News and Views

You’ve been asking for updated pictures of Apollo, so here he is. It’s amazing how fast he has grown!

I installed Microsoft’s new OS, Vista, on a friend’s computer. Here are my impressions:

General:
With the short time I’ve used it, it doesn’t seem very revolutionary. It seems about as different from XP as XP is from Windows 2000. The interface is fancier, more colorful, but most features are the same as on XP, just sometimes located in different menus.

The “Aero” interface requires a 3D video card, previously only necessary for 3D games and CAD. It’s mostly eye-candy.

It took about twice as long to install as XP. This was with the Home Premium version.

My recommendation is: If you have XP or Windows 2000, don’t bother to upgrade. If you are getting a new computer, it will probably come with Vista, and that’s fine.

Technical Problems (for those interested):
I installed an “Upgrade” copy. The computer started with Windows XP Home. The initial upgrade installation went fine — though it takes longer, it doesn’t stop part way through asking for information. Once it starts, it proceeds until it is almost done before you have to come back and interact.

I also installed a new motherboard. I decided to upgrade to Vista first, then install the motherboard, to see if it handled the change better than XP. It didn’t.

After I installed the new motherboard, Vista refused to boot. But instead of a blue screen, it brought up a screen with a list of options (Safe Mode, etc), along with the recommendation to boot on the DVD and run Repair. Vista’s Repair seems more intelligent than XP’s Repair. It spent a long time looking a things, trying to make it run. In the end, though, it failed.

So normally, the next step would be to do a Repair Install (AKA “In Place Upgrade”), where you just reinstall the OS as if it were an upgrade. But that wouldn’t work either. Since this was an upgrade, it would only let me install it from within a functioning OS. It would not let me install as an upgrade after booting from the DVD.

To make a long story short, it took about 2 hours on the phone with Harisha and Pradeep (you can guess which country they live in) and we ended up doing a fresh install, using some workarounds they walked me through. According to Pradeep, System Repair usually is able to find and fix problems when you switch motherboards, but occasionally problems like this occur.

The lesson from this is that if you didn’t like the hassle and restrictions of activation with XP, you’ll hate them with Vista. Your previous OS will have to be working if you want to upgrade, whereas with previous OS’s you could just pop in a CD proving that you had an earlier version of Windows to upgrade.

I sure wish Linux could become main stream, but Windows has too large an installed base.

Here are some pictures I took of Apollo today. He was 8 pounds when we got him (6 weeks old), and is about 22 pounds now at 11 1/2 weeks. He looks and feels more than 3 times as heavy!

He sure is a friendly, good natured guy. He craves attention, loves to be played with and petted. Still likes to nip at fingers, but he’s getting better. Still a long way from house broken.

Derek’s job runs from about noon to 9:00pm, so Gisele and I end up playing with him and walking him on many days.

Derek’s job is going well, he says. He’s on the last week of training, but is actually making lots of calls each day already, under supervision. If you’re late on payments on your Target card, you might be getting a call from him!

Here’s Derek’s puppy Apollo at 9 1/2 weeks old. He seems bigger almost every day.

Here he is in his usual mode — biting! He doesn’t try to hurt and usually it’s just a gentle nip, but his baby teeth are sharp and once in a while he breaks skin.

I can still outrun him, but that won’t last long. He will soon be able to jump out of his 2′-high pen in the kitchen too.

I wanted to get a picture of the roundworms for Richard, but he appears to be rid of them.

Poor puppy! We took him to the vet today for his first visit.

We found out why he has been scratching: Scabies! These are little mites that live in the skin. So he had to get a shot for them, and has to go back in 10 days for a follow-up shot.

Then they tested his stool. Giardia! Well, that’s not too serious, and the infestation wasn’t bad, so let’s not load him up with too many shots today.

Oh, wait a minute: Further inspection of his stool revealed: Roundworms! These are big ugly guys that live in the digestive tract eating the puppies food before he can digest it. More serious than giardia, so give the poor puppy more medicine.

All these things are more or less contagious to humans, and can reinfect the puppy, so we have to clean everything he has touched, scoop all his poop, and wash his bedding in diluted bleach. However, so far none of us have any symptoms, so we’ll probably be OK.

All the girls in the doctor’s office went crazy over him. I told Derek that he was a good way to meet girls, as long as he doesn’t tell them about the parasites. That might be a turn-off!

We drove back up to Snowflake yesterday (through falling snow and slush on the road) and brought Derek’s new Siberian Husky home with us.

Lots of whining and even a little yipping, as the poor 6-week old puppy pines for his mother and siblings. But he’s getting lots of love and attention here, so I’m sure he’ll be over it in a few days.

Derek still hasn’t decided on a name, and the camera battery died so I don’t have many new pictures, but we’ll try to get some more up soon.

We drove up to Snowflake, Arizona today for Derek to pick out his new Siberian Husky puppy. Here’s the one he chose.

Snowflake is about 20 miles north of Showlow, in the White Mountains. It was pretty cold up there! (OK, almost Siberia is an exaggeration, but for a Phoenician it was freezing!).

We have to wait another week or so before the puppy will be big enough to leave its mother, but he wanted an early choice of the litter. Another family got there just after we did and chose 2.

Devon got a 2007 Toyota Prius for an early graduation present. Pretty cool car; very high-tech. It is a hybrid, with both a gas engine and an electric motor. The combination gives almost double the gas mileage of an equivalent pure-gasoline engine car: 60 MPG city according to the EPA. It has other futuristic features, such as a key that just has to be in your possession to open the doors or start the engine.

OK, for you girls: It’s a very pretty medium blue.

Not to beat it into the ground, but as I pointed out last year, today is the real reason for the season.
So Happy Solstice, Merry Christmas, Hannukah, New Year, etc., etc.

There are some interesting “Implicit Association Tests” you can take, at Harvard University’s website.

Although I like to think of myself as racially unbiased, one of the tests revealed that I find it easier to associate European Americans with good and African Americans with bad. (That’s the “Race IAT”.) Try it! I think you’ll be surprised at what you learn about yourself.

See the first comment below for some details about the race test.