Quiet Vista: How to disable the Windows startup sound
October 13th, 2008If you want to be polite in a quiet place while using a computer, you will mute the sound, but what if you need to restart your notebook there? For mobile computers that have a hardware sound controller, preventing the startup sound from breaking the silence is easy, but what about the rest of us? For this problem, Windows has an easy option to disable the startup sound. How nice!
First open the control panel.
Just a thought…
September 6th, 2008
People Don’t Seem to Like Windows Vista
August 27th, 2008One of my professors gave an off-handed remark about how Vista works sometimes, and sometimes not. He also had a weird problem with his Windows XP computer during class. There was also another occurrence where a professor didn’t know how to change the display resolution of his Vista-based Tablet PC, and proceeded to take a poll of who "decided" to stick with XP. (I put "decided" in quotation marks, because the default operating system on the default Tablet PC made available to Virginia Tech engineers has Windows XP on it.) Bashing Vista seems to be a common occurrence as well. That made me think of this flow chart, which I created. 
All in good fun, people…
Ping from the start menu
February 19th, 2008I accidentally stumbled upon a Vista feature today. It seems that "ping" is a keyword in the Vista start menu, like "control". So if you type "ping 192.168.1.1" it will open up the command prompt ping that computer three times. 
the only trouble is that the window closes right after the third ping, but you get at least enough information to tell if the remote computer is responding.
You can also type in the Windows Network name of the computer.
And, of course, you can still find "the ping pong song": 
Internet Anywhere Through My Cell Phone
December 28th, 2007
This image really does represent ultimate sadness for someone (like me) who is addicted to the internet. This icon in the system tray means means that the computer isn’t connected to any network. That means (dare I say it) no internet! I am proud to say, that this icon has no effect on any more. Is this because I’ve kicked the internet habbit? Hell no! I have grown contemptuous of the “no networks” icon, because I can connect my laptop to the internet through my cell phone. It my sound complicated, but the process is actually very straight forward. Here’s what I do:
First, I click on the network icon in the system tray.
Next I click on “Connect to a network”, and I see this window:
Next I click on “Razr Net Access”. and click connect. So I see the next screen.
I wait a few seconds, and that’s it! I have access to internet that, while slow, is still twice as fast as dial-up, and it only costs minutes on my cell phone. The best part is that when calls are free, so is the internet access, meaning “surf’s up” on nights and weekends. Also, while I can not initiate calls, I can still recieve calls normally wile connected.
There. In four clicks I’m connected to the net. How is this possible? Well, it took some initial hacking of my Motorola Razr V3m that I got from Verizon. Some of the steps in setting it up initially can get a little complicated, but since the end result is so elegant (and free) I don’t mind. In a later post I’ll explain how to set this up.
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