Just received from XM Radio

The big record companies are pressuring Congress to pass legislation that would prevent XM listeners like you from having access to more music choices and new technologies. If these powerful special interests get their way, it will be much tougher for satellite radio to keep bringing you the unique and innovative artists you find on XM.

Let me explain: With 69 commercial-free digital music channels, XM provides an outlet for recording artists of virtually every musical style and genre.

XM has been a good friend to the music industry and, more importantly, to artists and songwriters. XM helps listeners discover new artists and rediscover forgotten favorites, stimulating CD and concert ticket sales.

We make sure artists and songwriters are fairly compensated for their music: XM pays a portion of your subscription fee to them and their record labels for the music you hear. Satellite radio has already paid tens of millions of dollars in royalties — and over the coming years it could pay hundreds of millions more. By contrast, conventional AM and FM radio stations pay nothing to recording artists or their record labels.

    In fact, satellite radio, including XM, is now the largest payer of digital performance royalties to artists and record labels in the country.

But the big record labels want more — a lot more — and are trying to use Congress to stand in the way of the future. They are pressuring Congress to pass legislation that would prevent XM listeners like you from being able to use our new radios. These radios allow XM subscribers to record music they hear on XM for personal use so you can listen later – in the same way TiVo allows you to record TV shows for later viewing.

This could mean fewer music choices and less new technology for you in years to come. Those who stand in the way of progress never prevail and they won’t this time, if you and the other 6.5 million members of the XM Nation act today.

Again, I hope you will click here to contact Congress and learn more about this issue.

Thank you for being a part of the XM Nation. With your support, XM Satellite Radio will continue to bring you the highest quality music, talk, sports, news and innovation.

Best Wishes,

Hugh Panero
CEO of XM Satellite Radio

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President Karen Holbrook to Retire

The thirteenth president of The Ohio State University announced her retirement on June 7th, 2006. This came as a surprised to me, but it was more of surprise when she was booed at the commencement ceremony last Sunday. According to her statistics and letter, the university has vastly improved over the years. It now ranks 21st in the nation and 1st in the state for public universities according to the U.S. News & World Report. It also jumped 15 places to the 24th in the rankings of total federal research expenditures in 2004. Annual giving, incoming ACT rates and the freshman-sophomore retention rates have also increased. The freshman-sophomore retention rate has risen to 89.7% while the six-year graduation rate has risen from 55% to 68% in five years. (Yah! I should be part of this statistic!)

The only significant story that I found on why students may not like Karen Holbrook came from The Sentinel and it basically stated that The Ohio State University has an excess surplus of money. Enough to be able to give each student $865 back each year. Oh come on, that is pocket change compared to the increased value of a diploma from Ohio State. Besides, The University operates as a business and from my experience a business would rather have a surplus of money and earn revenue each year. The only other comments I have ever heard about people not liking her are for what she did during the riots to try to control them and reduce drinking. Apparently, she also made it stricter to tailgate and drink in the streets and parking lots during football games. This is not that big of a deal as it is illegal to riot and drink in the streets in Ohio. All in all, her graduation speech was decent and there was no reason for students to boo her at a ceremony of that type.

I guess I just bleed scarlet and gray.

Posted in News | 2 Comments

Google Summer of Code

The Google Summer of Code program has started up again and is taking applications until May 8, 2006. It’s the second year the program has run and it seems to be a very effective way to get more help on many Open Source projects. They even pay $4500! I just wish I had more programming experience and could actually contribute.

Posted in Computers, Technology | 3 Comments

AMD64 and Windows XP 64

The following is about my experiences with my new (I got it for Christmas… if that is still considered new) computer and the Windows XP 64 bit operating system. I basically kept this saved and not published for awhile to add to the list of problems and quirks I encountered with it.

Computer Specifications

  1. The first problem happened as soon as I turned the computer on and remembered I could only load the SATA drivers via a floppy disk. I tried to use a USB drive, but was not able to successfully find directions and do so. So I had to use my old computer and make a floppy disk with the drivers and then remove the floppy disk from the old computer and put it in the new one as I did not purchase a drive for the new computer.
  2. The computer booted so quickly that I kept forgetting to hit the correct key combinations to make it boot from the cd and then the F6 key to load the SCSI drivers. This was most likely due to the fact that it was really early in the morning (or really late for some).
  3. The first serious error occurred when it did not find the correct scsi/mass storage device drivers automatically. The following messages popped up:
  4. Setup will load support for the following mass storage device(s):

    “NVIDIA nForce Storage Controller (required)”

    “NVIDIA RAID CLASS DRIVER (required)”

    Next error, “Setup cannot copy the file: ideocoi.dll” – entered to retry… did not work, try skip – worked, lets hope I don’t really need that file or I can add it later… (I never noticed a problem later)

  5. The installation went well until the computer booted up with Windows for the first time. Many of the devices had errors, but these were fixed one by one with the drivers off of motherboard – driver cd.
  6. Bus drivers installed fine. Reboot.

    Video drivers installed fine. Reboot.

    Audio drivers from cd would not install, “The audio files do not support your computer hardware”. The native XP 64 drivers appear to work fine along with the other drivers for the devices.

  7. The next step was to make sure the Windows Firewall was enabled and search the internet for a 64 bit virus scan. Avast Antivirus appeared to be the only one to come up. I had never used it but I will give it a chance as it seems important to have a 64 bit version since virus scan runs all the time.
  8. It installed more icons down on the damn system tray… pet peeve of mine.

  9. So I had just discovered and installed the Google Pack on my roommate’s computer in the living room so I navigated to it. Well, apparently that’s only for regular XP and since XP 64 is really built on Windows Server 2003 it would not let me download it.
  10. Next on to get Firefox, no 64-bit version either! However, the 32-bit version appears to run fine.
  11. The next big problem I ran into was not for months later until I needed to make a PDF, apparently there’s a problem with Acrobat 7.0, the print driver and XP 64.
  12. More will come as it is discovered.

Overall

My experiences with XP 64 have been fairly decent although I have not noticed a huge improvement over regular XP. The motherboard used in my computer setup has all of the devices onboard and came with an installation cd with the 64 bit drivers so I did not have any driver conflicts. I do not think I would even attempt an installation with older hardware. In fact, I have not even tried to install my external devices, such as a printer, or digital camera as my original computer can still handle that and I do not need anymore headaches.

I will most likely stick with the XP 64 installation for a few more months until I have time this summer to decide what I am doing with both of my computers. I would like to try Windows Server 2003 to see if I can set up a domain and a better network for file sharing and what not. I also want a media center… so we will see what the future of computing brings. (Okay, that was really corny)

Posted in Computers | 2 Comments

Gmail, one year of use…

Gmail has changed the way I use email over the past year. I used to not check my email for days and sometimes even weeks. This was due to the fact that OSU‘s webmail only allowed 15mbs of storage and no spam filtering (I do believe they have finally impemented a spam filter as of writing this)! I would spend the majority of my email time sorting through spam and trying to delete my email so I would not go over my quota when a team member wanted to send me a file.

Now, I check my email many many times a day. It has almost become a routine.

Pros of Gmail

  • search
  • no deleting!
  • conversations are stored in a message format
  • checking email from my cellular phone
  • files are available from anywhere when I need them
  • able to spoof the from address for other email addresses

Things that could still be improved

  • Implementing Google Talk to link with AIM, Yahoo, MSN, etc would make it more useful as many people I know do not use Google Talk
  • The implementation of Talk into Gmail seemed to have slowed down the overall page load time for Gmail
  • When I hit reply from an email sent to my other email addresses and forwarded to Gmail… I want the address it was sent to to show up.

Does anyone know if Google is ever going to offer an email server, like the Google Appliance? It would be awesome to be able to run the gmail interface within a large company, but have the email addresses be support@companyname.com

If anyone would like an activation code, please leave a comment!

Posted in Technology | 3 Comments

Gourmet Tuna Magic

The following is a recipe for my latest creation, a version of Kroger’s tuna magic but from much better ingredients!

Preparation Time: 10-15 minutes

Bake Time: 20-25 minutes 

 Ingredients

  • 1/2 (8 oz) package of egg noodles
  • 1 can of cream of mushroom soup
  • 1/2 cup of milk
  • 1 can of tuna fish
  • frozen or fresh vegetables of choice (I used a frozen medley)
  • 2 tablespoons of butter
  • shredded cheese (optional)
  • French fried onions (optional)
  • dash of pepper
  • dash of paprika
  • dash of salt

Start by boiling a large pot of water for the egg noodles.  Add a dash of salt to flavor the noodles once the water starts to boil.  Cook noodles 7-8 minutes.

While waiting for water to boil combine tuna, soup, milk, pepper, and paprika in a small sauce pan and heat on low. This is easier than trying to stir all the ingredients together in the casserole dish.

At the same time, cook fresh or frozen vegetables of choice in another sauce pan.  This reduces the amount of time the dish needs to spend in the oven.

Combine egg noodles and butter to coat in 8″ x 10″ casserole dish.  Add vegetables and soup mixture.  Combine thoroughly and top with as much shredded cheese as desired.

Bake 20 minutes at 375 degrees.  Top with French friend onions if desired and bake 5 more minutes.

Enjoy!

Posted in Recipes | 3 Comments

Hello world!

In all the years I have had a web site I have had problems keeping it updated. I believe this was due to the fact that I was always a bit stubborn and wanted to update and completely design a site from the ground up. This just took too much time out of my college life. It also seems that the times have changed and things can be accomplished easier, without losing quality, by using open source software and tweaking it for my needs.

I plan on running this place a bit differently than my previous site as I am using WordPress to publish, manage, and stylize my content. WordPress was my choice after I tried a few other Content Management Systems (CMS) and blogging type tools. This one seemed to work the best for my goals. I intend to use this site to showcase my previous accomplishments, future plans, and also share stories/reviews/information about computer and technology related items. I look forward to always improving on my little place on the World Wide Web.

Posted in News | 1 Comment