Geeking Out

MSN Live Messenger is pissing me off. Time to do some testing. MSN Live has as a sponsor, LavaLife. I am not the target market for LavaLife. I am very happily married and I do not want to see these ads on MSN Live sites or in MSN Live messenger.

I decided to check my profile. There are a lot of setting there, and most of them I have left blank, or set prefer not to say. The setting for marriage status was blank. I have a suspicion (or hope) that this setting will modify the ads I see.

First thing I notice is that there is no option to specify "I'd prefer not to say". Crud. I set it to married, and we will see if this gets rid of the ads.

I really hope that the settings on my profile will influence the ads I see. It would make sense wouldn't it? You'd think a company like Micro$oft would place contextually relevant ads. Surely they have someone there that can code that feature up.

Update 1: now I see ads for date.ca. Not much better.

Update 2: the MSN Live preferences page still shows LavaLife ads. I am now thinking I am S.O.L.

Decided on a whim (and a little investigation), to upgrade muddylaces to Drupal 4.7.2. There are a couple modules that I use(d) that haven't been updated yet. Since it was nothing critical, I decided to go for it.

This was a more complicated than usual upgrade, but now that it is done, I am liking it. Hopefully everything made it across just fine. I had to update two of my custom modules (easy), and update my theme, and tidy up a few things.

Excellent. Fun Fathers Day project.

The past couple weeks we have had a spotty internet connection. Everything would work fine for a while, then nothing. I logged into the router admin interface and noticed that the router was having problems getting an IP address using DHCP. Figuring it was a Shaw problem I gave them a call yesterday.

I didn't have to wait too long to talk to a rep, but then it was the usual crap to deal with. Unplug the power for the modem. No fix. Unplug the power to the router. No fix. Unplug power to both. No fix. Reboot the computer. No fix. Plug computer directly into modem. No fix.

FInally the tech pulled out some bizarre command line instructions:

netsh int ip reset resetlog.txt
and
netsh winsock reset catalog

I asked him what these were for, and he said that sometimes windows can get confused on bootup and not correctly configure itself. Bullshit. I called him on that. I asked: "How would that fix the problem when the computer had no problems getting an IP address from the router, and it was the router (not running windows) that couldn't get an IP address. " His reply: "Hmm good question".

Just a little note here that I have changed how I handle the feed from gf-tech.com (my other blog for geeky work related stuff). I was importing items from the feed to this site, and having them appear as first class content. This made for easy consumption, and easy commenting. The commenting bit was the downfall. I'd rather have the comments on the original source of the story (gf-tech.com).

I now have a block on the top right of muddylaces that shows latest content from gf-tech.com. This will not show up in the rss feed for this site (that is a drag). It will link to a story on muddylaces, with a link to the full article which will take you to gf-tech.com so you can leave comments there.

An example is here: http://www.muddylaces.ca/firefox_extension_dragdropupload

If you have any strong feelings about these changes, please let me know.

Drupal release 4.6.7 is now installed on muddylaces. This release is a security fix to patch a small hole with file uploads. The upgrade was nice and simple, just the way it should be.