New Windows

We just finished having our new low-E windows installed in the house today. While this was a fantastically expensive project, the payback this summer should more than make up for it.

We went with WindowWorld's window system, and their installers were quick and professional. The massive bay window looks awesome. I would link their website, but honestly it's hardly worth visiting. Find the local franchise and work with them. Ours was excellent.

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis: The Business of Walking Away

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis: The Business of Walking Away discusses the current mortgage crisis and what's going to happen as individual families, and the banks involved, start walking away from the properties that cannot sell.

It's scary what happens when megacorps walk into bad investments with their eyes open, and consumers follow along.

Some Vista Advice

We've been working with Vista at work since mid-summer, since Dell really hates selling XP to businesses now. I have a couple of tips for those who are going to be trapped into an upgrade to Vista and Office 2007:

• Don't order the PC with anything less than 2GB of RAM. If they insist, refuse the upgrade and stay on whatever POS machine you're on now. Vista at less than 2GB is slower than anything I've ever seen. Grass growing is lightning quick in comparison.


• Make sure you turn OFF encryption between Outlook 2007 and the server. It's ungodly slow if you're on an office network. If you're on the road, I might reconsider this suggestion. I went from about 2 minutes to about 20 seconds for Outlook to start with this one change.


• We found a network setting to turn off dynamic speed negotiations with the network. Changing this setting helped the speed of network copies, and fixed some issues with TAPI drivers on Vista. To change the setting, right Click Command Prompt --> Choose Run As Administrator and then type the following:
  

  netsh interface tcp set global autotuning=disabled

I'll chime in wtih more as we find it.

Wii Remote Internals

SparkFun Electronics has an article up documenting the Wii Remote internals. I love these internal/undocumented type articles, which is probably why I always liked to read John Carmack's agony-inducing .plan updates.

Study Shows Why the Flu Likes Winter - New York Times

Study Shows Why the Flu Likes Winter - New York Times covers a recent study on the transmissability of flue -- it's the cold, dry days. This is fascinating, because for years the fears were about being in crowded spaces or something to do with schools. It turns out flu survives much better in cool (41°) dry air. Flu doesn't live well at room temperatures or high humidity. Good to know.

Christmas Cookies

In our family, I'm the Christmas cookie baker. This is a tradition from when I was young, when my mom didn't have time to do the cookies, but we kids wanted them so badly. I started doing the cutting and decorating, because it was the tedious, time eater. Nowdays, I do the making and baking, and watch my wife, kids and friends DESTROY our kitchen throwing frosting and sugared decorations all over the place. Ah, progress.

This year, I vowed to make less cookie recipies than last year's record of 11. Somehow, I'm scheduled to do 10. Thankfully, I am going with simpler recipies, but still. How did I get into this boat AGAIN?!?

X Chromosome: The Evolutionary Smoking Gun

X Chromosome: The Evolutionary Smoking Gun made me laugh today. I especially like this part:

Conventional wisdom suggests the large X-effect comes about because the X chromosome is "exposed," meaning its complement, the Y chromosome, doesn't have the information needed to mask the effects of changes on the X. We inherit a set of chromosomes from each parent with each chromosome acting as a sort of backup for its complement. "It's a bit like cross-referencing two encyclopedias for errors," said Presgraves. In the case of X and Y, however, it's like trying to cross-reference an encyclopedia with a pamphlet.

Being fairly familiar with genetic-oriented recessive traits, this is just hilarious to me. When you look at images of chromosomes taken under a microscope, the Y is such a runty little bugger. It always amuses me how much of the war and violence in this world are related to that tiny bugger.