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Emergency dogsitting required, will be away for about 1 week. Will still keep a paper diary then publish when i get back.

Still going strong though.

Bah Humbug

What’s happening to Christmas?

Every year its the same old story, 5 times the price for something just before the big day. Then after Christmas it’s suddenly OK to virtually give the bloody stuff away, sales everywhere. Nearly every present i bought before Christmas is now available for nearly half price. It’s a con we cannot get out of, because how can you tell children “If you wait a couple of days you can have everything you wanted, and so much more.” They just wont wear it.

For me the real idea of Christmas has been lost amongst all the consumerism. Christmas now has a price on its head. You cant just buy someone a gift they would like, you have to spend a certain amount, so that all is equal. Try telling a five year old “The reason you have a mountain of toys is because its was equal in cost to your older brothers PlayStation 3 and the 2 games that went with it.” Then see if they actually give a shit.

I love Christmas, I just think it would be better during the sales.

Guinness Tour

Four of us booked tickets on-line, something i suggest everyone does. For a start its cheaper and to make it even better, you skip the enormous queue and walk straight in. Watching the annoyed faces of those queueing makes it sweeter.

Arthur Guinness would be proud of the way the tour is scheduled. I was in the forces for many years and travelled a large portion of the planet. On the way i visited many breweries. All before this one were pretty much standard you walk the entire site to see where each bit is done. But the Guinness tour is different, just like their magnificent commercials. For a start the tour is kept within the same building, the difference being is you spiral your way up around what turns out to be a  massive pint glass. Awesome.

You still get everything any other brewery offers and more, the history of the black stuff and all things associated with it. You also get to sample the stuff about half way round. I sampled at this point many many times. About fifteen times more than was necessary, but i just had to make sure, ahem.

The tour took about 2 hours. Then the final surprise. At the very top you enter the atrium, a 360 glass view over Dublin. You also get to savour the view with a full pint of heaven. It brings back marvelous memory’s just thinking of it. It was dark when we got to the top so Dublin was lit up, more so because it was Christmas.

The three others with me were from Dublin, and not one of them had visited before. Its true about overlooking things on your doorstep. Yet everyone agreed it was well worth it.

I have no hesitations in recommending this tour to anyone, just remember my first note = Book on-line

Winsxs

“Ok this new version of windows is a bit hungry, so every couple of months just throw a new hard-drive its way and it should be fine.”

Recently I decided to clear out the never ending accumulation of junk from my computer, now that I think of it more time is spent getting rid of clutter than doing anything productive, anyway I came across this folder named winsxs.  This folder is taking over the asylum that I call windows. A folder that is 3.5gigs in size has 6005 folders inside and apparently allows us to have several dll’s of the same name blah blah, yet nobody can give me an answer in English as to why is has to be so large.

Use the link below for a full explanation, but might I suggest you ingest some sort of mind altering substance before doing so, it might make things clearer.

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa374224.aspx

Don’t get me wrong, at present I have more than enough disk space to allow for this folder, but how big is it going to get?  I know that with every new operating system an increase is size is inevitable, but this is just getting ridiculous. It is bigger than an entire clean installation of Vista.Would it be safe to just delete it? Or is it best to turn a blind eye and allow windows to have carte blanche over our machines.

On another machine I am running Ubuntu Linux with Beryl, and what a powerful combination that is.  Why doesn’t Linux need as many hungry resources as Windows? Yet still seem to perform just as well.  Now I’m not getting into the debate about which is better because I have used both for many years, and have no preference.

Operating systems are getting so big and complex these days.  Is it just better to wander off blindly? Instead of bothering ourselves with something that clearly has nothing to do with us anymore. If you look at the space needed for the swapfile, browsing history, system backup and now winsxs then you will realize no matter how big the harddrive, windows will want it all.

To summerize, dont be impressed with the amount of ram, size of harddrive, processor speed, how big and fast the graphics card or how clear the sound card is. Because all that matters is can it run the current version of windows, and could i possibly run the next version of windows. Because one thing is for sure, it wont go much past that.

If all you really do is surf the internet then dont worry, your machine will last you for a good few years yet. Dont feel pressured into buying the latest machine.

My first post

I fix and maintain quite a few laptops and home pc’s. and i generally give the same advice to everyone.

There are a few things you can do to keep your machine in pretty good shape.

1) Defrag your hard drive once a week

2) Install an anti virus program

3) Install a spyware remover

4) Stop yourself from installing crap software. Stuff you have no idea how to use or probably never will use again

i will show you how to do all these, and it will not cost a penny.