My notebook PC went “toes-up” on Friday evening. After several of hours of troubleshooting over the course of the weekend I eventually determined that the hard drive had sustained an unrecoverable failure. (Notebook hard drives evidently tend to fail more frequently than their desktop counterparts.)
Happily, I didn’t keep much of anything vital there. Somewhere down the line I’ll probably realize it had my only copy of something, but most of my important files are stored on the desktop computer which gets backed up automatically. So nothing too vital appears to have been lost, though it did mess up my plans for getting some stuff done while I was sitting at the Shore Leave table during Balticon.
I took the drive out this afternoon so I could make sure the new one I was ordering would fit into the same space, and I’m really impressed at how small it is. 2 1/2 inches wide, by about 1/3 of an inch thick (9 mm). Who knew something so tiny could cause so many problems?
The replacement should arrive on Wednesday or Thursday. Then comes the real fun. I’ve installed various versions of Windows a number of times. But this will be the first time I’ve ever installed it on a computer that doesn’t have a floppy drive.

I’ve been participating in various Relay for Life events for about ten years now. My Jaycees Chapter has been fielding a team since before I joined and about six weeks ago I signed up for this year’s team.
One of the things about cancer is that pretty much everybody knows someone who’s had cancer. In my case a number of friends and family members have been diagnosed over the years, and several of them have passed away. That makes this particular cause a bit more personal and makes it easier for me to get up the courage to do some fundraising. (The fact that so many people know cancer patients doubtless makes it easier for people to donate as well.)
About three weeks ago my friend AJ was diagnosed with cancer. Because of advances in treatment over the years, brought on by people supporting cancer research, she’s expected to make a full recovery.
So I’d like to publicly thank a few of the people who’ve helped me out this year. In no particular order other than first name alphabetical:

I’m right now about 40% of the way to my fundraising goal and would very much like to exceed it. If you’d like to support me in Relay for Life, please visit my donation site at:

http://www.acsevents.org/SoMoCo/ThatBlairGuy

Browsing through Netflix last night, I noticed a new tab in the list of sections available for viewing. The “Watch Now” tab turns out to be a collection of videos you can watch online. No more selecting a movie, waiting for it to percolate to the top of your queue and then waiting for it to arrive in the mail, this is pretty much instant gratification.
Apparently this is something they’re rolling out to a few customers at a time. I didn’t notice anything on the site mentioning what the criteria are for them choosing to make it available; but the way this kind of thing usually works is that by the time a service becomes available to me, everyone else has had it for months or years.
For now at least this is just a free extra included in every Netflix subscription, but the fine print includes a notice that they reserve the right to charge for it eventually. It’s also not an “all-you-can-eat” arrangement, you get one hour of viewing time for every dollar in the cost of your Netflix subscription. So for example, on a plan that costs $18/month, you can watch 18 hours worth of online movies, in addition to your regular rentals.
From a technical perspective, it’s relatively painless. I don’t know the full list of supported platforms, but on Windows it requires Internet Explorer 6.0 (or later) and the Windows Media Player. When you sign up to watch your first movie, the “Netflix Movie Player” (presumably a wrapper around the Windows player) is downloaded and installed. I had to reboot to get the video to display, but my computer had already been in an “odd” state beforehand. And that’s all it took.
The video streams from Netflix’s servers, so the image quality is going to be subject to the limitations of your network connection. I have a 6MBs cable connection and the lights on my network connection flashed non-stop throughout Bill Engvall’s 72-minute performance. This probably won’t work at all for someone on a dial-up connection, but the full-screen image on my laptop was just as sharp as if I was watching a DVD.
I don’t see this replacing my Netflix DVDs any time soon (after all, my TV doesn’t have the ability to connect to the Internet). But this could be a nice addition for times when I don’t want to wait for a movie to arrive, or if I’m travelling and don’t want to haul a bunch of DVDs (or pay for a hotel’s in-room movie package).
All in all, it’s very cool.

I’ve been convinced for some time that a high percentage of the stuff you find online is pretty much junk. Sure, there’s some great stuff out there: Reference materials, product reviews, and more. The web is a real Wonderland.

On the other hand, consider the number of sites with pages that are never updated. Here’s one particularly egregious offender. And then you get into that whole thing with projects that never go anywhere and an unending array of blogs where the authors ramble without any sort of focus and so on.

When I started Dividing by Zero, I commented upon what I called “Blair’s corollary to Sturgeon’s Law,” claiming that most of what’s on the web is crud and wondering which side of the equation I was on.

I’ve been following the UserFriendly web-comic for most of the past seven years. It takes some good jabs at the geek world in a way that we generally can’t help but laugh at. Last weekend User Friendly ran a strip making the same claim I did about the value of online content. The strip even made the same reference to Sturgeon’s Law. Do you suppose this means Illiad (the author) has found my site?

Then again, he also pokes fun at himself from time to time…

Hello there! If you’re reading this (and I know both of my readers are out there), then I’d like to request your assistance with an upcoming project of mine.

If you think I’m about to ask for money, well… Yeah, you’re right. The good news is that I’m not asking for myself, nor am I asking on behalf of any overseas princes, oil executives, or shady bank officials. (The bad news is that I’m also not offering you fabulous wealth in return for your assistance with sneaking money out of a foreign country.)

On June 2-3, I’ll be participating in the Southern Montgomery County Relay for Life – a fundraiser for the American Cancer Society.

Officially, everyone’s supposed to raise at least $100. Truthfully, I’d like to hit at least $1,000. Donations can be made online with a credit card. If you’d prefer to use a check or money order, drop me a line so we can coordinate things.

Pretty much everyone I know has at one time or another known someone with cancer. With your help, maybe we can brighten that picture.