The Ramblings of Ken

Wow! I just discovered a new group last night. A friend of mine introduced me to a new video game called "Indigo Prophecy." On that game there are four songs by a group called "Theory of a Deadman." I had never heard of them before. I decided to find their CD and listen to it because I liked what I heard on the game.

I was blown away! There are a lot of tracks with heavy guitar that are cool. However, I am a sucker when it comes to rock/metal bands that play ballads. "Since You've Been Gone" from their new album "Gasoline" absolutely hit my heart with power! I've found a new group to put in my list of favorite bands!

(Image stolen from Amazon.com)

I've started to think lately that I have depression. I've gone through some really hard times and it has shown in my school work. Today I had two tests that were based upon homework that I didn't do this month. I crammed as much as I could for them and tried my very best. I'm sure that I failed my calculus test, nothing seemed right on there. However, on my computer science test, I actually think that I did halfway decent. I felt like I knew all of the answers. In fact, I think everything that I crammed for in the last hour before the test was exactly what was on the test.

However, even if I did fail both tests completely, so what? I'm still alive. I still love my job. I still have friends. Failing tests is not something I am used to, but I can tell that it is something that can be overcome.

For the past two days or so I was thinking that my life is over and that I have nothing else to live for. Well, it simply isn't true. I have so many people that care about me. I know that life is never as bad as it seems to be. I'm okay.

How cool is that? George Mason, a number 11 seed, beat the number one seed, Conneticut, to advance to the final four! It took overtime to do it, but they did it! I'm definitely cheering for the underdog to win it all!

The university newspaper "The Statesman" always dedicates every issue to one particular student. I think that every once in a while I'm going to change the title of the site to reflect the person that I'm dedicating the site to on that particular day. You can tell that today it is dedicated to James. :P

LSU shocked Duke tonight and sent JJ Reddick and company away without a national title! Unbelievable! Duke is the first number one seed to leave the NCAA tournament...

Running as a non-administrator on Windows XP is the way to go. If you are still running an account with administrative privileges on Windows (which is the default), you should re-think what you are doing.

When running as an administrator, malicious websites can take advantage of the elevated privleges that an administrator has and they can wreak havoc on your system. Viruses can also take over your system and do a lot of damage when being run as an administrator.

I have run as a non-administrator on my system at work (by company policy) and at home now for quite some time. I am quite pleased with the results.

To be able to do some administrative tasks, however, it is very annoying to log off of your account and log back in under the Administator account. To get around this you can use the "runas" command to run Internet Explorer. That is the way that I have been doing it. I won't tell you exactly how to do that, though, because I found a better way. I'll explain...

When Windows Vista and Internet Explorer 7 come out, the trick of running IE as an administrator won't work anymore. This is because Microsoft is finally breaking the ties between Internet Explorer and Windows Explorer. As I've tested the Internet Explorer 7 Beta previews I've come to realize that my tricks won't work on Windows XP after Internet Explorer 7 comes out.

I found a way around it today! You can run Windows Explorer as a separate process and it works! Here's how:

First, run regedit.exe as an administrator and navigate to HKCU \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Explorer \ Advanced. Change the SeparateProcess value from 0 to 1. This will cause explorer to run as a separate process under the administrator user account.

Next (as an administrator) make a batch file called admin.bat in the c:\windows\system32 folder. In that file paste the following:

[code]@ECHO OFF
runas /user:Administrator /savecred %1[/code]

Now, under a non-administrator account, go to start...run... and type "admin explorer" You'll then get a new Windows Explorer window that is running with full administrative privileges. You can then complete any administrative task without logging off and back on.

(Hint found at this site.)

Yes, the LAN party is still happening this Friday (March 24th). Everyone come! It will be great! Come and show up whenever you can get here. People generally show up at about 7:30 or 8:00. I'm looking forward to it!

I just can't get myself to go to bed without posting something tonight. I really don't know what I am going to write, so I guess we'll see how this goes.

I find myself going to bed earlier these days. I just don't see much to stay up for, I dunno. Everyone else here goes to bed at a decent time, I guess it is time that I started doing that too.

Oh, I just found out that I am going to be home alone for the next several nights. My brother got a job working swing shift and my parents are going on a nice romantic getaway for their 26th anniversary. It will be interesting staying at home by myself for the next few days...

I'm excited for tomorrow. Sunday is the only day that I see most of my friends for some reason. I guess we are all slackers and don't call each other and invite each other to do stuff. We all meet at church and talk to each other there. Sundays are good days.

Well, I am going to bed before Sunday actually gets here. Just thought I'd leave you all tonight with a few things.

Good night.

I have implemented Awstats advanced statistics capabilities on my web server. I love it so far. Now you can go in and see how much you are stalking me. The new page is available on the "Stats" link on the right. You then click on "
Click here for detailed web server statistics." Or for now, you can just click this link. Thanks to those of you who helped me test it :)

USU lost to Washington tonight 75-61. We battled hard, but Washington's Brandon Roy proved to be too much for the Aggies, as he took over the game and scored 28 points against the zone defense of Utah State. Very disappointing to us Aggie fans, but it was a good season... Good luck next year Aggies!

I love it! You know March is in full swing when the NCAA tournament occurs. Check it out... the games that are not being broadcast in your local area are available to watch online at http://www.ncaasports.com/mmod. I setup my computer downstairs next to the TV so that I could watch three games at a time. It rocks! For your viewing pleasure:

Nevada's tournament run is done already! 12th seed Montana beat 5th seed Nevada today in Salt Lake City. Crazy stuff happens in the NCAA tournament every year. Now Utah State needs to show up and beat Washington too to give the WAC some representation in the tournament.

How many contacts do you have on your MSN list? Right now I have 8 online, 5 mobile, and 10 offline contacts. That makes 23 total. I reduced my list by quite a bit a few weeks ago and I took off all of the people that I haven't seen sign on for years. That really reduced my list. I guess I need to make more online buddies now.

Do you guys have any contacts on your list that are online quite a bit, but yet you don't talk to them? I was thinking about that today. There are a couple that I haven't talked to for a while. I really don't know why. We just, um, stop talking. I can't explain it any differently... How are your contact lists?

I rediscovered a handy utility at work today. It is the Windows Installer CleanUp Utility.

Have you ever installed a program that wouldn't uninstall properly and it stayed left behind in the Add/Remove Programs applet? The Windows Installer CleanUp Utility might be what you need to get rid of the traces that the program left behind.

We had a problem at work today where a vital firewall/antivirus program would not uninstall properly. We had to uninstall it so that we could install a newer, more updated version. The new one would not install until all traces of the old program were gone. We were stuck. After running the Windows Installer CleanUp Utility, however, the newer program installed fine.

Use this utility if you ever get stuck.

Download the Windows Installer CleanUp Utility here

Are you feeling the hype? Our Aggies are on their way to the big dance!!! Post about your excitement, the hype, the retarded media people that think we shouldn't be in, etc...

Come on Aggies, let's beat those Huskies!



(Image stolen from trueaggies.com)

Well, as promised, I did shave this morning. Look how good I look!!

I don't know why I am doing this, but I'm posting my NCAA Tournament predictions here for everyone to see. A lot of my predictions are wishful thinking, but most are what I think it will be. You must take into account that I like upsets, and I think there will be quite a few of them this year, including USU's win over Washington :) Have fun looking over my picks and don't hesitate to make fun of them.

Take a good look folks. It is coming off. I am sick of it. I am not a facial hair kind of guy. Who knows... maybe once in a while I will let it grow out for a bit, but I can't take it anymore. My personality is all about clean shaven too. I am posting this for those of you who follow my blog regularly, but haven't seen me for awhile. You know who you are :) I'll post the clean shaven picture tomorrow so that you can see the difference.

Hell has frozen over! USU did not win their conference tournament and the selection committee still picked them for the tournament! They play Thursday in San Diego, California against the University of Washington. USU was given a 12 seed and Washington has a seed of 5. This is better than last year by quite a bit. They played as a 14 seed against number 3 seed Arizona in 2005 and lost. I think they have a good chance to pull off an upset here!

I teach Sunday School at 2:00 pm today. I am not looking forward to the lesson today. It is on eternal marriage and I feel like the most inadequate person in the world to teach this lesson. I feel like I am trying to make the right steps in my life toward marriage, but nothing seems to go right. My feelings aren't exactly completely positive on the subject right now. I hope that I can convey the message in a very uplifting way and not let my true feelings on the subject show. I want to encourage everyone to prepare for a good and happy marriage. I hope it goes well...

The real reason I am posting this is to push the post about the Kitty Blog off of the front page :P

I was getting bored with the site's color scheme. I decided that it is time to change it to something else. I'm gonna try out this one for a while. I kind of like it. It kind of fits the mood that I am in right now. Maybe I should change the color scheme every single day to reflect my mood! That's a good idea!

Well, look on the bright site, blog followers... we can now talk about something else besides USU being in the WAC tournament and moving on to play in the NCAA tournament. USU lost to Nevada tonight in the WAC Championship game 70-63. They were tied at 55 as time was running down. Nate Harris had a chance to win the game, but he missed an easy layup. Nevada went on to win it in overtime and, thus, ruined the Aggies chances of an NCAA tournament birth. Now that USU came to the WAC the media all says that the WAC is a one bid conference. I don't get it, but I'm sure that that is the way it will play out tomorrow. Some things in life we will just never understand....

USU beat Lousiana Tech 68-64 in the WAC Tournament semi-finals. They move on to play the winner of Nevada and New Mexico State tomorrow night at 7:00 pm on ESPN2. Tune in and cheer on your Aggies to a conference championship and a birth into the NCAA Tournament!

UPDATE - 11:45pm:

USU will play against Nevada in the WAC Championship game. Nevada just beat New Mexico State 70-59. Tune in at 7:00 pm on ESPN2!

Utah State won their opening game in the WAC tournament against San Jose State this afternoon. They won 76-69 and move on to play Lousiana Tech tomorrow at 7:00 pm Mountain Time. Tune in to Comcast channel 60 or watch it online at http://www.wacsports.com. Cheer on your Aggies!

The Utah State Aggies are playing in the WAC tournament this weekend. They will be playing for a chance to go to the NCAA tournament. Their first game is on Thursday at 3:30 pm Logan time. If they win they'll be playing again on Friday at 7:00 pm Logan time. After winning that game they will move on to the championship game on Saturday at 7:00 pm Logan time. The games can be watched online at http://www.wacsports.com , except for the championship game, which will be on ESPN2.

Watch the Aggies! Cheer them on as they go for a birth into the NCAA Tournament!!!

(Image hijacked from www.utahstateaggies.com)

I had a previous entry stating that the next LAN party would be March 17. Sorry guys. It's a no go. There is already another party planned at my house for St. Patrick's Day. So... we'll have to do it on either Friday, March 24th or on this Friday March 10th. Let's hear the votes...

I hope this doesn't turn out to sound mean, but here goes... Um, I saw a very disturbing thing today. You've probably all seen this at some point, but I don't believe that I ever have until today. We all see senior citizens driving very slow and backing up traffic. People get very upset at them. Well, um, just now on my way home from school I saw a very old woman driving 25 miles per hour in a 45 mile per hour zone talking on her cell phone! Okay... this should definitely be against the law! I almost slammed into her from behind because she was going way slower than what I had estimated. Please lawmakers, can we make this illegal?

(Image hijacked from istockphoto.com)

I found the coolest blog today! It is being done by my good friend's cat. A photo blog of a kitty??? I didn't know that such a cool thing existed! Cat's are so cute sometimes!

Check out the blog... http://notforkitties.blogspot.com/

This week's "Is Your ____ the best" is about your job. Tell all of us why your job is the best in the world (or why it isn't, if you hate it).

I work at the Space Dynamics Laboratory http://www.sdl.usu.edu. My job rocks. I get to play with computers the whole time I'm at work. I get to troubleshoot weird problems that nobody else knows how to fix. It is fun. I also have a job that will let me work around my school schedule. Not too many places will do that for you. I also don't have to work weekends. I think it has happened once in three years.

This job isn't the one that I'm going to keep forever, that's for sure, but it is definitely the best job that I could possibly have right now.