i am out of the loop… or what?

Since I have been unemployeed and at home, I feel left out of a lot of things.  Don’t get me wrong… I am very busy and my time in front of a computer is much less these days.  I’ve been enjoying the time with the kids and my wife so that’s a great thing.  But I’ve had some eye-opening experiences.

First, I feel left out.  When something classic or really funny makes it around the office, it’s great.  But since I’ve been out of that loop, I’m missing on some stuff, (realistically, am I really?):

And there are various Youtube and Google videos that I feel like I am missing out on.  What’s the next, greatest Internet meme? I think what I am really missing, is the people I used to work with.  I wish I could spend more time with them since I still consider them my best friends.  *sniff sniff*

But seriously.  I am on the computer way less than I used to be so I guess it is conceivable I am going through some sort of withdrawal.

mspscan.exe crashes… or ScanSrv crashes

This is totally nuts.  As you might have read, I reinstalled WinXP on a newly formated hard drive and had to reinstall Office 2003 naturally.  When I tried to scan in a doc with Microsoft Document Scanning, as soon as I hit the “scan” button, the application crashed and wanted to phone home to Microsoft and report the error. Here’s what showed up in my Event Viewer -> Application:

Faulting application mspscan.exe, version 11.0.8166.2, stamp 4616c200, faulting module mspscan.exe, version 11.0.8166.2, stamp 4616c200, debug? 0, fault address 0x00008b66.

I couldn’t find anything on Google or Google groups… nothing even close.  I did find two articles in Spanish that didn’t seem to help.   I was starting to sweat since I really needed to send a particular fax, (I use a web-based faxing service so I scan in my docs and then email them to the fax provider who sends them as a fax to my recipient).

I then searched for “microsoft document scanning crashes” and I found something that looked like a clue from somewhere:

To get this to work on our machines using ‘Microsoft Office Document
Scanning‘, we went into ‘My Computer’ from the desktop and under
‘Scanners and Cameras’ shortened the scanner’s filename to 26
characters.  Also put the recent file history settings that were
deleted previously from the registry back in place (couple of them had
really long filenames). It still works.  For us it appears the
presence of recent file history with long filenames had nothing to do
with the ‘…Document Scanning‘ not working.

You know what? It worked.  Instead of going to “My Computer” I went into “Control Panel” and changed:

  • Hewlitt-Packard OfficeJet K80 Scanner

to:

  • HP OfficeJet K80 Scanner

And it worked.  So, here I post this for you in case you need it.    This is apparently something that came up after Office SP3.  Good luck!

i must conquer the fear of life

My title might sound somewhat philosophical but in realty, it’s the song I am listening to right now.  The title of the song is “The Risen Lord” by Will Oldham.  I’ve rated this song four stars in the past…

So where were we? Oh yeah… I haven’t posted in a long time.  I have been more busy than every since I am unemployed.  It’s been great and I feel super productive.   For the last two or three days, I had to rebuild our home PC.  I ended up buying a new motherboard, powersupply, and SATA DVD burner.  I can’t believe how cheap and powerful computer parts have become… even in the last year.  It’s nuts.   So now I have a rock solid and stable machine at home, and my wife is happy.   Okay, she’s not happy about how much I spent, but when I explained to her we spent way less than if we bought a new computer, she saw the logic and was cool about it.  *whew*

For those interested, here’s my shopping list:

I didn’t include my RAM.  You know what’s nuts? When I bought my Sony DVD burner, it was almost $150.  This Lite-On I bought is more faster and has more features and it cost $39.  Incredible.  I’m happy.  But I’m not too happy with the on-board video on the motherboard.  For now, it is a necessity since I had a hot-shot AGP card.  Now I need to find a deal on a PCI-E video card, then I’ll really be in business.   Oh, and everything is moving to SATA… so if you are thinking about buying a new motherboard to get an upgrade, make sure you have enough IDE ports on the new motherboard or move your data to SATA drives… hence my SATA dvd burner purchase.
So, tinkerin’ around with our computer took valuable time away from some other important things I have been working on.   (You know who you are), but now I am back on track.  I also ended up buying some bad RAM from a guy on Craigslist, (he says he didn’t know it was bad and promised to mail me a check back… I hope he does the right thing).   I manged to sneak my new new laptop RAM into my home computer purchase the other day.

Today, I got a bunch of stuff done so I feel pretty good.  I doubt you, the reader find any of this interesting, so I promise a more juicy, technical post later this week.

music

I think I got this work out with a WP plugin called easytube. I hope this works…
If you are a reader of my blog, you’ll see that every once in a while I’ll post some music related stuff. Truth is, I love music… but not the top 40 crap or the pop music. I cut my teeth on college radio when we moved here from Chicago in 1984. My first record/LP I bought was Devo, New Traditionalists. I’ve always enjoyed music that wasn’t part of the mainstream. Don’t get me wrong, there is good popular music, but I just hate the souless crap that is pumped out nowaday. This is something I can speak with some authority on. During my college years I worked at record stores for a good… hmmm, let me see… 1988 until 1995. I was part of the LP to CD conversion and even then I remember when CD’s were sold in the “longbox” before they went to the jewel case only product that you see today. I remember when I laughed outloud when some kid asked me, “What is an LP?”

Even today, I prefer college radio to mainstream radio. However, I have found myself appreciating some fo the classics. I’ve always like the Who, but lately I have begun to appreciate Led Zepplin.

Okay, I have distracted myself from my main point. You should see this video. It’s great. If you don’t get it, then maybe you should tune into some spoon-fed pablum for the masses:

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to bring you down. It’s just a beautiful video that’s done really well. So, dear reader, in order to balance things out… I submit this nugget that I believe is completely underrated, even despised among the true fans. Check it out:

This video is significant for many reasons. I might need to start a separate post about it. Neil Young is one of those guys that is a creative genius. Whether you like or hate the “Shocking Pinks” era, you have to appreciate the effort that Neil put out. Anyways, I’m getting tired but thought I’d leave you with this Cornershop video. I love this song… and whole album is really good, too.