So I was going to write a response to Bob’s comment on my last blog entry “End-User IQ”, and I was about to go on a rant about a typical desktop support scenario. I then realized it that my post was getting way too long for a comment. This deserves its own entry.

The task: User has spyware; remove it.

Alright, time to download Spybot SD.

click Start [start menu briefly appears, then disappears] OMG I hate Windows XP

click Start again wait… where is the web browser icon?

WinKey + R > “iexplore.exe”

[waiting… waiting..] What the hell is taking so l… Holy search toolbars, Batman!

[more waiting… I see http://www.msn.com/ populate in the address bar, and I desperately try to change it to google.com. Why can’t people set their homepage to something useful?]

Yes! Google! At last! “spybot”, [enter key]

Great, the spyware blocked the download page. Why the flying f*** are we still using XP? This user would never have gotten spyware if we were on Vista… Ugh… I can’t believe people fell for Apple’s bullshit advertisements about Vista. Now the whole world is stuck on Windows XP. What was I doing again? Oh, right…

[2 hours of strife and agony later…]

“Ok, I think I got rid of it all. Let me know if you have anymore probl…” [spyware pops up again] FUUUUUUUUUUUUUU************

“Alright. I am formatting your HDD.”

[The next day]

“Ok, I reformatted your hard drive and re-installed all of your apps. Be careful about what you install and let me know if…” [I look around as if there is some possibly physical, visible entity watching me and waiting for me to utter the next few words, ensuring my own demise] “…if you have any more problems.”

[The next day]

User says, “Oh hey, my computer is doing that thing again where…” [I roll my eyes and let out a grunt]

[I reformat again. I didn’t want to do it, but you made me. This time, no administrative permissions for you, Mwahahaa! Problem solved.]

In dealing with computer users, I’ve discovered a method for calculating their intelligence. It seems that IQ has a direct correlation with a user’s web browser. I’ve written an equation that can roughly predict intelligence, shown below:

iq = webBrowser - (5)searchToolbars

Where webBrowser can have any of the following values:

• Internet Explorer (version 6 or less) = 95
• Internet Explorer (version 7) = 100
• Internet Explorer (version 8) = 105
• FireFox (any version) = 105
• Chrome (any version) = 105
• links or lynx (see footnote*) = 115
• Opera = 95
• Safari = 90

searchToolbars is simply the number of search toolbars that the user has installed. This generally only applies to internet explorer. Each toolbar that you have installed removes 5 points from IQ, because in order to let one be installed you have to be retarded or illiterate (which is usually a symptom of the former). It usually happens because somebody has no idea what they are doing, and they can’t read or they are just plain dumb.

Lets use the example below to calculate this user’s IQ:

iq = 105 - (5)4

iq = 85

user = RETARDED

Now, more variables can be added to more accurately calculate intelligence. Variables like homePageURL, favoriteOperatingSystem, spywareCount are all important factors to consider, but are not covered in this post.

*using links or lynx does not implicitly imply a high IQ, but does imply that the user has a working knowledge of Linux, and therefore generously raises the IQ prediction.

If you’ve ever needed to look at browsing history from FireFox 3, without being at the physical machine, as I recently did, you will discover that FireFox 3 stores URLs in a .sqlite file. You can just open the file up in notepad, and you will see some URLs, but it’s not very readable, because it’s jumbled in with a bunch of binary data. I’m going to tell you how to do it the right way.

1. First, download the SQLite command-line utility at their website.
2. Unpack the zip file somewhere on your hard drive. I’ll save it to C:\temp for the purpose of this article.
3. Find your FireFox profile folder. It will look something like this: C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<random>.default on Windows XP or C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<random>.default on Windows Vista.
4. Open a command prompt. and find the folder that you put sqlite3.exe in. Ex:

   C:\Users\username>cd c:\temp

5. Now run sqlite3.exe, run a query on the database, and specify a location to output the text file. Ex:

   c:\temp>sqlite3.exe C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\
   <random>.default\places.sqlite
   
   sqlite>.mode list
   
   sqlite>.output history_dump.txt
   
   sqlite>select url from moz_place;
   
   sqlite>.exit
   

6. You should now have a text file named history_dump.txt in the same directory as sqlite3.exe. This contains one URL on every line.

The aforementioned steps will not list dates or times, that would require multiple queries, but at least you have a list of all visited URLs.

I didn’t like the new taskbar (“superbar”) in Windows 7 at first. I tried it for a few minutes, and then promptly found a way to switch it back to the way I like it in Windows Vista, by going into the taskbar properties and checking the “Use small icons” box and changing the “Taskbar Buttons” option to never combine. After I got bored of the same ol’ same ol’, I decided to give the new configuration another chance, and I have to say that I’m starting to like it.

At first I thought it would be difficult to differentiate between programs on the superbar, because there is no text, so you have to identify using the icon only. This is easier than I thought, as I quickly recognize all of the icons for the programs that I use frequently. The nice thing, though, is that when you have several windows open, you mostly look at the thumbnail images that popup for each icon, instead of the icons themselves, and I’ve found that to help quite a bit. What helps even more, is that when you hover over the thumbnail, all other windows go transparent, and the one you are looking at stands out. This makes it easier than ever to identify the window you are about to select.

I have never liked grouped taskbar icons. I always turn that option off. Grouping things together has always made it harder for me to find the window I am looking for. There is too much thought process going on for such a simple maneuver. It’s really not bad now, though, since you see thumbnails of all your windows. The only thing I don’t like about it is that it requires an extra click or a couple seconds of hovering to see the thumbnails. I really like looking through my IE tabs using the thumbnails on the taskbar, it’s awesome.

There is one thing that’s keeping the new taskbar from being useable for me. I don’t know if it’s a bug or some idiot thought it would be a good idea. Usually, when you close a window using the ‘close’ icon on it’s thumbnail, the panel of thumbnails just compacts and continues to show the remaining windows. Every time I close an email message in Outlook 2007, the whole panel of thumbnails closes. This is terribly frustrating, because if I have to close five tabs in IE, I can just click the five ‘X’ buttons on the thumbnail panel. However, if I have to close five emails, I have to hover over the Outlook icon for a couple seconds, find the one I want, click the ‘X’, and repeat four more times. It’s annoying, and it’s ridiculous.

I kind of feel like the thumbnail panel shows up in a weird spot. Maybe I would like it better if the icons weren’t grouped, and hovering over the icon itself hid all of the other windows, instead of having to move your mouse up and over the thumbnail. I’m obviously not the UI expert who gets the big bucks designing the Windows UI, but I still think there are some obvious changes that need to be made.

My overall evaluation: I like the new default taskbar settings more than I thought I would, but I think there is still more efficiency to squeeze out of it.

There are more aspects of the new taskbar to talk about, such as the combination of the quicklaunch bar and the taskbar in a very OS Dock sort of way, but I’ll have to touch on that in another post.

I was excited to try out the new Resident Evil 5 Demo today, but I’ve been disappointed so far. The controls are a bit goofy, but that didn’t bother me much at first. There are a lot of quirks that just irritate me. For instance, you can’t move at all while you reload, which is absolutely retarded. I emptied my pistol clip into the chainsaw guy’s chest (which he apparently didn’t even feel, because he just kept running at me without so much as flinching), and I pushed LT + A to reload my pistol, which stopped me dead in my tracks for two seconds. The chainsaw guy then proceeded to saw away at my throat for 5 seconds, during which I was unable to do anything but watch myself die.

It takes twice as many bullets to kill a zombie with the MP5 as it does with the pistol, which makes no sense to me, because they both use roughly the same size bullet, yes? There isn’t nearly enough ammo in the game, which reduces you to using your knife all the time, which is slow and ineffective.

I can’t move out of the way of the bosses (axe guy and chainsaw guy) very well, because the character movement speed is slow, and it feels “sticky,” in that you don’t make very fluid running motions, instead you slow down a lot when you have to turn.

The graphics look good, and the enemy characters are cool, and I honestly don’t know much about the story-line, but everything else sucks. I’m not impressed.

I’ve been enjoying the Windows 7 beta a lot. Overall, it’s really good. The libraries are cool too. I think they are a good idea, and they seem to work well. However, I’ve had a frustratingly hard time trying to add a network share into a library.

On my Windows Vista and Windows XP boxes, I usually have the “Documents” or “My Documents” folder point to a network share, so that I can share all my stuff between workstations. I’ve been trying to do something similar by adding the same network location to my “Documents” library in the Windows 7 beta, and I’m running into some difficulty. It seems that Windows does not want to let me add a folder to a library unless it’s indexed. It gives me an error message saying, "This folder cannot be included because it is on a share that is not indexed." Furthermore, I can’t find a way to add a network share to the list of indexed locations unless it’s mapped to a network drive.

The weirdest part about this whole thing is that when you click the “How can this folder be indexed?” link, it doesn’t tell you how to index the folder, but rather, it brings you to a help article that tells you that network folders can be added to a library, even though they cannot be indexed. What’s going on here? Am I missing something?

Oh, and I edited that photo with the new Paint application. It sucks just as bad as the old one, it just has a Ribbon UI.

Update: After reading a thread over on the Channel 9 forums, it looks like the share does need to be indexed, and this can be accomplished by installing Windows Search 4.0 on the host, and then including the folder to be indexed on the host.

I’ve been a Comcast customer for a little over a year now. I had nothing to complain about for a while. I had no problems with the initial installation. My internet connection was quick – I could pull 1MBps from a good server. I had minimal downtime. I’ve heard other people say bad things about Comcast, but had never experienced any problems myself, so I just assumed those people were whiney customers. Then things went wrong… so terribly, terribly wrong.

The problems started when I moved a few months ago. I called Comcast to request a service transfer a few days before I moved. I had to wait two weeks for the next available technician to come out and swap out my cable modem for a new one. That’s not a big deal, I didn’t give them much time. The customer service representative on the line was nice enough, he even wrote in a note for the technician to be at my place after 5:00 PM, since I work until 5 every day.

Two miserable weeks without an internet connection passed and it was now the day of my scheduled Comcast appointment. The technician was schedule to arrive by 6:00 PM. Well, 6:00 PM came and went and I was wondering what was going on. I figured I would just call about it in the morning and see what happened. Well 8:00 rolls around and I get a call. The tech says, “Hello, I show that you have an appointment to have cable installed today?” Oh good, I thought, looks like they are coming after all.

“Yes, that’s right.”

“I’m calling to let you know that I am not going to be able to do the installation today. I ran out of cable modems.” He ran out of cable modems? How the fuck does that happen?

“Oookaay… sooo... when will you be able to install my cable?”

“I don’t know, I am going to call it into the dispatcher.”

“Oookaay… so what are they going to do about it?”

“I don’t know, they’ll probably send someone out tomorrow.”

“Probably?”

“Yeah, I don’t know. Like I said I’ll just call it into the dispatcher.”

“Oookaay… Thanks then.” Whatever. Bye bye idiot.

I waited all day the next day for a visit from the tech or maybe a phone call. Nothing. After a couple more days I called Comcast back. Here’s how the conversation went: ”Hello, thank you for calling Comcast, what can I help you with today?”

“Hi, I recently requested a transfer on my cable service. The technician called and said that he ran out of cable modems. He said he was going to call the dispatcher and have someone else come out to do the installation but it’s been a week and I haven’t heard anything back.”

“I am sorry about that sir, let me just put you on hold for a minute.”

“Ok.” [sigh]

--Shitty hold music--

--Phone line goes dead. Call ends.--

Fuck this shit, I can’t believe this.

At this point I am very angry with Comcast and I spend about a day looking for a competitor for cable internet. I don’t want shitty DSL, and I don’t want shitty Clearwire. What I really want is Verizon’s FiOS, but they don’t provide service in my area yet. Comcast is the only available cable provider in my area. Fuck.

A couple days later I reluctantly called Comcast again in attempt to get my damn cable installed.

”Hello, thank you for calling Comcast, what can I help you with today?”

“Hi, I recently requested a transfer on my cable service. The technician called and said that he ran out of cable modems. He said he was going to call the dispatcher and have someone else come out to do the installation. I never heard anything back. I tried calling back about a week ago, but I was put on hold and then the call was dropped.”

“I am sorry about that sir, let me just put you on hold for a minute.”

“Fine.” [more sighing]

--Shitty hold music--

”Hello, thank you for calling Comcast, what can I help you with today?” Un-fucking-believable. Are you fucking kidding me? Am I in the god damn Twilight Zone?

In a noticeably irritated voice I replied, “I recently requested a transfer on my cable service. The technician called and said that he ran out of cable modems. He said he was going to call the dispatcher and have someone else come out to do the installation. I never heard anything back from him. I tried calling back about a week ago, but I was put on hold and then the call was dropped. I just called back again right now, I was put on hold, and I somehow got transferred to you.”

“I am sorry about that sir, how many times have you called in?” Did I not just explain this in painful detail?

“It’s technically been three times, last time I called, my call was dropped, this time I got transferred, and now I am talking to you. Three.”

“I am sorry about that sir, we’ll get a technician out there for you.”

“Good.”

“The next available appointment is in two weeks.”

“Two weeks? You can’t get my anything sooner?” Are you serious? You can’t make any fucking special arrangements for this obviously complete failure on your end?

“I’m sorry, that’s the soonest I can send someone out.”

“Fine. The 18th will work.”

“Ok, what time slot do you want?”

”Well I work all day, so something after 5:00 PM.”

“We can put you between 3:00 PM and 6:00 PM.”

“Ok, can you make a note or something to make sure the tech is there after 5:00 PM?”

“No… is there any way you can get off work early?”

“No. There isn’t.” Who the fuck are you to suggest that I leave work early for a fucking cable installation?

--Pause--

“Fine. Give me the 3:00 PM to 6:00 PM slot. I won’t be home until after 5:00 PM, but whatever.”

The conversation ended shortly after that. The technician came at 8:00 PM on the 18th, two hours later than the deadline. The first lisp-y words out of his mouth were, “Firtht thing’th firtht. Where’th your bathroom?” Wonderful.

My cable was successfully installed that night, but the nightmare did not end. My internet connection still disconnects and drops packets all the time. Every 5 to 30 minutes I get dropped from Xbox Live games, and every 20 to 45 minutes, I get disconnected from Xbox Live entirely. It’s impossible to play anything, and it’s a source of constant frustration.

I am preparing for the next round of “I’m sorry sir, I can’t help you” telephone calls. Anymore of their shit, and they are losing me for good.

I’ve come up with a few descriptive new mottos for Comcast that I think really explain their goals and aspirations in regards to customer relations.

“Comcast. We’ll come two hours late in two weeks. Maybe”

“Comcast. It’s our dick, in your ass.”

“Comcast. Fuck the customer.”

“Comcast. We’ll get around to it.”

“Comcast. Because we just don’t care.”

“Comcast. It’s rape on a cable.”

“I don’t know.”

“We’re sorry, but we can’t do anything.”

I was linking an article from Gizmodo about iTunes 8’s Blue Screen of Death problem, when I noticed a Zune advertisement on the same page. It gave me a warm, fuzzy feeling inside.

Of course, the Zune has it’s own problems. The whole reason I was looking up the article was to show it to some iPod fanboys who were being equally smug about the Zune 30 bug exposed this morning.

Read about it here: Zune 30 Bugging Out Everywhere.

P.S. I can’t stand G4, and I wouldn’t normally link to an article there, but it’s the best one I can find so far.

I am moving my “Freeware of the Week” series to my new blog, How To: PC. I’ve decided to start the new blog, because I want to write articles to help people in their computing endeavors, but I want to keep it separate from my personal blog, due to the obscenities therein.

I will keep the “Freeware of the Week” articles here that have already been posted here, but all future articles will be posted exclusively on the new blog.

To read up on the new “Freeware of the Week” posts, as well as check out my new how to articles, please visit the new site: http://howto-pc.blogspot.com/.

I have mixed feelings about the usefulness of my selection for this week, but I have yet to find any better apps for this purpose.

Official website; download page.

Notepad++ is a cool text editor that I use from time to time to edit scripts. I like it because it understands a number of scripting and markup languages, and it adds helpful formatting and collapsible text areas. I use it most for Visual Basic Scripting (VBS), HTML, and PHP.

I really don’t mind having an advertisement of some sort on my blog. What I don’t like, however, is large, intrusive ads that get in the way of what I want to show on the page. Windows Live Spaces is a free service, and it has to generate revenue somehow. although, I would be tempted to argue that the point of Windows Live is to improve the Windows experience, and it is sort of a marketing investment, and therefore everything should be charge-free, and advertisement-free for Windows owners.

Windows Live Spaces has historically had a huge banner ad above all of the page content. That annoys me, because I feel like it’s in the way, making it harder for users to get to the content they want to see. With the latest rollout of Windows Live services, all of that has changed. Microsoft has done away with the giant banner ad at the top of the page, and put the content at the forefront. I really think MS made the right decision.

In all honesty, it wouldn’t bother me if there was a small, non-intrusive advertisement – something like Google AdSense. They could just put a small box somewhere with a text link advertising something related to the content on my page. Since Microsoft is apparently ok with eliminating ads altogether, that’s even better.

I don’t know if this is just a momentary thing, or some strange problem with my internet connection, but I’m unable to access profiles on Windows Live. For instance, when I click the “Profile” link at the top of my blog, it points to this link: http://cid-20398cf465d44bac.profile.live.com/, and I get a big fat “cannot display the webpage” error.

A quick Google search has not shed any light on the situation. Anyone else know what’s going on?

Update: Ok, now Spaces seems to be down too. Great.

Update: …aaand we’re back – sort of. Seems like my blog and profile is up, but some aren’t. I assume the downtime is related to the Windows Live services update rollout.

So, I’m not sure that this really qualifies as “freeware,” but it’s definitely one of the most useful tools in my arsenal. I’ve mentioned it before in my article Norton Antivirus Is Useless Bloatware. Install AVG!.

I absolutely hate Norton. It’s slow, it’s buggy, and it just plain sucks. The one piece of software from Symantec that’s actually useful is the Norton Removal Tool. It does it’s job well, removing every trace of Norton. I don’t have to use it much anymore, now that I work on the same computers everyday. When I used to work on a lot of computers as a PC tech, this was on my flash drive, and I used it all the time.

Grab the Norton Removal Tool from the official webpage.

Epic released a title update for Gears of War 2 today. Check out the official forum post.

Among other things, the patch is supposed to fix the long matchmaking times in multiplayer. I’ve only been playing with the patch applied for about an hour now, and I haven’t really noticed a difference yet. They say that it might take a few days to really notice the difference, so hopefully it will get better by then.

I’m going to get back to playing Gears now, but I’ll update this post with my findings regarding matchmaking over the next couple of days.

Update: Maybe it’s just my imagination, but I think it’s a little faster. It’s still painfully slow though. Hopefully it will get better.

For this edition of Freeware of the Week, I am featuring a great disc image utility called ImgBurn. It’s a great utility that allows you to burn an image to a disc, make an image from a disc, or make an image from files on your computer. Now that they’ve added a new “welcome screen,” it’s easier than ever.

Check out ImgBurn’s Homepage or visit the download page.

ImgBurn will burn any cd image type that you will encounter. From the official website: “ImgBurn supports a wide range of image file formats - including BIN, CUE, DI, DVD, GI, IMG, ISO, MDS, NRG and PDI.”

ImgBurn has especially had a great impact on me as a systems administrator and here’s why. It has shell integration, so you can just right-click an image file in Explorer, click “Burn using ImageBurn”, and bam!, you’re burning it. It also recognizes my CD burners better than any other software that I have used. Windows XP’s built-in CD burning software pretty much never recognizes my drives as burners while Nero and ISO Recorder (an ISO burning tool that I would recommend secondary to ImgBurn) will correctly identify my drives as having burning capabilities about 2/3 of the time. ImgBurn, on the other hand, hasn’t let me down yet. That’s not to say it will never happen. On the 10 computers or so that I have tested it on, though, it’s worked.

If you regularly burn or create CD images, I would highly recommend ImgBurn. It’s lightweight, it works well, and it’s free.

Wow. Just wow.

I bought CoD: World at War today with high expectations. Every review I’ve read pointed to a fucking awesome game. However, as I began playing, I realized a sad truth: it sucks.

What happened? CoD 4 was fucking awesome! World at War is just terrible. You only ever see dirt and cement (why the fuck do CoD fans complain about Gears of War having a boring pallette?). Both single player and multiplayer are boring as shit. It's hard to move around in campaign mode, as I keep getting stuck on the terrain.

I think this is the only shooter I've played where the weapons have no recoil, but when you get shot, the camera flails around like you're on a tilt-a-whirl. Also, as soon as you poke your head out of cover, a good portion of the NPCs stop shooting at their targets, turn around and start shooting you in the face. The combination of those two things makes it impossible to shoot anything. Maybe it has something to do with that fact that I’m drunk, but I’m completely disapointed.

I’m trading in CoD: World at War tomorrow at Game Stop, and picking up Left 4 Dead instead.

Time to get back to Gears of War 2.

I’ve decided that I need something to write about on a regular basis, and that I should probably start writing some positive blog postings before I turn emo, and start slashing my wrists. We’ll see how it goes, but I’m going to try to recommend free software every week that has made my life easier. For the purposes of this series, “Freeware” software refers to free, closed source software; and open source software – no “shareware,” “trialware,” or “are-you-seriously-charging-money-for-this-ware.”

For “Freeware of the Week” #1, I’ve decided to review an awesome drive imaging program called DriveImage XML – an awesome disk imaging tool. You can find official information here, and a direct download link here.

If you are looking for an application to make a quick, one-time backup of your hard disk or transfer a partition between hard disks, look no further, DriveImage XML is for you. Official features are: Backup logical drives and partitions to image files; Browse these images, view and extract files; Restore these images to the same or a different drive; Copy directly from drive to drive; and Schedule automatic backups with your Task Scheduler.

DriveImage XML is great for all of the aforementioned reasons, but the most important feature to me (besides being free), is the ability to restore an image to a destination partition that’s larger than the source partition. Most disk imaging and recovery software that I’ve seen out there will take the entirety of the destination partition, and write to it as if it was the same size as the source partition, essentially shrinking your capacity.

Here’s a specific example as to why that’s useful: I had a user with a 75GB hard drive, who was running out of disk space. At this point, I would normally just throw in a second hard drive, but he had some retarded HP workstation that had absolutely no space for a second hard drive. Now what do I do? I could have copied all of his files to the network, thrown the new hard disk in, installed Windows, re-install all of his apps, and so on, or I could partition the disk in to two parts, and use a traditional backup program like NTBACKUP to transfer the data to a partition of equal size to the source partition. After a little research, I found DriveImage XML. I threw his old 75GB HDD into an external drive enclosure, and used DriveImage XML to copy an image of the disk over to my workstation. I then swapped that disk out for the new 320GB disk, and after formatting it, I restored the image, now utilizing all available disk space.

I did have to do the hocus pocus and sprinkle some chicken blood on the disk to get it to boot properly, but that’s a story for another time, and I’ll write about it later if anyone cares.

That’s it for this week. I hope you give DriveImage XML a shot, and let me know how it goes!

Hello Everyone,

I recently starting playing around with the PDC beta of Windows 7 in Virtual PC 2007. I was initially irritated by the fact that Virtual Machine Additions did not work correctly. After I installed the Additions to the virtual machine, it crashed on reboot. I did a system restore and was able to get it up and running again. I was able to fix the problem by installing Virtual PC 2007 Service Pack 1. Windows 7 took the new drivers just fine.

I have to say that I really like Windows 7 so far. I really wish I could try it out with Aero enabled, but I haven’t found a spare box with a good enough graphics card. I wish Windows 7 was my OS on my main workstation, so that I could boot into a VHD. I can’t wait!

I got the awesomebar enabled using Rafael Rivera’s tool. I found it in Paul Thurrott’s blog.

I hope this helps someone out. Have fun testing Windows 7. I know I am!

The folks over at The Onion posted a lame article today. They smugly took a shit on Windows, because that’s what cool people do (apparently). You can find the original article here. I decided to fix their embarrassing mistakes by make my own comparison chart. Feel free to review it extensively, before deciding that Windows 7 will be your next operating system of choice, due to its broad range of support for third-party hardware, its stability, and its functionality.

Don’t let Apple make you its bitch! Help thwart their desires of forcing expensive first-party hardware and software (and Steve Jobs’ dick) down our throats!

Long live Windows 7!