Brickton

Windows 7 and Live(MSN) Messenger

Tith — 2010-04-01T01:15:00Z

I have been running windows 7 for a while now and I'm really liking the new OS, however there is always a few thing that each OS has that just kind of annoys you. For instance I run MSN Live Messenger but on Win7 the messenger status is "pinned" to the taskbar(aka the Start bar along the edge of your screen), instead of running in the System Tray (where the clock is located). Well we are in luck and we can run MSN Messenger in the System Tray!

Step 1: Completely Close Live(MSN) Messenger

Step 2: Find the executable and right click on it and choose "Properties".

Step 3: On the Compatibitly Tab

Put a check the box in "Run this program in compatibility mode for:" and select Windows Vista (Service Pack 2)

Step 4: Click "OK" and run Messenger again

Step 5:

New Computer

Tith — 2010-03-04T05:33:59Z

For the last month or two I've been working at getting new parts to upgrade my desktop computer. After a daunting task of researching the parts I would like to use for the budget I put myself in I finally got all my parts.

This is what I put together:
Intel Core 2 Duo E7400 Processor
Gigabyte GA-Ep45-UD3P Motherboard
4 GB Ram from Mushkin
BFG Nvidia GTS 250 Graphics Card

I didn't have to get anything else since I had the parts already, although I did splurge just slightly on a new case.
Putting the computer together was kind of challenging since my case was a little smaller then I first thought. Fitting all the hard drives, vid card and memory with all the required cables was pretty hard, but I got after a little minipulation.

I also opted to install Windows 7 Pro 64-bit OS to try it out. The install for this was horrendesly slow, but after the install the Win7 is blazing fast. The down side of a 64-bit OS is the lack of 3rd party software support. To help aid with this Microsoft release XP-mode which runs a virtual version of XP. It is very easy to setup and very easy to use I have used it for a few old games that XP itself barely supported.

Overall my experience with my new compter is a positive one.

I will be appending to this article when I figure some work arounds for some of the non 64-bit supported softwares out there.

Tis the season to be depressed

Tith — 2009-12-07T23:53:00Z

December has rushed in and holidays are upon us, the crazies are making mad dashes to the mall to spend a stupid amount of money on a bunch of things they don't want nor need. And here I am sitting in the basement trying to hide from it all. Partly because I don't know if I'll have a job in a few weeks and I don't have the money to spend on silly gifts.

It also happened that I did not get my pay get last week. FANTASTIC! And it always happens when I make enough payments that missing it would screw me over. Anyways bitching about it won't get me anywhere (believe me I tried). No one cares if their mistake costs you money as long as they aren't out anything. The same week that my paycheck went missing, my iPod which I use to help keep my sanity in check on the way to work decided to crap out on me, and no longer syncs, format's nor allows any data to be written to it. Just great!

Enough of my holiday cheer, a snow storm is upon us here in Bismarck/Mandan and as soon as the wind chill gets better I plan to go sledding with Kai on a wicked hill by the in-law's place. Maybe we can make a few ramps to jump off of and some extra obstacles to work our way through. Overall I think it will be blast once we get some new sleds and some outdoors gear.

Also I plan to do some upgrades over the next few weeks to my computer, so I can run my CAD a little better, I have a lot of projects in my head and it would be more useful to have them drawn out, but my current computer doesn't do so hot when I'm running a CAD. I also found a site that sells and educational copy of 3DS Max for fairly cheep and is also packaged with Maya and Mudbox. I hope to do some work in these programs so I can get a little more proficient with them.

Fall is here!

Tith — 2009-08-29T03:30:00Z

So it is the end of September and the new semester has started. Hey, err... wait what did I just say? That's right even though I mentioned earlier how much I hate college I decieded to take up the 10 step program to help me quit. I took one class for this semester but I don't think it will be all that hard. I took the class to help me get a local job here in Bismarck since I'm having a bear of a time finding one with my other major. The class is Computer Science 1 which is programming in JAVA, so I don't think it will be bad. I always wanted to learn JAVA, now I have the time to do it!

I also started playing FFXI again after a 6 month hiades, I haven't play all that much since I'm still busy with work and my son but the little time I do get I make the best of it. I have mostly played in the campgain since I don't have the 4+ hours to devote to a party. After that I don't have much to say.

Since moving back to Bismarck I started working on a bank for my lego city, but I ran out of parts. I hope I get some more to complete it soon. I also started making some drawings for the hospital and the fire/rescue center. I have what I think a pretty good idea for the hospital, the space where I plan to put the hospital has a cliff on it to the shore line. I plan to have the building forward facing to the shore line and rather tall. I hope to make some CAD models of these but I doubt I will get to that until I get a local job. I also started working on some back stories for the city and the characters that fill it and I'm getting the pages put back together, I think I'll get them done by the end of the year.

Thats all I have for now.

Work and the Never Ending Tasks

Tith — 2009-06-23T04:38:00Z

It has been a while since I created a post. I plan to do some more posting now that I'm done with college which was made clear when I got the letter from the bank about my student loans. The paper pretty much told me what I already knew was comming to start paying back my "investment". So now I willl see if it was completly worth it to go to college or not. I still haven't found anything better than my internship at Goodrich, which I'm thankful I have at the moment. I hope soon I can find something a little more local here in the buslling town of Bismarck.

Speaking of work, I have been doing a lot of it lately. Curretly I'm working the PLM project to get the new Teamcenter Engineering turned on. This has been an ongoing process for a long while now. Just to give a hint at how long the roll-out was suppose to be in April. Almost 3 months ago! Although I can't complain it 1. gives me a job and 2. I have learned a lot about programming enough to make me dangerous, as how the experts in the field put it. Right now to help with the uploading effort I am creating a program that will help with the loading by finding all the neccessary CAD files and make sure they are named correctly by comparing them on disk with a master CAD list. It sounded like an easy task at the time but after I dug into it a little ways I found it was a little more tricky than I would have hopped for. But no worries I should have it done and have all the bugs worked out by the end of this week!

On the gaming note I haven't had much time to do any of it. Right now I have canceled my FFXI account so I wouldn't get hammered hard on a bank issue earlier this month. Which I must say Wells Fargo thanks for fixing it even though it wasn't your problem. But by the end of the month I should be going back to it with the hope that I will get some free time in the evenings to play. I also canceled my Realm account, they changed the rates from $49.99 a year to $69.99 I didn't think it was worth paying that since there is next to no content updates and the game play/challenge is near non-exsistant. I only played it to pass the time away when I was waiting on a large download or waiting for Amy to get home. I will sure miss that game but like all the others they will just pass into memory.

Well it's late and I need to attempt to get some sleep.

Loosing track of time!

Tith — 2009-04-16T04:59:00Z

It is crazy how fast time can go by. Here it is mid April and coming around the corner is my sister in-law's wedding. I'm getting a little excited about the wedding since it will give me some time off and relax. I'm getting tired of work and school. As mentioned earlier we are moving back to the grand city of Bismarck very soon. I've started to look for a job in Bismarck but engineering is getting a little tight right now due to the economy, but I'm sure I'll find something.

The weather here has been a little wierd as well. Fargo is in a major flood and has been there since mid March. When the Red reached its peak crest of 40.6ft it stayed there for far too long. The city was in agony just waiting for the river to receed back into it's boundries. The sandbag dikes held and are still doing well. The flood waters are receeding and a good rate so I think the flooding will be over soon. I can't say that yet for the rest of the state though. Jamestown and Valley City are in pretty bad shape, flooding there is worse then it has been in many years. I can't remember when ND was flooding as bad as this. With the large patch of warm weather coming in this weekend all the rivers should lower giving everyone working on the river a break.

Gaming wise I have done none! That right absolutely none. After getting home from work I have been too tired to play or I've been busy with class work. I can't wait for May to come around then I can play a lot more and hopefully explore the locations I've always wanted to see. COH/COV got a new update this month as well as FFXI. I haven't yet played either one but they seem pretty good.

Fargo Flood of 2009

Tith — 2009-03-31T04:08:00Z

It has been a week so far since the fight against the rising Red started. The people here talk all the time about the dikes and the sandbagging effort. The flood this year is very epic one of the worst in over a century! All the major news channels are covering it. Overall I'm doing quit well we live in an area which shouldn't be affected by the flood if the dikes were to break. I haven't taken any pictures of the area since my digital camera has gone to crap, so I will be attaching some links so you can see the trouble we are dealing with. This week has caused a lot of hell through out the eastern part of the state pretty much all levels of government (for the local area) is closed. I had an exam to take back on the 25th and that was postponed a few more days, yet I was still very busy volunteering plus every place that could proctor me is closed so I asked for a longer extension since the on-campus students have yet to take the exam but I have not heard anything yet.

March Madness and Spring Break

Tith — 2009-03-04T04:27:00Z

I originally started working on this post about two weeks ago, but now since a lot has happened most of what I originally typed is irrelevant. So class is going well, I'm not doing bad in any of them but I still have a lot of work to do and very little time it seems to do it in. A blizzard moved through the area this week so I didn't go to work for three days it also got so cold I kept Kai home so he wouldn't get exposed to the extreme wind chill. I also had to take a test on Monday and my proctor was originally in Jamestown so I had to find a new one here in Fargo. The test wasn't too bad I think I did pretty good I was able to answer 90% of the questions (that 90% may not be all correct either).

Other things that have happened this week my Altima got hit so now I have to get that fixed. It is kind of annoying about the situation of our car getting hit. Amy was dropping Kai off at our daycare and our daycare provider's son didn't pay attention and back into it. Even though insurance is taking care of it, the whole thing was a preventable accident. All he needed to do was glance in the mirror, what if (and this is a large what if) it wasn't my car? What if it was a child? Some people don't care to use there head in real life or they just have a lack of intelligence. Like mentioned above the whole situation is more annoying then anything.

I haven't been able to play any games lately. I have been too busy with work, school, and my son to play. I managed to play some CoH/CoV in the last two days and got my hero up to level 25 and my villian to 29. I'm still playing FFXI but right now I've lost my motivation to play the game. I'm just too tired of spending 3 hours to accomplish 10 minutes of actual gameplay.

Another reason for no gameplay in the last few weeks was from me having to reformat my computer. I had a major slowdown and my antivirus was busy everyday removing about 5-10 viruses a day. So I took it upon myself to start fresh again. My computer is still not up to the same level as it was before the format. I did do a few things a little different this time so it should be harder for me to catch anything. I'm not saying I won't catch anything ever, I'm just saying it will be harder.

I also have plans for the website so I'm getting ready for a new update to the entire site. It will still be using asp.net but I'll be upgrading to IIS7 and a newer version of Community Server. The updates will take some time to get ready and the server upgrade will also take some time to get ready so it will be a few more months before I get the full roll out of the new edition. Hopefully the CS will be faster with this update.

Hard Drive Upgrade for Mac Mini PPC

Tith — 2009-01-13T04:06:00Z

Recently I posted how I upgraded the RAM on my Mac Mini. Well I guess I wasn't finished with the upgrade, shortly after the memory upgrade I got a unhappy mac logo flashing on the screen. The first though in my mind was the memory, so I did some diagnostics on the RAM module and it turned up good so I was slightly confused on what could have happened. After I put everything back together again I inserted the install disk for OSX 10.4 (thinking a screen with a press any button to boot from disk was going to appear) and nothing happened! I went to the apple site for some help since the manuals were of no help. I started a live chat session with a mac "expert" and they wouldn't touch my out of warranty POS. So I then went to scour the knowledge base and found only slight tid bits of information. I found help on the discussion forums. I narrowed the problem to my hard drive after find the goofy keyboard shortcuts that change the boot sequence. I bought a brand new 160gig hard drive and got the partition created and boom back up and running!

The upgrade to the hard drive on a Mini is only a few more steps to the memory upgrade I posted earlier. So I am going to refer to that post in order to open the case back up again.

Get what you need

Your mini
Razor blade
Paint scraper
Small screwdriver set
A static shock bracelet (not shown)
Long philips screwdriver
A can of compressed air (it is pretty dirty in there)
Alcohol (beer or anything harder)

To begin you need to open the case so read the previous post for that.

Next remove the three screws from the base that holds the DVD ROM and Hard Drive

There are two screws on each side of the piece of plastic which holds the hard drive on. You need to remove the system fan in and use a long neck philips screwdriver in order to access the screws on the opposite site.

Gently pull the hard drive forward, and not in an upward motion or you may bend the prongs. Also hold the connector board still while you pull the hard disk its pretty flimsy.

Slide the new one in and replace all the screws.

Replace the fan making sure the wires are wrapped back the same way before they were removed. There is a little lip the wires go around to prevent the wires from getting snagged.

Now before we place the drives back onto the motherboard, clear the PRAM first by removing the button sized battery. Leave it removed for about 30 seconds. (This may not be 100% neccessary but that step is what got my system booting from an install disc, I'll explain more later.)

Once you got the PRAM cleared put the battery back in, then snake the bluetooth and wireless antennas through the plastic holder. Place the wire through the slot on the board interface card. It is right next to the contacts.

Replace the three screws and your almost done. Now to reinstall OSX.

In my case I am running a G4 PPC with OSX 10.4 (Tiger) 10.5 should be the same steps, only the disk format is different if your running an Intel processor.

Have a wired usb keyboard and mouse ready, and plug everything else that is necessary and power up.

Hold in the "C" key through the boot up screen and don't let go until after the little rotating gear whee disappears.

Then click on the Go on the top toolbar when it appears and choose disk utility.

Click the partition tab and set the size you want then click apply. You now have a volume to install onto.

*To install you must have a valid install disk each install disk that is packaged is specialized for that model only.

Once everything is working fine and the volumes get a clean bill of health go a head put the top of the case back on.

Referene:

Mac discussion forum

I will update these pictures shortly to help indicate direction and motion for clarity.

The holidays are over but I'm still hurting.

Tith — 2009-01-09T06:30:21Z

So it is now January and I'm still hurting. Even though the holidays are over with I'm still in a struggle. My wedding anniversary is on the 8th of January so I would like to do something special for that. Also Tuition among other bills ( the bane of existence) that is which driving me insane. Work is about to pick up with a few tests that need to done for a few programs so I'll be able to keep my mind off of other things thankfully. Through this vacation I managed to get my COV toon up to 25 and I started a new Mastermind and managed to get 3 levels in 5 minuets that was kind of impressive for me. I got the mac working again but its not at the point where it was before the crash (do I even want to bring the mac there again?) Maybe some extra time will pop up and let me try to do some data recovery on the old drive. I also started some work my site it had some errors in some random palces so I cleaned that up and I am also thinking of a new look as well, in the mean time the community server will be in place to run most the site. I have been looking at switching to Joomla but I don't know how easy the transision will be that will be a summer project as well.

I added a link to the social website of linkedin.com its a facebook for professionals who knows it may come it handy down the road. Check it out if you have some extra time.

The semester is over time to celebrate!

Tith — 2008-12-21T17:30:00Z

The semester is finally over and now I can relax a little. Christmas is upon us in a few days and I have yet to go shopping for my wife and son, I just don't know what to get them.

The semester went rather well I managed to pass all my classes and I'm very happy I'll never have worry about them again! This semester wasn't overly difficult just stressful in the amount of work that was required. I had to type three papers a week plus the homework plus the studying but that is just college life. I'm excited about next semester sense I only have three classes left! I really should find one more to take just so I can be a full time student, but I will worry about that later.

Now that class is over for a while I can get some time playing the games I enjoy, FFXI, and CoH/CoV. A friend of mine is trying to get me to start World of Warcraft but I'm still kind of leary about it. I used the ten day trial and I didn't play all ten days but from what I did play I wasn't really impressed. I did purchase the game but I haven't yet opened the box. I guess I'm not in a huge hurry to play since I have FFXI and CoH. On now to FFXI, I'm four levels away from being able to use all of the artifact armor for the pld I'm getting excited now that there is location that I can hunt in with huge amounts of xp. Also FFXI had an update last month and it introduced a concept called "Level Sync" where the party can sync down to a lower level and play with any group. Since the update my high level friends have been partying with me more and the fun has increased.
So I also started my CoH/Cov up again, I enjoy playing that game from time to time and I can see why every time I come back a new issue is released and they add loads of cool new things. Such as the new day job bonus, when you log out in certain locations you can get a new bonus when you log back in. The next update will allow players to create there own mission, now that sounds like fun.

Also I have a small update on my last post with the Mac Mini PPC; shortly after the upgrade the computer failed (I got the little sad face). I no longer had the old memory so I RMA'ed the new memory module, but it turned out the memory was good. This led me to the hard drive. So now I need to upgrade the hard drive, and I'm in the market for a new Mac hard drive. Who says macs never fail? With the crappy equipment it's bound to fail. Anyways ranting won't get me anywhere but my screwdriver will. I will post an update on the hard drive repair as soon as I get it.

Evan R.

Memory Upgrade for a Mac Mini PPC

Tith — 2008-11-07T18:46:00Z

When the Mac Minis first came out I was thrilled. I bought one as soon as they came onto the market, but over the years my mini started to really slow down. It slowed down so much that I decided to not use it anymore. So I decided it was time to do an upgrade. The only problem is, Apple designs the minis so they are nearly impossible to get into to. I stared at the case trying to figure out how to get the blasted thing open. So I went and did a search and found a few videos on you tube on how to open the case. So I went and gave it a try myself.

Get what you need

Your mini
Razor blade
Paint scraper
Small screwdriver set
A static shock bracelet (not shown)
Coffee

Once you get all the necessary items together, flip the mini upside down CD Drive away from you.

Carefully place the razor blade in between the case and base unit. The razor blade creates enough spacing for the paint scrapper. Be Careful with the blade so that you don't cut yourself, or nick the case.

Lightly push the paint scrapper straight down then out until you hear a click, the clicking sound is the plastic snap fits un-hinging. Do this along each side.

When all the snap fits release pull the base unit off, their are no cords to worry about getting snagged.

Loosen the screws on the side then pull the antenna out and set it aside. Undo the side hinges on the memory slot and pull the old memory out.

Secure the new memory module, and double check it is completely seated in.

Now you need to put it all back together again. When putting on the case start with the back side, align the metal clips and the security slot then press down along the sides.

Enjoy the new peppy mini!

Any Mac owner can do this operation.
Total time ~15 minutes

A work in progress

Tith — 2008-09-21T00:44:00Z

What the hell happened? The last time I checked it was July!?

All kidding aside I have been very busy classes started up and damn its a lot of work. I have two lab reports a week plus the homework problems and a seminar paper. The work isn't that challenging it is just time consuming. With all the work and school going on the stress stays high and the blood-alcohol level stays constant.

A side from school and work, the little time I play I'm still working my pld on FFXI. I haven't had a lot of time for anything, but I have managed to do a few besieged battles and worked on Zilart missions.

The End of July

Tith — 2008-07-31T04:46:00Z

So it has reached the end of July it is amazing how fast your days can go when your very busy. I didn't even manage to finish a single personal project this summer. I started a lot of them, but I was unable to get serious in any of them.
Over the past few weeks I started to learn Blender, so far I love it. The interface has a bit of learning curve but nothing too overwhelming. Blender is a free 3D render tool that can do it all for you. I purchased a few books and started reading the tutorials online but that's how far I got.

I am still level 51pld in FFXI I haven't leveled in a few weeks, I just haven't had the time to play. Also I started working on some photos for the photo galleries and they should be up this weekend.

I can't wait for the weekend maybe then I can give the cars an oil change that I have put off for far too long.

Blasted Monitor Cont.

Tith — 2008-07-29T02:11:00Z

So I mentioned I would post some pictures of the monitor repair. Well, the repair didn't go as well as I would've hoped. I damaged some of the horizontal cells so now I have no picture on the bottom 2 inches of my monitor. So it is time to can it and get a new(er) one.

Blasted monitor

Tith — 2008-06-27T03:57:00Z

My LCD monitor went out this week, and just my luck it is also out of warranty. Computer hardware almost always burns out after its warranty period is over. Anyways I checked the dell help forums and they mentioned that the symptoms my monitor was displaying show a bad inverter board or the back light is out. So I crossed my fingers and order only the back light since I still get a picture its just extremely dark.
Here is a picture of what it currently looks like with the brightness and contrast at 100%. Although this image doesn't seem so bad, its actually very dark.

I can usually take a snapshot of the screen with the flash on. This is what it looks like with the flash.

And yes it is on.

When I receive my back light for the monitor I take install pics, I hope its not too hard.

Where did May go?

Tith — 2008-06-20T03:30:00Z

May went so fast I didn't get time to sit down and finish the posts I was going to add. I wanted to release more but I got too busy. Between my family and work it is very hectic. I also don't have any pictures ready to post as well. I'm posting this message to let everyone know I didn't disappear... yet. It is a good thing that the weekend is coming up so I can attempt to catch up on stuff. So with any luck there is more to come.

I have made some progress in FFXI, I have unlocked the g2 (2nd Level cap), and started on getting the second artifact armor piece. I also started working on Nin so I can sub that job with my pld at higher levels.

Again I started up COH/COV again with the hopes of rapidly leveling my characters. Well that didn't turn out as well as I hoped, and I have closed my account yet again. I made my hero Tith to 25 and my Villain Evil Tith to 19. I absolutely don't have the time to play all these games.

When I do get some extra time for myself I have been learning how to use Blender. Blender is a free 3D render tool that does it all. Unfortunately it has a large learning curve to it but I'm up to the challenge.

First and Last post of April

Tith — 2008-04-24T05:13:00Z

Wow time goes by so fast, I have been very busy with classes only one week left of class and then finals week. I'm really happy this smester is over it was a very stressful semester. Next semester might be just as bad as this one with senior design. I wanted to make at lest one post this month but I don't have much to talk about since I haven't had much of a social life.

I only got about three hours of play time in FFXI this month! I'm still level 48 pld this summer I plan to get more levels and unlock all the level cap quest, plus get my artifiact armor. That is a pretty hefty goal with among all the other projects I have planned for this summer. I also get about a week off before I got to work at Goodrich again, so I have a few days to get some good play time in.

Wish me luck!

Evan R.

Spring break is now over so back to the grind.

Tith — 2008-03-10T03:27:00Z

Well it was a good week, I managed to get a lot of what I wanted to do done. Although I didn't get to level 50 in FFXI. I only managed to make level 48 and I unlocked Campaign, and a few more classes such as dancer and blue mage. I also started judo over spring break with a friend that just moved to town, I'm not so sure I want to stay in it, since it isn't really my kind of fighting although the work out was a blast. It has been a week of vacation and judo and FFXI is the only two things I really have to talk about. I'm a slacker...

Over spring break I managed to break my file server and also fix it. The server isn't working exactly the way I want it, but all my computers are able to sync to it, and the server runs its backup routine without problems. I am having some troubles running some miscellaneous services, but overall doesn't prevent the server from doing its job.

FFXI version update occurred today as well. Check it out a lot of cool new stuff was added.

Another note, although I haven't played in a long while, City of Heroes has released Issue 11. The new features look like a lot of fun I can't wait for the summer to give it a whirl.

Memory upgrade in a Dell Inspiron

Tith — 2008-02-25T20:49:00Z

Last year I bought this laptop from Dell, it was pretty zippy so at the time I didn't think it was very neccessary to put 2 gigs of memory in it. Well over the course of the year I starting to increase the demand a little more so I figured it was about time to upgrade. I assumed the upgrade wasn't going to be very hard since my last Dell laptop was very easy to upgrade. I recieved the new memory modules and started to get to work.

I first made sure my laptop was complety off, I have a habit of leaving it in suspend mode for long durations of time. Then I removed the battery and let it sit a while making sure that there was no power source.

Right in the middle is the one plate with two screws. Just remove the two screws lift up the plate and unclick the modules that are seated in there and quick replace.

It is just that simple right? WRONG! I removed the plate to discover only one 512K meg memory module inserted. This confused me for a few seconds, so I had to revert back to the old trusty user manual. The user manual mentions there is two memory slots, A and B one on the bottom (shown above) and one under the keyboard.

The B slot was pretty straight forward but slot A is going to need a little more work. Just my luck the memory slot would be in a location that is a pain in the ass to get to, right underneath the keyboard. Seriously who designs this stuff and why do they still have a job? The user manual made it sound like it was a cake walk to remove the hindge plate and keyboard. I started by removing the two screws inside the battery bay.

Then flipped the laptop over and clicked the plate off. A small note was on this step saying to to not use extreme force or you will break it. So you have to deal with about million snap fits holding this little tiny piece of plastic on, this little piece pissed me off.

After working the hindge plate off which took about 10 minutes of twisting and pulling (gently). I finally got the hindge plate off. Next slide the keyboard out.

And there it is slot A is revealed the manual wasn't lying to me! Now all I have to do is swap the memory modules and replace everything.

And I managed to do it with no visable damage to the hindge plate. Now to boot the computer and check to see if the new memory is being detected and working correctly.

The computer booted up and the memory check cleared, and the 2 gigs of RAM is detected by windows no problem.