October 08, 2009
Quickset has encountered a problem
Recently I started getting error messages when running Dell Quickset to the effect of
Quickset has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience.
So very frustrating. The error details weren't much help either
Faulting application quickset.exe, version 8.3.17.0, faulting module kernel32.dll, version 5.1.2600.5781, fault address 0x00012afb.
I used Microsoft's Process Monitor [microsoft.com] to see just what was happening and found that right before faultrep.dll was loaded quickset.exe was looking for a DLL that didn't exist. A little farther up the chain I noticed it successfully probed a registry entry for a product I didn't have installed anymore (Inte'l WiFi software). Putting 2 and 2 together all I had to do was remove the orphaned registry entry (which pointed at this DLL that didn't exist) and voila!
I'm much happier now that I have my volume and brightness OSDs back in place.
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Posted by Guy at 10:39 AM | Permalink
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July 20, 2009
Javac Command Line Argument File
Recently I ran into a problem where I have too many jars in my classpath to successfully compile a certain application. Does this indicate something is broken in the build system? Definitely. But, until the build system is fixed I still need to compile, right?
There are stupid things to do with the path to get this working, but it looks like the engineers at Sun (when it was Sun) had (sort of) thought this might be a problem in the future, so they build something into the Java compiler called Command Line Argument Files. Basically you can specify all of your javac arguments within a single (or multiple) file(s) and not be limited by the underlying OS or shell program. This is awesome, except it's sort of broken when using classpath entries with spaces.
Luckily, there are workarounds.
Continue reading "Javac Command Line Argument File"
Posted by Guy at 12:01 PM | Permalink
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November 11, 2008
Nuclear a-go-go
Mini Nuclear Plant is safe [engadget.com]: This is awesome! So let's do the math.
10,000 homes
10 years
12 months/year
75 USD/month (average although in my case it's usually 100)
Total: 90 million USD
Cost: 25 million USD
Profit: 65 million USD
Of course this doesn't take into account infrastructure maintenance, delivery fees, etc. But even if all of that totaled 30 million USD there would still be a profit of 35 million USD after 10 years. Maybe not the best, but it's relatively clean power, right? If co-ops could be setup this sort of thing has the potential to put a hurt on many large power providers. Interesting.
Posted by Guy at 11:55 AM | Permalink
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October 13, 2008
Upgrade!
My hosting provider recently sent out a notice stating that MySQL 4 wasn't going to be supported starting 1/1/2009 and they could turn it off at anytime without prior notice. Therefore I've switched the backend DB over to MySQL 5. This post is really just a test to see if the switch occurred correctly.
Continue reading "Upgrade!"
Posted by Guy at 10:37 AM | Permalink
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September 29, 2008
Graduate School
I recently started my application for graduate school (again), this time with North Carolina State University [ncsu.edu]. I chose them because they offer an all online Masters degree for Computer Engineering. Sure there were other choices (namely Purdue), but NCSU had the right combination.
- Cheaper
- Less classes
The first point (cheaper) is because their classes are all 3 credits at 700 USD / credit, so 2100 USD per class. Compared to other schools, Purdue for example, where credits are 875 USD / credit or 2625 USD per class. Right off the bat that's a savings of 525 USD per class; spread that over 30 credits (10 classes) and you're looking at a difference of 5250 USD.
The second point (less classes) is important to me because I really don't want to still be doing this in 5 years. Some schools, Drexel for example, require 15 classes or 45 credits for a Master's degree. True they are only 10 week classes, but they charge 875 USD / credit.
The discrepancies in pricing between universities has me wondering if you're just paying for the name or are you paying for the education? The answer, of course, is that it depends on the school. I learned more about fuzzy math and combinatorics are SUNY IT than I think I would have at Syracuse, but the Real Time Systems class I took at SUNY was par with my undergrad classes. Hopefully NCSU will live up to my expectations.
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Posted by Guy at 05:25 AM | Permalink
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March 14, 2008
Update: next.yahoo.com
It looks like next.yahoo.com [yahoo.com] has been updated and redirects you to next.yahoo.net. It looks like some sort of design group either working with or for Yahoo. Here's what the site says it is:
* * Tasty bits of hacker goodness
* * A steady stream of small delights
* * Ideas, experiments and the people behind them
Posted by Guy at 08:23 AM | Permalink
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February 11, 2008
WTF Facebook?
After being bombarded with friend requests on MySpace for obvious spam accounts I pretty much stopped using it. Now I'm all into Facebook, but tonight I got a Friend request from someone I (or any of my friends) didn't know. Okay, so I checked out their profile and wouldn't you know...Check out my 18+ pictures...
What a PITA! I hope Facebook fixes this soon or at least comes up with a better solution than MySpace. Actually almost any solution is better than MySpace's.
Posted by Guy at 09:14 PM | Permalink
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