I wanted to thank everyone who made my birthday special from Illinois, Australia, to the United Kingdom all the way back home to Ken. I REALLY appreciated all the notes and emails and personal messages wishing me your best!!! :)

Now as far as Ken goes he wins top prize for my birthday. He heard me bitching about how slow my computer was and that I just didn’t want to get on it because all I seemed to do was wait for this or that. It’s mostly because Vista is a resource hog, just as Windows 7 will be. I’m sure someone will correct me on that second part. ;P

My new system’s configuration is generally this:

OS: Microsoft Vista Ultimate x64

Processor: AMD Phenom II, x2 550+

Graphic’s: NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT, one gig ram.

Memory: Four gigs DDR3 ram.

New 360Gig HDD – Primary

Storage: Two 500Gig Western Digital HDD

So there it is in a nut shell. I hope it makes sense to most of you. :)

Have a wonderful day!!!

In case some of you are daring and like to try new things, Microsoft has released a new public beta version of the next Windows, Windows 7. I’m not sure why they are already getting ready to release a new operating system when Windows Vista is still pretty new, but alas it hasn’t been flying off store shelves like they thought (or hoped it would). You can read about and download the public beta at Windows 7, there you can also find out much more about the newest offering from Microsoft.

In my SkyDrive Public folder there is a program for Internet Explorer 7 that is a great compliment and I’ve used it for quite some time now and love it. It’s especially helpful to bloggers and people who need spell check – like me.

If you haven’t downloaded Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2, why not give it a try. I have it installed on my laptop and have had no problems with it there. I did try to install it on my Vista desktop but it’s running into problems with Norton 360, I’m going to try again and see if it causes the same problems. Who knows, maybe Norton has fixed the problem by now, but knowing them from the past they don’t update or change code until it’s ready for release and they tend not to mess with beta applications primarily from Microsoft.

I realize some of you haven’t tried beta software and don’t like it but in retrospect I have had little problems with beta’s. Don’t forget to download the latest builds of your Windows Live software here.

Now if I could only get our DirecTV to get a picture. ARGH. We have audio but zero video, weird huh. I think I need to spray the dish but need to check first to see if what I spray it with will hurt the dish in any way.

PS – Most of my blog issues have been resolved, except for the Adobe Flash Player that for some reason doesn’t want to be seen on Live Spaces. I can only assume it’s on Microsoft’s end because I uninstalled it and then reinstalled it twice, once using the stand-alone installer and then the web installer. So those who have been frustrated with my Guestbook and my Live Spaces Video not working – It’s not me causing the problems. Speaking of my Guestbook, I found an old post from Greg with instructions and I did it another way and it seemed to work fine, so my Guestbook is back in business. :::knock on wood::: Here is a screen shot showing that YES, I have it installed (the Flash player).

Hope you have a wonderful day!!! :)

LATER: Well I fixed the Flash problem, it was with Internet Explorer 7, as I’m running Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 (Public Beta) and now my Adobe Flash is working fine for my video player AND my Guestbook. Damn, what a productive day it’s been! :)

Boy the past few days I haven’t had much opportunity to play on the net and blog, more of the same but with a few added twists tossed in. Our personal assistant isn’t available to paint the guest bathroom this week as he has other work and he makes more money so of course he’s going to work the other job first. We are expecting company this weekend which will be nice and we have Krystin’s birthday bash to attend or at least try and attend on Friday, depends on when our company arrives. The house still has several things needing to be done before overnight company and so I will be busy the next couple days with that.

Ken got whacked by a MEAN-ASS’D series of Trojans yesterday and I was up until 3:00AM reloading his Windows with service packs, remind me to make him a slipstream of Windows XP for future use. At this point it’s pretty much all back together and now he just has to load his personal preferences and such. I usually wouldn’t stay up into the wee hours reinstalling a system – not even mine but I know how much Ken likes to spend time on his computer during the day since he’s been off and wanted to get it back up to speed ASAP.

I upgraded my system the other day to only use DVD-R/RW, which reads CD’s fine so now I have two DVD readers/writers on my desktop system. I bought he second player a couple months ago and never really felt like installing it but since going to Nero 9.0 I wanted to get it installed. Most things are going to DVD anyway so I guess I’m just trying to keep up with the trends. Plus it will make it easier to copy a DVD now, more so than before.

I hope everyone is doing well and I wanted to at least check in and say Howdy!!! :) I will try to check in as much as I can, usually when I have a few extra minutes to check on comments and personal messages and check my email. I’m just need some time to get things sorted out here, tonight may be another long night but I WILL get more done that way and leaves me less to do during the next couple days. So I could be annoying you all again sooner than expected! :)

Today Microsoft released to it's update sites the third service pack for Windows XP Home and Professional. You can avoid the lag at Microsoft with everyone trying to get it by downloading it from here.

There are several updates and fixes in this Service Pack 3, so happy downloading. When downloaded as a single file it's roughly 316megs. Small in my book but huge if you're on a dial up Internet service.

I installed the Service Pack 3 on my laptop from the link above without a lick of trouble. So yes, it can be trusted and it's not going to CRASH your system so please don't be afraid to download it.

UPDATE 4.30.2008 - You can read the release notes (overview information) on the Service Pack 3 at this Microsoft location. It's at the bottom in two formats, .PDF and .XPS .

Enjoy updating!!!  >:-)

UPDATE 5.1.2008 = Some people have asked about the problems with the Service Pack 3. This ONLY refers to the Windows Update/Microsoft Update site, not the standalone install file that I have linked to in this post. I have downloaded and installed the Service Pack 3 on five XP machines without ANY issue at all. I would highly recommend that you download and use the standalone installer to update to SP3, it's better than waiting for Microsoft to fix the issues at Microsoft Update.

UPDATE : 5.7.2008 - The standalone installer is available here from Microsoft. Windows XP Service Pack 3 is referenced by KB article KB936929 in the Microsoft Download area. Thanks to Dean for letting me know about a bad link that was here before. The link above will take you to the same service pack as noted in this update.