Check out my PHOTOS section to see the photos from our honeymoon cruise!

Now normally this is no suprise to anyone, after all I am a chubby white boy. However this is more a “I miss my vacation post.”

My boyfriend and I just commented, “it’s 10am, shouldn’t we be on the Lido deck at the breakfast buffett?”

Yup my friends… the feast is over.

Well thanks to Mike P of Blather and Bosh for writing such a eloquent post about the fact that the word GOMO finally got listed correctly in the Urban Dictionary. I submitted the definition about a month or so ago and never got confirmation it was approved, but Mike P did the same and found out for us that it did get approved. The other definitions are all negative and are mostly insults. Ours however is not.

GOMO - A homosexual who is also geeky, or into geeky things.

I don’t know why but somehow I feel it’s more official.

Well I’m back on dry land and back to the world of Internet Access. I had hoped to blog from the ship but at 24.95 per HOUR access, that was NOT happening. Even I am not that crazy!

I did write a blog for every day but to save you all the reading, I’m going to try to compress into two posts. I’ll work on that tomorrow when I’m back home before I have to leave again for a business trip. May is going to be a very busy month for me.

Today it’s just one more relaxing day in South Beach before catching our flight home (I will be happy to sleep in our bed again let me tell you!).

More to follow. Hope you’re all well.

My sweetie catching some rays on the tiny gay section of South Beach at
12th Street.

Yay vacation!

We’ll we’re off on our honeymoon! We are sitting in a Starbucks on Ocean Drive enjoying a cold drink and getting me some internet access. Thank goodness T-Mobile is offering it’s customers free WiFi on the weekends for this month! Bloggibg maybe sporatic this weekend and possibly week because I might not have a signal but I’ll try.

Now… to the beach!

I’m not the only one frustrated with Windows.

In support of Windows Frustration Day… please read Paul Thurrott’s thoughts on Windows Vista…

http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/winvista_5308_05.asp

It’s long but good and sums up a lot of my feelings about Microsoft in reference to Vista. And Mr Thurrott is not exactly a Mac Fanatic. He’s pretty much a Windows/Microsoft booster.

In my world at least. How about in your world? I feel the need because some of my readers will comment this is the latest in my Pro-Apple, Anti-Microsoft campaign, but I say to you not so. This is simply a post about my frustration with Windows today.

It started innocently enough with a Blue Screen of Death (BSoD) on my XP OS running on my MacBook Pro (MBP). For those of you who don’t know… a Blue Screen of Death is a System Error on Windows, that causes the computer to completely die. You see a blue screen with a lot of white text, which doesn’t give you a lot of user friendly information. I have no problems with the fact it happens, to quote Judd Nelson as John Bender in The Breakfast Club, “Screws fall out all the time, the world is an imperfect place.”. It’s what happens past that, that sucks.

I installed a program, which made me reboot my computer, and then the nice BSoD arrived. And before I could read it, the computer rebooted again. Leaving me with no idea what happened. Next XP did a scan disk, found a group of truncated files located in what I realized was my Anti Virus’s program folders. After the scan, it starts to boot into Windows XP and again, the BSoD and a reboot. WTF?

Frustrated, I tried to hold down the “Shift” key to bypass anything in my start up folder (I know how Mac of me…) but seems that only works if you are logging in, and much like OS X, XP is by default set to automatically login the user if only one is defined. Bother. I decided to enlist the help of my coworkers to see if there was some way to get the message to stay. I knew I could boot into “Safe Mode” but I had no clue what was wrong.

My coworker did inform me that on the Safe mode screen you can disable the reboot following a BSoD. I asked why would anyone WANT a reboot after an error like that. He said he didn’t know either but we disabled it and waited again while XP scanned the hard drive, truncated some files and then BSoD’ed again. This time I saw the error was something about Paged something or other. Hmmph. Reboot a fourth time and this time go into “Safe Mode“. This time I turned off the “Services” (at my friends advisement) for both the Application I installed and the one that the Scan Disk reported was having it’s files truncated. I also switched off automatic login so that I could see WHEN the BSoD was happening.

Blue Screen of Death, on my Mac no less!

XP successfully booted this time. I went and started the service of the new application I installed and it caused the machine to crash. But now, I had to reboot into safe mode, turn off the Service again and reboot. Uninstalling the application did not work however, I get an error on uninstalling too. I guess I can go and try to manually remove the application, clean up the registry, remove the service etc.

Now this may seem like not too much trouble but let me tell you…that’s not the case. Each time I had to boot into Safe Mode took approximately 20 minutes. It was a mess. And I still need that application and it’s not working.

Also today, I needed to install some software on my work laptop. Which caused me to restart my machine 3 times. All three times on shut down, I was told that my Virus Protection program could not be ended. I got a dialog box with an End Now or Cancel button. Cancel does not stop Shutdown, and why do I need to click the End Now button? I’ve initiated a shut down. I don’t care it crashed. Just automatically do an “End Now”. I don’t need the option! Just get the damn thing shut down!

Ugh… so I officially declare that today is “Windows Frustration Day”

Yesterday my good friend Ed from Chocolatay.com introduced me to a new awesome site called MEEBO.

Meebo is wicked cool. It’s a website that uses AJAX (Asynchronous Java And XML) to allow you to chat online. Nothing earth shattering in that but…the catch is you can login to AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, Jabber, and GoogleTalk all at the same time. No apps to be downloaded and it works thru regular HTTP port 80 traffic. This means from any machine anywhere you can get onto your chat client. Passwords are encrypted, the windows because of AJAX can be moved around and you can hide all your chats by just minimizing the browser. Sweet. It also allows you to sign on as invisible to any service that supports that (AIM and Yahoo for example).

Meebo rocks. Check it out, especially if you’re on someone’s computer that you can’t or don’t want to download a client too.

Today my friends, was one of those days. It started out alright, I got up on time, took my shower, got dressed and I went downstairs to pack up my stuff for the day. I got my lunch together and then went to my desk. I put my MacBook Pro into my laptop backpack (I figured I’d do my Boot Camp install while I was at work…) and stuck my Dell laptop (work issued) into my laptop briefcase. I then gathered up the discs needed for the MBP’s XP install via Boot Camp and took off.

I had a decent drive to work, I spoke to my friend Roseld for part of the way and got to work on time. As I was saying good bye to him, I realized, I forgot the Dell in the car. I went back to my car and found out that I had in fact, left it at home. 25 miles and 35 minutes away… NOT GOOD.

I came in the office and went back and cajoled the Tech guys to give me a loaner laptop and set about checking my mail, realizing that I’d be doing a fair amount of work when I got home to make up for what I missed during the day. I booted up the loaner, which of course was not the nicest machine, but it was a machine. However, since work moved to the new Mail servers, I had no clue what my Mail Server’s name is. So no email on this machine.

I turned my attention to my MBP. I tried to boot off the OS X Tiger startup disc to do a repair disk. I guess my dozen or so XP installs and deletes finally caught up to me, so I put in the disc and hold down the “C” key while booting up my Mac and it just boots into OS X. What gives? Then I remembered, the MacBook Pro, like the iMac, can’t boot off the original OS X Tiger Install DVD cause those machine’s optical drive drivers aren’t on the OS X 10.4.0 install. The iMac needs 10.4.3 or higher and the MacBook Pro, 10.4.4. Sigh. No work will get done on that today.

Then for a fleeting second, things looked better, a ray of light broke through the clouds above my cubicle. My neighbor Sue was working at home this morning and coming in just prior to lunchtime! Sweet! She offered to get my Dell AND the MBP’s install disc from my house. Yippie!

Then lunch proved to be another disappointment. I had forgotten my lunch on the counter at home. So I went to the cafeteria and got a ham sandwich on ciabatta bread, mmm my favorite. And I got a craving for a bag of Doritos. Yes I know I should NOT be eating them, but after this day, I figured I deserved them. So I headed to the vending machines and put in my 85 cents. The bag started to move, and then got stuck. Crap. Worse, it did not get stuck at the bottom, but rather the top. It was stuck on the shelf above. I figured if I bought another bag, it would knock down the bag and I’d have a bag to give away to someone in my office. I put in another 85 cents and sure enuff the first bag did not drop but hinged up wards and now two bags were stuck. I went back to my desk and had a good laugh with my friend B. Who insisted on trying to buy a third bag for herself. We gave up after that. As you can see in this picture, her idea was as bad as mine.

Some days you should just stay in bed.

UPDATE: About an hour after I posted this, I went by the vending area to get to the bathroom, on my way back I stopped in to have another look, of course the bags are gone. HA!