Kindle for PC

I own 75 Kindle books plus the original Kindle.

A month ago I bought a bargain basement netbook from Fry's for $199.

So, having read about the new Kindle for PC program from Amazon, I thought I would try it out.

IT ROCKS!!

Wow! Much better to read with (accepting the form factor differences) and viewing illustrations and drawings is now actually acceptable.

If you own a Kindle and you own any kind of PC, my advice is to go out and install this program right now. It is simply wonderful.

BizTalk 2009 the end of the product?

I got the word from a MSFT insider that BizTalk 2009 is the final version.

It has been handed off to 100 guys in India for support and will be incorporated into .net 4.

The BizTalk adapters will possibly be marketed as a separate product add-on.

Another source yesterday told me that whatever code runs BizTalk will be given to the SQL group at Microsoft.

Curiouser and curiouser!

Berets

What I learned about wearing a beret while in Paris:

1. They don't blow off of your head because they are round and hence aerodynamic.

2. They keep your head warm. (Very important when one has lost a lot of hair over time.)

3. Only young woman and old guys (holds up hand) wear berets in Paris.

4. You can buy them cheap in Paris. I paid like $6 for a wool beret.

Create a Windows 7 USB installer

There are many articles on how to create a USB installation drive for putting Windows 7 on netbooks.

Here is a free program from Microsoft that does the entire thing for you:

http://store.microsoft.com/Help/ISO-Tool?err=t2#at2

I used it to put Windows 7 on my netbook and it worked flawlessly.

You need to have a .iso file of Windows 7 and a USB drive of a least 4GB.

What I got out of Paris

I found a few nice French people but on the whole they were haughty, aloof and rude. I spoke with British, Finnish, Dutch and other tourists who felt the same way. The attitude seems to be that either one is French or one isn't French and if you are the latter you will be treated as a second class person.

If you eat at McDonald's in France and have wholesome natural beef hamburgers, fresh bread buns, fresh cheese, fresh French pastries and BEER you will NEVER enjoy an American McDonald's again!

Things that were closed: The Picasso Museum, the Egyptian wing at the Louvre, the catacombs.

There's a LOT of walking, which we expected, but to successfully traverse the Montmartre area you need to be part mountain goat. We did eat at the "Amelie" cafe in Montmartre and had creme brulee for dessert. It was cool that people can bring their dogs into restaurants.

The view from the top of the Arc D'Triomphe is absolutely stunning. The stairs to reach the top will kill you.

The value of whether or not to buy a Paris Museum Pass is up in the air. I guess I would say to go for it just to avoid having to stand in line at each museum to buy Yet Another Ticket.

I love cinema, but didn't feel the Cinema Museum was worthwhile.

Napoleon's apartment in the Louvre is a must see, but oddly several guidebooks fail to mention that it exists. The Louvre cafe is pricey but good. It cost 7.5 Euros for a slice of pizza which is ten dollars! We also discovered a British potato chip there that came in flavors such as Stinky Cheese with Onions, Roast Ox and Ham with Mustard.

Paris 2009 photos

My daughter is a better photographer than I am.

These are the few photos I took in Paris.

Just click "Paris 2009 photos" to be taken to my Picasa album.

I left my camera in our hotel room more often than I took it along.

The Louvre and Egypt

October 2009 the entire Egyptian wing at the Louvre, which is the largest collection of Egyptian objects outside of Cairo, is CLOSED.

Centre Pompidou and Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol's Elizabeth Taylor work was not on display due to an all woman art show being exhibited. So since Andy wasn't a woman they put his Elizabeth Taylor silkscreen into storage.

Yet another Paris disappointment. This is from our October 2009 trip.

The Paris Catacombs October 2009

CLOSED! No re-opening date was given.

We traveled across Paris to see the catacombs but they weren't open.

Netbooks in review

I finally bought a netbook based on 2 reasons:
One, Fry's had the Velocity micro NoteMagix M10 Netbook on a special price of $199 instead of its normal price of $349.
Two, I realized that I would rather travel lighter on my trip to Paris with a netbook (2.6 lbs) instead of my Dell D620 (5.74 lbs, using the 9 cell extended battery and the media bay battery).
This purchase led me into the wild and woolly world of netbooks.
First of all it seems that almost all netbooks have the same motherboard in common, using an Intel Atom CPU running at 1.6 GHz with 1 GB of DDR2 (sometimes DDR3) SODIMM for memory. For anyone wanting to go beyond Windows XP (the usual OS on netbooks) to Vista or Win 7, Toshiba's netbook can be upgraded to 2 GB and HP's can go to 3 GB.
There are usually 3 USB ports, VGA out, audio I/O and LAN RJ-45 connectors on most netbooks, as well as a webcam.
Battery life is 3 hours as a rule. Claims of 6 hours of battery life are from marketing people who don't actually own or use a netbook.
Wireless is universal on netbooks with B/G being standard. Some vendors such as Sony include N.
Standard hard drives are 160GB 5400RPM SATA although HP offers drives up to 250GB and SSD as well.
While most screens are 10.2 inches HP offers one (with HD no less!) at 11.6.
Graphics engines tend to be Intel GMA 950s, although HP has begun offering the Nvidia ION.
I will admit to being biased, but having seen 10 of these lined up at Fry's, Sony's looks the best and feels much more sturdier than all other vendors. Of course you pay the price, $500 for a Sony versus $350 for a similar notebook.
I'll report in the future on how I fare traveling with a netbook.

France

I'll be in France in October.

You won't.

This trip was enabled by NOT buying any of the numerous name brand e-books, marketing/writing courses or other "find yourself and get rich quick!" crap off of the Internet.

Listen to your own voice and your own heart and do not get sucked into the vortex of Internet blogging hype. NOTHING you can buy off of the Internet will create success for you.

You've got to do it on your own.

Then you too can go to France.

The Netflix Culture

Check out this SlideShare Presentation: While it is interesting, keep in mind that the weakness of Netflix is that they are TOTALLY DEPENDENT on renting a product PRODUCED BY SOMEONE ELSE. So they have an enormous Achille's Heel.

Culture

View more presentations from Reed Hastings.

HP Laptop memory upgrade

Today I took the 4gb of RAM I had left from upgrading my Sony and installed them into an HP laptop that had 2gb of RAM.

I checked on the HP model (DV9700 as I recall) and the memory looked like it would work.

Well, I removed the AC power from the laptop, took off the battery (no sense risking ANY potential voltage when installing any internal hardware upgrades to ANY computer), removed the 2 1gb PC-5300 SODIMM and installed the 2 2gb PC-6400 SODIMM.

Replaced the battery, plugged the AC back in and booted up the laptop.

Nothing! The laptop "stalled" on boot up and offered various keys to do things including opening the BIOS settings, but NONE of the keys would work!

So I thought about this and replaced the old SODIMMs into the laptop and booted up into the BIOS settings. Sure enough, the boot order had the laptop hard disk drive in third place after USB floppy and network boot! Well, let me tell you that simply will never work when you do a RAM upgrade. The system needs to rapidly boot up without hesitation in order to recognize the new RAM. (That's the non-technical explanation).

I set the laptop hard drive as the first boot up device (CD/DVD drive as second, fyi) and while I was in the BIOS, set the built in video up to use 128mb of RAM, from 64mb just for an additional performance boost.

I replaced the new RAM back into the laptop and it booted up correctly. However since this HP is only running x32 Windows it can only use 3gb which is still a 50 percent memory upgrade. Sometime in the future I might upgrade it to x64 Windows, but it was enough of a puzzle getting it upgraded to 4gb of RAM today.

More Michael Jackson Neverland Rides at CA State Fair 2009

Michael Jackson Neverland rides at California State Fair 2009

My error! Sony's head is DEFINITELY parked up their ass!

Bah! Turns out Sony has disabled the Intel VT and the ability to enable it using the computer's BIOS on ALL of their personal computers due to some bullshit worry that consumers might get attacked from the Internet. The technical challenge to do this and succeed is about as likely as having a UFO land in your backyard and deliver a pizza.

So I am sorely PISSED since the ONLY way to turn on VT (Virtual Technology which I need for Virtual PC development under Windows 7) is to use a hack developed by Igor Levicki in Serbia. Granted Igor should be out gathering brains for Dr. Frankenstein, but I am grateful that the hack exists. I am not too happy that if I attempt it and it fails that my new Sony notebook will be turned into a brick, as in no longer working in any manner at all.

Well, stayed tuned. I don't know what I am going to do about this.

P.S. (8/26) I did the patch and it worked! Woo-hoo! I have to put on clean underwear now, but it was certainly a thrilling experience.

Sony FW Memory Upgrade from 4GB to 8GB

Here's the solution which I bought from Amazon for $360:

Patriot Signature 8 GB (2 x 4GB) PC2-6400 DDR2-800 SoDIMM Dual Channel Desktop Memory Kit - PSD28G800SK

Granted I've been a computer consultant for 40 years and have assembled my own computers since the mid-70s. It's cheaper in today's market to buy the core PC or laptop and then just do upgrades such as high end video boards, more robust power supplies, etcetera.

Let me tell you, it was a gamble that the above memory worked as there was nothing on Sony's site to give you a technical clue. Basically the only site I found that listed memory matched to my laptop was at crucial.com. However they wanted $229 per 4GM stick plus tax and shipping. So, without further ado, I started researching for a memory stick that appeared to match Crucial's. Well as shown above I found the kit on Amazon, which saved me money on the price as well as no taxes or shipping.

The memory arrived yesterday. I just removed the laptop battery and the one screw on the bottom of the laptop that covered the memory; removed the old memory and installed the new. Put the cover back on the memory, put the laptop battery back on and booted up the laptop.

After clicking on Computer and then right clicking to get to Properties, the laptop showed that it recognized the 8GB of RAM and all is well. Keep in mind that for this to be useful you must be running a 64 bit version of Windows (or whatever other 64 bit OS you might have).