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Some more root beers

I had the chance to have a few more root beers this week and I thoroughly enjoyed them. The first root beer I tried was Red Ribbon. I must say it tasted pretty plain. Nothing really stood out about it and it had a very generic IBC/Barq’s root taste. If I hadn’t taken a picture I probably would have completely forgotten about it. Beth pointed out that Red Ribbon had almost zero aftertaste. It was almost like you forgot you took a drink of anything. Then I had the Americana root beer.
This one was fantastic. It wasn’t too sweet, had a very good aftertaste and actually tasted like I was drinking something. It wasn’t quite as sweet as Virgil’s but with the food I was having that was a very good thing.I would have to say at this point this is my second favorite root beer, and depending on what I am eating at the time I would probably go for one of these over a Virgil’s.
Finally, I had Boylan Bottleworks. This was probably the sweetest tasting root beer I have ever had but that made it taste a bit more like liquid candy than a drink of bitter, brewed root. The label said it is sweetened with pure cane sugar and it was very tasty. I wouldn’t say I didn’t like it, but when drinking it the sweetness got in the way of the taste. Beth on the other hand loved this one and kept asking for more.
Overall Boylan Bottleworks was a great change from traditional root beers and I will keep it in mind when I want something to sip on while watching a movie. But I probably wouldn’t drink this one on a regular basis while eating my dinner. Unless of course my dinner is licorice.

Windows Vista temporary user profile

Sometimes when a user logs into their vista machine they are greeted with a temporary user profile. This is caused from a few different things but the main causes are
1. The computer cannot authenticate the user on the domain (usually because it did not get a respond from the domain controller). Or the computer is no longer a part of the domain.
2. The user is part of the Guest user group.
3. The user profile folder/user name was not available or the user already existed in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList
4. The login service failed to start on the machine prior to logging into the machine.

The main indication that the user is using a temporary user profile is all of their documents appear to be missing (desktop, documents, favorites, etc.). Any settings the user may have are also set to default (default background, screen saver), and the user will have this popup in the lower right hand corner.

The popup warns the user saying “User profile was not loaded correctly. You have been logged on with a temporary profile. Changes you make to this profile will be lost when you log off. Please see the event log for details or contact your administrator”

If this problem happens for a user the first thing that will probably fix the problem is restarting the computer (so the computer can connect to the domain controller). If that does not fix the problem please put in a work order so we can look at the problem and narrow down why this is happening.

One important thing to note when the user is logged into a temporary user is that their documents in their profile are not lost. Nothing has been erased they are just logged in as a different user. It is also important that the user does not save anything to the temporary profile. If they need to save a document they should email it to themselves using apumail.apu.edu, save the document to one of their network drives, or save files to a usb drive. If anything is saved to the desktop, documents, or favorites of the temporary profile it will be lost once the user is logged off.

Please see these links for more information.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940453
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/947242/en-us
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/257580/en-us

Tesla Roadster

For my birthday this past weekend I treated myself to something I wouldn’t normally do. I went for a test ride in a super car. It is something I have always wanted to do, and now that I am 25 I feel like I should be able to go do it. Lucky for me there is a start-up super car company that happens to have 1 of 3 dealerships about 30 minutes away from my house. So I gave them a call and scheduled a ride in one of their fabulous cars.
I wanted to give a quick review of what I thought about the car. First of all the obvious, this car is gorgeous! It is based off the Lotus Elise and it shows. It is a pretty small car with 100% carbon fiber body panels. For being such a small car it looks fairly heavy sitting on the street, but when the trunk/hood were open I could see all of the unpainted carbon fiber (including the carbon fiber trunk “tub”). All of the carbon fiber really makes this car stand out from just another Solstice/Sky and into the super car category. I asked if it came unpainted but I just got a weird look and was told there probably wouldn’t be a market for that. They were probably right but I still think it would look sweet.
One of the first things I noticed when I got in the car was how hard it is to get in. The side sill was extremely high when compared to the seat, and the seat I sat in was quite uncomfortable. I asked and found out the car I was actually sitting in was only the eighth Tesla Roadster ever made. When I finally got into a production car with swede seats it felt significantly better but I still wouldn’t want to sit in the seat for more than a hundred miles or so. Of course in this car, those hundred miles would go really quick. The side support was also a bit lacking for how fast the car can corner.
Also from just sitting in the car I found a few things very strange. First was the fact that the car uses a traditional key. I know this may not sound strange but even basic cars now use a wireless key and push start buttons. Second was the RPM gauge. Sure the electric engine spins around 13,000 RPM but the current transmission is only one speed. That means the RPM gauge and speedometer mirror each other. Tesla did finally fix the problems with their two speed transmission so maybe this will make the RPM gauge a bit more useful but I still find it a bit strange. Lastly was how small the car was inside. I currently drive a Toyota MR2 so I know what small cars are like, but with a driver sitting next to me I found that I had to lean slightly to the right just to keep rubbing shoulders the whole time.
On the plus side, this car is quick! I have been in some quick cars (the fastest was probably the ’07 Corvette Z06) but now this takes the cake. It was very deceptive how fast we were even going because there is no engine noise, but I could feel my gut collapsing on my spine whenever the “gas” pedal was pushed. Not only was it fast in a straight line, everything in the car is so low that it moved around a corner just as fast as it did going straight. I think my lower intestine tied into a knot going around a freeway offramp. Another big plus was how simple the interior is. There is no glove box (more of a shelf), no center console, and only about 6 buttons and 2 knobs including the AC, heater, and radio. Most things were controlled with a touchscreen on the lower left side. I asked what you could do with the touch screen and besides the boring charge level and air pressure the valet mode was really cool. You can put in a pin number and it limits the car to a lower speed and RPM. Just something to make sure no one else is having too much fun in your car.
Overall the car looks fantastic, goes like stink, and is so unique I can almost guarantee you won’t know anyone else that has one for the next 3 years. But overall some of the car felt very “version 1.0″ car quality and made me want to see how much better the second version of the car is going to be. For now the car is too expensive, starting at $110,000, and doesn’t offer enough to make it usable as a daily driver. Not that I would turn one down, but obviously I don’t have the money to buy one either.
Thanks to everyone at the dealership for taking time to show me around and let me ride in the car. I had a blast!
Let me know if you have any questions about the car in the comments.

How to restore a Apple computer to factory defaults

I occasionally need to set up a Apple computer to act like it just came from the factory to give to a new person or to sell it. There are 2 ways I found to do this. The first is with the original install disk that came with your computer. But honestly who still has those around?

The second is as easy as deleting one folder and two files.

All you have to do is boot the mac into single user mode (command+s at start up) and enter the following commands at the terminal you are presented with.

mount -uw /
rm -rf /Users/ /var/db/netinfo/local.nidb /var/db/.AppleSetupDone
reboot (or shutdown -h now if you don't want the machine to turn back on)
Replace with whatever username you set up on the computer.

This isn’t exactly the same as a fresh install but it is close enough. It removes all of the users and has the person go through the steps of naming the computer and registering with Apple.

Let me know if you have any other tips for restoring a Apple computer to true factory defaults.

How to set an external display as primary in Windows Vista

I posted this on my work’s wiki but I wanted to post it here so I can remember how to do it for later.

If you have your external display plugged into your laptop push Win+X to bring up the Windows Mobility Center. Then click on the Connect display button.

This will bring up the New Display Detected screen.

With that window open select “Show my desktop on the external display only” and hit ok.

Your laptop monitor should turn off and the external display will show your start menu and anything else you had open on the laptop.

Now right click on the desktop and go to personalize.

Then go to Display settings and select “Extend the desktop onto this monitor”

Go here for more information.

http://msthings.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!BFE88543FF6C8C5F!218.entry

Let me know if you have any Vista tips in the comments.

Dog n Suds root beer

So first of all I want to say thank you Ken and Jeanne for my birthday gift. Second, I wanted to start a series of posts reviewing some of the root beers I have tried. I’m not as big of a fan of root beer as I used to be, mainly because of a bad experience my freshman year at college, but I do enjoy the occasional break from Dr. Pepper, Cherry Coke, and Vitamin waters. And when that break calls, it is nice to have a good cold root beer at hand. On top of that I love trying new things.
I have tried just about every big brand root beer I can think of (IBC, Stewart’s, Henry Winehard’s, Virgil’s) and I would have to say so far Virgil’s in my favorite. I don’t plan this root beer log to get fancy with reviews or even have a rating system like this awesome site. But I just want to keep track of what I have tried and what I thought of it as I go.
So first up is Dog n Suds. I tried it last night with a Italian sub and it reminded me a lot of Stewart’s root beer. It had a bit of a creamy taste at first and then dulled away with almost 0 after taste. It was kind of strange because I was waiting for the after taste blow that would make me not like it but it just went right into my stomach making me forget that I took a drink of anything. This is not a bad thing but at the same time it is not a good thing. It is just a dull existence for a root beer to go into your mouth and right through your body without so much as a flavorful burp.
Overall I would say it was good but you can probably do better with something that will leave a more lasting impression.
Please let me know in the comments if you have a root beer you think I should try.

Hi, I’m a…

So I don’t usually like to post about Apple and their blunders because that would take far too much of my time. In this case however I found it too funny not to post something.
I am sure you all know about the “Hi, I’m a Mac” adds (and hopefully how blatantly incorrect they usually are) and I know that Justin Long and John Hodgman are just actors. But the fact is that Apple picked them to represent a certain demographic of user by how they look and what they are probably interested in. Meaning “the cool guy” is a Mac and the “nerd” is a PC.
But in the real world Justin Long is a PC user and John Hodgman is a Mac user.
This was just too good to resist.

You can’t hide from RSS feeds

It has been fun over the past few years to see stories that have been pulled from websites for various reasons. The really fun part is the fact that using RSS feeds to read stories instead of going to the website allows me to see even the stories that were taken down.
The latest one I found interesting had to do with Apple’s new ipod nano. Someone seems to have taken offense to the story though because within 3 hours of the story being posted, it was gone. I really can’t imagine who would have told them to take it down…
Anyway, here is a screenshot of what the story was about.

On another note about the new iPod nanos. It appears they changed physically how the device looks and also how the software looks.

I must say, it sure does look like another player that I have seen before. (both software and hardware)

Anyway, just thought I would encourage people to use RSS feeds to allow them to read the whole internet. Even the stories that get taken down.

Why I switiched from bloglines to Google reader this weekend

It is simple really. I found myself looking around Bloglines after using it for about 3 years. I saw some of there partner sites, and in under 10 minutes I exported/imported all my stuff to Google reader. Now if only Google reader was a app I could use with my website. I hate having to keep around a gmail login.
I highlighted the part that bothered me so much.

Racist Pajamas

Here is something Beth noticed a little while ago on some of her pajamas that was just too funny to not post it here.

It may be a little hard to see in the picture but it says

100% Cotton
100% Algodon
Machine wash
Cold water
Lavase a mano
En agua fria
Hecho en
E.U.A.
Made in U.S.A.

So really what that says in spanish is

Wash by hand
In cold water

I mean really, how much more racist can you be to force Spanish speaking people to wash their clothes by hand.