Today was brought to you by the letter E.

Words that I added to the wall today:

-evil
-egg
-easter
-ether
-everyday
-ego
-edible
-eternal
-eager
-educator
-education
-erie
-eek!
-earth
-edgy
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A note about Blogshares, I sold all my shares in everyone. Don't take it personally but I want to take my fake money with me into the new game.
______

And now a big thanks to one of my Techno-Super Friends Tim. Tim has assisted me in installing Mandrake Linux 9.1 making my desktop a dual-boot system. Everything seems to be working okay, I think. Haven't really had a chance to play around in Linux just yet. So, Tim, where did you say I could download that theme that looks like Mac OS X (great now ya'll know the real reason I wanted to install Linux.)

Class dismissed!

While out and about on Saturday, I bought a new hard drive for my desktop computer which has been out of comission for many, many moons.

Whenever I would shut off my computer it would go back to the way it had been when I started it up. I could install, uninstall, save, delete, and change the background picture, but when the computer was restarted it would revert. I tried many things to fix it to no avail.

A new hard drive has been on my shopping list for awhile now. Saturday, I found one for 120 GB for $99 which was a pretty good deal I think. The 60 GB model was $119. Today, I installed it, which I was very nervous about. Everything seems to be working, I haven't got past the whole formatting and such, that will come tomorrow.

It will be nice to have my desktop back again. I can play games, which I don't need to be doing but that is another post.

Mr. Wright, out!

UPDATE (03/03/03): My Desktop is back up and running! Whoo hoo! And boy is it snappy. Sure I haven't loaded anything but XP but let's not think about that. I partitioned the drive with an 80 GB and a 40 GB partitions. I was thinking about getting some variation of Linux running on the 40 GB partition, just to play around with it. Any (cheap) suggestions? I am also looking for a nice MP3 player. Not fond of MusicJukebox or WinAmp. I really liked Siren from Sonic Foundry but they no longer make it. Let me know in the comments.

Anna, you can skip this post. For those of you who are running any version of Windows XP, they have recently posted the Service Pack 1. You NEED to download this update because it fixes a critical secuity bug that could delete items off your hard drive by simply clicking a link in a HTML document, web page or HTML e-mail. The good folk over at Microsoft have been hiding this for a couple of months until they were able to fix the bug. The service pack fixes this, as well as several other issues that have been patched already with Windows Update. If you have been keeping up with your Windows Update, then use the express version, it will check which patches you have and will only download the patches that you need.

To read more technical data about this issue, check out the related articles at the ScreenSavers:

The security hole involves Windows XP help. The hole lets anyone put a link on a website that can wipe out certain hard-drive directories.

2. Once you've found the file, delete it or rename it. Doing so will not hinder your ability to use Windows XP.

Mr. Wright, out!

I think that it would be interesting to go around to the different classrooms at my school and see the different styles and personalities of each room. One of the things that would be most intriguing to me would be the difference between the female teachers' classrooms and the male teachers' classrooms. If I were honest, there is very little sympathy for certain things in my classroom. Here is an example of a typical medical complaint in my classroom: (Moms everywhere will be horrified):

Child: (In the most pathetic, whiney voice possible) Mr. Wright, (insert dramatic pause, sigh for dramatic effect optional) I have a headache (or other ailment). (Flutter sad puppy eyes.)
Mr. Wright: (Usually in the middle of answering another child's question) I'm sorry.
Child: It's really bad.
Mr. Wright: What do you want me to do about it?
Child: I dunno.
Mr. Wright: Sorry, I left my magic wand at home; otherwise I would use it to get rid of your headache (or other ailment).
Child: Mr. Wright!
Mr. Wright: Well, when you figure out what you want me to do, you come tell me and we'll do it. Okay?
Child: Okay. (Limps back to desk, and adds sad little cough)

Horrible isn't it? I'm just so mean. Actually I have discovered that children who actually have a medical issue will say that they need to go to the nurse, and without question, those students who ask to go to the nurse, go. Conversely, those students who won't suggest going to the nurse are just trying to get out of doing something they don't want to do. I guess they feel that saying that they need to go see the nurse is too obvious, and they would be found out. So they wait for me to suggest that they go to the nurse and that way it will appear that it was my idea. As a matter of fact, whatever they come to me and say they think they need to do, I will allow them to do that within reason of course. Just they other day, I had a student complain that they had a headache and they told me that they thought they just needed to lie down. We have a red wagon with pillows in the back of the room, so the child went to the wagon, laid down for five minutes and got back up and finished the day, and we didn't even have to bother the very busy school nurse. Now there are a few students that I have, who are very shy and who normally will not talk to me unless I talk to them. If they complain about something, then it is straight to the nurse! Now if I can just figure out a bathroom plan that will work.

In other news: my desktop computer is going crazy. It has taken to restarting itself while I am working on it, not while it is just sitting there. So I decided to start from scratch by reinstalling XP. So I start the backup process, burning files to a CD-R, five minutes into the process, it restarts. I have wasted four blank CDs so far. Any tech heads that happen to read this, please advise. UPDATE: In trying to run a ScanDisk from the XP CD I recieved this message: Setup has determined that drive C: is corrupt and cannot be repaired. Folks, this does not sound good. The little Tech Demon has taken up perminate residence in my desktop! Does anyone know how to do an exorcism?

Mr. Wright, out!

Have you seen Apple's newest commercials? (Find them here.) I find them a bit annoying myself, but maybe that is why I enjoy this new switch commercial. You won't see this one on TV.

NOTE: You need Quicktime to view this, and it is a large file, about 3.68 MB but it is well worth the wait!

Did you catch the Shrek reference?

Mr. Wright, out!

I hate Spam. I hate e-mails that are sent to me that I didn't ask for. I really hate it when they contain content that I find offensive.

The government has recently taken up this battle. Several states have tried to pass laws regarding unsolicited e-mail, however many of those laws are being struck down as unconstitutional.

The Federal Government is now going to try. I hope that they are more successful.

Find more information in the article The War on Spam

More information about Spam and how to avoid it in this Spam FAQ.

Tell me what you think below. Can the government legislate Spam? Or for that matter the Internet? Let me know what you think.

Mr. Wright, out!

Not that anyone is interested, but, I have just finished upgrading Moveable Type which is the software that runs this blog. It seems that everything is working properly. If you see any problems please let me know.

Mr. Wright, out!

The other day I bought a PNY Nvidia Geforce 4 graphics card at Best Buy. It has 64 MB of video to replace the measly 16 MB that I currently have. It also is a 3D graphic accelorator to speed of game play of one of my favorite games right now, Command & Conquer Renegade.

I get it home, read the instructions, one of the few times that I have actually done that, and carefully put in the card into my machine. Plug everything back up and push the on button. The hard drive whirs like normal, only problem, the monitor tells me that there is no signal. RAAAAAAAA! I take everything apart again and make sure that the card is fully seated, plug everything back in, push on and then no signal. RAAAAAAAAAAAAA! I do everything a third time and the same thing. Finally I install the old card and everything is working. I guess the card is bad. I will be calling Tech Support tomorrow.

Teach Mr. Wright a thing or two and tell me what is wrong, if you can!

Mr. Wright, out!

Update 5/30/02: After much phone calling, e-mailing, and living without a sound card, I returned the silly thing. Seems HP didn't want me to be able to upgrade my power supply. Grrrr! I'm going to build my own compter next time, that is after I buy a Mac!