As you might have gathered from the title of this post, life has not been the same without my computer, I still have a laptop, but it’s an Eee PC 1000H so its limited processing power / tiny keyboard don’t make for a very productive afternoon. And of course, it runs Windows, so 90% of the programs I need to run can’t even be installed on the Eee.

Now its pretty much a waiting game, I’ve filed a police report and an insurance claim (thank goodness for Renters Insurance), and now must wait for the insurance paperwork to arrive and the claim to process. The guy I spoke to at State Farm said it would likely take 1-2 weeks to process my claim.

The next two weeks are going to be incredible long and boring I’m afraid.

Feel free to check the site out, feedback is absolutely welcome.

For more information on MunchLaw.com, please refer to this post.

This year he told me he had a budget of $2,000 to spend, most excellent!

For a total of $1,700 this is what he’s getting:

Windows Vista Home Premium
Microsoft Office 2003 Pro
1TB Storage Space (2x 500GB Hard Drive)
8GB DDR2 800 RAM
2.4GHz Quad Core Processor (9.6GHz total processing power)
512MB GeForce 9600 GT Graphics Card
20x DVD-RW Drive (He declined getting a Blu-Ray drive)
19″ Widescreen Monitor
Wireless Bluetooth keyboard and laser mouse
Draft-N Wireless Card
40 Watts 2.1 Speaker System

It saddens me greatly that he wants me to install Windows Vista on it, but I’ll live.

I’ve got a client who’s interested in deploying an order management/inventory system using the iPhone, now I’ve already set them up with the backend system that’s accessible through Mobile Safari, but both he and I would like to use an application layer on the phone to speed things up and offer more robust functionality.

Fun times indeed.

So I’ve just finished moving 976MB of MySQL data from one server to another, that sucked royally. Apparntly 1&1 only allows you to upload SQL files that are less than 8,192kb, which is a major pain. I ended up having to move most of it over manually.

I’d been considering the move to 1&1 for awhile now, but didn’t like the fact that each MySQL database had a 100MB limit. Last week however, I sat down and wrote some code for both the Wordpress and SMF platforms that allows them to run using multiple databases for storage. This of course can lead to some considerable slowdown if it has to switch back and forth, but I think I’ve optimized it so it doesn’t have to switch very often.

Please let me know if you notice any slowdowns in performance.

The main drawback would be that you can’t drive it year round, but seeing as my business is usually slower in the fall/winter months it shouldn’t be too difficult to pull off sharing a car at that point.

I’m currently looking at the Schwinn Newport 150 (150cc engine), it gets 85MPG and has a top speed of 53MPH, which is looking pretty good considering the price of $1999.99 (msrp).

I had been looking at the Honda Metropolitan (retails for $1899.99), but I’m not sure about it since it’s only a 49cc engine, which is rather slow.

Anyone out there have any recommendations for a good scooter in the $2500 range?

It really is a fantastic deal considering the specs:
Operating System: Windows Vista Home Premium
CPU: Intel Pentium dual-core T2370(1.73GHz)
Screen: 15.4″ WXGA
RAM: 1GB DDR2
Hard Disk: 120GB
Optical Drive: DVD Super Multi
Graphics Card: Intel GMA X3100

And for an extra $30 I ordered another GB of RAM for it. I’ve purchased a few of these in the past for clients and they’ve had great reviews. Even in the stock configuration I was impressed at the speed it runs Windows Vista.

Acer also provides XP drivers for their Extensa series of laptops, major bonus.

The discount requires a promo code which only works if you’re subscribed to Newegg’s newsletter. At any rate the promo code is: EMCAGBKAH.

Hanging application hl2.exe, version 0.0.0.0, hang module hungapp, version 0.0.0.0, hang address 0×00000000.

Just add the following to the end of the Target path of the Portal shortcut:
-dxlevel 81 +mat_forcehardwaresync 0

You can do so by right clicking on the Portal icon and selecting Properties.

After you’re finished, it should look something like this:
Steam.exe -applaunch 400 -dxlevel 81 +mat_forcehardwaresync 0

Now click Ok.

Please note this fix is only relevant for launching Portal using the desktop shortcut, this will not fix launch problems with launching Portal from within Steam.