What is acceptable and what is not? Does a facebook status differ from a twitter tweet?

I starting thinking about this when I thought of a humorous little comment, that I was going to post as a facebook status. When I then thought “wow, I have coworkers on here. While they may be friends also, is this something I wanted them to see me doing while within the 8-5 time range?”

Yes, I had this humorous comment come to me during work time; and yes, one of the first ideas that came into my head was to share it with people I know. That would be either tell it to them, email it to them, or post it to facebook.

The first idea would not work, because I am at work, and some humerous comments are not acceptable. The second idea, while working, would have been hard to fully convey. The third would work, because people do not mind having only part of the joke and filling in the rest.

However, I am at work. Some of the people I work with are on facebook, and are my friends. So, in a way, options 1 and 3 start blurring together. Then I thought, “what if I had a twitter account, would that be different?”

That has led me to wondering, is there a difference between facebook status updates and twitter tweets? If so, what is the rationale for such a difference? While everyone who is your friend sees your status updates, unless they have chosen to hide you, people who have chosen to follow you on twitter see all of your tweets. So, where is the difference, at least in what is, or is not, acceptable?

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Changing the water pump on a 1995 Jeep Cherokee

If you don’t know much about replacing the water pump on a Jeep, don’t worry, most people don’t. But it goes something like this:

Windows Server 2008 Standard – Workstationed

Well, with how well Vista is going, I was wondering if we were going to try and support XP Pro for years after it is officially dead.

Then, I came across this site the other day, which got me to wondering if we could use Windows Server 2008 as an option.

The Great Food Experiment

Recently, we (my wife and I) decided to make some changes in our (the family’s) diet. Mostly, we were looking at taking out artificial colors, flavors, and preservatives. We found the Fiengold Diet to be very helpful, and we have been using their information.

Now, you might be wondering what this is all about. Mostly, we wanted to see if taking out the artificial stuff would help us overall. Maybe help the intestinal issues that the middle child was having, and help out with the youngest’s autism.

Personally, I wanted to know more about what we were taking out. Yeah, artificial flavors and colors could possibly seem obvious, but what about caramel color? Why is that included in the list, and what about this sodium benzoate we see in so many soft drinks?

ARGH… Freaking Vista!

I have been using Vista off and on at my new job for a while now. I wish to honestly say, that it is the worst Operating System I have used. I am including MS-DOS 4.0 in that comparison, so that should say something to you older PC folks out there!

It has all of the spit and polish (with extra spit) of XP, some look photocopied from OS X, and the ease of use of classic Mircosoft products like Bob, or Clippy.

What I am trying to say, is that this is an utter waste of human effort! I was going to say that I meant no offense to the programmers, but hey, they built this pile of excrement, they can deal with it!

I am about to start into the rant, so you can read on if you wish.

DFS, FRS, oh my!

Well, the upgrades continue. Now, I am in the process of moving all of our DFS (Distributed File System) shares from our existing Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition (WS2003EE), to the new Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition (WS2003R2EE). Here are some of the fun things I have found out while doing this.

CompUSA and my first computer

Well, it seems that CompUSA is closing. Now, this is important because this is a company that had as many as 200 or so stores across the US, and now it is being closed after massive losses. But, for me, it is more important because I purchase my first real computer from CompUSA, back when they were changing their name from Soft Warehouse.

Back in 1991, I purchased my first personal PC. It was a Compudyne 216, back when the 386’s were just coming out. It was called the 216, because it was a 286 that ran at 16MHz, and even included the 287 NPU (math component). This machine included the Suntac Chipset, IDE and floppy interface, and came in a desktop housing. That was it. No video card, no hard drive, no floppy, nothing. I don’t know if this is the exact board, but it seems very close.

So, I had to purchase the rest while I was there. This included a 3.5″ floppy, 5.25″ floppy, 88MB Seagate hard drive (which a friend said that I would never fill), a 1MB VGA card, 14″ Compudyne monitor, Logitech mouse, and even a Mustek handheld scanner. I got more than I had originally planned for because the name change had just started, and they seemed to be going away from the Compudyne stuff.

Here we are, 16 1/2 years later, and they are going out of business. It shouldn’t really mean all THAT much to me, but then again, a lot happened with that computer. It survived being upgraded to 4MB, running Windows 3.0 and 3.1. It survived running DOOM in a Windows DOS window, so I could make the “virtual memory” in Windows available to DOOM so it would actually run (fps was in the less than 1 per second when the window was set obscenely small). Commander Keen spent some time destroying Martians there. I got to find out what happens when you put a sound card in an ISA slot too close to the 350Watt power supply (noise and hum in and out). I visited Prodigy and The Sierra Network with it. That machine is where I truely cut my teeth on PC hardware and troubleshooting. It was nearly 6 years before that machine was replaced. Even then, it stayed around for other stuff. It finally went away, because it had no where else to go or to be used for.

So, now I will say goodbye. To CompUSA, hell, even to Soft Warehouse and the CompuDyne namebrand. Goodbye you guys. Its been fun.

WSUS follow-up, Automatic Approvals and Revisions fun

With all of the problems with Windows Desktop Search rolling out without explicit approval from WSUS, I have closed down all automatic approvals, and now have to manually approve every update in WSUS. At least I thought I had.

WDS and WSUS fallout

Well folks, if you are a System Administrator running Windows Server Update Services (WSUS), then you have had to deal with Windows Desktop Search 3.01 and the havoc it wrecks on computers and networks.

Now, Bobbie Harder, the Program Manager for WSUS, has responded. He states “revisions are only titled as such, when metadata or applicability rules of an update package change, never the binaries.” However, this is a lie.