Windows Media Center

I'll start by saying that I love my windows media center and its DVR feature.

Sorry my friendly MSFT'ers (BTW, do you have a fun name for yourselves?) Nothing worked in windows media center after my Windows XP Media Center Edition updated to Service Pack 3. It gave errors like "Component Registration Failure" and "Some of the files needed to play radio or video are missing or corrupt. Media Center component registration may have failed" and "Critical Process Failure" and "A critical Media Center process has unexpectedly failed. If problems persist, please restart your machine and try again, or contact technical support. Code 3."

But I found a post by 1stknight (any relation to one of the knights who might read this post?) on this Microsoft website and it fixed my problem. It was in this forum: http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=3358277&SiteID=17

My 802.11b wireless adapter also doesn't work since the update, but I haven't tried to debug that yet, and it is a generic one that I got for like $8 at Fry's 4 years ago. I guess I'll work on that one next.

Puzzle Quest for Wii

I just finished Puzzle Quest for Wii. It tried to play to my previous addictions of both puzzle games and fantasy RPGs. The puzzle aspect isn't near as good as Tetris or Dr. Mario, and the RPG aspect isn't near as good as any Final Fantasy game, but it certainly was addictive. The game plays like bejeweled, but clearing gems gives you powers or does damage to your enemies. The game has the depth of hundreds of items and spells, and you have to clear unique screens to get the learn spells or forge new items, but you basically can get through the game by just playing hundreds of enemy screens over and over until your enemies are all dead.

I really can't figure out why I played it to the end when it is so repetitive, other than it is inexplicably addictive. (and I have to finish games I start)

Frankfurt

I have a few pictures to share from Frankfurt. The weather last night was in the mid 70s and beautiful, so we enjoyed eating outside at a place downtown. Today looks to be rainy and foggy, but at least it's not 106 like Dallas.



This is the view of downtown, taken Sunday from my hotel room window. In the lower right of the photo, you can see the wooded park which neighbors the hotel.

This is the same view at night, taken by a pro.

The hotel lucky enough to have me.

"Die Alte Oper" or The Old Opera. One of my favorite downtown landmarks--because it has good parking!

The building in the center Commerzbank Tower, the tallest building in the European Union. This photo was taken from in front of the Opera. (the building on the far right is shorter, but closer). There are several radio/tv towers that are taller, but this is the tallest building.

Frankfurt Bound

I'm on my way to Frankfurt for work this week. Before new readers get too excited for me, let me say this will be my 8th trip (plus or minus one, I haven't really kept track). I do have a one small thing to be excited about on this trip.

I got this 1 GB micro SD card for my phone and a little card reader so I could get pictures from my phone to my laptop easily. It is so small, I might start using it instead of my flash stick. You can see it's only about twice the size of the usb connector.

Also, I read an article on the plane about people who "flip" websites like people flip houses. They buy websites cheap, fix them up in ways to drive more traffic, and resell them. Feel free to make me an offer.

So I had to play with the camera on my phone a little bit. Here is O'Hare's add for their wifi, which I can tell you if you are reading this, works beautifully. I can't really say the same for the camera that is built in to my phone. It seems to be about as cheap as they come. When the new 3G iPhones came out last month, one complaint I heard was that the camera was only 1.3 megapixels. Sounds good to me... I've only got 0.3 megapixels.

Auf Wiedersehen!