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Me want!

I’ve had my eye on this joystick/throttle combo for a while. Much cheaper ($89 bones) than a single yoke and a throttle stack. I’ve tested this in a store and its pretty lightweight on the resistance side but has a nice heavy base, as opposed to my current Saitek joystick which has strong resistance and a fairly light base. The throttle is very smooth though. The front “hand guard” is a little strange though..maybe I can remove it.

So I finally got around to installing the Vista Beta yesterday (it was time for my quarterly format so I figured what the hell). Overall I think it’s a dazzling operating system with all the bells and whistles of bloat. Microsoft is pretty good with going to the next level with their GUI each time they put out a new OS, and while some things from older platforms have been retained others have been changed completely (or at least altered/renamed in such a way to seem new). In a way it seems the operating system has been ‘dumbed down’ for people who beyond oblivious to using a little common sense and clicking around to find what you need. Redundancy is a word I may use..maybe even over bearing..but this is still Beta and from what I can tell the whole thing is fairly customizable ( so the minimalist me in can reign).

I continue to use this I hope to post more about what I like/don’t like. I may edit this entry, or I may just create anew (?) all together. My first complaint though is the ridiculous and utterly annoying Administration/User privileges thing that’s seemingly buried deep within Windows itself. Again this is Beta so hopefully these are the obligatory glitches, but basically as it stands now I am the only account “in town” who has administration privileges who has to click through 3 or 4 windows before I can alter any settings or am denied authorization outright.

I turned User Control off (seen above) because it was flat out annoying and wouldn’t let me allow me to edit a simple .lnk and wouldn’t even allow me to join a Battlefield server, all in the name of ‘you dont have the proper privileges’.

^So now I get to stare at that all the time now. Anyone know a work around to get that ‘alert’ to go away? (I beg your forgiveness for skewed images, the XP Image Resizer which I’ve grown to adore doesn’t work with Vista)

**EDIT**

Here’s another example;

I love how it’s telling the administrator to contact the administrator for permission. I had to tick mark ‘remember my answer’ and skip 80 operations. Operations being pieces of my plane!!!!

Did this damn thing come outta nowhere, or what? 

A tropical depression formed off the North Carolina coast on Tuesday, causing a tropical storm watch to be issued for the eastern part of the state.At 11 a.m. EDT, the second depression of the 2006 Atlantic hurricane season was moving toward the north near 5 mph, the National Hurricane Center said Tuesday. A slow turn to the north-northwest or northwest was expected later Tuesday or Wednesday.Forecasters said the depression could become a tropical storm as soon as Tuesday evening. Top sustained winds were 35 mph and the depression would be named Beryl if its winds reach 39 mph.The watch was issued for north of Cape Lookout northward to south of Currituck Beach Light. A watch means that storm conditions are possible within 36 hours.

Worldwide Storm Names 2006 

The space shuttle landed this morning around 9am EST. Make sure you click the picture above for the landing video ;). It’s really good for any aviation (gliding really) enthusiast. Make sure you watch the launch videos here from cameras located on the rear and nose of the right solid rocket booster. At 3 minutes it seperates from the shuttle and shows it flying off, and at around 7 minutes if when it splashes back into the ocean for recovery. The nose cam has the best view for takeoff and splash, but the rear has the best for seperation and ‘goodbye’.

(pardon the RealMedia linkage, it just streams better than the Windows Media file in this case. WM is available though)

Today I went to get my hair cut and something bad happened…

Uh Oh. Should I keep getting it this short? I wonder if you can even tell the difference from this angle; the rest of the pictures were terrible.

This girl has talent. She has a few songs up on YouTube, so click her picture above and listen up. Make sure you click ‘more’ on the right for the lyrics and watch her other songs down below that. Props to you mademoiselle Moineau.

This past weekend I got to see Superman ( a matinee still cost us 18 friggin dollars) at a brand new theatre in Wilson, NC. It was stadium seating with big comfortable seats and a DLP screen you could probably see from space. It was a great movie and I think Megan and Brett had a good time too.

What really caught my eye about this movie (about of a hero that transcends all cultures ) was the warm tone to the image. If you look at the picture above it sorta has a cartoonish element to it. To me thats an homage to where Superman really began. Other movies which have pulled this ‘era of origins’ (per se) off are Pirates, Band of Brothers and Saving Private Ryan. No doubt there are others but those are the ones I’m most familiar with.

In other news - Megan got an 1100 on the GRE. To do that you must have game. Now that I’ve mentioned this, she’s forced to blog about it. Go Megan!

Happy July 4th! Considering the litigious spirit of our country I found this humorous.

“Apparently, a company in Sweden is offering file-sharing insurance - they’ll pay your fines if you’re sued by the RIAA. The /. submitter translates the link as follows: ‘For a mere 140 SEK ($19 USD) per year, they will pay all your fines and give you a t-shirt if you get convicted for file sharing.’”

If you think filing a claim with your in-country insurance company is a pain, imagine collecting from one in Sweden