Kirb’s Musings

Kirby Witmer’s ponderings, ruminations, and meditations of… anything.

Yesterday was the first day of spring, and I got my free Italian ice at Rita’s . It was almost too cold outside to eat it though. Did you snag a free ice too?

There’s been a number of changes on this blog the last while.

• My blog now resides at blog.kirb.com. I always disliked the fact that my old blog url had a capital letter in it, and when I figured out that it wouldn’t be that hard to move the blog I decided to go with a new sub-domain.
• There is a new theme. For some reason I always get tired of a theme after awhile so I change it.
• I’ve upgraded to Wordpress 2.5 RC1. And its just plain awesome. Lots of cool new features, and a whole lot more responsive.
• My photos now reside at photos.kirb.com. Don’t you just love my short domain name?

Needless to say I was quite surprised at receiving a free copy of Windows Vista Ultimate with Service Pack 1 at the Windows Server 2008 launch event this week. It was definitely worth going.

      Microsoft has finally released the much anticipated Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista. Although its not “publicly” available for download from Microsoft yet, it can be found online at various other places. I’ve installed the service pack on both a desktop and a laptop now and I’m well pleased with it. Its worth installing simply for the annoying “slow file copy” bug fix which is included. Hurray!! Of course, there is a whole lot of other fixes included as well.

Check out these screenshots.

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I was at a Microsoft Partner event back in 2007 where some people were upset that the Ultimate version of Vista was not included in the Action Pack. It looks like that is about to change, because I just got this email from the Microsoft Partner team. Here is an excerpt from it:

One full-install licence key for Windows Vista Ultimate with SP1 for internal use, so you can learn more about this product’s benefits and features for customers who need a single PC to fulfil their work, travel and entertainment needs. We plan for this software to be delivered in your regular Action Pack quarterly update (April/May 2008).

I’m pretty happy about that. I just about fell for the buy one get one free offer they had offered to me earlier this year as a bonus for beta testing Windows Vista, but now I’m glad I didn’t.

It would appear like we might just see some good things coming from the Microsoft Surface team at this year’s CES. Although the team sure isn’t giving many clues. Its a bummer I can’t be there, I would love to have my hands on one of those.

This picture is pretty impressive in my opinion.

-via the Windows Live Local Blog

I’ve been organizing my files and photos that were scattered from one hard drive to the next, and I discovered these old Nextel ads I had downloaded a couple of years ago. Sigh. I miss the old Nextel.
(If you have trouble watching these videos, you can download the original mpegs at the bottom of this post.)

http://www.kirb.com/media/radiotower.flv

http://www.kirb.com/media/antennalope.flv

http://www.kirb.com/media/pigeons.flv

http://www.kirb.com/media/lunch.flv

Original MPEG Files (right click to download)

http://www.kirb.com/media/radiotower.mpeg
http://www.kirb.com/media/antennalope.mpeg
http://www.kirb.com/media/pigeons.mpeg
http://www.kirb.com/media/lunch.mpeg

I was at the local Home Depot today, and I noticed that the soda machine outside now has a credit card swipe device on it. Just my luck, I was wishing for a cold drink, although I had no cash on me. I whipped out the credit card, swiped it, and bingo, I had my cold drink. Ahhh… modern conveniences. 

This new glowing animated shirt dynamically displays the current wi-fi signal strength. Way cool.