Dark Side of the Carton

I was looking for instructions on resetting a very old broadband router this morning and stumbled upon a nice resource put out by Sony for EQ2 players on resetting tons of different routers back to default specs. You can find the page here.

The big news recently is the Sony batteries that have been recalled by Dell and Apple, but up until today I hadn’t actually seen pictures of the event that spurred the recalls. The Inq is carrying the story with the pictures. Talk about scary.

The Inq

I setup a DTS package in SQL 2000 yesterday to make a mirror of the live database for an app that I maintain. The goal was to have an exact copy of the live data for the dev environment so I can start coding a new release. I set the DTS package to run every 4 hours. Little did I know the columns specified as primary keys didn’t retain that property. When I went in to look at the data there was all sorts of duplicates. Attempting to delete these records threw the following error:

The row value(s) updated or deleted either do not make the row unique or they alter multiple rows.

I ran across this site that had a fix for my boneheadedness (now I’m making up words). I used the 3rd solution where you add a new field and set it as a key which allows you to delete the duplicate data, remove the new column, and re-set your primary key as the primary key.

Solution 3< ?xml:namespace prefix ="" o />

This solution is a yet another way to approach this problem.  In this approach you use the query below to create a new column that numbers your records 1, 2, 3, etc.  This will get rid of the duplication and allow you to delete the records or update them as you need.  After you fix the duplication problem, just remember to delete the column.

 

ALTER TABLE Table1

ADD TempID int IDENTITY(1, 1)

Thanks to Allen Buckley for that one. I was scratching my head.

Just another case of the content industries making others play by their rules. MS has agreed to prevent playback of next gen HD content on the 32 bit versions of Vista citing concerns that the unsigned malware that runs in kernel mode can get around copy protection. I have a news flash for everyone, the crackers and the hackers will still find a way to get around copy protection. Name one copy protection scheme that has remained uncracked to date? Didn’t think so.

Source: Slashdot

Give me a break. The fact that Blockbuster, a company not known for being nice to the competition, is suing someone in an AntiTrust suit is just laughable. So this is what happens when someone gets knocked off their high horse by a company without a strong physical presence.

Source: Ars

I am all about the shoes. I love shoes. I especially love a slick pair of Adidas. I am also frugal. So while browsing around online I run across these. I am stunned. Someone tell me why those superstars are worth $1k and what boneheads bought them all up so they are sold out.

In the same discussion that I just posted about below Lauren and I got on the topic of Gay Marriage. Now honestly I right of center on the political spectrum, but I think it’s just silly that the government is legislating on personal preference. I think it goes against what our country stands for, but whatever. The curious thing to me is that as a gay person in this country and an alleged supporter for gay marriage, why would they try and get this law passed with a Republican President AND Congress? They had to know it would fail miserably. Lauren and I came to the conclusion that the left may have encouraged it knowing it would crash and burn so they wouldn’t have to re-address it the next time a Democrat was in power. Is it possible to think that the issue was forced to get it out of the limelight? I certainly think so.

I listen to the radio a lot and I pretty much only listen to talk radio at this point, which typically focuses around politics. A term I have heard tossed around quite freqently is NeoCon which is short for Neo-Conservative. While at lunch this weekend with my family, my wife and I got onto the subject of politics and it became more clear to me that while the US currently embodies a 2 party system, we may be on the path to a 4 or 5 party system. Let me explain. The “NeoCons” are the ones pushing the Republican party further and further to the right. This is eventually going to alienate the just right of center members of the party which could force the Republican party to splinter into 2 or 3 factions. The factions could potentially be, starting from way out to the right, the NeoCons then the traditional Republicans and then a very moderate bunch right in the middle. It is feasible that the same thing could or would happen on the left side of the spectrum. In the end you are left with 2 varying degress of our current parties with a big pile of moderates in the middle that would probably band together.

Obviously this is just my wild speculation, but what would the future of American politics look like if we had 5 parties? Would the elections be a madhouse?

if you were pranked into believing that your mom or girlfriend was a stripper?

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Here’s a great idea. Let’s let this Leopard go, but first let me piss it off with a stick and then we will let it go and have our window down. Nevermind it’s a lightning fast cat with huge teeth and claws.