My Insights

If you didn’t notice that I have a new banner on my website, then you need to visit my site more often (including you RSS readers). It was created using paint.NET which is nothing less than Photoshop as far as I am concerned … and it’s free!

It started development at Washington State University as an undergraduate senior design project mentored by Microsoft, and is currently being maintained by some of the alumni that originally worked on it. Originally intended as a free replacement for the MS Paint software that comes with Windows, it has grown into a powerful yet simple tool for photo and image editing. (source)

Although the banner above might not say much for my artistic skills, it should definitely tell you that an amateur like me can easily generate professional quality images using paint.NET.

It was created using the following picture (taken by my brother in NY) on a layer which was made semi-transparent.

By the way, the fact that my banner is professional quality is not a matter for debate.

So what are you waiting for? Ditch that illegal copy of Photoshop on your PC and download paint.NET!

There is a Starbucks on the same block as my office and my parking garage. So every morning when I move my car into the garage, I stop by Starbucks for a chocolate donut.

One particular morning, I hadn’t gotten much sleep so I decided to waste my money on some coffee. So I look across the board and the cheapest thing I can find is for about $1.60. Now what can be the cheapest thing in a fancy coffee shop? REGULAR COFFEE. Keeping that thought in mind and the fact that 7-11 coffee is $1.29, I decided to order a “Solo Macchiato”.

Now first, I want you to take your mouse and compare it to your water/coffee cup sitting on your desk. Can you see why I am mad? A cup of coffee for $1.60 should be TALLER than my mouse!

After I open the lid, I find that this “cup” is only HALF FULL!

Wouldn’t you be mad too if you paid the price of “half a gallon of gas” to get a “pint of starbucks”?

I thought this deserved a tribute-

Background
For the past 4 weeks or so, my processor has been incessantly churning away processing ’something’. Upon further investigation, it always turned out to be the ‘System’ process which basically means that my kernel or OS was processing something that occupied about 90% of my processor 24/7.

What did I do
After several reboots and shutdown of unneccessary services, I started scanning for viruses and spyware. After weeks of repeated scanning by McAfee and Ad-Aware, nothing turned up.

Last Resort
I finally gave in and decided to reformat the entire computer. So I started preparations to find and save essential data and such.

Hope
Yesterday, I remembered the Safety section on live.com and decided to give that a try. I performed a full-system scan which took about 24 hours to complete. However, it fixed the problem! And to top it all, it was free! I just felt that this is one of the many reasons why Microsoft should be hailed as a good company … not an evil one.

I switched to Verizon FiOS in late January ‘06. Before Verizon FiOS, I had internet service with Comcast cable. I thought it would be interesting to compare speed tests from the same provider (speakeasy.net) for Comcast and FiOS.

Here is the last speed test I conducted before cutting the cable:

The advertised speed for my Comcast connection was as follows:
Download: 4000 kbps, Upload: 384 kbps

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Here is a speed test I conducted today with FiOS over a wireless connection:

The advertised speed for my new connection is as follows:
Download: 15000 kbps, Upload: 2000 kbps

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As you can see, this is a tremendous improvement both in terms of download and upload. And to top it all, it is costing me the same!

Comcast: $42.95 + Stupid taxes/charges
FiOS: $44.95 + NO TAXES/CHARGES

To top the cake, FiOS comes with MSN Premium service (not much useful) and a free 802.11g wireless router. I don’t see why anyone wouldn’t want to switch.