random photo of the day

Walter can’t seem to keep himself out of trouble

it never ends

Well, I screwed up my laptop again, but this time it’s my own damn fault trying to use custom themes. Now when I power it on it appears to load like it should, gets to the password screen, and once I enter my password it stops at the following error message:

AtBroker.exe – Application Error
The application failed to initialize properly (0xc000007b). Click OK to Terminate the application.

If I leave it alone for about 30 seconds, the background fades to black and says “This copy of Windows is not genuine” – but it is, and has been until I broke it tonight. Then when I click OK I get a second error:

SLUI.exe – Application Error
The application failed to initialize properly (0xc000007b). Click OK to Terminate the application.

and in the background I get a different window open that says:

Transitions Accessible technologies between desktops has stopped working

…so I click OK to the first and Close the program for the second, and a new one pops up to keep me company now:

Windows Activation Client has stopped working

…so I close that one two since there are no other options available, and it sends me back to the password screen again. If I enter the password I get the same procession of errors. Rebooting leads me back to the same spot. Uhg. I can’t boot, I can’t even get to safe mode, and “last known good” was no good at all. I just hope I can get to the restore point I set up before frakking with the system files.

As much as I want to bitch right now about how bad Vista sucks, I know full well I’m to blame here. At least I didn’t have anything critical stored on it yet, just a couple days worth of reinstalling programs if it comes to that.

Edit: Success! Sort of. System restore took forever but I’m back to a safe boot. Lost more than I expected though, but not as much as I feared. C’est la vie.

random photo of the day

lens through a lens

free Dr. Pepper?

Yeah, sure, go ahead and try.

Anyone remember Dr. Pepper mentioning that if Guns N Roses makes a new album, they’d give out free drinks? Yeah – neither do I. But they said it apparently, and for one day only (today) you can sign up and get a coupon in the mail a month and a half later to redeem for a single can. Except you can’t – because there’s so much traffic on their site you can’t get through. I’ve tried it a bunch of times now and on the few instances I’ve gotten the page to load nothing happens when I submit my info. I guess I’ll try it again later, but I won’t be heartbroken if it still doesn’t work later. It’s just Dr. Pepper.

But it will be fun to read about all the complaining in the following days from the people who got cheated out of a free soda.

tweaking

After reading Lifehacker more and more and catching the occasional featured desktop I decided to change up my laptop a bit. Nice and simple with the few key details I need ready at a glance… and of course, Portal themed. I’m sure I’ll find more stuff to add to it though… but here it is so far:

random photo of the day

extreme close-up!

random photo of the day

We’ve picked something up on radar!

yup, I’d say he’s a bit of a geek

I ran across this list of 50 facts you might not know about Obama thanks to Digg, and couldn’t help but spot a few blatant geek signs:

• He collects Spider-Man and Conan the Barbarian comics
• He has read every Harry Potter book
• He says his worst habit is constantly checking his BlackBerry

There are plenty of other amusing ones on the list, but those stood out. Makes me wonder about past presidents, because I’m sure more than a few of them have an inner geek of their own.

steamed

So I downloaded the Left 4 Dead demo from Valve and gave it a shot… I’ve been wanting to play this for the past month and a half ever since I got gypped at Valve HQ. From the little I played I’d say it’s a pretty good game. I have a bad habit of shooting other survivors, so I’d piss off a lot of people if I tried any online multiplayer campaigns… but no one died, so that’s always a plus. I wold have liked to play more, but as it was loading the second half of the demo it crashed my system (so much for the “No more blue screen of death in Vista!” myth). It’s fun, and with people that know what they’re doing it would be a great co-op game, but I don’t think I’d spend the $45 on it seeing as I haven’t even finished either if the Half Life games I was given on Steam.

Also, after I rebooted and tried out the Audiosurf demo real quick (fun little game, but again not impressive enough to drop coin for) I finally installed Portal: Prelude. I’ve been cautiously optimistic about it after my initial wave of excitement, and my hesitations were justified. I installed the most up to date version available, and not a minute into it I was already confronted with an obvious glitch (the storage cube won’t go through the first portal in the relaxation vault – I know you’re not supposed to toss it through since you need it to hold the button, but there’s no physical reason why you shouldn’t be able to). Aside from that and some clipping issues, it ran smooth and looked like it should have.

Now, the lack of GLaDOS egging you on wasn’t as bad as I expected, because you’ve got two Aperture Science guys guiding you via intercom (although the voices and speech patterns gave the impression that they too were supposed to be computers, even though you could see them through the observation windows). But I only got about four chambers in before getting too frusterated to continue. I expected the maps to be more complicated than the original – but on top of the boosted dificulty the chambers aren’t nearly as intuitive as I felt they should be to really be enjoyable. Also, having the voiceover give innaplicable iinstructions was a poor attempt at mimicong GLaDOS’s manipulative comments. I will go back to it, but I’m not expecting to finish it considering the experience so far. But hey, it’s better than nothing, and it was free right? Can’t honestly complain too much.

Oh, and one last thing: my laptop really is trying to live up to it’s reputation as a complete bastard. As I was loading Portal to run through a familiar level to ease my frustrations a bit, the damn thing decided it was time for a Windows Automatic Update without warning and yanked me right out of test chamber 17 and held itself hostage for a few minutes.

01010010 01001001 01010000

Two hours ago, MarsPhoenix gave it’s final Twitter message – “Triumph” in binary, followed by an ascii heart. Mission control reports that they finally lost contact with the lander, which is now probably frozen on the surface of Mars and not likely to revive when it thaws another year from now. And I’m only mildly embarrassed to say it makes me sad.

@MarsPhoenix was an excellent way to engage people in the mission, which otherwise would have gone unnoticed spare the occasional news clippings. By giving the little robot a Twitter feed and posting brief notes on progress from a first person perspective, the team managed to give it a personality. And personality goes a long way. That simple side project endeared the craft to thousands of people across the world like no other similar mission could have… and I’m sure I’m not the only one who will miss it.