I came across this blog created by the new owner of a Cirrus SR22, a beautiful modern general aviation aircraft.  He's going through his thought process of why he purchased this make/model versus others out there, including Cessna, Columbia, and Diamond. 

I hope to one day join the ranks of Cirrus pilots, if not outright owners.  Cirrus makes a beautiful aircraft, and given the current dismal state of our national airlines, it might just be the way to get around the southwest with the family.

In a recent post, I was complaining about an odd issue with Windows Defender hammering my hard drive.  Well, today I found myself diving into Process Monitor again, looking for the reason my HDD once again was being taxed to the limit.

In the logs, I found two oddities:

1. iPoint and iType, two applications used for added functionality for Microsoft's Wireless Desktop devices, were constantly creating a file, querying a directory, then closing a file over and over again.  I haven't been able to find any information about this online yet, but I'm going to keep looking.  I may have to open a ticket with Microsoft about this one.
   
   
2. The real cause of my HDD spooling issues was something called SearchIndexer.exe.  This, in the UI and Vista marketing material, is also known as Windows Search.  It's basically supposed to index highly user impacted directories allowing for quick search results.  It's also supposed to go to sleep when processing demand is high.
   
   Well, apparently the last bit of that hasn't worked out so well, as there are quite a few people looking for answers to permanently shut down SearchIndexer.exe.  In my case, it wasn't consuming so much CPU drain, as my task manager barely showed it at more than 2% of total CPU use, but my HDD was just getting beaten, causing all I/O tasks to get queued up.  That brought my computer to a near stand-still.  E.g. shutting down the 7 apps I had open (Office, FireFox, VisualStudio, iTunes, SQL Management Studio, and LiveWriter) and shutting down Vista took nearly 10 minutes.  I'd like that 10 minutes back.

In searching for a resolution, I came across a good post at Office Watch which describes what they claim is a potential/the issue with Windows Search.  What's especially nasty is that if Windows Search goes bad on you, it's very difficult to shut it down, as it has hooks in Windows and Office products.  This means that you can shut it down, but when you sneeze in the direction of Outlook, it'll go off to the races once again.

I for one never use the search functionality in Windows.  Visual Studio?  Sure, you betcha.  But I just haven't found a need for it yet.  I'm not sure if that's an indictment of my use of the OS, or maybe a simpler point like I always keep the documents I use where I expect them.  Regardless, if you don't think you'll be using Search anytime soon, you can go into Start -> Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Services, and find Windows Search (you can sort via Name).  Right click on it, and select Properties.  Change Startup type to "Disabled" and stop the service by pressing "Stop."

Sweet relief.

Continue reading at Office Watch for other suggestions on how to get Search working normally again.

I've been running Vista as my main dev box for about 12 weeks now, and I couldn't be happier that SP1 is going to be rolling out soon.  In my opinion, it can't get here soon enough.  Vista, in my opinion, is just not mother-in-law-proof.  For the record, my laptop is rated as an overall 4.5 "experience index" (on a 1 to 5.9 scale)**, which is not too shabby.  A 4.5 (with 5.9 video scores) allows me to see all of the glassy UI Vista effects.  For argument's sake, I'm going to ignore my personal beef(s) with developing on Vista, and will discuss general interaction I've had with the OS.

Last week I had all sorts of slowdown issues that required me to download Process Monitor to chase down a rogue process that was eating my HDD I/O.  What was that process?  Windows Defender.  Defender decided to run a full HDD scan in the middle of the afternoon, despite the schedule being set to run in the middle of the night.  The result?  My laptop came to a screeching halt, barely allowing me to get at Task Manager to perform emergency shutdowns of my freshly edited VS code.  Awesome.

Then there was this kicker: I played IT-guy for my niece.  She was having issues with her relatively new, relatively fast Compaq/HP notebook, and when I took a peek at it I noticed how much crapware was installed.  Seemed like the perfect example for an FDISK with a fresh XP install.  So, as that computer was being wiped, I was using my Vista box to download all the latest drivers.  I thought this would be a time-saver, as the plan was to download it all, then burn it to a CD.  Boy was I wrong.  Downloads worked like a champ, but when I went to burn the CD (using the internal Vista DVD/CD burner), this is what Vista calculated:

No, I am not kidding.  No, I did not Photoshop this image.  17 items.  578 MB.  This wasn't the first "best guess", but rather 3 or 4 excruciating minutes into the 578 MB copy.  Let's do some math, shall we?  32,996 days = 2,850,854,400 seconds. 578MB/2.85B seconds = 0.20 bytes/second = 1.62 bits/second.

My circa-1980 Commodore 64 had a 14.4kbps modem that was 8,878 times faster than that.  You know what?  It felt like it.  I could nearly see the electrons moving. 

[**Note to Microsoft: fire the idiot that determined a 1.0 to 5.9 scale.  1 to 5.9??  What the heck?  Was this built by the same joker that decided 0 to 158 1/3 is a good passer rating?]

[Programming note: I'm going to try to keep my music posts to Monday mornings.  That is all.]

For months, there's been a low buzz in the internet about when The Beatles and Radiohead are going to break down and sign a deal with Apple to provide their music on iTunes.  Radiohead last night told Apple (and the rest of the industry that treats musicians as slaves) where they can stick their 1s and 0s.

Last night, Radiohead announced they will not only be selling their next album, In Rainbows, on their own site, but they'll allow the purchaser to name the price, from $0.00 to $1,000,000 (or whatever your credit card max is).  From their site,

Radiohead have made a record.  So far, it is only available from this website.

The release will come in two flavors: digital download, and in a "diskbox" which will contain

the new album, In Rainbows, on CD and on 2 x 12 inch heavyweight vinyl records.  A second, enhanced CD contains more new songs, along with digital photographs and artwork.

The latter diskbox will cost 40EUR, or roughly $57USD.

You can get more information about the purchase by wandering through Radiohead's website, or by going directly to the order page for In Rainbows. 

I think there are a couple of very interesting things to note here.  The first is that witness to a significant paradigm shift in the world of music distribution.  This isn't the first band to distribute directly, nor will they be the last.  But they are arguably the biggest band to do it.  Beck has been toying with direct-to-consumer material for over a year, and Barenaked Ladies released Barenaked Ladies Are Me tracks before their album was complete.  With BNL, Avril Lavigne, Dido, Jars of Clay, and Sarah McLachlan have moved their management to the non-traditional Nettwerk Music Group, who is foregoing the traditional methods of band conscription by (among other things) offering alternative methods of distribution.

The second, more geeky, and real deal maker/breaker, is whether Radiohead's site will be able to manage the traffic gracefully.  Their site is very cool, but at the sake of being lightweight.  The main store page for example is nothing but imagery which makes the page about 100x bigger than it would otherwise be if it were the textual analog.  The rub is this: if they can't manage the traffic that will be hitting them on 10/10/2007, the band's goodwill might be shot.  What's the over/under on Radiohead.com and the download site denying connections by the time NYC wakes up?

I love finding new music that speaks to me on a different level; meaning that it's not the same style music I've been playing or listening to in the recent past.  About a year ago, I came across Marcus Eaton, whose most recent album is rhythmically reminiscent of old Dave Matthews or Duncan Sheik.  Something I appreciate Marcus Eaton for is that he embraces technology and allows you to listen to his entire album just by visiting his site.  Sure, it's not high fidelity, but it whets the appetite.

Anyway, I was looking over this weekend's Austin City Limits Music Festival lineup, and although I came across quite a few bands that are new to me, Gotan Project really jumped out.  Maybe they remind me of my most recent trip to Paris, or maybe they're a little pop-tastic, but there's something very cool about their sound.