nick_a1984

public class Weekend
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After Monday and Tuesday, even the calendar is like W T F

My hard drive crashed a month ago tomorrow... Friday the 13th no less!

Matt's brother brought my attention to a program that allowed me to save all of Matt and my files from the damaged drive. Well all of them except five or six that appear to be at places on the drive where the damage actually occurred. Anyways, the program is called Spinrite. It's made by the folks over at www.grc.com. The software costs $89 USD but there is also a money-back guarantee.

It worked for me so it's worth a shot if you're looking at losing everything

Many Apple junkies accuse Microsoft of ripping off the idea for Windows from Apple's original Graphical User Interface back in the early 80s.

Now it seems they're back to their old tricks, and this time even I have to admit that it's hard to deny. The revamped taskbar in the upcoming Windows 7 looks and works extremely similar to the dock at the bottom of the OS X desktop.

Take a look at the article all about it on the Engineering Windows 7 blog:
http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2008/11/20/happy-anniversary-windows-on-the-evolution-of-the-taskbar.aspx

From seenit.co.uk....

By Martin Hoscik ⋅ November 18, 2008

JJ Abrams, director, executive producer and co-creator of Lost, Alias and Mission: Impossible III, unveiled 25 minutes of explosive and never-before-seen footage from his upcoming movie Star Trek last week in London for a select audience. We were lucky enough to sit down with the director afterwards and talk about his Trek vision, which he describes as more of a “re-invigoration” than a re-boot.

“The idea is really to re-introduce these characters in a different way, but they are the characters from the original Star Trek. It’s not a complete re-imagining… I figure if you re-imagine something you should just imagine something else”

The latest Trek movie certainly doesn’t drift too far from its roots. That’s not to say this is for Trekkers only (The term Trekkies is no longer P.C) With Abrams at the helm and an all-new younger cast, there are hopes that the movie will have an appeal beyond its niche fanbase, pushing it towards more mainstream cinema-goers.

“I think the idea was really to show this movie as an origin story and be as connected to reality as possible, not just this inside joke that people who have seen the other ten movies will get”

But bringing Star Trek to the masses and turning it into a blockbuster is no easy task. Aside from the 1986 movie, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, no Star Trek film has ever achieved that elusive mainstream appeal. Perhaps the other movies were perceived as too geeky, or perhaps they seemed to lack action…too much lengthy dialogue and not a lot going on? Well, rest assured, judging from the 30 mins of footage recently screened in London, action is something this picture won’t be lacking!

“I do think that there is a level of action and excitement that will be unusual and unexpected to a lot of people’’ the director explains. On first impressions, this seems to be no understatement on Abrams’ part. Blazing set pieces, pulsating action and gigantic space battles have given Star Trek 09 an almost, dare we say, Star Wars-esque quality. Abrams doesn’t deny his love for the other sci-fi franchise “I was actually more of a Star Wars kid than a Star Trek kid”

The new trailer for Trek begins on Earth, with a daredevil boy racing a classic car towards the precipice of a cliff – not very Star Trek at all, in fact, cinema goers in the US have already become quite shocked when they finally realised that they’re watching a trailer for the latest Star Trek movie. The young boy drags himself off the side of a cliff and reveals his name to a futuristic cop “My name is James Tiberius Kirk”

Explaining the thought process behind the trailer, Abrams comments, “I wanted to begin the trailer in a way that was earthbound and fun, relatable and real, and not necessarily Star Trek at all. Just something that was curious. And hopefully draw people in not because of the spaceship flying across the camera but because there’s this young boy crashing a classic car with a futuristic cop pulling him over”

“All you have to be is a fan of movies- of action, adventure, comedy, romance - and you’ll like this movie.”

Trekkers needn’t worry that Abrams vision might alienate them, On the contrary, the movie is full of homages to past-Trek glories and folklore. Explains Abrams, “Hopefully without it being a distraction, there are definitely countless moments in the movie that Star Trek fans will appreciate that non fans won’t necessarily get, but that’s irrelevant because the movie is such that even if you’ve never seen Star Trek, you’ll completely get the movie, you won’t be behind, you won’t feel lost. But if you do know the world of Trek, we’ve done a lot of little things for you.”

Abrams counts himself as one of “the geeky community” despite the fact he was never a Trekker, “I wasn’t when I started this project!”

Continues Abrams, “I’m one of those people who loves genre story telling, loves science fiction, loves horror and fantasy. Going to Comic Con, for example, years and years and years ago, it was like, it felt strangely, almost unhealthily - like home. It was just one of those things that I felt I had always been a part of it.”

Fans won’t be surprised to hear that Abrams’ favourite of the original Trek movies is Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan – “I think it has to be the one that I’ve always liked the most. It stayed with me even when I was a kid and it first came out. There are moments that were just kind of indelible.”

Following the recent trend for the aforementioned re-boots, it almost seems inevitable that Star Trek 09 will take heed of recent successes like Bond and Batman and position itself as a darker, more brooding epic… right? Wrong.

Abrams insists that Star Trek offers a hopeful and optimistic view of the future “The Dark Knight is undeniably entertaining and wonderfully made, but it, and many films before it, are incredibly cynical, dark, not quite post-apocalyptic, but pre-apocalyptic movies and I feel like the thing about Star Trek, which is kind of a relief in a way, is that it completely embraces optimism. It is undeniably, just intrinsically, the very root of optimism.

“That humans will not only survive but actually thrive and collaborate with other species. The notion of the final frontier in space exploration is so silly and clichéd in so many people’s minds, but when you actually stop to consider that Star Trek is, whilst a fantasy, our future.

“I love what Roddenberry was doing and I’m proud to continue that spirit as opposed to doing Star Trek: The Dark Years. Which, by the way, I’m sure would be hugely entertaining and wildly profitable.”

Star Trek is released May 2009

One sunny day in January, 2009 an old man approached the White House from across Pennsylvania Avenue, where he'd been sitting on a park bench. He spoke to the U.S. Marine standing guard and said, "I would like to go in
and meet with President Bush."

The Marine looked at the man and said, "Sir, Mr. Bush is no longer president and no longer resides here."

The old man said, "Okay", and walked away.

The following day, the same man approached the White House and said to the same Marine, "I would like to go in and meet with President Bush."

The Marine again told the man, "Sir, as I said yesterday, Mr. Bush is no longer president and no longer resides here." The man thanked him and, again, just walked away.

The third day, the same man approached the White House and spoke to the very same U.S. Marine, saying "I would like to go in and meet with President Bush."

The Marine, understandably agitated at this point, looked at the man and said, "Sir, this is he third day in a row you have been here asking to speak to Mr. Bush. I've told you already that Mr. Bush is no longer the president and no longer resides here. Don't you understand?"

The old man looked at the Marine and said, "Oh, I understand. I just love hearing it."

The Marine snapped to attention, saluted, and said, "See you tomorrow, Sir."

One of the headlines on CTV.ca today was "Elderly dementia patients have high car accident risk."

What was your first clue? They've got age and dementia going against them! And I don't mean that as an ageist comment. I'm simply stating that as people age, their reaction time, vision, and hearing all start go. Unfortunately that means driving ability is going to take a hit too.

I personally think that at age 60 or later, if you want to renew your driver's license you should be required to have to take a recertification test of some kind. This isn't about shutting the elderly in their homes and denying them mobility. It's about keeping everyone who shares the roads safe.