Thursday, March 31, 2005
I just wanted to give a shout out to the Lady Bears of Southwest
Missouri State University, and congratulate them on their 78-70 victory
over West Virginia in the championship game of the Women's National
Invitational Tournament. I especially want to congratulate tournament
MVP Jenny Lingor on her record-setting performance throughout the
tournament. The Lady Bears also set an NCAA single-season record for
three-pointers made, with 305. Congratulations, ladies, on a great
season, you earned it!
Posted by Brooks Travis | 
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
As some of you may know, I spend most of my days at work working on Windows XP PCs, and to say that I don't like it would be a significant understatement. Recently, I began having issues when attempting to deploy a custom image of XP onto some machines in a lab that I am responsible for. Previously, in a situation like this, we would set up the machine the way we wanted it, set up a custom user account template, and copy it over the default user template that comes with XP. Then, we would run Microsoft's sysprep.exe utility on the machine and dump it to a Norton Ghost image and then deploy it as needed. That worked great (note the past tense), that is, until this past summer, and Service Pack 2. It turns out, that the functionality that we relied on to deploy those customized user templates was a "bug" in XP prior to SP2. Apparently, the correct behavior is for Windows® to copy the administrator account profile onto the default user profile. For some reason, that doesn't make any sense to me. For instance, in my situation, I want the administrator account to have Windows's Administrative Tools in its start menu, but I don't want network users to have them there. What are my options? I can set up profiles for all the I want to administer the machines, but they have to be present for me to do that, because they have to log in, at least once, and that just isn't feasible in my situation. Oh, but that's not all.
To add insult to injury, Microsoft also insists in ramming its apps down your throat as well. Every time that you create a new image using sysprep, the machine puts MSN Explorer Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player icons on the desktop of every user, even the ones for whom you have already created a custom set of desktop icons (In my setup, I don't get the MSN Explorer or IE, icons, but just TWO WMP icons, instead). It makes me want to pull my hair out. I wish the U.S. government would crack down on Microsoft the way that the European Union (Free Registrations Required) has, and force them to offer Windows without all the bundled (read: force fed) Microsoft media and browser apps. But, alas, as long as G. W. Bush is president, I have little hope of that happening. If anyone out there has any suggestions as to what, if anything, I can do to ease my custom setup woes, I would greatly appreciate it. In the mean time, have a good day, and stay away from Windows, if at all possible. Stress kills.
Posted by Brooks Travis |
Monday, March 28, 2005
Good news, if you're a college student. Apple is giving away a free iPod® shuffle every week from now until September 30, 2005. To enter, just go to this website. The Apple higher education student site also contains valuable information on student discounts and using your Mac at school, so it's worth checking out as well. Well, that's it for now. Have a good one!
Posted by Brooks Travis |
Sunday, March 27, 2005
I know that many of you have gotten caught up in iPod® fever over the past couple of years; i know I have. One of the biggest problems that I've run into with my iPod is finding good content to fill it up, and I want to take this opportunity to let you know about some of the best sources I've found so far, some free, some not.
We'll start with the obvious one. The iTunes Music Store is definitely the Apple-recommended source of iPod content, and it's a great one. Featuring a library of over 1 million songs from Big Five and Indie
labels, as well as audiobooks from audible.com
(more about them later), the iTMS is the #1 online music store in the world. Here are some links to get you started:
One last thing on iTMS: If you drink Pepsi, you'll want to be on the lookout for yellow Pepsi bottle caps good for free downloads. You'll also have a chance to win a FREE iPod® mini for each cap you redeem.
If you're like me, and you love book but don't have the time to read
for fun, but you do spend a lot of time in situations where you can
listen to you iPod--driving to work, school, home from college, walking
to and from class--then Audible is the ticket for you. For $20 a
month, you get two audiobook downloads, regardless of how much the book
normally costs, and some are upwards of $80. To make it even sweeter,
you can get your first two audiobooks free!
I'm sure you've almost all heard about the phenomenon that is the podcast. If you haven't, we'll just call it a weblog for home-brewed audio, and it's re-making online audio distribution, the same way that blogging has re-made online publishing. There are several applications out there, for all platforms that make it easy to subscribe to, download, and transfer podcasts to your iPod. Here are a few of them:
The nice thing about podcasts is that, as far as I've seen, they're free, and there's definitely no shortage of them. You can even make your own. One way to do this, easily, is by using your 3rd or 4th generation iPod and a Griffin iTalk and LapelMic. Just as a sidenote, one of the most popular types of podcasting out there is known as "Godcasting," that features Christian and other "family-friendly" content.
Well, that's it for now. Happy listening!
Posted by Brooks Travis |
Saturday, March 26, 2005
Greetings, everyone! Welcome to the new home of my personal blog, Vincit Veritas, previously located on my .Mac account. As my previous readers know, my site is devoted to my greatest interests: technology, politics, religion, and entertainment, and literature.
I'm currently seeking my Masters in English, Creative Writing at Southwest Missouri State University, soon to be Missouri State University. I have a Bachelors of Arts in Political Science, and currently work as a Graduate Assistant providing computer support in the Educational Technology Center at the University, where I support a mixed-platform lab and office composed of both Windows® and Macintosh® computers, though I'm making progress on getting the office to go all-Mac. I love Science Fiction, especially Ursula K. LeGuin's Earthsea and Hainish cycles, and am currently working on several critical papers based around her work. I am also interested in Philip K. Dick, William Gibson, and Orson Scott Card. My favorite literary theorists are Fredric Jameson, Northrop Frye, Carl Jung, and Terry Eagleton.
Anyway, my favorite TV shows are Enterprise (SAVE IT), Smallville, and Alias. As for politics, I was a Kerry supporter in the last election, but that doesn't mean that I support everything the Democrats stand for. I subscribe the the Sojourners online newsletter for progressive Christians, and am definitely anti-abortion, but don't think that it is prudent to make the procedure illegal. We should be working to create an environment in which abortion isn't even a consideration for women, rather than forcing them to undergo dangerous back-room operations or use clothes hangers on themselves. Well, that's really it for now. Hopefully, I'll be able to keep up with things a bit more regularly here, than on my .Mac account. Have a good one!
Posted by Brooks Travis |
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