Draginol

The joys of hosting in Blogging JoeUser Forums

I tell ya, I really wish I could go back exactly 2 weeks. Here's what I would do: a) Get all the WinCustomize.com skin libraries backed up. b) Get redundancy going on the sites c) Get THREE brand new machines to the server site. Right now, JoeUser.com, WinCustomize.com, Stardock.com, and all our other sites are running on TWO machines. Two PCs. It's ridiculous. But we've had two machines die in the past month. Not a shining time for Dell (nor their fault). <B

Reply to Only one day left 'til the weekend. in Misc JoeUser Forums

This weekend I'm definitely looking forward to. It's been a LONNNNG tough week.

Reply to How I Lost The Man I Love in Welcome JoeUser Forums

I've been where you are. It was when I was 18 (actually 17 through 20). A rollercoaster. In my case, eventually I found that the best solution was to be apart from her and eventually I did find the person who became my true soul mate but it took a long while.

Reply to Legitimate Alternatives in Politics JoeUser Forums

My biggest problem with the EU, as a whole, is that it seems like a thinly veiled way for Germany and France to do by treaty what Hitler and Napolean failed to do by force.

John Dvorak: Blogging revolution is co-opted by big media in Blogging JoeUser Forums

I often enjoy John Dvorak's columns. He's probably my favorite technical columnist out there. But at the same time, he is one of those people who makes rash predictions that are sometimes dead wrong. In fact, he's made so many bad predictions that he gave me the idea for a website - www.badpredictions.com that I registered almost 4 years ago. The idea was to let people submit entries that were either predictions already

Reply to Airline travel in Blogging JoeUser Forums

Well I'm in Chicago now. I actually found a place here at the airport that sells shoulder straps. $40. Too expensive so I'll just have to suffer luggin the laptop bag around by the handle. I dn't like Rent-A-Car because I don't enjoy driving very much in areas I don't know and the rent-a-car places are so inefficient at getting you on the road. I don't like losing an hour, after a long trip, messing around with that sort of thing. Ohare is remrakably free of book stores. But

Airline travel in Blogging JoeUser Forums

I write this from the airport. Thanks to my SprintPCS enabled cel phone, I'm on the Internet at around 384K (3G network). Being able to connect to the Internet anywhere makes traveling only slightly less painful. For one thing, airports are still an incredible hassle. For me, I don't travel except under great need. The logistic (and expense) requirements to move my carcas around has gotten pretty high over the years as a way of discouraging unnecessary travel. No matter how well I plan

Reply to Legitimate Alternatives in Politics JoeUser Forums

BTW, I agree the US needs to let the EU form a coherent army. At the same time, I believe the US should be allowed to exit NATO. The two go hand in hand. If we're going to be stuck defending Europe, we should have some say over their defense handling.

Reply to Legitimate Alternatives in Politics JoeUser Forums

Solitair - the EU forces aren't even capable of conducting night operations. "Quality" is not the word I would use to describe their militaries.

Reply to Legitimate Alternatives in Politics JoeUser Forums

BTW, I don't know where you're getting your figures. From the Cato institute: US military spending in 2003: $380 billion. That's over $200 BILLION more than all of NATO combined.

Reply to Legitimate Alternatives in Politics JoeUser Forums

Here's an article tat basically answers yours. ;) http://www.cato.org/research/articles/tupy-030501.html

Reply to Legitimate Alternatives in Politics JoeUser Forums

It doesn't work as you describe. There are a lot of problems with this kind of analysis. First, your main problem is per capita spending. Secondly, I'd like to see where you're getting your statistics. The last time I checked France's GNP spending was not nearly that close to the US's. Let's tackle the first sicne the second requires looking up stuff. ;) If I'm a 10 foot tall giant and I use 10% of my strength to push someone over I'm going to have a lot more might t

Reply to Color Schemes on JoeUser.com: Revisited in Software Development JoeUser Forums

I think people are going to be looking for more than color tinting the top bar. The entire right bar would need to have its own colorizing and perhaps some different styles for the tabs and other "widgets".

Reply to The left's hatred of George Bush is blinding them in Politics JoeUser Forums

Terrorism: The war in Iraq is about terrorism. Just not in the way you're thinking. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, true. But the "root cause" of terrorism is Islamic extremism coming from Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, an Egypt. What country is right in the middle there? Iraq. IF the United States can put together a stable democratic country with liberal (classic liberal) ideals then it may serve as an example to other countries in the region on how their people might find a better way to

Reply to Blogging Tools in Blogging JoeUser Forums

Oh one other feature we put in that may seem minor but I think is a big deal: Bloggers can DELETE responses to their articles. On your own blog, you are the editor. You can delete out anyone's responses you want (even mine!). I figure people who write things on the Internet don't have to allow people to comment on them or at the very least should be able to decide which comments say. People so far have been very fair minded but I don't think fair mindedness shoudl be required.

Reply to Blogging Tools in Blogging JoeUser Forums

I agree with your points, particularly the negative ones. ;) Here's what's up for JoeUser that addresses those things: 1) We're working on a program that's tentatively called Joe Navigator. While JoeUser is free, Joe Navigator will allow, for a small amount, for bloggers to automatically keep their blogs locally so that even in the worst case scenario, they always have their blogs available to them locally. From a reliability point of view, JoeUser rides on Stardock.net which h

Working on so many things my head is getting dizzy in Blogging JoeUser Forums

Thoughts of the day... I updated my msstyles rant . It amazes me that someone out there would actually pay money to patch their uxtheme file. I'm surprised Microsoft hasn't busted "companies" that make a profit selling cracks to the gullible. Tomorrow I'm speaking to U of M on software development and about the game industry. Tuesday I'm off to LA on business and won't be back until lat

The left's hatred of George Bush is blinding them in Politics JoeUser Forums

The left really hates George W. Bush. I don't particularly care for Bush myself. But it's more on a personality level than due to his policies. I haven't decided whether I will vote for him or not. But one thing is for sure, he seems to drive some people on the left insane. And I mean that literally -- IN-SANE. Ask them why and the reasons usually are in a gurgle of profanity and crazy talk. And unfortunately for them, the left is increasingly becoming its own wo

Reply to (R)evolution** in Misc JoeUser Forums

Me thinks a quick look at American history would quickly bring you up to speed that relatively speaking, things are going pretty well in the United States. I've yet to figure out why some people have such a problem with GW Bush. It just sounds like crazy talk. I am not sure what you mean by "taking care of its own" Do you have any idea how many billions were spent last year helping other Americans? In addition, you really need to get out more. Middle class people stan

Reply to God's Gift in Misc JoeUser Forums

There are a lot of laws we don't agree with. You want to smoke weed. I don't like having to pay for other people to live on welfare. I'll happily vote in favor of people who live in houses (the stuff does stink and I wouldn't want to smell it so no apartments) in exchange for not having half my income taken and distributed out to other people.

Can you really win a bloodless war? in Politics JoeUser Forums

I suspect I'm not the only one who is thinking this. As a student of history I've come to a fairly simple conclusion when it comes to war: Wars only end when both sides decide that it ends. While this may seem straight forward, it a conclusion that seems to escape from many policy makers. Many of the problems we face in Iraq are the result of the enemy not believing they are defeated. The United States and its allies have fought a war as antiseptically as poss

UXTheme patch, crack, and other ways of adding visual styles in OS Customization JoeUser Forums

So you've got Windows XP and it has only 3 looks: Blue, Green, and Silver. And you want to add more. How? There are two commonly used ways to do it. You can patch Wndows XP to support applying Microsoft's .msstyles format. Or you can use Stardock WindowBlinds Both ways have their own pros and cons. MSStyles / UXTHEME When it comes to using .msstyles you need to patch uxtheme.dll to use t

Reply to Adding visual styles to Windows XP in OS Customization JoeUser Forums

Yes and no, there is video acceleration and then there is video acceleration. You are using the term in its most basic form at which point you can say everything is "accelerated". Msstyles aren't cached in any way, don't make use of video card memory to prevent re-rendering issues.

Reply to No You cant have a dog in Pets & Nature JoeUser Forums

Oh come now, no wonder you're poor. If you find yourself spending money on everything that you can get for free then you'll spend what money you have on unnecessary things. I've had many dogs over the years and I've never spent a penny buying them. But if you're really "poor" then you probably shouldn't be getting a dog. Some children ask for ponies too. Children ask for all kinds of things that aren't realy affordable. Christmas isn't about spending money. It's about

Reply to Why isnt the news showing us the real war in Iraq? in Current Events JoeUser Forums

60,000 Americans died in Vietnam. A few hundred American VOLUNTEER soldiers have died in Iraq. Vietnam: draftees forced into combat on a policy few people understood. Iraq: Volunteers fighting a policy that is clearly understood. Vietnam: Fighting to maintain a corrupt dictatorship versus an enemy that had been fighting colonial powers for independence. Iraq: Fighting to free Iraqi's from a dictator so brutal that he buried thousands of children alive during