1. If you ask me technical questions please don’t argue with me because you don’t like my answer. If you think you know more about the topic, why ask? And if I’m arguing with you…it’s because I am positive that I am correct, otherwise I’d just say “I don’t know” or give you some tips on where to look it up, I don’t have the time to just argue for the sake of it.
2. Starting a conversation by insulting yourself (i.e. “I’m such an idiot”) will not make me laugh, or feel sorry for you; all it will do is remind me that yes, you are an idiot and that I am going to hate having to talk to you. Trust me; you don’t want to start a call that way.
3. I am ok with you making mistakes, fixing them is my job. I am not ok with you lying to me about a mistake you made. It makes it much harder to resolve and thus makes my job more difficult. Be honest and we can get the problem resolved and continue on with our business.
4. There is no magic “Fix it” button. Everything takes some amount of work to fix, and not everything is worth fixing or even possible to fix. If I say that you just need to re-do a document that you accidentally deleted 2 months ago, please don’t get mad at me. I’m not ignoring your problem, and it’s not that I don’t like you, I just cant always fix everything.
5. Not everything you ask me to do is “urgent”. In fact, by marking things as “urgent” every time, you almost ensure that I treat none of it as a priority.
6. You are not the only one who needs help, and you usually don’t have the most urgent issue. Give me some time to get to your problem, it will get fixed.
7. Emailing me several times about the same issue in the same day is not only unnecessary, it’s highly annoying. Emails will stay until I delete them, I won’t delete them until I’m done with them. I will typically respond as soon as I have a useful update. If it is an urgent issue, let me know (see number 5).
8. Yes, I prefer email over telephone calls. It has nothing to do with being friendly, it’s about efficiency. It is much faster and easier for me to list out a set of questions that I need you to answer than it is for me to call and ask you them one by one. You can find the answers at your leisure and while I’m waiting I can work on other problems.
9. Yes, I seem blunt and rude. It’s not that I mean to, I just don’t have the time to sugar coat things for you. I assume we are both adults and can handle the reality of a problem. If you did something wrong, I will tell you. I don’t care that it was a mistake, because it really makes no difference to me. Don’t take it personal, I just don’t want it to happen again.
10. And finally, yes, I can read your email, I can see what web pages you look at while you are at work, yes, I can access every file on your work computer, and I can tell if you are chatting with people on an instant messenger or chat room (and can also read what you are typing). But no, I don’t do it. It’s unethical, I’m busy, and in reality you aren’t all that interesting. So unless I am instructed to specifically monitor or investigate your actions, I don’t. There really are much more interesting things on the internet than you.

From here and probably many other places.

If you are like me, and have been moaning and groaning about Microsoft not releasing Service Pack 3 for Windows XP, you probably downloaded and tried RC2 Refresh. And if you are not like me, it probably installed a-okay. But if you did have a problem, this is the one I had and maybe you did as well.

A BSOD flashes on the screen just at the end of the install and when Windows tries to restart it appears again. And again. And again. I finally got it to stay on the screen long enough to get this text:

STOP ERROR 0xc0000139 Ending Point Not Found
Gdigetbitmapbitsize not loaded in dynamic link library GDI32.DLL

FUN! But don’t fret, there is an easy fix. Using either your Windows Install CD or Bart-PE you can get the problem taken care of.

In either case (Windows Install CD or Bart-PE) you need to copy one file. Here are the steps I used to get the GDI32.DLL back to working order.

• Once in a CMD screen switch to C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\ and rename GDI32.DLL to GDI32.DLL.OLD
• And then COPY C:\WINDOWS\SERVICEPACKFILES\GDI32.DLL GDI32.DLL
• Reboot

And there you have it. The problem is that the old GDI32.DLL file was not allowed to be replaced with the new one. Once you get it replaced everything should work fine.

Let’s face it, Windows XP is here to stay for a while longer. Especially with Service Pack 3 being released. Business can ill afford to be Microsoft’s Free beta test bed for Vista. Not when almost nothing in Vista is robust enough to stand up to the average in”duh”vidual user (apologies to Scott Adams).

So what happens when your Windows XP system really begins to crap out on you? Say you can no longer access printers. Or every so often when you power up you get a momentary BSOD and the system reboots and then works fine.

Let’s just say the system is running veeeeeeery slow. You can break out the OEM CDs included when you purchased the machine and backup all your data/mp3’s, try to find all the install CDs from all the extra programs purchased. You even kept all the MSI’s and install programs from everything you downloaded from the interweb, right?

Reinstallation is almost never the first answer and often times is rejected as the last resort. What can you do?

Windows XP comes with a handy little option during the setup call Repair Install on the Windows XP install CD. What this will do is let Windows find the current installation on the hard drive and install a “fresh” copy of Windows XP over top of it.

The big, huge, humongous difference between a Repair Install and a Reinstall is this: a Repair Install will keep the Windows Hive as intact as possible with regards to installed 3rd Party and non-OS software.

That means your Outlook PST files will stay where they are (and who of you out there really know where they are to begin with?) A Repair Install means that all of your customizations to your account (bookmarks, My Documents, etc) will remain intact.

Most of the problems caused by an aging Windows XP installation can be solved with a Repair Install of Windows rather than a reinstallation of the entire OS and software.

Now the bad news.

A Repair Install takes just as long as a Reinstallation of the OS. So look forward to an hour or so of watching the Microsoft Minute timer bounce around.

You will have to repatch your Windows Installation after the repair install completes. A Windows XP SP2 installation will need to download anywhere from 80 to 90 patches to get caught up.

If you downloaded and installed any malware, viruses, trojans, etc., a Repair Install WON’T get rid of those. You will still have to deal with those things FIRST (remove the virus and it’s files, delete malicious programs, etc) before you do the Repair Install.

But all in all, it is a GREAT time saver because you are just redoing the Operating System and not the entire hard drive and all the programs you added over the course of the months or years of your system’s life.

One more caveat.  When you load the Windows XP install CD do NOT select the option to repair using the Repair Console.  Continue on to the next set of menus.

In an effort to continually re-invent (needlessly I might add) the BiggAndyy franchise, I will be trying a new theme format; the Magazine Theme. The creme-de la creme of the Wordpress Magazine Theme World is of course the Revolutions Magazine Theme.

However, since I don’t have/want to shell out $100.00 bucks American cash, I am doing what any red blooded skinflint would do, try and find a free alternative someone else came up with.

I hope you like the new look and I hope it can be a winner. I might even want to blog a bit more often.

Yes folks, a quick and easy theme generator for WordPress. It is online (no downloading) and lets you preview your changes instantly.

http://www.yvoschaap.com/wpthemegen/ so far is very easy to use and seems to be heading in the right direction as far as one size fits all theme generators. Look for some changes to BA in the future, a completely customized theme from the Theme Generator.