Ted Leung on the air

The only TV in the house is an ATI Radeon All-In-Wonder 8500DV that is sitting in my mostly unused Windows box. Today was the first event of the figure skating season, so last night I booted up the machine to make sure that the TV stuff was still working. Windows installed a pile of XP security patches, and I had to upgrade the device drivers. When I finally shut the computer off last night, the TV tuner and DVR software appeared to be working.

This morning I got up and booted up the machine so that it would record the broadcast while we were out for the morning. Unfortunately, the TV Tuner input disappeared, and no amount of rebooting and haggling would get it working before we had to leave. In fact, no amount of fussing with it has been effective at getting the TV Tuner input to reappear.

There are perhaps 4 regular (non-cable) broadcasts of skating events this (Olympic) year (USFSA sold out to ESPN just like last year). Windows made me miss one of them. Microsoft is creating the wrong kind of passionate user in our household.

When it came down to new equipment choices, it was between the Powerbook and an IBM Thinkpad T series (ideally a T41P). Jeroen Frijters of IKVM fame shows the kind of stunts I might be pulling had I gone the WinTel route... At the moment, though, I have no regrets...

On the one hand, I'm grateful that Scott Hanselman has posted his list of must have utilities. On the other hand, the length of the list is kind of frightening...

As if MSBlaster wasn't enough... Tonight I started getting e-mails from the .NET Messenger Service staff, about the required upgrade for MSN Messenger and Windows Messenger. No problem there, although I do update my XP box regularly. Unfortunately for Microsoft, I've received 7 identical copies of this message since 7:14PM. Ironically (and I hope not chronically), an action that is part of the Trustworthy Computing Initiative is actually decreasing my level of trust and confidence.