My Vista Installation (short) story…yes another Microsoft rant

By scott

I had a sadistic moment on the week-end. I am not sure what came over me. My desktop computer (probably the last PC I will ever buy) was running very sluggish, it has probably been a year since I did a complete overhaul of it. My mother board fried a year ago, so I got a new one, upgraded some ram, and dressed up the old beige elephant. So it is an AMD Athlon 2000+ with 2 gigs of ram, not too shabby. Since it was running sluggish and regular defrags didn’t seem to be doing anything I figured it was time to run the trusty old “format c:” and start fresh. So that went smooth, everything deleted, I put in my bootable xp pro disk, installed xp without a hiccup. For whatever reason there was an issue with my xp key, a quick call to India (or wherever the xp tech support is), a new key was issued to me and I was up and running.It was a beautiful thing only seeing that windows xp screen for a few seconds during boot up. So now I was left staring at that very ugly, over saturated hillside photo that is the default xp wallpaper. First thing, let’s hit windows update, make sure I have all the patches and updates, I didn’t think there should be too many since the disk I installed from had SP2 on it, I was wrong, about 250 megs of updates.

Time to eat lunch, wash the car, etc. while Windows downloads the updates, installs them, and restarts 42 times.

Ok, I’m back, everything seems good to go. Once again I am staring at that horrible wallpaper. Whatever my turkey sandwich was spiked with made me want to try and upgrade to Vista. A clean install, nothing to lose on my machine, should be pretty straight forward, right? So I hit up the vista site, I see they have an application you can download to see if your system is Vista ready. Perfect! I download it, run it, fairly straight forward process. Only took about 2 minutes. Good news, my system passed. Only warning is my sound card driver. No problem, hardware vendor has drivers on their site.

So I go out and pick up a copy of Vista, yes, a legit copy, hear that FBI, Bill, a legit copy! $250 (or whatever the price was), not bad, heck, it’s the life line of your computer. So I stick the disk in, a very ugly blue and green screen greets me. From this screen I can run the test again or install Vista. I was still proud of my system for passing the test the first time I didn’t think he deserved the stress of going through that again. So I clicked the install Vista button. Waiting, waiting, waiting, blue and green screen, no text. Them WHAMO! My first error, I didn’t even make it to the first step of the install process and I have an error.

Supposedly my computer doesn’t have full ACPI support and Vista cannot be installed! Um, what, but my boy passed your test? The test results didn’t mention anything about this. My XP hardware profile says I have ACPI, why can’t Vista see it? WTF?!?!? The only interactive element on this very painful message window is an OK button. I click it and it just closes the Vista Installer. I tried it again, restarted, tried it again, the same message every time.

Now I’m pissed (seems to happen the longer I work on a Windows based system)! The free online test said my system was good to go. I buy the software, I open the software (once it is opened it can’t be returned), I attempt to install it and I learn it can’t be installed on my “Vista-Ready” system.

So that’s my story, I told you it was short, I wish I could write more but I didn’t even make it to step one. Once again, thank you Microsoft. You really know how to drive people to other OS’s. Very generous, do you get tax exemptions because of this charity work.

UGH!

ExternalInterface…HELP

By scott

I recently ran into another issue with ExternalInterface, when sending multiple calls at once? What I am seeing is when multiple calls are made certain calls get dropped unless I use setTimeout and add a 50 millisecond delay? I know this was an issue with the getURL(”javascript: in previous versions but I thought ExternalInterface was suppose to fix the overloading and buffering issues found in some browsers. I have tested in both IE and Firefox to no avail. And what really upsets me is the fact that it works sometimes, it’s not consistent.Is this a known bug, has anyone seen any workarounds (other than my hack of course). It’s happening in both AS2 and AS3. I am using the ExternalInterface to communicate between AS2 and AS3 (AVM1 and AVM2). I know I can use LocalConnection, but that is not the answer I am looking for, I need to use ExternalInterface in this particular project.

P.S. Happy Vallentine’s Day, I got chocolate covered bugs from my secret admirer, the ExternalInterface.

Let them know we want a Yahoo! Maps AS 3.0 API.

By scott

Those interested in a Flex 2 Yahoo! Maps API, you have a collective voice. Someone created a suggestion queue here: http://suggestions.yahoo.com/detail/?prop=ydn&fid=3208 I can’t say for sure if this will convince the powers that be to go ahead with this initiative, but supply is based on demand. So go vote and let your desire to have a true Flex 2 Yahoo! Maps API be heard.

As Chuck Freedman said, “together, we can change the world& or least how we add it to our Flex 2 applications”.

Is the Superbowl Hoopla all washed up? The commericials sure suck!

By scott

As I sit here and watch the Superbowl in my corporate housing in California I can’t help to notice how crappy the commericials are. The game, well, it’s usually a blow out, or not entertaining. The half time show, who cares. The rain was suiting, because Prince is washed up. Back to the commercials though. What happened. Has the creativity been sucked out of the agencies? Has the FCC scared corporate america into not being too risque? Is the 2.5 million dollar price tag sucking all the money out of the actual quality of the commercial?Anyway, i thought I would post one of the great Superbowl ads of the past. Mr. Terry Tate…wooooo wooooooo the pain train!!! I know this isn’t actually the spot from the superbowl, but it is still great!