pay $50 for a “big name act” and still be stuck in the nosebleed section.  Money is tight, so I figure it had better be well-spent.  Also, I’m getting older, and the days of going out for the sake of going are just coming to an end.

To be brief, last night gave me hope that, even amidst my pessimism, there is such a thing as a good concert.  It was memorable, it was fun (even my wife liked Dan), and it was well worth the $10 apeice, even after having to get out of the crowd due to my being punched in the head by dancing/flailing indie-types.

Removing the new Microsoft “Office Genuine Advantage”

I know it’s been a while, but I finally have something worth blogging about:  Fact!

My computer recently downloaded a Microsoft Windows Update called Microsoft Genuine Advantage.  Even though I have a perfectly legitimate copy of Office, the advantage software did not like it.  Well, I did not like the software telling me what to do, so I took matters into my own hands, hitting the blogs hard to find the answer.

Turns out there are many answers out there, so here’s the short of what I did.  You’ll need some medium to semi-advanced computer skills to achieve the win, I think.

This website has a pretty nice walkthough, listed here:

“Step-by-Step Guide to Solve
====================
PART 1 – Uninstall the related update (KB949810)
1. open Command prompt: Start > Run > type “cmd” (without quotes) > press “Enter”
2. paste/ type following command, then press “Enter”:
msiexec.exe /uninstall {B148AB4B-C8FA-474B-B981-F2943C5B5BCD}
* note: a “Microsoft Installer” will popup to uninstall “OGA Notifier” automatically. No user interaction needed.

PART 2 – Kill the Tray Icon
1. open Task Manager (either press Ctrl-Shift-Esc / right click on task bar, select Task Manager)
2. kill “WGATray.exe”
3. go to your Windows system32 folder (default is C:\WINDOWS\system32\)
4. from the menu of the file manager, select Tools > Folder options…
5. select “show hidden files and folders” and uncheck “hide protected system files”
6. locate WGATray.exe and WGALogon.dll
7. rename them to WGATray.old and WGALogon.old
8. open Command Prompt again.
9. type/ paste the following command, then press “Enter”:
regsvr32 %Windir%\system32\LegitCheckControl.dll /u
10. Restart computer

Part 3 – Cleaning up (Optional)
1. delete WGATray.exe, WGALogon.dll and LegitCheckControl.dll from your Windows system32 folder
2. delete registry using Registry Editor (regedit)
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\Notify\WgaLogon
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\Notify\WgaLogon
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\removeremove\WgaNotify

After doing the above, you are free from OGA’s annoying message. Yet, you have to manually disable the patch from Automatic Update.”

Now, the problem I ran into was with part one, which was answered in a comment at the bottom of the blog:

“The code {B148AB4B-C8FA-474B-B981-F2943C5B5BCD} is specific to the US-English installation.

For instance Swedish {DB427EF6-F13E-4AA6-9D40-5D962394774F}, and UK-English {B2544A03-10D0-4E5E-BA69-0362FFC20D18}.

To find out what data ID your OGA Notifier uses for your locale you have to:
1. Run: Regedit
2. Navigate to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurentVersion\Uninstall
3. Here you will find several folders with a similar data ID name. Go into each and every one of them and look for the REG_SZ name: [DisplayName]. This should show something like “Office Genuine Advatage…” or “OGA”.
4. Once you find it perform the same steps as described but replace the data ID with your ID. in “PART I”"

Also, another problem was with deleting WGALogon.dll  – I found some AMAZING free software here:  http://ccollomb.free.fr/unlocker/

This freeware allows you to basically kill the processes that windows is running that are locking up the file, in effect “unlocking” the file that you need to dispose of.  Wish I had access to this program a few years ago.

Anyway, I did a bit more noodling around in Regedit and cleaned out some more WGA stuff, and after a quick restart, it was gone.  The first restart blue screened my compy out, which worried me, but a second, hard restart yielded satisfactory results.

*NOTE* – If your copy of Office is pirated, I don’t support using this process on it, of course.

Hope this helps.

Blog Away

I am starting to believe that much, if not most of the time, blogging is nothing more than a crying out for attention.  Also, sometimes it would appear as if the blog owner’s opinion is greater than all others.  This extends to blog comments.  The creator of content, whether main article or mere comment, wants to be right, to end up the one on top at the end of the day, although many opinion posts are not carefully considered.  Most end up being empty words about unstudied subjects grossly protruding from a haughty mind.  Unless, of course they are trivial, which is fine.  It has its place, but can only be trivial.

Working around and seeing tragedy (trauma, burn ward, ER) has taught me a few things.

Life is hard, death is harder, and the in-between should not be filled with waste.

Our time is short.  Our days are numbered.

I had to ask myself, “What have I been doing with my time?”

The answer:  I guess that’s for me to know.

So what are you doing with your time?  (I don’t want to know)

Tick, tock, tick, tock……………

Uninformed Review: Tropic Thunder

Redbox!!!1!!  Where else can you rent a new release movie for a dollar?  Where else can you wait outside in the cold for the family in front of you to search through and rent a movie for every member of their 15 person family?  Where else can you wait around until 9:00 pm and watch men, women, young, and old get increasingly frustrated when the guy standing at the machine is hindering them from returning their movie on time (NOT ANOTHER DOLLAR, OH NO!)?  Where else can you briefly scroll through the movies and then be rushed into a decision by a suspicious-looking person behind you, who is sporting an unhappy face and may or may not have a gun?

Upon traveling to one of these kiosks with my wife and bro-in-law recently, we found that we couldn’t agree on anything to rent.  We wanted to stay away from the obscene rated R comedies (can’t stand pointless swearing for the sake of swearing), yet my wife didn’t want to watch anything action-oriented or heavy-handed.  We had seen most of the other movies, so due to being rushed and cold, the resulting movie wasin fact a rated R comedy.  TROPIC THUNDER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

First, let me give a few examples of what comes to mind when I think about the word “hilarious“.

Exhibit A: The french guy in the happy cake episode of Sealab 2021.
Exhibit B: Chewy sings Christmas carols.
Exhibit C: The fake cable PSA

These things make me laugh pretty hard.  Now, here’s a list of things that didn’t make me laugh pretty hard:

Exhibit A: Tropic Thunder

And that’s it.  The biggest problem that I had with this comedy movie is that it wasn’t really funny.  Now, that’s probably subjective.  In fact, I know it is.  Not everyone is going to laugh until they cry at an obviously fake French accent vividly describing a cartoon voyage to recover a happycake oven from the clenches of a giant squid.  I sure did though.

OK, let’s see…there were a couple of funny moments I think.  Robert Downey Jr. played a pretty good black man, but it wears thin pretty soon.  The part where the director blows up is alright for a “OhMyWHAT!??” laugh, until the subsequent scene with Stiller toying with the dismembered head.  Gross ≠ funny here.

On the really bad side of things, I still think that Jack Black is severely overrated.  And so is Ben Stiller.  They seem to be a part of this “quotable comedy” genre that seems to place situations around memorable one-liners so that the audience can impress their friends with stupid movie quotes for a few weeks.  I don’t buy it though…it’s not that funny when you’re watching it.  Tom Cruise’s character is there solely for name status too.  OH, BUT DID YOU SEE THE PART AT THE END WHERE HE DANCES TO GANGSTER RAP???  Yes.  I punched myself in the face for watching something so stupid.

When it comes to the audience, I feel like that’s the one part of the equation that wasn’t really considered during the creation of the film.  The movie’s target seems to be Hollywood itself.  It’s like going to see a stand-up comedian who tells jokes that only he gets about the inside world of comedy and then watching him crack himself up.  What’s the point? 

Finally: How in the whole wide world did this get rated 83% on Rotten Tomatoes?  I would venture to guess that it’s because many movie critics are so close to Hollywood that they are absorbed by it, and because of that, most of the send ups resonated a bit better with them.  This annoys me though, because it’s a false positive.  This movie really isn’t that funny to the general public, unless your idea of a “hilarious” comedy is a slight chuckle now and again.

Oh, and did I mention that it’s about 2 hours long?  *facepalm*

Mark Gormley Interview!

In this interview, Mark Gormley of “The Uncharted Zone” internet fame comments on his recent success and invitations to play on television shows such as Jimmy Kimmel live.  Oh, and the fact that he is looking for a woman.

 

One of the most impressive personal libraries ever

I found an interesting article on Wired.com today entitled “Browse the Artifacts of Geek History In Jay Walker’s Library“.

Simply fascinating!  I would love to have a personal library like this, yet at the same time I don’t want to be that vain.  Hmmmm.

Could 2009 be the year of Linux?

via

ZDNet released a news article yesterday boldly proclaiming “Torvolds abandons KDE for Gnome.”  In true journalistic fashion though, it appears to be a much bigger news story than it actually is.  The gist of the article is that Torvolds switches to whatever works best at the time.  Hey, makes sense to me!  The real story, however, is the last line of the bit: “He does, however, refrain from proclaiming 2009 as the year of Linux… “  So are some fanboys hoping that 2009 will be the year that Linux explodes from its terminal, sudo-chopping Microsoft in its weakened state (post-Vista) and taking a bite out of Apple? *zing zing!*

Now, I’m what I would consider to be an average….probably above-average computer user, and I honestly gave Linux Ubuntu (Gutsy release) a shot a while back on my Dell laptop (Inspiron 1501).  The only thing that I really didn’t like about it was the lack of support for developer drivers (since they are obviously proprietary to the manufacturers).  This turned out to be a huge problem, since my broadcom wireless card never actually worked like it should have while using the third party drivers, and I never resolved the problem with my ATI video card not having any drivers to work off of at all.  That meant no compiz, which was a minus.  When I read in this article that whoever wrote this thinks that 2009 could quite possibly be “the year of Linux,” the thought of those driver problems came immediately to mind.  Until first party software code for video card drivers, wireless card drivers, etc. becomes open source, it would seem to me that Linux would always be at a disadvantage, at least for the computer users in the mainstream.  (The OS itself, though, has made leaps and bounds even since I first went to college in 2003.  Ubuntu looks verrry niiiiiiice!)  Thus, the hold point is still between big business and open source, which is square-one of the origin of Linux.

Also, I know what you’re possibly thinking:  ”Well, Daniel, if you hadn’t gotten a stupid tool’s computer like a Dell you wouldn’t have had many, if any problems at all with the drivers!!!”  True, but there are many, many others like me who buy from high-volume merchants because it’s cheaper (perceived, but debatable) and much less hassle (debatable).  For that matter, my computer was even refurbished!  That’s the average computer user for you, and that’s who would need to be pursuaded if Linux were to gain any serious credibility outside of computer science labs and server rooms.

*UPDATE - 12:35* As you can see in the comments below, Dell is offering computers with Linux pre-installed.  Sheesh, I’m behind the times.  Seems like they support DVD playback, ATI, maybe even Broadcom?  Looks like the playing field has changed since I last used Ubuntu.  But, is this Linux’s time to shine?  Guess we’ll have to wait and see!  I’m kind of excited though….if all of these problems that I ran into are truly remedied, I can see how Linux has a bright future ahead of it.

Epic Video – Mark Gormley sings Little Wings

This video is made of win.  Or at least wing.

Still here

It’s been a crazy past few months, but doesn’t everyone say that at some time or another?  Quite a few changes are in order, and some upcoming new responsibilities as well I hope.  Katie and I are still helping out with the worship at Journey Church here in Nashville, and things are going very well!  We have a new sound system that we’ve been working with, and it has enhanced the worship service to a great extent already.  I am so thankful for the opportunity to serve, and I couldn’t ask for a better group of people to serve with.  Mike asked me to do a Bible study for the month of February during our Wednesday night life group meeting, so I’m excited about that!  The theme is going to be Change in the Christian Life.  If you want to attend, that would be great with me!  Lemme know if you’re interested.

Otherwise, Katie and I have been trying to keep warm during these cold months and trying to keep the electric bill down too.  (December’s bill was $185, January’s was $153, so we’re making some progress).  Since we’re having to tighten our budget due to the high price of heat, we’ve been investigating good free forms of entertainment.  One of the best deals that we’ve found is that Redbox has a “free movie monday” program going on.  If you use a code (easily found on the internet) that they release every monday, you can get a free rental for that night and that night only.  So, we get to watch a new release every monday now, and sometimes two if we have enough time, all for the price of $0.  You can’t beat it, folks.  If you want to keep it another day, it’s only $1.  Oh yeah.

And speaking of terrifying puppet videos with catchy songs, check this one out:

Youtube Thursday: It’s Ridge Racer!